1156 General Notes. [November, 
such rapidity that on the 27th it reached San Francisco harbor, 
and continued to come in at intervals of twenty minutes, rising 
to a height of one foot for several days. 
Farther advices from Colombo, Ceylon, dated London, Sept. 
26, state that the recent earthquake at Java caused a sudden sub- 
sidence of the sea at Colombo of fifteen feet. On the 27th of 
August the water rose and fell violently for half an hour, when it 
resumed its normal condition. Several vessels broke from their 
moorings, but no other damage was reported. 
Discovery OF PALÆOZOIC ROCKS IN WESTERN BraziL—! 
region about Cuyuba is generally low, with little hills and ridges, 
all formed of talcose and ferruginous schists, or of heavy quartz 
veins. The schists strike nearly north-east, dipping north-west 
at a high angle. The quartz is, in parts, very auriferous, and in 
their time the mines of Cuyuba have been among the richest in 
the world. 
Twenty miles north-west of Cuyuba the land rises suddenly 
about 2000 feet, this is the Chapadao or table-land; it is not, a 
the name might imply, a fat elevated plain; the surface is rolling, 
_ or even hilly and mountainous in parts, and the streams run 
through deep valleys or cafions, This table-land, so far as I 
have seen it, is composed of soft sandstones and clays of be 7 
ages, overlying the schists and appearing at the edge of the pia- 
teau in long precipices, often several hundred feet high. 
The village of Chapada is on the highest part of the Canes 
near its southern edge, and about thirty-five miles from Cre 
Half a mile west of this place, on an open hillside, I found a kt 
ruginous sandstone with casts of Spiriferze,Terebratule, TRE 
lepti (?) and other brachiopods, with many Discinæ and p 
the latter were also found in a kind of iron-stone above the Je 
stone layer, and in soft shales below it. I found the same 1 
at Laranjal, ten miles north-east of Chapoda, and at other poin 
The Discina appears to me to be the D. /odensts, fous ae 
Hamilton group of New York State, and at Erere, on ae 
mazons ; one of the Spirifers also resembles an Erere spe en 
These, with the Tropidoleptus, would, if my determinati Toit : 
correct, indicate a Lower Devonian horizon for the st , 
beds; it is quite possible, however, that I may be vo = 
have no books of reference on palzontology at hand, an we te 
pretend to proficiency in that science. At all events e a 
described are Palzeozoic, and in all probability either He 
or Carboniferous, 7 oo feet of 
My section through the Chapoda beds show nearly bee ee 
The fossiliferous beds themselves occupy from ey nearly ê l 
(not yet well determined), and they are. followed A conglot- 
thousand feet of soft sandstones, capped by 350 fer oo 
