192 LEA'S DESCRIPTION OF A FOSSIL SAURIAN 



Hudson rivers, he mentions the fact that it forms a gently inclined plane, descending 

 from its source in Carolina several hundred feet above the sea to its estuary on a level 

 with the ocean. A full account of Prof Rogers' views will be found in his New Jersey 

 report, and the facts and observations adduced by him strongly recommend the 

 acceptance of his theory. Certainly the position of the deposit and its mineral contents 

 would go to sustain his ideas, but the fact that we have not the evidence of its being 

 a fresh water deposit would induce us to have some hesitation on the subject. It 

 would seem that from its inclined position and its forming a broad estuary in an arm 

 of the sea, that it must necessarily have been of fresh water origin ; but in its organic 

 remains, the paucity of which is remarkable, we have no evidence to that effect. The 

 numerous bird, Batrachian and Saurian tracks, represent the littoral character of its 

 condition, as the ligneous coal also does. The Saurian bones mentioned by Mr. 

 Wells, of which there has been some doubt expressed, and those of the Clepsijsaiirus 

 described by me, may have belonged to species living either in fresh or salt water. 



There seems to be no reason to doubt of the red sandstone formation of the Connec- 

 ticut Valley being of the same period with that which sweeps through the Middle 

 States to New York. It consists of a narrow belt, commencing in the Valley within 

 four miles of the Vermont State line, and passing south through Massachusetts it 

 terminates in Connecticut, where it is supposed by Prof Adams, that " the Connecti- 

 cut River emptied into a long narrow bay, which reached up from Long Island 

 Sound, nearly to, or quite over the southern line of Vermont and in which the sand- 

 stone deposits accumulated."* He considers that most of this deposit had its origin 

 in the rocks of the State of Vermont, as Prof. Hitchcock had found some of the coarse 

 conglomerates near to that State to contain pebbles derived from Vermont rocks, and 

 which some geologists regarded as indicating violent freshets. Prof Hitchcock had 

 considered it perhaps in the same light, as he viewed it as a tidal estuary. But, if 

 this long narrow bay extended from Long Island Sound to the northern terminus of 

 the deposit, it would prove the marine origin of the formation. I should doubt this, 

 and would rather refer it to the same cause as that of the more South- Western deposit 

 of Avhich I have been treating. It would seem to me that both deposits had their 

 origin in a district several hundred feet above tide water, and the waters flowing down 

 an inclined plane deposited the debris according to dynamic laws. This view of the 

 facts would tend to prove the fresh water origin of the formation, and I would be 

 inclined to look rather for such organic remains as would sustain such an origin. 



Prof. Mather in the New York Reports, does not agree in tFie view of the fluvia- 

 tile origin of these red rocks, but considers them to have been deposited by the action 

 of two oceanic currents, the polar and equatorial, flowing in opposite directions on the 

 ancient coast of the Middle States, the meeting of which currents, regulated by known 



* Second Geological Survey of Vermont, p. 160. 



