70 Impressions of Bain-drops in Strata. 



Bave been broken, — for enabling bed-ridden persons to assist 

 themselves, — for strengthening feeble joints, and many other 

 new and valuable purposes. 



On Impressions of Bain-drops in Ancient and Modern 

 Strata, By Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., &c.* 



Footprints of reptiles and birds have been observed on the 

 surface of several ancient strata, accompanied by cracks re- 

 sulting from the shrinkage of mud during desiccation, and it 

 had been fairly inferred that the rocks beai'ing these marks 

 must have been formed on a beach, between the level of high 

 and low tide. It might therefore have been presumed that 

 the same combination of circumstances would favour the pre- 

 servation of impressions left by rain-drops, if any rain had 

 fallen on the surface of the same strata, when in a state of 

 mud or sand. Accordingly, memorials of rain have been 

 met with, and Sir Charles Lyell exhibited specimens of fossil 

 rain and hail-prints, collected by Mr Redfield of New York, 

 from the New Red Sandstone of triassic age in New Jersey 

 and others of still older date, obtained by Mr Richard Brown, 

 from green slabs and sandstone of the Coal Measures of Cape 

 Breton in Nova Scotia. 



Casts of rain-drops were first recognised in 1828 by i)r 

 Buckland on the lower surfaces of slabs of quartzose sand- 

 stone, found by Mr Cunningham in the Storeton Hill quarries 

 in Cheshire, where they are accompanied by shrinkage cracks, 

 footprints of Cheirotherium, and ripple marks. Mr Redfield 

 and Sir C. Lyell observed others at Newark in New Jersey 

 in 1841, in red sandstone and shale ; and still finer examples 

 have been since met with at Pompton, in the same state, 

 twenty-five miles from New York, by Mr Redfield. The 

 Lecturer had also an opportunity of observing, in 1842, that 

 a shower of rain had left numerous impressions on the mud- 

 flats exposed at low water, in estuaries communicating with 

 the Bay of Fundy ; and he afterwards obtained a collection 

 of specimens of the hardened mud from Dr Webster of Kent- 



* Abstract of a Lecture delivered in the Royal Institution, 4th Aprils 1851. 



