292 Mr. Hall on Microscopic Shells found in Marl Slate. 



The mean temperature of the autumn months was 52°-13. 

 Crops of fruit were not so large as in the preceding year, but 

 there was a fair supply. The uncommon warmth of the spring 

 and early summer hastened the ripening of fruits very conside- 

 rably before the usual period. Winter apples, a staple crop with 

 many of the farmers near the Ohio, were ripe nearly a month 

 earlier than in common years. The Baldwin apple, a favorite 

 winter fruit for the table in Massachusetts, was ripe the last of 

 August, and, before the period of gathering this crop, had nearly 

 all dropped from the tree. This I find to be the case with several 

 of the valuable eastern apples. The heat of the western sum- 

 mers changes them from a winter to an autumn fruit. The close 

 of the year has been very mild and temperate. The coldest 

 morning in December was 13° above zero. There has been but 

 little snow, and the ice in the Ohio River has not checked the 

 navigation by steamboats. The last day of December, the mean 

 temperature was 41°, and to-day, the first of January, 1845, it is 

 41° -SB, with a calm, mild, and rather hazy condition of the at- 

 mosphere, similar to that of " Indian summer." 



Marietta, January 1, 1845. 



Art. VIII. — Description of some Microscopic Shells from the 

 Decomposing Marl Slate of Cincinnati ; by James Hall. 



A FEW weeks since, Mr. J. Carly of Cincinnati placed in my 

 hands a small tube phial containing at least five hundred indi- 

 viduals of different species of fossil shells, discovered by him in 

 the soft decomposing marly slates around Cincinnati. Much 

 credit is due to so faithful and accurate an observer as Mr. Carly, 

 who devotes his leisure moments to the investigation of the fos- 

 siliferous beds of his neighborhood, enriching his own cabinet, 

 and not unfrequently, as in the present instance, adding to the 

 numbers of species already known, and to the extent of our 

 knowledge, by his discoveries. 



For the information of those unacquainted with the geological 

 relation of the formations about Cincinnati, it may be proper to 

 state, that the strata consist of alternations of shale and limestone, 

 more or less pure. Much of the shale is very calcareous or marly, 

 decomposing into a marly clay, charged with a profusion of or- 

 ganic remains. Sometimes indeed it presents all the appearance 



