NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 149 



June 2d, 1857. 

 Mr. Ord, President, in the Chair. 



The following papers were presented for publication in the Proceed- 

 ings, viz : 



Notes on the Geology of the Mauvaises Torres of White River, Ne- 

 braska, by F. V. Hayden, M. D. 



Prodromus descriptionis animalium evertebratorum, quaj in Expcdi- 

 tioni ad Oceanum Pacificura Septentrionalem a llepublica Federata 

 missa, Cadwaladaro Ringgold et Johanne Rodgers ducibus. observavit 

 et descripsit W. Stimpson. 



Description of two new genera of Shells, and Rectification of 

 some of the generic names of American Tertiary Fossils, by T. A. 

 Conrad. 



Which as usual were referred to committees. 



Dr. Leidy remarked t'.iat upon one of the specimens of coal shales with fossil 

 fishes, from Linton, Jefferson Co., Ohio, presented this evening by Mr. Wheatley, 

 there was a compressed oval, black, shining, brittle, homogeneous mass, 

 about three inches long, and one inch and a quarter wide, by two lines in 

 thickness, which he suspected to be the ink bag of a Loligo, or cuttle-fish. 

 The carbonaceous mass can readily be reduced to an impalpable powder, which 

 has the same appearance and color as that derived from the fossil Loligo of the 

 Lias of Wiirtemburg. 



Mr. Lea exhibited two specimens from the dark slates of the Red 

 Sandstone of Phoenixville, Pa., which had been procured by Mr. 

 Wheatley from the tunnel of the Reading Railroad. These specimens 

 contained a hone and a coproUte, and through the mass could be 

 observed imperfect portions of the so-called Posidonia, which has 

 been found usually wherever these black slates occur. The bone 

 is fractured at both ends, is nearly four inches long and three-quarters 

 by nearly half an inch thick. It is flattened on the outside and curved 

 on the inner side. The transverse section nearly resembles that which, 

 as the fore-arm or leg, Mr. Lea figured in the Journal, N. S., vol. ii., 

 pi. 18, fig. 1, under the name of Clepsj/saurus Pennsylvanicns, and it 

 may be identical with that species ; or it may belong to that of Cente- 

 modon sulcatus, Lea, which was described in the Proceedings of the 

 Academy in April of last year, from a single tooth, and which he found 

 within a few hundred yards of the same locality, at the northern end 

 of the same tunnel. This is another evidence among the very few in 

 Pennsylvania of the existence of Saurian life at the period of this in- 

 teresting Red Sandstone formation. The specimen of coprolite is 

 more perfect than any Mr. Lea had seen from the same locality, and 

 was probably one of the ejectamenta of this Saurian. 



June 9(h, 1857. _ 



Dr. B. CoATES in the Chair. 



Dr. Leidy remarked that the specimens of coprolites and shales with Fost- 

 donice, and the left dental bone of a fish presented by Mr. Conrad and himself 

 this evening, had been obtained in a recent visit to Black Tunnel, near Phoenix- 



1857.] 11 



