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PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Apr. 30, 



Is it to be supposed that each marine formation was laid down at 

 the present sea-level, and then raised, or that each marks the sea- 

 level of an unknown epoch ? — and that fresh-water deposits were 

 made at various levels above the sea ? 



Vertical oscillations of the land are very general. Mr. Logan dis- 

 covered in St. Armand fresh-water shells incumbent on marine. 



Lastly, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, we find ancient marine forma- 

 tions at only 20, 30, and 40 feet above present tide-level. 



April 30, 1851. 

 John Edward Hutchins, Esq., M.P., was elected a Fellow. 

 The following communications were read : — 



1. Notice of the Occurrence of an Earthquake at Carthagena, 

 New Granada, on 7th February , 1851. 



[Communicated from the Foreign Office by order of Viscount Palmerston.] 



2. On Fossil Rain-marks of the Recent, Triassic, and Carbo- 

 niferous Periods. By Sir Charles Lyell, F.R.S., G.S. 



Mr. John Cunningham, F.G.S., in the year 1839, read a paper 

 before the Geological Society on Impressions and Casts of Drops of 

 Rain discovered in the quarries of Lower New Red Sandstone at Store- 

 ton Hill, Cheshire*. After he had inferred their pluvial origin, he 

 pointed out the indentations on the spot to Dr. Buckland, who recog- 

 nized the correctness of his interpretation. 



When, in 1841, I visited the quarries of new red sandstone at 

 Newark, in New Jersey, in company with Mr. W. C. Redfield, of 

 New York, we observed some very distinct rain-prints on ripple-marked 

 shales. Afterwards, in 1842, I saw similar impressions of recent date, 

 which had been made between high- and low-water mark on the red 

 sand and mud bordering the Basin of Mines, in the Bay of Fundy. 

 Since that period I have been enabled to form a collection of speci- 

 mens of this mud, hardened in the sun, through the kindness of Dr. 

 Webster of Kentville, to which I shall presently allude. In 1843, 

 Mr. Redfield, in a letter to the author which was read to this Society, 

 stated that he had found impressions of rain-drops in another locality 

 of the new red sandstone, called Pompton, in New Jersey, twenty-five 

 miles from New Yorkf ; and in the same year he published in Silli- 

 man's Journal an account of the sandstone strata of that place, and of 

 the Ichthyolites contained in them J. In these beds, many of which 

 are frequently ripple-marked, and which exhibit the foot-prints of 



* Proceedings Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 99. f Ibid. vol. iv. p. 23. 



% Amer. Journ. of Science, vol. xliv. p. 136. 



