422 



Scientific Intelligence. 



pan, Jeddo and Miako, which has been thrown open to the commerce of 

 the United States in 1854. The dreadful earthquake of 1854 at this 

 place was alluded to. It totally changed the character of the harbor of 

 Simoda, destroyed the fine city of Osaca, and injured Jeddo. The wave 

 which was caused by this upheaval of the land traversed the entire 

 breadth of the North Pacific in twelve hours and some few minutes, a 

 distance of between 4,000 and 5,000 miles, demonstrating the depth of 

 that ocean to be between two and three miles. The diagram illustrating 

 the paper showed the singular confusion before mentioned in the hydrog- 

 raphy of these small but important positions. The Bonin Islands lie to 

 the southward. They have recently been made the subject of some un- 

 courteous disputation by the Americans as to the right of discovery and 

 ownership. There can be no doubt of their Japanese discovery, and are 

 the Arzbispo Islands of the early Spaniards. Next follows Captain Cof- 

 fin in 1824-5, who was believed to be an Englishman, but which is con- 

 troverted by Commodore Perry of the U. S. N. The particulars of the 

 discovery were related. Next, Captain (now Admiral) Beecby saw them 

 in 1827, and took possession of them before the discovery of Coffin was 

 published. They were colonized under the direction of H. B. M.'s consul 

 at Oahu in 1830, the survivors of those settlers still living there. These 

 islands have been lately explored by the United States Japan Expedition, 

 and their volcanic origin established. It was hoped that some authority 

 to repel aggression would be established there, as the islands have now 

 become valuable as a coaling and refitting station for steam- vessels. The 

 Volcano Isles which follow are tolerably well-known, and from these the 

 volcanic submarine ridges diverge to SSE, and SW, several isolated 

 shoals and volcanic rocks having been discovered in these directions. 

 The paper concluded with a hope that our naval officers would endeavor 

 to clear up the embarrassing confusion which had arisen from the imper- 

 fect accounts o*iven of this now important region. 



9. On the New Red Sandstone Formation of Pennsylvania ; by Isaac 

 Lea, (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phil., April, 1856.) — Mr. Lea read some 

 notes from a paper he is preparing for the Journal of the Academy on the 

 Red Sandstone Formation of Pennsylvania, and stated that he had, dur- 

 ing an excursion last summer, found in the dark shales of that Formation, 

 near Phcenixville, on the Schuylkill, the tooth of a Sauroid Reptile which 

 he thus characterised. 



Centemodon* sulcatus. Tooth smooth, rather thick, slightly curved, 

 with trenchant edges, rounded on the exterior portion, sulcate on the lower 

 part near the base, covered with very minute, distinct striae from the point 

 to the base, which strise cross the sulcations in slightly oblique lines. 

 Length sixteen-twentieths of an inch; greatest breadth four-twentieths of 

 an inch ; pulp cavity large. 



On comparing this tooth with Clepsysaurus Pennsylvanicus, which he 

 had described from the same Red Sandstone Formation in Lehigh county, 

 it is found to differ very widely. The edge is not serrate on any part 

 as in that genus, nor is it so large or so attenuate. The form, too, is more 

 compressed. It differs in size from the teeth of Bathygnathus borealis of 

 Leidy, from the New Red Sandstone of Nova Scotia, being smaller and 

 more attenuate, as well as in having a trenchant smooth edge and not a 

 * KfTVTi^ot aculeus and S3oui densi 



