34 M. E. de Verneiiil's Note on the 



No. 1, we learn what fabulous results have been assumed, and 

 what visionary fabrics have been imagined, and dreamy phan- 

 tasies indulged in, of primitial fire mist, and secular refrigera- 

 tion, and azoic and protozoic rocks, and gelatinous monads, and 

 progressive development, and strata identified in universal for- 

 mations, and the long catalogue and concatenation of chimaeras 

 and romance which in the present day is either substituted for 

 sober science, or which so poisons its well-heads that its current 

 throughout is corrupted and debased by it ; corollaries essen- 

 tially consequent on "the folly," as Playfair terms it, "of at- 

 tempting to explain the first origin of things," and which impli- 

 cates certain geologists in the something more than folly, viz. 

 that while they ostentatiously parade their trite and broad phy- 

 lactery, " denique non belle et probabiliter opinari, sed certo 

 et ostensive scire," they assume a definite sense and terms, and 

 draw physical land-marks, out of what are merely convenient 

 cabinet mineralogical distinctions, not definitions in nature, 

 but convenient distinctions in a constantly running and blend- 

 ing series, in which it is impossible to limit a genus or a species. 

 Bleadon, April 20,1849. 



IV. Note on the Geological Structure of the Ast7irias, parti- 

 cularly in reference to the Nummulitic Eocene, and the Car^ 

 bo7iiferoiis Palcsozoic Rocks of that Province {extracted from 

 a letter ofM.. E. de Verneuil addressed to Sir Roderick 



I. MURCHISON*). 



IN a tour which he is now making in Spain, M. Ed. de 

 Verneuil has observed, that on the frontiers of the pro- 

 vinces of Asturias and Santander, the nummulitic formation 

 overlies all the true cretaceous rocks, and that no form of the 

 genus Nummuli7ia, D'Orb., ever occurs in them ; thus fortify- 

 ing the generalization recently announced by Sir Roderick 

 Murchison, deduced from a study of the Alps, Apennines, 

 and Carpathians ; viz. that the nummulitic group of Southern 

 Europe, and which extends over such an enormous area in 

 Asia, is the true Eocene tertiary of geologists. The cretace- 

 ous or uppermost secondary rocks of the north of Spain con- 

 sist of two great stages, the lower of which is the Diceras 

 limestone, antl the uppermost a group of limestones and 

 argillaceous sandstones, &c. with Hippurites, Radiolites and 

 Orbitolites. The last-mentioned bodies have been supposed 

 to be Nummulites ; and hence has arisen the mistake of sup- 

 posing, that Nummulites and Hippurites are associated in those 



• Communicated by Sir R. I. Murchison. 



