TERTIARY FORMATIONS OF SWITZERLAND. 151 



and partly upon a fresh- water limestone, the upper beds of which alternate 

 with the marls above. On each side of this band of limestone, marked (b), 

 there comes out another series of marls (c), resting upon the Molasse (d) 

 which is here of no great thickness, and overlies a portion (probably the 

 lower part) of the chalk formation {e), immediately below which in this 

 part of the district are the upper oolite beds of the Jura (y). 



In the uppermost of all these beds, resting on the fresh-water limestone, 

 there have been discovered, in digging foundations for houses, several frag- 

 ments of bones, among which were teeth in tolerable preservation. These 

 bones, being examined by competent anatomists*, have been referred to the 

 following genera : — Anoplotherium, Palceotherium, and Lophiodon, Hippo- 

 potamus, Camelopardalis, Equus, Deinotherium, Elephas, and Rhinoceros. 

 To the bed containing these fossils, and the circumstances under which they 

 occur, I am desirous now of directing attention. 



The bed I have already sufficiently described as a black earthy deposit, 

 alternating with calcareous bands. It is pretty regularly stratified, and I was 

 struck with the probability there seemed of its having been formed while 

 the lake, which doubtless once covered the whole valley, was so far dried up 

 as to resemble a marshy pond, in which the bones would be preserved as in 

 a peat bog. Of the species determined, I believe five have been identified 

 as occurring also in the Paris Basin ; the others would seem to belong to a 

 more recent period, and perhaps we should rather refer to the tertiary beds 

 of Bordeaux, and the valleys of the Garonne and Loire, than to the neigh- 

 bourhood of Paris for analogies. The Miocene period of Mr Lyell has 

 already been suggested by that gentleman as the probable date of the Jura 

 tertiaries, and the discovery of these fossils would tend to confirm his 

 opinion. 



The Molasse, however, being the substratum, and resting immediately 

 upon the cretaceous beds, it is clearly an older deposit, perhaps existing 

 as the bottom of an ancient sea, before the disturbances and elevations, 

 which formed the valleys of the Jura, and raised them to their present 

 position, took place. 



* Most of the specimens were determined by Professor Agassiz, and many of them sent to 

 Paris to be compared with the fossils examined and named by Cuvier, and found in the Lower 

 Tertiary formation of the Calcaire grossiere. 



