OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE FORMATION OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
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dynamic laws and the mountain chains occupying positions the same as they now do, 
and as they did at the period of the deposition of the red sand-stone strata, he considers 
sufficient to account for the position and form of the deposit, the wider portion being 
where the axis of rotation took place, (p. 292.) 
The fossil fishes of this formation, to which the Messrs. Redfield and Prof. Hitch¬ 
cock have given so much attention, are all heterocercal so far as observation has vet 
gone, and must be at least as old as the New Red Sandstone. But I am not aware 
that this character implies a necessity of their having lived only in salt water. On 
the contrary as they are Ganoides, and belong to one family, Lepidoides, which 
includes the Esox osseus of our western waters, the evidence is in favor of their having 
been inhabitants of fresh water. Mr. W. C. Redfield has found many species of two 
genera, Palceoniscus and Calopterus ,* at Boonton and Pompton in New Jersey, and 
in several places in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He remarks that at Boonton the 
fish beds are under the “ variegated calcareous conglomerate,” and that at Pompton a 
second fish bed of bituminous shale lies two hundred feet below the other. 
Mr. Redfield informs me that some of the fossil fishes from the Oolitic coal field of 
Virginia, were considered by Sir Philip Egerton to be homocercal, and that they 
belonged to the genus Dictyopege. But Mr. Redfield differed in opinion as to 
the character of their tails, which he considered to be oblique , and that in this oblique 
character these Virginia fishes are scarcely distinguishable from the Catopterus of the 
New Jersey and Connecticut red sandstones. Indeed, that “all the fishes of this red 
sandstone formation from New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, have the 
same character of tail with those from the coal of Virginia.” Mr. Redfield mentioned 
at the same time, that the genus Dictyopege would be dropt, in the new work of Red¬ 
field and Agassiz on these fossil fishes, but that the name of Ischypterus would be 
retained, for some, or most of the Palceonisci of Connecticut Valley. At the meeting 
of the American Association at Cincinnati, he stated that this formation was 
characterized by a flora and fauna as recent as the Trias. 
Prof Hitchcock, who has labored so much in this hitherto sterile field to the 
palaeontologist, in addition to his numerous discoveries in Ornithichnites , &c., has 
observed and figured several plants in this formation, which he refers to Voltzia, and 
which, with Tceniopteris , also found by him, are considered as characteristic plants, 
peculiar to the New Red Sandstone. Mr. Redfield also found impressions of plants 
which he refers to Voltzia. They are from the Little Falls of Passaic in New 
Jersey. In Virginia near Prince Edward’s Court House, Prof. Rogers observed a 
deposit of coal which was nearly two feet thick, and in a brownish sandstone were 
inclosed thin seams of bituminous coal, the shales of which were impressed with 
rhombic fish scales, the rocks being slightly calcareous. He found, also, “black 
* See American Journal of Science, Vol. 41, p. 24, and catalogue in De Kay’s New York Reports, p. 385. 
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