FOSSIL 181 FOSTER In anatomy (1) In the singular, a groove. There are in the ear a fossa of the helix, which is a groove called also fossa innominata or scaphoidea, and a fossa of the antihelix, which is a some- what triangular depression, called also fossa triangularis or ovalis. There are also a fossa of the heart, one of the gall bladder, etc. There are also a canine, a corodoid, a digastric, a digital and many other fossa. (2) In the plural, grooves. There are nasal fossae, su- perior and inferior occipital, etc. FOSSIL, originally, "all bodies what- ever that are dug out of the earth are by naturalists commonly called by the gen- eral name of fossils." At present, any body, or the traces of the existence of any body, whether an- imal or vegetable, which has been buried in the earth by natural causes; one of the bodies called organic remains. Even the cast of a fossil shell, that is the impression which it has left on the rock, is deemed a fossil. (Used often in the plural.) In the early part of the 16th century fossils were supposed by some Italians to have been formed in the hills by the FOSSIL — SKELETON OP HYRACOTHERIUM VENTICOLUM, FROM EOCENE STRATA action of the stars, a view which, prior to 1579, Leonardo da Vinci combatted. Then the hynothesis arose of a plastic force, or, according to Andrea Mattioli, a fatty matter capable of fashioning stones into organic forms. But the hypothesis which held its place longer than any other, and is not yet extinct among the unscientific, is that they were relics of the Mosaic deluge. It is now thoroughly proved that the relics are really those plants and animals, that they were nearly all of them in existence ages before the Mosaic deluge, that they are not nearly contemporaneous with each other, but differ in age by untold millions of years, that there is at least a progression among them, if not even the evolution of the last from the more antique. There are breaks or gaps in the series of fossiliferous strata, espe- cially one between the Palaeozoic and the Secondary strata, and another between the Secondary and the Tertiary. Mr. Darwin showed that it is almost exclu- sively strata desposited in seas or lakes which at the time were slowly sinking that have been preserved; those formed when land was rising have as a rule^ been washed away. In thf older strata, and sometimes in those not so ancient, fossils have been destroyed by meta- morphic action, and when any rock is called non-fossiliferous or azoic, the cau- tious geologist means by the term only that fossils have not been found in it up to the present time. FOSSORES, or FOSSORIA, in en- tomology, burrowing Hymenoptera, a sub-tribe of the hymenopterous tribe Aciileata. Sexes two, the individuals in both of which are furnished with wings, legs formed for burrowing or for run- ning, tongue not elongated, but widened at the extremity. Habits not social. The females of the fossores construct holes in the ground, where they form their nests. Depositing their eggs, they next lay up for the future larvae a supply of food consisting of spiders and cater- pillars rendered half dead by being stung. Many of the fossores are called sandwasps. The sub-tribe ils divided into eight families: (1) Scoliadas, (2) Sapygidse, (3) Pompilidse, (4) Sphe- ddse, (5) Bembic-idae, (6) Larridse, (7) Nyssonidss, and (8) Crahonidse. FOSTER, JOHN WATSON, an Amer- ican statesman and diplomat. He was born in Pike co., Ind., March 2, 1836. He graduated in 1855 from Indiana State University and for a time attended the Harvard Law School. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted as a major in the United States Volunteers, rising to the rank of Brigadier-General by the time the contest closed. After taking a prominent part in the councils of the Republican party he began his diplo- matic career as minister to Mexico. After serving seven years at this post and one as minister to Russia he practiced inter- national law at Washington and thus in 1883 became Minister to Spain. From 1885 to 1891 he negotiated for the United States a series of reciprocity treaties with Germany and Brazil. Presi- dent Harrison in 1892 appointed him Secretary of State, a post he held until Cleveland was inaugurated the following year. The closing years of his life saw him engaged on many important diplo- matic missions for the United States,
