NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 695 
not only these rocks, but to study the Amazon sandstones and clays. I 
have scen nothing to cause me to change my opinion about the age of the 
last named formation. I have not succeeded in finding any fossils in 
hem. I have found beautiful nc leaves of apparently recent plants, in 
a recent ironstone. In the hill of Creré, Monte tpe m and near Santa- 
rem, beds of basalt occur. — C. F. Hartt, on boa M Steamer 
‘“‘Jurupensem,” near Monte Alegre, Rio BSR i a. 5th, 1870. 
New Fossit Fisnes.— Prof. Corr has Berend studied a genus Sauro- 
cephalus and allies, from the Cretaceous, and states as a result, that these 
fishes are not in the least related to the Sphy AEA where they have been 
placed heretofore. The structure of the mouth is like that of the Chara- 
cinidæ, while the neural arches are distinct and the tail vertebrated as in 
Amia. The pectoral se i have been described by Leidy, as those of a 
new inq Ichthyodectes, type species I. ctenodon ; the former differs from 
the known genera, Saurocephalus and Saurodon, in not having the series 
of Neisdcts foramina on M inner side of the alveolar ridges. He refers 
ese fishes toa new family, under the name of Saurodontide. 
PrasriCciTY or Rocks.— The old cobble-stone pavement in Waverly 
Place, between Broadway and Mercer street, being now in 
x 
tan have taken place on their perpendicular surfaces, and I am therefore 
convinced that they have been moulded into one another by pressure only. 
On conversing with the rotii: they all “concurred as to the fact, and 
the foreman stated that his attention had been called to it before. Very 
probably I am myself only repeating what is already well known to 
ers. — GEORGE GIBBS, New Yo 
Satt Puarns IN New Mexico. — Brevet Major General August V. 
Kautz, U. S. Army, writing from Fort Stanton, New Mexico, informs me 
that there is a valley of some two hundred miles long and twenty wide, 
lying between the Sierra Blanca and the San Andreas and Occura moun- 
tains, in that Territory, in which there is no stream, and only a few alka- 
line springs and salt lakes, or ponds. Where the road from Fort Stanton 
to El Paso crosses it, about sixty miles south of that post, is a plain of 
white sand, sik I gypsum, which has drifted into mounds, 
forty and fifty feet in height. Water of a strongly alkaline character is 
obtained by difghig i a few feet, and around the edges of this district, salt 
marshes exist, where in the dry seasons, great quantities of almost pure 
Salt may be collected. The sand is so white and the plain so extensive as 
