Northern and Central Turkey. 259 



the Rtan, three leagues to the north of the Servish Banja. 

 Farther north it forms the great Omelijska-Planina, and bounds 

 the tertiary molasse of Timok and its tributary torrents to the 

 east, as well as to the west and south, by forming the Vratar- 

 nicza-Planina, which extends to the pass of the same name on 

 the north of Gorguschevatz. 



In these countries, the limestone does not vary much in its 

 texture or colour, which is chiefly greyish or whitish, seldom 

 reddish or yellowish, but it exhibits some variety in its fossils. 

 Sometimes it is distinctly oolitic. Although the compactness 

 of the rock often prevents the organic remains being visible, 

 yet, at other times, indistinct traces of them are very common, 

 and in particular beds the fossils are well preserved, but diffi- 

 cult to extract from the rock. Two leagues south of Schar- 

 koe, on the Sukava, the whitish limestone is full of encrinites, 

 and bivalve and univalve shells in fragments : this rock is pro- 

 bably only a prolongation of the beds observed to the south, al- 

 ternating with some slaty rocks upon the Lukanitscha-rieka and 

 Nevljanska-rieka. The position of these last limestone rocks is 

 rather doubtful : they are sometimes oolitic, and full of encri- 

 nites, various corallines, terebratulse, Sec. Some spots seem to 

 be still more rich in fossils. In crossing from Nissa to Gorgu- 

 schevatz, I observed between the inn of Male Timok and the 

 highest part of the plateau to be crossed to the north, that the 

 limestone contained so many Encrinites, as well as the Ostrea 

 cristata, and species ofAstrea, Cariophyllia, Cardium, Trochus, 

 Echinodermes, &c. that it was not unlike some of the rocks be- 

 longing to the coral rag. I searched in vain for belemnites ; 

 but I hope to be able next year to make a more extensive 

 collection of Turkish Jurassic fossils. 



In Western Turkey the whole group of hills between Bosnia, 

 Novibazar, Ipek, and Montenegro is calcareous, and composed 

 of a limestone which is greyish or whitish, seldom reddish, and 

 much like that of the secondary Alps. Some marly slates are 

 inter stratified here and there ; but I have not heard of gyp- 

 sum or salt being found in it. Fossils seem very rare ; yet in 

 ascending from Ipek the Peklen hill, we meet at no great height 

 a bed full of a species of Isocardia not unlike my /. Carin- 

 thiaca (See Mem. de la Soc. Geol. de France, vol. 2, part 1, 



