*76 [Assembly 



are comparatively so poor in fossils, that they are as a series far 

 less perfect and instructive than those of this State. 



These Silurian and Devonian strata are there, as here, suc- 

 ceeded by a Carboniferous formation, with its beds of coal and 

 abundant vegetable remains, but far less in breadth of extent 

 than the enormous coalfields of America. But above the Car- 

 boniferous, they have the newer formations, which succeed each 

 other from west to east, as our older ones do from north to south. 

 .This is because the dip or downward slope of the strata is there 

 to the east or southeast, not as here, to the south. The section 

 at the beginning of this pamphlet (No. 2) gives a general idea of 

 their succession across England from Derbyshire to Sussex, though 

 it is far from accurate in either proportion or smaller details. 



First above the Carboniferous, lies what is called the Permian 

 SYSTEM : several hundred feet of limestone, marls, slates and 

 sandstones ] containing many fossils, shells, corals, fishes, and the 

 bones of several kinds of reptiles. 



Next lies the Triassic system, or New Red sandstone, which 

 contains the great mines and springs from which most of the 

 salt used in and exported from England is manufactured. It is 

 a thousand or two feet thick ; and though generally not abound- 

 ing in fossils, some very remarkable forms of reptiles have been 

 discovered in it, and many fish. 



It is believed that the Red sandstone of the Connecticut valley, 

 which is also found crossing New-Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vir- 

 ginia, is of the same age with the Triassic system of Europe. 

 This opinion is mainly founded on the similar character of the 

 fossil fish in the two formations. It will be remembered that it 

 is in this rock that the footprints of birds mentioned on page 

 53 occur. Specimens of these are in one of the rooms, and 

 are of great interest, for they mark, so far as is yet known, the 

 period when the great class of Birds first appeared on earth. 

 (They bear also other tracks, considered as being those of various 

 kinds of reptiles.) Specimens of the fish of this formation, from 

 the Connecticut valley and New-Jersey, are in a case in one 

 of the rooms of the collection. 



Next above the Triassic system, succeeds what is called (from 

 constituting the greater part of the Jura mountains in Switzer- 

 land) the Jurassic system. The whole formation is several 

 thousand feet in thickness : its lower part, known as the Lias, is 

 several hundred feet of dark marly shales and straight thlti 



