Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/843

ZEOLITE ZEUGLODON 813 ZEOLITE (Gr. frlv, to boil), the name given to a family of minerals, which, though in some respects unlike, have the common character- istic of melting and intumescing in the flame of the blowpipe. They consist chiefly of silica, alumina, some alkali, and more or less water ; the latter two account for their dissolution under heat. Most of them also gelatinize in acids, by separation in such state of the silica. As found, they fill cavities or form narrow seams in rocks, are implanted on their surface, or more rarely imbedded in them, but are never, like agates, disseminated throughout the rock. They all occur in amygdaloid, some of them in granite or gneiss. Among them are heulandite, laumonite, natrolite, stellite, analcime, sodalite, lapis lazuli, &c. (See LAPIS LAZULI, and LAUMONITE.) ZEPHANIAII, one of the twelve minor pro- phets, a descendant of Hezekiah, supposed by many to be the king of that name. He pro- phesied in the reign of King Josiah, about 625 B. C. His prophecy consists of three chapters. The first is a general threatening against all the people whom the Lord had appointed to slaughter, and in particular against Judah and the Philistines. In the second he inveighs against the Philistines, Moab, Ammon, and Gush, and foretells the fall of Nineveh. The third contains invectives and threatenings against Jerusalem, but afterward gives com- fortable assurance of a return from captivity. Among the best commentaries are those by Hitzig (3d ed., 1863), Keinke (1868), and Klei- nert (in Lange's Bibelwerk, 1868). ZERA9I. See GEBAM. ZERBST, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Anhalt, on an affluent of the Elbe, 22 m. S. E. of Magdeburg; pop. in 1871, 11,957. It has four Protestant churches, including the fine Gothic Nikolaikirche, restored in 1827, and a large town hall with a Bible in parch- ment containing pictures by Lucas Kranach. The Anhalt penitentiary was formerly a con- vent. Four annual horse fairs are held, and there are manufactories of gold and silver ware, silk, and other articles, including the celebrated Zerbst bitter beer. It was for many centuries the capital of Anhalt-Zerbst, which became extinct in 1793. (See ANHALT.) The beautiful palace where the princes of that heuse resided adjoins the town. ZETLAND. See SHETLAND ISLANDS. ZETTERSTEDT, Johan Wilhelm, a Swedish natu- ralist, born in Ostergotland, May 20, 1785, died in Lund, Dec. 23, 1874. He taught bota- ny and natural history in the university of Lund from 1810, made several scientific jour- neys through northern Europe, and in 1839 was appointed professor of botany and econ- omy. He published Dissertatio de Foecunda- tione Plantarum (3 vols., Lund, 1810-'12) ; In- secta Lapponica (Leipsic, 1838-'40); and Dip- tera Scandinavia (14 vols., Lund, 1842-'60), for which he received the great Linnaeus medal from the Stockholm academy of sciences. ZETTINIE, or Zetttitfe. See CKTTIGNE. ZEUGLODON (Gr. fevyAj?, a yoke, and 6do{>?, a tooth), a gigantic fossil cetacean mammal, found in the eocene and miocene tertiary strata of the southern United States and Europe, so named by Owen from the yoke-like character displayed by a section of the molar teeth. Its remains were first discovered in 1832 in the tertiary of Louisiana, and were supposed to belong to some huge saurian reptile, to which Dr. Harlan gave the name of lasilosaurus ; he carried the bones to London in 1839, where Owen showed by microscopic examination of the teeth, and the fact that the molars were double-rooted and implanted in double sockets, that it was not a reptile but a cetacean mam- mal, and belonged somewhere near the manatee and dugong. In 1835 Prof. Agassiz established the 'genus phocodon, from the examination of a tooth in the museum of Cambridge, England, regarding its possessor as nearly allied to the seal family ; this was the very specimen figured by Scilla in 1747, in his work De Corporibw Marinis, and was obtained from the miocene of Malta ; if phocodon be a synonyme of zeu- glodon, the former has a priority of four years over the latter, and according to the rules of scientific nomenclature should be adopted, and with the more reason as the animal in question bears affinities to the seals in more respects than in the form of the teeth. In 1840 M. Grateloup described the fragment of an upper jaw with teeth found in the eocene of France, a few leagues south of Bordeaux, which he believed to characterize a new order of am- phibious reptiles, carnivorous and marine, per- haps a connecting link between the lacertians and the sharks, and for which he proposed the name of squalodon. In 1845 Dr. K. W. Gibbes described some teeth which he re- ferred to a genus called by him dorudon, now recognized as belonging to the zeuglodon. The materials for the study of this animal have been extensively collected, though its exact position in the scale of mammals is not established beyond dispute. In 1843 Mr. Buckley found a considerable series of bones of zeuglodon in Clark co., Ala. ; they con- sisted of a chain of 40 vertebras, with a por- tion of the skull and lower jaw, a perfect hu- merus, and a few other bones, measuring in total length about 70 ft. ; some of the verte- bras are 18 in. long and 12 in. in diameter on the articulating surfaces, and many are nearly perfect ; the specimen belongs to the collection of the late Dr. J. C. Warren of Boston. About the same time Mr. Koch, a German collector, obtained from the marly limestone of Alabama a considerable quantity of these bones, which were put together, embracing parts of differ- ent skeletons, and exhibited in most of the northern cities as the hydrarchus Sillimani, or great marine serpent. Prof. Wyman and others questioned the authenticity of this col- lection, which was carried to Dresden, and there described by Carus as a reptile, though