208 Miscellanies. 



adds, " To your magnificent region I look with intense interest, and T live in 

 the hope of being able to explore its paleozoic 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. The 

 American old red sandstone with fishes is absolutely undistinguishable in 

 hand specimens from certain beds with coccosteus, holoptychias, &c. which 

 I have collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and largely in Russia." 



We are authorized by Mr. Murchison to hope that his projected visit 

 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 expected 

 in this country in August, and he will remain until the next year, travel- 

 ling and engaged in professional objects. All our geologists will unite in 

 welcoming these distinguished men, and they will receive a cordial wel- 

 come from many other intelligent persons. 



18. Dr. Brown of Edinburgh on the Production of Silicon from Pa- 

 racyanogen. — Much excitement has prevailed of late among the scientific 

 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 into 

 another, and he conceives that all matter may proceed from one simple 

 elementary body, which by union with itself under diflferent conditions, 

 gives rise to other dissimilar bodies possessing characters which have, we 

 think, been considered elementary. He can combine but cannot sepa- 

 rate the atoms. 



It is now some months since we were first informed, through a corres- 

 pondent in Edinburgh who is well known in this country, of this novel, 

 and, as it seemed to us, extravagant claim, and we should never have 

 thought of bringing the subject before our readers, had we not within a 

 few days, through the same kind hand, received a copy in proof of Dr. 

 Brown's second paper, the title of which is at the head of this notice. 



