Bibliography. 397 
and in others were entirely obliterated ; so that if the coast should sub- 
side, the consolidation of this sand would afford casts analogous to those 
of Storeton Hill in Cheshire, yet the impressions had been made and 
filled in a few hours. 
When considering the broad question whether the fossil foot-prints 
were made by creatures walking on mud or sand after the ebbing of 
the tide, Mr. Lyell reminds his readers of the fact that in the United 
States, as in Saxony and Cheshire, the tracks in sandstone and shale 
are accompanied by littoral appearances, as ripple-marks, the casts of 
cracks in the clay, and often by the marks of rain. 
In regard to the age of the red sandstone of the valley of the Con- 
necticut and New Jersey, the author states he has nothing to add to 
what had been previously advanced, by which its position had been 
shown to be between the carboniferous and cretaceous series. In the 
neighborhood of Durham, Connecticut, he had collected in the sand- 
stone, fishes of the genera Palzoniscus and Catopterus, but no other or- 
ganic remains, except fossil wood. 
In conclusion, Mr. Lyell remarks, Ist, that the Ornithichnites of Con- 
necticut should teach extreme caution in inferring the non-existence of 
land animals from the absence of their remains in contemporaneous ma- 
rine strata; 2dly, that when this red sandstone of Connecticut was de- 
posited, there was land in the immediate vicinity of the places where 
the Ornithichnites occur; and that but for them it might naturally be 
inferred that the nearest land was several miles distant, namely, that of 
the hypogene rocks which bound the basin of the Connecticut. Now, 
the land that caused the sea-beach, Mr. Lyell says, must have been 
formed of the same sandstone which was then in the act of accumula- 
ting, in the same manner as where deltas are advancing upon the sea. 
In a postscript, Mr. Lyell states, that subsequently to writing the pa- 
per, he had read the luminous report of Mr. Vanuxem* on the Ornithich- 
nites described by Prof. Hitchcock, and though it agrees in substance 
with his own account in some particulars, yet that he has left his notice 
as it stood. .} 
Art. XVIII.— Bibliographical Notices. 
1. Zoology of New York, or the New York Fauna, comprising de- 
tailed descriptions of all the Animals hitherto observed within the State 
of New York, with brief notices of those occasionally found near its 
borders, and accompanied by appropriate illustrations ; by James E. 
De Kay. Part 1, Mammalia. pp. 146, 4to, plates —The mammiferous 
* See this Journal, Vol. x11, p. 165. 
