'¢ transverse ° 
170 Association of American Geologists and Naturalists. 
Prof. Hitchcock read a paper:“‘on a new species of Ornithich= 
nite from the valley of the Connecticut. Hive; and on the rain-— 
drop impressions from the same locality.” 
After Prof. Hitchcock’s observations respecting the bird tracks 
of the Connecticut valley, Mr. Lyell alluded to the subject of 
the cause of the present dip of the formation, expressing, the 
opinion that it is due, in-part at least, to an uplifting of the strata. 
Prof. H. D. Rogers mentioned the reasons which had induced 
him to attribute the dip of the beds in. the other great tract of this 
new red sandstone, or that which ranges southwestward from the 
Hudson, to oblique deposition. A uniform northerly dipof about . 
fifteen degrees prevails entirely across the basin, even where it is 
twelve or twenty miles in breadth, and coéxists with a manifest 
shallowness of the deposit. This want of vertical depth is seen 
in several places in Pennsylvania, where denudation has exposed, 
in the interior of the tract, large patches of the older Appalachian 
strata, upon which this new red formation rests unconformably. 
No traces of dislocation occur to lead to. the inference ihat the 
shallowness of the basin is deceptive, and that the present want 
of depth in the deposit has been caused by a succession of up- 
throws with denudation. The steady northerly dip is very rarely 
influenced, either in amount or in direction, by any of the numer- 
ous dykes of trap which penetrate the formation. 
Prof. Rogers next mentioned facts which go to shew that 
the focsnutaion of the Connecticut valley and the equivalent one 
of the Middle States, are in all probability, accumulations in two 
originally distinct estuaries. He mentioned as one evidence, the 
independent direction of the dip in the two basins, and stated that 
the absence of a parallel order of succession in the members of 
os Ai formations, tends likewise to strengthen this opinion. 
yell conceived the steepness of the dip, which sometimes 
une to ued degrees, but. more especially its direction,— 
the course of the ancient estuary, to present a diffi- 
culty. Prof. R. endeavored however to shew that the present 
peso have been the original one, by sug ggesting, first, that 
is ev e in the nature of the materials of the great. 
ee basin for believing that they entered the estuary Jate- 
rally on the outerop side, by streams flowing from a country of 
decomposing, taleose, chloritic and hornblende rocks ; secondly, 
that if en he Bowen store, the velocity of 1 the 
