186 



tended to obliterate the first impressions. If these are to be con- 

 sidered rain drop impressions, it must be assumed that they were 

 caused by a fleeting shower, and not by a continuous rain. 

 Perhaps they were caused by water in the form of spray. 



Dr. C. T. Jackson thought that they were really impressions 

 of rain drops from a fleeting shower, which had escaped obliter- 

 ation. 



Prof. Wm. B. Rogers stated that he had recently examined two 

 specimens of lignite, one from the coal-bearing rocks near Rich- 

 mond, Virginia, and another from the New Red Sandstone of 

 North Carolina. He had found, in the comparison of these speci- 

 mens, another fact in confirmation of the view that these two 

 strata are of the same geological age. 



Dr. C. T. Jackson agreed with Prof. Rogers in this view. The 

 identity of geological age was proved by the identity of the fossil 

 flora of the two regions, and would probably be more fully 

 illustrated by comparison of the fossil fishes and saurians of the 

 two localities. Dr. Jackson remarked, that the sub-heterocercal 

 character of the tails of fishes found in the sandstone and slate 

 of Connecticut River, in New Jersey, Virginia, and North Caro- 

 lina, seemed to give plausibility to the theory of their being more 

 recent than the strata of the coal formation, and of the New Red 

 Sandstone rocks of Europe, and most nearly allied them with 

 the Lias groups of strata of Europe, in which coal of a similar 

 character is found to that now worked in Virginia and North 

 Carolina. Prof. Emmons has found well-preserved bones of 

 Saurian reptiles in the Sandstone of Dan River, North Carolina, 

 and Sauroid fishes and Saurian coprolites abound in those 

 strata. 



The following letters were read, viz : — 



From the Societc de Geographic de Paris, Oct. 30, 1854, re- 

 turning thanks for the Publications of the Society, and requesting 

 that volumes 1 to 5 of the Journal may be supplied; — from 

 the Societe d'Histoire Naturclle du departement de la Moselle, 

 returning thanks for those of the Society's publications which 



