of the Alps, Carpathians and Apennines. 213 



to lie at the top of the eocene or bottom of the miocene, and to 

 pass up through conglomerates, marls and sandstones replete with 

 the well-known miocene types of the Superga into the blue marls 

 and yellow sands of the Astesan, which are of sub-Apennine age. 

 The great interest of this section lies in its exposure of a vast 

 thickness of intermediate beds, in which the per-centage of recent 

 and fossil species is of so mixed a character, that for a league across 

 the inclined strata the able palaeontologists, E. Sismonda and Bellardi, 

 who made the section with the author, found it impossible to draw a 

 defined line between miocene and pliocene accumulation, so com- 

 pletely do they inosculate. 



After describing the relations of the miocene and pliocene for- 

 mations near Bologna and in the Tuscan Maremraa, including the 

 great coal beds in the latter, which are believed to be of the older 

 miocene date, the relations of all these marine tertiary deposits to 

 younger ten-estrial and freshwater travertines and limestones is 

 traced; and reference is made to the more recent changes in the 

 configuration of the Campagna di Roma and valley of the Tiber, 

 with allusions to the labours of Monsignore Medici Spada and Prof. 

 Ponzi, from whom he announced future communications ; the one 

 on the igneous rocks of Latium, the other on the sedimentary de- 

 posits of the Papal States. 



After briefly recapitulating the principal phsenomena in the Alps, 

 Apennines and Carpathians, the author dwells in conclusion on the 

 chief aim of his present communication, viz. the establishment of a 

 true equivalent of the eocene in Southern Europe. He analyses the 

 writings of the geologists who have recently described the nummu- 

 litic formations in the south of France,viz.Leymerie,Pratt,D'Archiac, 

 Delbos, RauUin, Tallavignes, Rouant, &c., and indicates how their 

 facts and his own are in harmony in showing the superposition of 

 such deposits to the true cretaceous system, no characteristic fossil 

 of which has been continued into the nummulitic group. Two or 

 three species of Gryphsese are alone common to the upper beds of 

 the one and the lower beds of the other. All the other fossils as- 

 sociated with the nummulites, whether from the Vicentine on the 

 south or from Sonthofen and Kressenberg on the north of the Alps, 

 are of tertiary forms, a certain number of them being absolutely 

 identical with species of the London and Paris basins. Looking to 

 the very great thicknesses and fine lamination of these accumula- 

 tions, including the shale, sandstone and lime^stone above the num- 

 mulites in the Alps, it is contended that as all these surmount the 

 white chalk, they must be an equivalent in time of what is legiti- 

 mately eocene, and that they do not merely represent, as suggested 

 by that eminent geologist M. E. de Beaumont, the interval which in 

 the North of Europe has occurred between the termination of the 

 chalk and the commencement of the plastic claj% 



Extending the application of his view to still more southern and 

 eastern regions. Sir Roderick Murchison is of opinion that the great 

 masses of the nummulitic limestone of the Crimsea, Africa, Egypt 

 and Hindostan are also of eocene age ; or in other words, that from 



