86 Dr Boue*s Geological Observations, 



admitted. Lastly, the combustible deposits must be placed in 

 the same order, as facts shew that they are nothing else than 

 vegetable and animal matters, which have been carried away 

 from the continent by rivers, debacles, or the sea, and which 

 have been buried under certain conglomerated rocks. 



In conformity with these views, it will be perceived how er- 

 roneous it would be to search, for instance, in the middle of a 

 very large basin, for the coal, lignite, gypsum or salt, which are 

 found accidentally at its margins. We will not entirely deny 

 the success of such researches ; but we may affirm, that the 

 probability of the existence of such extensive deposits, always 

 diminishes in the ratio of the magnitude of the basin. In an 

 extensive basin, which might shew coal or salt at its margins, 

 we ought not to be surprised to find here and there, instead of 

 these inflammable or saline bodies, arenaceous matters, with 

 little or no coal or salt. 



These preliminary observations have seemed to me to be es- 

 pecially necessary, with the view of enabling us to classify with 

 accuracy the deposits of a great part of the Alps, the Appe- 

 nines, the Carpathians, and the Pyrenees* The three first 

 chains present, in my tables, a great arenaceous or marly depo- 

 sit, which is pretty similar to the greywacke, and which would 

 seem to occupy the place of more than one of the arenaceous 

 floetz formations of other countries, or which, perhaps, is an equi-i 

 valent for the whole of these floetz formations, up to the Jura 

 limestone. This new fact would be explained, according to my 

 ideas, by the total absence of porphyries in these great chains ; 

 for in every other part where these igneous rocks have appeared, 

 they have given to the ancient floetz deposits their peculiar and 

 ordinary characters ; and some parts, even of the Alps, and of 

 Hungary and Transylvania (as the Southern Tyrol, the coun- 

 try round Funfkirchen and Zalathna), afford us very striking 

 examples of this general law. * 



These remarks also give rise to general geognostical views 

 regarding the floetz formations. It would seem, that, from too 

 great a desire to examine the details, geologists have lost sight 

 of the general facts presented by this class of deposits. With- 



• See my Memoir on Germany, in the Journal de Physique, 1821?. 



