Geology of the Austrian Alps, 28 



and Kressenberg, and serving as connecting parts, and as yet 

 unknown to them ? They will themselves confess the small im- 

 portance of the more isolated position of the Kressenberg com- 

 pared with that of Sonthhofen, of which the hills are united to 

 the alpine limestone chain ; for this is only an accident resulting 

 from a total (bouleversement) overturn which affected these 

 mountains, of which some remained connected with the Alps, 

 while others have been separated from them. At the Kressen- 

 berg, the inferior beds, which at Sonthhofen contain the inoce- 

 ramus, the belemnites, &c., are buried under tertiary and allu- 

 vial rocks, or have been hidden by a falling down. Lastly, we 

 ask our opponents what opinion they would entertain of our 

 logical reasoning, if, on examining, at two distant points, their 

 magnesian limestone which runs through England, and being 

 unacquainted with the whole extent of its distribution, we should 

 classify one point of it with the secondary limestone, and the 

 other with the transition, in conformity with the fossils we had 

 seen in each locality ? Would they not say to us that the age 

 of a deposite must be characterised by the whole of its fossils, 

 and not by the shells of one or two localities ; and notwithst^d- 

 ing the identity of many fossils of the magnesian limestone and 

 transition limestone, they would remind us that, in the first, 

 other fossils peculiar to this deposite may occur, which, however, 

 may be wanting in different places, without changing the true 

 state of things. I trust this example is quite in its place. 



Our authors attack us also in regard to our classification of 

 the tertiary deposites of the basins of Bavaria, Austria, and 

 Styria, and they reproach us for laying too much stress on mi- 

 neralogical characters, (p. 109). We thought we were as well 

 aware as they of the insufficiency of this last argument. But 

 are we right in saying that in the basins just mentioned, as in 

 Switzerland, there are only tertiary subappennine deposites, or 

 formations superior to the tertiary nummulite limestone of 

 Paris. Our opponents contend that they have recognised, by 

 means of the fossils in the basin of Gratz, rocks of the same age 

 as the London clay. If they are of opinion that they have a 

 sufficiency of fossil shells for establishing such an identity at 

 such a distance, we would not be so foolish as to contest this con- 

 clusion, which, besides, is conformable with our own ideas^ for 



