in 'the Province of Granada. 51 



this tract for about two miles, crossing a stream in the latter 

 part of it, in whose banks the sandy nature of the deposit is well 

 seen. The rise of ground beyond the stream is a little more 

 rapid, and shortly afterwards a soft sandstone in strata variously 

 inclined, and a dark black-looking rock make their appearance, 

 and for the next mile there is a semblance of alternation between 

 these two substances ; but a group of low mammelonated hills 

 of pitchstone, almost contiguous to the road on the left or to- 

 wards the west, explains the deceptive appearance. A portion 

 of the pryogenic rock has burst through the sandy deposit along 

 the line of road, and has probably been the agent oi' its consolida- 

 tion, and of the variously inclined, and occasionally perpendicu- 

 lar, position of its strata. Although the sandstone strata are in 

 places variously inclined, at high angles, and even perpendicu- 

 lar, the general dip is toward the north ; and the last of them 

 which are observed on the road to Vera, apparently beyond the 

 influence of the rock that has distributed them so far, dip in the 

 latter direction at about fifteen degrees. From this point to 

 Vera the deposit again consists of sandy loam, but gradually ac- 

 quires a little more elevation. A mile beyond the town, the 

 open track to which the above observations apply, becomes con- 

 tracted by the intervention of low hills, composed of alternating 

 beds of sandstone, sandy loam and conglomerate, which dip at 

 between 16° x 25° towards the north, and confined by primary 

 and transition districts, is prolonged inland in a north-westerly 

 direction, by Cantoria, Purchena, and Searon to the ^asin of 

 Baza, one of the chief inland towns of the province of Granada. 

 This great fissure or aperture in the Sierra Nevada chain, is 

 generally known by the appellation of the Valley of the Alman- 

 zora, and in that part of its course in which the villages of Ura- 

 cal, Comartin, and Searon are situated, exhibits tracts of conglo- 

 merate and beds of micaceous sandy loam, in which Clypeaster 

 alatus, Ostrea crassissima, Balani, and several species of Pec- 

 tens, are met with. Another fissure, with a direction from S.S» W{ 

 to N.N.E. in the system of primary and transition rocks, that 

 appear to have exclusively occupied, at some former period, the 

 whole of this part of the Peninsula, connects the open tract in 

 the vicinity of Vera with the plain of Lorca, in the province of 

 Murcia, and it is filled up with a deposit similar to that near the 



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