555 
to the grand succession of Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous 
strata in the state of New York and on the borders of Pennsylvania, 
having been accompanied during a portion of his tour by the States’ 
Geologist, Mr. J. Hall; but he had also visited, in company with that 
gentleman, the Falls of Niagara and the adjacent district, and he states, 
that he purposes to communicate a paper on the phenomena of the 
recession, drawn from new arguments, founded on the position of a 
fluviatile deposit below the Cataract. He expresses his intention of 
also communicating a notice of five localities of Mastodon bones which 
he had visited, digging up some remains himself, and collecting the 
accompanying shells, which he says, seem to have been neglected. 
He had likewise examined, accompanied by Prof. Silliman and his son, 
the new red, with intrusive trap, in Connecticut; and, assisted by 
Mr. Conrad, he had collected fossils in every member of the cretaceous 
system in New Jersey*. The principal object, however, of the present 
communication is, to point out the extension to the United States of 
Mr. Logan’s generalizations on the beds of fire-clay containing Stig- 
maria, formerly laid before the Society in a paper on the coal-field 
of South Wales. Mr. Lyell had met Mr. Logan at New York, pre- 
viously to that gentleman’s visit to the anthracite coal-field of Penn- 
sylvania, and he adverts to the delight which Mr. Logan must have 
felt in witnessing the occurrence of beds of Stigmaria fire-clay to an 
extent far exceeding what could have been expected. On the con- 
fines of the states of New York and Pennsylvania, Mr. Lyell found 
remains of Holoptychius and other fishes in the old red sandstone, 
and at the bottom of the overlying coal series a thick quartzose 
conglomerate ; and he says that the coal-measures, with their im- 
bedded plants, bear an exact analogy to British coal-measures, both 
in detail and. as a whole. In investigating the coal district of Bloss- 
berg, Mr. Lyell had for a guide Dr. Saynisch, president of the mines. 
The first point which they examined presented three seams of bitu- 
minous coal resting on fire-clay containing Stigmariz, with the leaves 
attached to the stems, and extending in all directions through the 
clay; and they observed, in a gallery lighted on purpose, that the 
stems seen im situ were very nearly all parallel to the planes of stra- 
tification, only one being in an oblique position. Every stratum 
underlying a coal-seam examined by Mr. Lyell, presented the same 
phenomena, except one, and in that case the bed was so sandy that 
it could not be considered as a fire-clay. The thickness of these 
Stigmaria deposits varied from one foot to six feet. The roof of the 
Blossberg coal-seams consists usually of bituminous slates, but occa- 
sionally of very micaceous grit, and it contaims great varieties of 
_* Mr. Lyell mentions incidentally having observed between Easton and 
Trenton, on the Delaware, and in 40° of north latitude, that all the trees 
were barked on one side, at the height of twenty-two feet above the present 
level of the river, owing to a freshet and stoppage by ice in the spring of 1841. 
The stuccoed parts of the houses were also strangely scraped; and in one 
place the canal, the towing-path of which is twenty-two feet above the river, 
was so filled with gravel that carriages did not cross by the bridges. 
