﻿1851.] 



LYELL ON RAIN-PRINTS. 



245 



pared, therefore, to hear of the discovery in such a region of the signs 

 of all the phsenomena which characterize sea-beaches or banks of sand 

 or mud laid dry between high and low water. Accordingly Mr. Brown 

 alludes in his memoir not only to ripple-marked surfaces and shrink- 

 age-cracks, but to fossil rain-prints, and of these last he has had the 

 kindness to send me some fine examples, which I shall now describe. 

 They consist of delicate impressions on greenish slates (see fig. 5), 



Fig. 5. — Carboniferous Rain-prints, with Worm-tracks, on green 

 shale, from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. — Richard Brown. 



Fig. 6. — Casts of the same Rain-prints as No. 5, seen on the under 

 side of an incumbent layer of shale. 



'Fig. 5. Fig. 6. 



and of casts projecting from the under side of similar shale resting 

 upon them (see fig. 6) . Some of these casts present the same warty 

 or blistered surface (see fig. 7) which Mr. Cunningham has mentioned, 



Fig. 7. — Casts of Carboniferous Rain-prints and Shrinkage-cracks 

 on the under side of a layer of sandstone, Cape Breton, Nova 

 Scotia. — Richard Brown. 



when speaking of the Storeton Hill rocks. Some of the Cape Breton 



