338 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



character, from the associated strata. This crinoidal limestone forms the 

 base of the mountain limestone series in this region, and rests directly upon 

 rocks equivalent to the Portage and Chemung groups of 'New York. This 

 lower bed has yielded a great number of teeth, though they are usually of 

 smaller size than in the upper beds. This stratum was first observed at 

 Quincy, 111., and has since been recognized in Henderson County in the same 

 State, and at Augusta, in Iowa, points nearly one hundred miles distant from 

 the one first named, showing that these fish beds are not local. This bed has 

 also afforded one well marked, bone nearly four inches long. Prom these 

 specimens it seems that the fishes of the sub-carboniferous era increased in 

 size from the beginning to the end of that period, and that by far the greater 

 portion of them were cartilaginous, only two well marked bones having been 

 obtained from at least one thousand well preserved teeth. The Pentremitce 

 and Archimedes limestones of southern Illinois have afforded several very fine 

 specimens of fish remains, but a very careful examinatiorgjias not yet revealed 

 any strata in which they occur in such profusion as in the lower beds. Going 

 south through Tennessee and Northern Alabama, though this formation attains 

 a thickness of more than one thousand feet in the valley of the Tennessee 

 river, these remains are exceedingly rare, and a careful research of several 

 days yielded only three or four specimens of this class of fossils. 



ON THE RELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FISHES OF THE CONNECTICUT 

 RIVER SANDSTONE, TO THE TRIASSIC AND LIASSIC PERIODS. 



Mr. W. C. Redfield read a paper " on the relations of the fossil fishes of 

 Connecticut and other Atlantic States to the Triassic and Liassic periods." He 

 showed that so long ago as 1836, Mr. J. H. Redfield had made a careful examin- 

 ation of a portion of these fishes ; and by the aid of the great work of Prof. 

 Agassiz on the fossil fishes known in Europe, was able to point out the geolo- 

 gical age of these American fishes, as of the period from the Triassic to the 

 Liassic series ; their affinities being as near to the latter as to the former. 

 These results were published in the annals of the New York Lyceum of 

 Natural History, with his first- description of the genus Catopterus. In a 

 report prepared at the request of the American Association of Geologists and 

 Naturalists, and presented at the meeting in New Haven in 1845, Mr. John 

 H. Redfield gave a more extended examination of these fishes, including the 

 genus Catopterus from the coal rocks of Eastern Virginia, and confirming the 

 results of the former examinations. Later researches by geologists do not 

 appear to have altered these determinations. The value of fossil remains, as 

 indicating the relative age of rocks, is well shown by the fact that a young 

 man of twenty, without previous training, was thus able to point out the geo- 

 logical age of these strata, and within the same limits which seem to be 

 established by all subsequent discoveries and examinations. 



NEW CARBONIFEROUS REPTILE. 



At the American Association, Albany, Prof. Jeffries TVyrnan presented a 

 communication on the remains of an animal found by Dr. Newberry in 



