GEOLOGY. 315 



Rogers says, They occur, indeed, in a geological horizon, only a 

 few hundred feet below the conglomerate which marks the beginning 

 of the productive coal series, in which series similar footprints, attrib- 

 uted to batrachian reptiles, had been previously met with in VVestern 

 Pennsylvania. Instead, therefore, of constituting a register of the an- 

 tique life earlier than any hitherto discovered, by at least a whole chap- 

 ter in the geological book, they carry back its age only by a single 

 leaf. The surfaces upon which these interesting footprints abound are 

 the smooth, divisional plains separating the beds of red sandstone, and 

 ars invariably coated with a fine impalpable material of a once slimy 

 and soft mud ; and every thing in the texture of these surfaces goes to 

 prove that they were in contact with the air, and were the stages of 

 rest between the alternate depositions of the strata. Many of them are 

 covered with ripple lines and water marks, suggestive of the shelving- 

 shore, and, with few exceptions, they are spotted over with little circu- 

 lar impressions, imputed to the pattering of rain. All over the succes- 

 sive floors of this ancient world, as delicate and impressible in their tex- 

 ture as so much wax or parchment, are the footsteps and the trails of 

 various creeping things, the prints of some unknown four-footed 

 creature, thought to be reptilian in its nature, but of whose true affin- 

 ities the Professor expressed his doubts, trails analogous to those of 

 worms and mollusks, and various other marks, written in hieroglyphics 

 too ancient to be interpreted. The larger footprints are, for the most 

 part, five-toed, alternate in the steps, and w r ith the fore feet as large 

 nearly as the hind ones ; marks of the scratching and slipping of the 

 feet, and the half effacing passage of the tail, or of some soft por- 

 tion of the body, are often distinctly legible. 



Prof. Agassiz stated his doubts as to the reptilian character of the 

 footprints noticed, and, after describing the difference in the arrange- 

 ment of the locomotive organs of the modern and the ancient fishes, 

 gave it as his belief, that in those early periods there were fishes of a 

 structure which permitted them to walk upon all fours. 



ON THE OCCURRENCE OF EXOGENOUS VrOOD IN THE LIAS 



FORMATION. 



MR. J. C. SORBY has found, on submitting sections of fossil wood 

 from the lias of Gloucestershire to the microscope, indications of ducts 

 and imperfect spiral vessels. This observation is interesting from the 

 fact that hitherto exogenous wood has not been found so low down as 

 the lias. London Athzn&um. 



ON THE OCCURRENCE OF PALMS IN THE COAL FORMATION. 



AT a late meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, Mr. 

 Teschemacher exhibited several specimens of palms from the country 

 hack of Singapore. The object of the exhibition of these palms was, 

 he said, to show several agreements between them and the vegetation 

 of the coal period, of which he exhibited specimens in the anthracite 

 coal itself. He observed, that in the most recent work on this sub- 



