GEOLOGY. 223 



platinum has been found, and the rocks on the one side are 

 eruptive, and on the other of recent sedimentary origin. Almost 

 all the minerals which accompany the pyrope of Dlaschkowitz, 

 Podsedlitz, and Triblitz, are found in different parts of Bohemia 

 in their gangue of basalt, but I see no reason a priori why the 

 basalt should not contain diamond. The hypothesis of the organic 

 origin of the diamond, resting on the authority of Brewster and 

 other observers, has always appeared to me to offer fewer diffi- 

 culties than any other ; but hypothesis is nothing in the presence 

 of a fact; besides, it has not been proved that the diamond would 

 be consumed by the fusion of the basalt." Comptes Eendus, LXX., 

 p. 140. 



According to Rose, the features of the Bohemian locality are 

 not so different from those of the diamond-producing districts of 

 Brazil, for the serpentine of Bohemia may be derived from an 

 amphibolite or similar rock, which is found in Brazil with itacol- 

 timite, and which, as well as the itacolumite, contains diamonds. 

 Comptes Rcndus, LXX.,^. 398. 



NEOCOMIAN STRATA OF NORTH EUROPE. 



Mr. Judd, of the Geological Survey of England and Wales, 

 thus concludes a paper " On the Neocomian Strata of Yorkshire 

 and Lincolnshire, with Notes on their Relations to the Beds of 

 the same Age throughout Northern Europe :" 



"We have thus seen that the Neocomian. beds of Yorkshire and 

 Lincolnshire are the most westerly development of a great mass 

 of strata, of the same age, stretching over a wide area in North- 

 ern Europe. It is true that the beds of this age are neither so well 

 exposed, nor do they attain so great a thickness, as in the south 

 of Europe ; but they nevertheless present us with a remarkably 

 similar succession of faunas. At the eastern and western ex- 

 tremities of the areas in Brunswick and in Yorkshire respectively, 

 the marine series is complete, and we have the three divisions of 

 the Neocomian formation all developed ; but in the intermediate 

 districts of Westphalia, Hanover, and the Hartz, the marine beds 

 represent only the Upper and Middle Neocomiau, and these rest 

 upon the fresh-water strata of the North-German Weald en. The 

 section at Speeton Cliff derives additional interest from the fact 

 that it is by far the most complete exposure of the Neocomian beds 

 over the whole of the great North-European area. The sections 

 elsewhere are more or less isolated and fragmentary ; but at 

 Speeton we find the key by means of which they may be identified 

 and correlated. We have seen that, over the North-European 

 area, a remarkable uniformity of character is maintained among 

 the Neocomian strata (and the same is, to a certain extent, true 

 also of the Cretaceous and Jurassic), indicating that this district 

 forms a natural province, not improbably representing an ancient 

 sea-basin. The ridge of Paleozoic land traced by Mr. Godwin- 

 Austen, in his celebrated memoir ' On the Possible Extension of 

 the Coal-Measures beneath the South-Eastern Part of England ' 

 (See Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc., xii., 1856, p. 38), may not improb- 



