Sir R. I. Murchison's Notes on the Alps and Apennines. 291 



not examined either the Swiss and Savoy Alps, the Monfer- 

 rato, Apennines, or Southern Italy, any words he may be 

 cited as having spoken at that meeting are not to be taken as 

 affecting his ultimate conclusions expressed in this memoir. 

 Since it was read, he has received a letter from M. Alcide 

 d'Orbigny, which l^e willingly cites both as confirming his ge- 

 neral conclusions and as bringing these deposits into close 

 comparison w^ith the lower tertiaries of Northern Europe. 

 " For three years,'' M. d'Orbigny writes, *' I have made the 

 most extensive general researches on the strata containing 

 nummulites ; and, in comparing all the stratigraphical and 

 palaeontological results, it is impossible not to recognise 

 therein two distinct epochs superposed the one to the other, 

 and having each its proper fauna. One of these epochs, which 

 I have recognised in the French Alps, the Pyrenees, and the 

 Gironde, corresponds to the plastic clay of Paris and London, 

 and whicl), belonging to the lower sands of Soissons, I have 

 named ' Etage Suessonien;' the other, equally common in the 

 Alps and the basins of the Gironde, and which includes the 

 ' Calcaire Grossier' of Paris, up to the gypsum of Montmartre 

 and the London clay, Ajp., I designate 'Etage Parisien.' These 

 divisions, based upon a considerable number of facts, are de- 

 tailed in the work I am now printing, and the entire compo- 

 sition of their characteristic faunas is given in my ' Prodro- 

 mus of Universal Palaeontology.' The habit I have acquired 

 of determining these fossils, makes me regret that I cannot 

 go to inspect your collections in London ; but the portions of 

 them I have seen, in the hands of our friend M. de Verneuil, 

 has led me to recognise, at once, what I was already ac- 

 quainted with in the Pyrenees and the French Alps. Again, 

 the fossils I have examined in the collection of M. Tchichat- 

 cheif, confirm me in my opinion, and would lead me to extend 

 the limits of these tertiary stages, as you have suggested, 

 through Asia Minor, and other tracts, even to Hindostan.'' 



It may be added, that, in citing the able memoir of M. Co- 

 quand,* Sir Roderick has expressed his opinion, that the data, 



* Description g6ologique dc la partie septentrionale de Tempire de Maroc, 

 par H. Coquand. — BhU. de la ISoc. Oeol. de France, Second Series, vol. iv., 

 p. 1188. 



