Specimens of this adipocire were presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences, by my uncle, who found them at his country seat, opposite Valley Forge, buried in moist ground, near a drain which led water from a spring-house. About ten years previously, the shepherd in charge of a flock of sheep indulged in a drunken spree, and in the meanwhile some fifteen of the sheep in his care died from neglect, and were buried in the above mentioned spot. My uncle, who was present at the exhumation of the sheep, stated that in some of the remains, the exterior forms of the muscles were very distinct. The two specimens I obtained were in lumps, amorphous under the microscope, floating on water; of greasy feel, and rank mutton smell, mingled with a peculiar disagreeable fundamental smell, that I have observed in all my specimens of adipocire, including the fossil one. Heated in a capsule with water, a transparent fat floats melted on the surface; heated alone in a platinum crucible, it melts and burns with a smoky flame, leaving a slight residue, which effervesces with hydrochloric acid, and contains beside sand and a little iron, principally lime. Under the microscope with moderate powers, it is white, fatty, and granular, disappearing with Canada balsam; with higher powers it is amorphous: melted on the glass slide covered with thin glass, is crystalline on cooling, in groups of plumose crystals, which give a beautiful play of colours with polarized light; a drop of its weak alcoholic solution evaporated spontaneously on glass gave the same appearance of crystallization. Water added to this solution precipitated it in the form of a pure white amorphous powder: distilled per se, leaves a slight carbonaceous residue, and gives a volatile fat, yellowish, and cryst, on cooling. This volatile fat is soluble in hot alcohol, and precipitates partly on cooling. The weight of material was seventy grammes; it was melted in the water bath, and filtered through paper in a hot funnel; the filtered solidified fat was of a light coffee colour, and weighed fifty-four grammes; in a capillary tube, is soft at 54°, fluid at 62°; on cooling becomes opaque at 50°. When pressed in paper, the latter is greased by oleic acid; it contains no ammonia, nor any nitrogen by the potassium test; the residue on the filter (together with the filter) was boiled with alcohol, filtered hot on a weighed filter, and washed with alcohol. This alcoholic solution deposited twelve grammes of fatty acid, by spontaneous evaporation, during the summer. The crystals at first deposited were white and warty; a portion of the alcoholic solution on a glass slide, exhibited with the microscope, white, curved dendritic forms, arranged stellate; in the capillary tube, they begin to melt at 53°, are fluid at 62°, and on cooling begin to cloud at 58°, and are opaque at 50°. The residue on the filter weighed about four grammes, and viewed under the microscope, consisted of membranous