Geological Society. 225 



The author then gives his reasons for supposing the fungi to be the 

 cause and not the effect of the decay ; and concludes by describing 

 the several stages of development of the fungi, and their mode of 

 entrance within the fruit. Specimens of the fungi were exhibited to 

 the Society after the reading of the paper. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Nov. 17, 1841. — A letter addressed to Dr. Fitton, by Mr. Lyell, 

 and dated Boston the 15th of October, 1841, was read. 



Mr. Lyell's attention, between the period of his arrival in the 

 United States and the date of his letter, had been principally devoted 

 to the grand succession of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous 

 strata in the state of New York and on the borders of Pennsylvania, 

 having been accompanied during a portion of his tour by the States' 

 Geologist, Mr. J. Hall ; but he had also visited, in company with that 

 gentleman, the Falls of Niagara and the adjacent district, and he states, 

 that he purposes to communicate a paper on the phenomena of the 

 recession, drawn from new arguments, founded on the position of a 

 fluviatile deposit below the Cataract. He expresses his intention of 

 also communicating a notice of five localities of Mastodon bones which 

 he had visited, digging up some remains himself, and collecting the 

 accompanying shells, which he says, seem to have been neglected. 

 He had likewise examined, accompanied by Prof. Silliman and his son, 

 the new red, with intrusive trap, in Connecticut ; and, assisted by 

 Mr. Conrad, he had collected fossils in every member of the cretaceous 

 system in New Jersey *. The principal object, however, of the present 

 communication is, to point out the extension to the United States of 

 Mr. Logan's generalizations on the beds of fire-clay containing Stig- 

 maria, formerly laid before the Society in a paper on the coal-field 

 of South Wales. Mr. Lyell had met Mr. Logan at New York, pre- 

 viously to that gentleman's visit to the anthracite coal-field of Penn- 

 sylvania, and he adverts to the delight which Mr. Logan must have 

 felt in witnessing the occurrence of beds of Stigmaria fire-clay to an 

 extent far exceeding what could have been expected. On the con- 

 fines of the states of New York and Pennsylvania, Mr. Lyell found 

 remains of Holoptychius and other fishes in the old red sandstone, 

 and at the bottom of the overlying coal series a thick quartzose 

 conglomerate ; and he says that the coal-measures, with their im- 

 bedded plants, bear an exact analogy to British coal-measures, both 

 in detail and as a whole. In investigating the coal district of Bloss- 

 berg, Mr. Lyell had for a guide Dr. Saynisch, president of the mines. 

 The first point which they examined presented three seams of bitu- 

 minous coal resting on fire-clay containing Stigmariae, with the leaves 



* Mr. Lyell mentions incidentally having observed between Easton and 

 Trenton, on the Delaware, and in 40° of north latitude, that all the trees 

 were barked on one side, at the height of twenty-two feet above the present 

 level of the river, owing to a freshet and stoppage by ice in the spring of 1811. 

 The stuccoed parts of the houses were also strangely scraped ; and in one 

 place the canal, the towing-path of which is twenty-two feet above the river, 

 was so filled with gravel that carriages did not cross by the bridges. 



Ann. $ Mag. N. Hist. Vol. x. Q 



