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



though construed differently by that author, may be so inter- 

 preted as to lead to the conclusion that the mass of the rocks 

 containing nummulites, in the Barbary states and the shores 

 of the Mediterranean, are, like those of the Alps and Apen- 

 nines, supra-cretaceous ; his own limited observations in the 

 Neapolitan territories being confirmed by the local knowledge 

 of Professor Scacchi. Similar conclusions are, he thinks, ine- 

 vitable respecting the nummulitic rocks of Egypt, on the pai-t 

 of any one who has read Russegger's work on that country. 

 At the same time, though well-assured of his own facts, he 

 would not argue against the possible existence in certain 

 southern regions, not examined by him, of some one species 

 of nummulite in strata of the age of the uppermost chalk, as 

 insisted upon for the Crimsea by M. Dubois de Montpereux, 

 and for Cape Passaro in Sicily by M. Constant Prevost. All 

 that he contended for is that the ^reat nummulitic group, as 

 characterised by a multitude of species of shells, Echino- 

 derms, nummulites, &c., is a formation superior to and dis- 

 tinct from the chalk ; and if there be situations (which, how- 

 ever, he has never seen) in which a species of nummulite be 

 common to the uppermost chalk and lowermost tertiary, they 

 would only the more confirm his view of transition from the 

 one epoch to the other in some regions of the surface of the 

 globe, as proved by other fossils, and the nature of the strata. 

 In the memoir about to be published, the author will give the 

 result of the comparison of the species of the nummulites, 

 whether collected in the Alps or Hindostan, with those of the 

 south of France by M. le Vicomte d'Archiac, who has obli- 

 gingly compared them. In the mean time it may be stated, 

 that, however, the species may have been differently named 

 by authors ; that able palsBontologist has assured himself that 

 the very same forms of nummulites, orbitolites, and Echino- 

 derms, exist in the south of France, the Pyrenees, the Alps, 

 the Crimaea, Egypt, and India.* 



* It was my wish to have communicated to my valued friend, the editor of 

 this Journal, Professor Jameson, a sketch, however brief, of some of the chief 

 results at which I had arrived concerning the glaciers, moraines, and erratic 

 blocks of the Alps ; the more so as his Journal was the chief medium for the 



