Foot-prints of Birds, SfC in the Valley oftlie Connecticut. 515 



All these fossils were discovered by Mr. Kaye and a friend within 

 the last two years, and are entirely new to European palaeontologists. 



In the neighbourhood of Pondicherry and bordering on the lime- 

 stone is a bed of red sand containing an immense quantity of the sili- 

 cified wood long known to collectors. 



Trkhinopoly. — The spot in this district from which Mr. Kaye pro- 

 cured his specimens he was not able to visit. The fossils occur also 

 in a limestone, preserve their shelly matter with occasionally the 

 colour, and belong principally to marine genera, but some are con- 

 sidered to be of freshwater origin. Cephalopods appear to be of very 

 rare occurrence, Mr. Kaye having obtained from the locality only 

 one fragment of a large Ammonite. Wood bored by Teredines is 

 also found in the limestone. 



Verdachellum. — From a calcareous rock near Verdachellum, forty 

 miles from Pondicherry, Mr. Kaye procured a variety of marine shells, 

 including a considerable number of Ammonites, considered by him to 

 be distinct from those found near Pondicherry ; also a few imperfect 

 Nautili and a few Echinidse, corals, &c. 



Among the testacea are several considered to belong to species 

 found in the Trichinopoly deposit, and a few believed by Mr. Kaye 

 to be identifiable with Pondicherry shells. This limestone is likewise 

 bordered by a red sand which contains specimens of silicified wood. 

 The formation was discovered only a short time before the writer 

 quitted India, and he consequently considers his collection as defec- 

 tive ; but he regards the deposit whence it was obtained as of interest, 

 affording, by its position and organic contents, a link between the 

 other two localities. 



6. A paper " On the Fossil Foot-prints of Birds and Impressions 

 of Rain-drops in the Valley of the Connecticut." By Charles Lyell, 

 Esq., V.P.G.S. 



The deposit in which these impressions, long known on account 

 of the researches of Prof. Hitchcock, occur, is situated in a trough of 

 hypogene rocks, about five miles broad, the strata, which consist of 

 sandstone, shale and conglomerate, dipping uniformly to the east at 

 angles that vary from 5° to 30°. Mr. Lyell first examined the red 

 sandstone at Rocky Hill, three miles south of Hartford, in Connec- 

 ticut, where it is associated with red shale and capped by twenty 

 feet of greenstone. Many of the beds are rippled, and cracks in the 

 shale are filled by the materials of the superincumbent sandy layer, 

 showing, the author observes, a drying and shrinking of the mud 

 while the accumulation of the strata was in progress. The next 

 quarries he examined were at Newark in New Jersey, about ten 

 miles west from New York city. The excavations are extensive, 

 and the strata dip, as is usual in New Jersey, to the north-west, or 

 in an opposite direction to the inclination in the valley of Con- 

 necticut, a ridge of hypogene rocks intervening. The angle is about 

 35° near Newark. The beds exhibited ripple- marks and casts of 

 cracks, also impressions of rain-drops on the upper surface of the fine 

 red shales. Mr. Lyell states, that he felt some hesitation respecting 

 the impressions first assigned to the action of rain by Mr. Cunning- 



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