OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE FORMATION OF PENNSYLVANIA. 193 



dynamic laws and the mountain chains occupying positions the same as they now do, 

 and as they did at the period of the deposition of the red sand-stone strata, he considers 

 sufficient to account for the position and form of the deposit, the wider portion being 

 where the axis of rotation took place, (p. 292.) 



The fossil fishes of this formation, to which the Messrs. Redfield and Prof Hitch- 

 cock have given so much attention, are all heterocercal so far as observation has yet 

 gone, and must be at least as old as the New Red Sandstone. But I am not aware 

 that this cliaracter implies a necessity of their having lived only in salt water. On 

 the contrary as they are Ganoides, and belong to one family, Lepidoides, which 

 includes the Esox osseus of our western waters, the evidence is in favor of their havino- 

 been inhabitants of fresh water. Mr. W. C. Redfield has found many species of two 

 genera, Palceoniscus and Caiopterus,* at Boonton and Pompton in New Jersey, and 

 in several places in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He remarks that at Boonton the 

 fish beds are under the " variegated calcareous conglomerate," and that at Pompton a 

 second fish bed of bituminous shale lies two hundred feet below the other. 



Mr. Redfield informs me that some of the fossil fishes from the Oolitic coal field of 

 Virginia, were considered by Sir Philip Egerton to be homocercal, and that they 

 belonged to the genus Dictijopege. But Mr. Redfield differed in opinion as to 

 the character of their tails, which he considered to be oblique, and that in this oblique 

 character these Virginia fishes are scarcely distinguishable from the Catopterus of the 

 New Jersey and Connecticut red sandstones. Indeed, that "all the fishes of this red 

 sandstone formation from New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have the 

 same character of tail with those from the coal of Virginia." Mr. Redfield mentioned 

 at the same time, that the genus Dictyopege would be dropt, in the new work of Red- 

 field and Agassiz on these fossil fishes, but that the name of Ischypteriis would be 

 retained, for some, or most of the Palaonisci of Connecticut Valley. At the meeting 

 of the American Association at Cincinnati, he stated that this formation was 

 characterized by a flora and fauna as recent as the Trias. 



Prof Hitchcock, who has labored so much in this hitherto sterile field to the 

 palgeontologist, in addition to his numerous discoveries in Ornithichnites, &c., has 

 observed and figured several plants in this formation, which he refers to Yoltzia, and 

 which, with Taniopteris, also found by him, are considered as characteristic plants, 

 peculiar to the New Red Sandstone. Mr. Redfield also found impressions of plants 

 which he refers to Voltzia. They are from the Little Falls of Passaic in New 

 Jersey. In Virginia near Prince Edward's Court House, Prof. Rogers observed a 

 deposit of coal which was nearly two feet thick, and in a brownish sandstone were 

 inclosed thin seams of bituminous coal, the shales of which were impressed with 

 rhombic fish scales, the rocks being slightly calcareous. He found, also, "black 



* See American Journal of Science, Yol.41, p. 24, and catalogue in De Kay's New York Reports, p. 385. 



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