50 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS { April 4, 
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 
Friday, April 4. 
H. R. H. Prince Axsert, Vice Patron, in the Chair. 
Sir Cuaries Lye tt, 
On Impressions of Rain-drops in Ancient and Modern Strata. 
Foot-prints of reptiles and birds have been observed on the surface 
of several ancient strata, accompanied by cracks resulting from the 
shrinkage of mud during desiccation, and it had been fairly inferred 
that the rocks bearing these marks must have been formed on a beach, 
between the level of high andlow tide. It might therefore have been 
presumed that the same combination of circumstances would favour 
the preservation 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 sandstones of the Coal 
Measures of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. 
Casts of rain-drops were first recognized in 1828 by Dr. Buckland 
on the lower surfaces of slabs of quartzose sandstone, found by Mr. 
Cunningham in the Storeton Hill quarries in Cheshire, where they 
are accompanied by shrinkage cracks, foot-prints 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 Kentville, some of which are marked by the 
drops of a heavy but transient shower which fell on the 21st of July, 
1849. The average size of the hemispherical cavities is small, but 
some of them are no less than half an inch in diameter. Many of 
them are circular, but in some the longest diameter exceeds the 
shortest by 1th, or even trd. They are surrounded by a small rim of 
mud, consisting of the matter which has been forcibly expelled from 
the pit by the falling drop ; and this marginal rim sometimes projects 
as much above the plane of the stratum, as the bottom of the pit ex- 
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