Report of the Director. 15 



as could be expected, and tliat in this respect we may safely challenge 

 comparison with any other similar institution of our country. 



I am, very respectfully, 



Your obedient servant, 



JAMES HALL. 

 Albany, January 10, 1871. 



Note. — The Gilboa collections, noticed on page 8, having been submitted to Prof. 

 Dawson, of Montreal, for examination, he has determined the fossil trunks to be 

 of two species, which he has named Psaronius Erianus and Psaronius iextilis. 

 Among the other plant remains he finds three species, which he designates, as 

 RacTiiopteris gigantea, Rachiopteris palmata and Ncnggerathia Oilhoensis. 



{From tJie Albany Argus of January 30, 1870.) 

 The Schoharie Fossils. — Letter of Dr. Hall. 



Albany, January 29/A, 1870. 

 Dr. S. B. Wool WORTH, Secretary of the Board of Regents: 



Dear Sir — Some weeks since a letter from Mr. D. Mackey, of 

 Gilboa, informed me that, while blasting rocks in that place, the 

 workmen had discovered the base of a large tree of peculiar character 

 standing erect in the rocky strata, and that him*self and other persons 

 in the town were desirous that the specimen should be secured for 

 the State Cabinet. By my direction, Mr. Lintner visited the place 

 and brought away some fragments of the trunk and two specimens 

 of stems or trunks of a different kind. At the same time he obtained 

 a promise that the larger of two trunks then obtained should be 

 reserved for the State Cabinet. Some notice of these specimens was 

 given at a meeting of the Albany Institute on the 18th instant. 



I have, since that time, visited the locality and examined the 

 geological relations of these fossil trees. I have brought down to the 

 Museum three of these trunks, one, the specimen first discovered and 

 reserved for the Cabinet, another larger one with a nearly complete 

 base, though much broken in the upper part, and another smaller 

 one in which the base is not preserved. In the first one the spread- 

 ing base is not entire, though I think it may probably still remain in 

 the rock where the trunk originally stood, the place being now 

 covered with debris. This one is nearly a foot in diameter at a point 

 two feet above the base. The large specimen preserves the base 

 nearly entire for three-fourtlis of its circumference, and is three feet 

 in diameter. The trunk at the height of two feet is eighteen inches 

 in diameter. The smaller one is broken ofi* above the base, preserv- 

 ing about two feet in length, and is somewhat flattened, the diameters 

 at top being respectively seven inches and eight inches. The exte- 

 rior surface of these trunks is irregularly rugose, but without any 

 regular or defined markings. The interior, 1o the depth of one or two 

 inches, is coarsely reticulate, with the meshes extremely elongate in 

 the longitudinal direction of the trunk. The three trunks, together 

 with other specimens collected, including boxes and packing material, 



