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208 Miscellanies. at ys 
“To your magnificent region I look with intense interest, and I live in 
rs ie of being able to explore its paleozoie rocks. Already, however, 
your countrymen are preparing all the elements for the complete classifi- 
cation of the older deposits of America. I have for some time been grat- 
ified to observe the steps which Conrad, Vanuxem, Hall, and others have 
been taking, and very recently I was delighted to receive from Mr. Hall 
a suite of specimens which leave no doubt of the descending ‘succession 
of old red sandstone or Devonian rocks into the Silurian.types. I sent his 
section to be laid’ before the Geological Society, with a notice from my- 
self Mr. Featherstonhaugh had furnished me with carboniferous: and 
Silurian fossils, but the suite sent by Mr. Hall is the first that’ combines 
evidences of the existence of the great intermediate formation. 
Senene old shee becceguennera with fishes i is weotisitec preteen eae in 
tychias, 
IL have collected in thie: Highlands of Scotland, and largely i in Rossi” 
“We are authorized by Mr. Murchison to hope that his seeeetetel vit 
to the United States may not be postponed beyond the spring of 1843. 
Another eminent English geologist will visit us in the current summer— 
Mr. Lyell, as we learn by a recent letter from himself, ‘may be ex 
in this country in August, and he will remain until the next year, tr 
ling and engaged in professional objects. All our geologists will unite in 
welcoming these distinguished men, and they will receive a psi al wel 
come from many other intelligent persons. 
ee 
18. Dr. Brown of Edinburgh on the Prinkictionof Siticon from Pe 
world of Edinburgh, owing to the discovery claimed by ‘Dr. Samuel M. 
Brown, a young chemist of that place, that one element may be derived 
from another by causing atoms of the same element to combine with each 
other under peculiar conditions, giving rise to-bodies dissimilar in all re- 
spects to the properties of the original matter, and corresponding” ‘in char 
acter with the attributes of some other elementary body. In other words, 
one element (as we at present consider them) may be transmuted int 
another, and he conceives that all matter may proceed from one ne simple 
elementary body, which by union with itself under different conditions, 
gives rise to other dissimilar bodies possessing. characters which have; W° 
think, ‘been considered: sleeker sae eepaeted but ceannot SeP 
rate the atoms. 
~Ttis now some’ a rin: first informed, siti a corre 
