288 Sir R. I. Murchison's Notes on the Alps and Apennines. 



A transverse section of the Monferrato Hills (Superga) 

 near Turin, exposes a most instructive tertiary succession. 

 A coralline concretionary limestone, with small nummulites 

 (Gassino), though described and mapped as cretaceous by 

 Collegno and others, is shewn to lie at the top of the eocene 

 or bottom of the miocene, and to pass up through conglome- 

 rates, marls, and sandstones, replete with the well-known mio- 

 cene 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 completely do they 

 inosculate. 



After describing the relations of the miocene and pliocene 

 formations near Bologna and in the Tuscan Maremma, in- 

 cluding the great coal-beds in the latter, which are believed 

 to be of the older miocene date, the relations of all these ma- 

 rine tertiary deposits to younger terrestrial and fresh-water 

 travertines and limestone is traced ; and reference is made 

 to the more recent changes in the configuration of the Cam- 

 pagna di Roma and valley of the Tiber, with allusions to the 

 labours of Monsignore Medici Spada and Professor Ponzi, 

 from whom he announced future communications ; the one on 

 the igneous rocks of Latium, the other on the sedimentary 

 deposits of the Papal States. 



After briefly recapitulating the principal phenomena in the 

 Alps, Apennines, and Carpathians, the author dwells, in con- 

 clusion, on the chief aim of his present communication, viz., 

 the establishment of a true equivalent of the eocene in Southern 

 Europe. He analyzes the writings of the geologists who have 

 recently described the nummulitic formations in the south of 

 France, viz., Leymerie, Pratt, D'Archiac, Delbos, Raullin, 

 Tallavignes, Rouant, &c. ; and indicates how their facts and 

 his own are in harmony, in shewing the superposition of such 

 deposits to the true cretaceous system, no characteristic fossil 



