qfi/ie Alps, Carpathians and Apennines, * ' 209 



aamits to be cretaceous. In common with all the geologists of their 

 day, they also formed an erroneous opinion of the age of the " flysch " 

 in viewing it as secondary greensand. 



He now specially refers, as the base of all his subsequent results, 

 to a memoir of his own, read before the Geological Society in 1829 

 (Annals of Phil, and Phil. Mag. June 1830), which proved that on 

 the edge of the Venetian Alps, near Bassano and Asolo, the white 

 and red scaglia, or chalk, is there conformably succeeded by the 

 nummulitic and shelly deposits of the Vicentine, which are unques- 

 tionably of lower tertiary age, and graduate upwards through other 

 shelly strata and sandstones into marls and conglomerates with sub- 

 Apennine fossils. It has since been ascertained that deposits with 

 the same shells, Echinidae and nummulites of older tertiary age, 

 enter far into the higher Alps of the South Tyrol, and are there ele- 

 vated to great heights on the surface of limestones v/hich represent 

 the chalk. Natural sections are then described in Savoy, Switzer- 

 land, and Bavaria, which show a clear ascending order from the 

 Neocomian limestone (a formation unknown when he formerly 

 visited the Alps), or equivalent of the lowest greensand of Eng- 

 land, through a zone charged with fossils characteristic of the gault 

 and upper greensand into a limestone containing Inocerami and Anan- 

 chytes ovata, which, whether of white, gray or red colour, unques- 

 tionably stands in the exact place of the white chalk of Northern 

 Europe. Certain conformable transitions from this inoceramus lime- 

 stone up into shelly and nummulitic strata, like those of the Vicen- 

 tine, are pointed out, particularly at Thones in Savoy, at the Hoher- 

 Sentis in Appenzell and near Sonthofen in Bavaria, where these 

 intermediate beds, partaking of all the mineral characters of the great 

 eupracretaceous groups, or "flysch," are still characterized by a 

 Gryphaea, which is not to be distinguished from the G. vesicularis 

 of the upper chalk. Above this zone (?'. e. in tracts free from 

 dislocation and inversion) no traces have been discovered of any 

 one fossil referable to the cretaceous system ; the overlying strata 

 being unequivocally nummulitic and shelly rocks, which ai-e linked 

 together by position and fossils, and which on the north flank of the 

 Alps (especially at Sonthofen and Kressenberg), as well as on the 

 high summits of the Diableretz and Dent du Midi, represent the 

 lower tertiary of the Vicentine. The upper portion of this group, so 

 vastly expanded on the north flank of the Alps, is a collection of 

 shale, impure limestone and sandstone, the " flysch " of the Swiss, 

 to a great extent the " Wiener Sandstein," or fucoid grit of the 

 Austrians*, and the " Macigno " of the Italians. The whole group 

 of nummulite rocks and " flysch," much loaded with chlorite, pre- 

 eminently a " greensand," and often assuming a very ancient litho- 

 logical aspect, is not, as many geologists (including himself) sup- 



* In an able map of the Northern Alps of Bavaria and Austria, M. Mor- 

 lot had placed the nummulite and flysch rocks above the chalk. Now, 

 however, great confusion prevails among the Austrian geologists respecting 

 the position of the " Wiener Sandstein," which has recently been mapped 

 as " Keuper." 



Phil. Mag. S. 3 . Vol. 84. No. ^28. March 184-9. P 



