Geology of the Austriafi Alps. 19 



doubtful. If our adversaries, ignorant of the Carpathians, refuse 

 to adopt our opinion, we beg them first to visit the country in 

 question, for, without a knowledge of the country from exami- 

 nation, if they continue to deny what is obvious to us and 

 others, they must not be astonished if we retort against their 

 conviction and our own also, that the magnesian limestone, and 

 the red marl of Durham, is not the same deposite as that which 

 receives the same names in Nottinghamshire and Somersetshire. 

 In both cases the reasoning would be absurd. 



We rejoice, on the other hand, to agree fully with our au- 

 thors respecting their mode of considering the arenaceous red- 

 dish system below the alpine limestone. It is well known that 

 we, and also Professor Buckland and these gentlemen, compared 

 it with the red marl, and even with the keuper, and that we endea- 

 voured to find out in the thick beds of limestone, which are 

 sometimes ferriferous, in the gypsum and the rauchwacTce, some 

 representations of the ancient secondary formations which are 

 so well exposed in the southern Alps, and so well characterised 

 from the Lago Majore to the Cadore. There is a great dif- 

 ference in the composition of the Alps on opposite sides. Upon 

 the one side, the secondary formations, nearly unaltered, support 

 the colossus of Jura limestone and chalk ; while, on the other, 

 the latter formations, with many peculiarities, and often with 

 apparently strange fossils for such deposites, rest upon a series 

 of aggregates, almost unknown elsewhere in Europe, and which 

 are connected with the primary system. That union of lime- 

 stone, containing immense masses of sparry iron-ore, with are- 

 naceous talco-quartzose slates, is a Gordian knot, which can only 

 be cut by our theory of igneous subterranean alterations. 



In regard to the inferior alpine limestone, these gentlemen 

 have been very fortunate in discovering in Carinthia the Gry- 

 phcea incurva in the dolomite of Bleiberg, thus rendering it a 

 lias limestone. Notwithstanding the singularity of this fact, and 

 that not more than two or three casts of the shells were found, 

 we admit it. As this characteristic fossil of the lias is not men- 

 tioned by them as occurring on the opposite side of the Alps, 

 we question if they are right in admitting the lias in the Sala^- 

 burg Alps. If this deposite exists in the Alps of Dauphiny 

 and SaVoy, and even perhaps of Western Switzerland, the dark 



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