NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 
9 
Mr. Lesley thought the valley could not have suffered from volcanic force, for 
it was tortuous like the suture of a skull, not straight like the profound lines of 
fault in the Appalachians of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Tennessee." 
Mr. Foulke described the Deep River country as one of straight valleys wailed 
in by vertical cliffs two or three hundred feet high, which he thought were evi- 
dently fractures of the crust. 
Mr. Lesley described the Kanawha country to show that, if so, then the crust 
must be looked upon as having suffered a shivering rupture with open and pro- 
found cracks running irregularly or aborescently. But such fissures could not 
have been filled up, and their sides sloped off to form a country like western 
Virginia. 
Dr. Woodhouse described the canons of the Pacific side, as sometimes sedi- 
mentary on one side, and volcanic or metamorphic on the other, and sometimes 
having lava streams in the middle. 
February 23<:^. 
Vice President Lea in the Chair. 
Sixty- six members present. 
The amendments to the By-Laws offered at the previous meeting for 
business, were read a second time and unanimously passed to a third 
reading. 
The Auditors reported they had examined the Annual Report of the 
Treasurer, and compared it with the vouchers, and that they had found 
it correct ; which report was adopted. 
March 2nd, 
Vice President Lea in the Chair. 
Forty-eight members present. 
Dr. Wilcocks read a paper entitled " Remarks on an Optical Illusion, 
by Alexander Wilcocks, M. D." 
A paper was presented, entitled Descriptions of new Organic Re- 
mains, collected in Nebraska Territory, by Dr. F. V. Hayden and others, 
under the direction of Lieut. Gr. K. Warren, U. S. Topographical Engi- 
neers, with some remarks on the G-eology of the Black Hills, and portions 
of the surrounding country, by F. B. Meek and F. V. Hayden, M. D.'' 
which was referred to a committee. 
Dr. Leidy read a letter from Mr. F. B. Meek and Dr. F. V. Hayden, 
dated Albany, Feb. 16th, 1858, indicating the probable existence of 
Permian Rocks in Kansas Territory, from which, at the request of 
the authors, the following extract is published. 
" Some six months since, Major F, Hawn, of Weston, Missouri, to whom we are 
under many obligations for interesting information respecting the geology of 
Kansas Territory, sent on to one of us'^ a small collection of fossils from a 
locality near the junction of Solomon's and Smoky Hill forks of Kansas River. A 
portion of these fossils were at once recognized as being types common in the 
coal measures of the west. Along with these, however, there were several masses 
1858.] 
(*Mr. Meek.) 
