Geol.-Vol. I.] SMITH— COMPARATIVE STRATIGRAPHY. 34 1 



idas. The Trachyceras beds of British Columbia may also 

 belong here. 



The Karnic stage is best represented in the Tyrolian 

 Alps, of which the section is taken as the standard for the 

 rest of the world, and from which the names of the sub- 

 divisions are taken. The St, Cassian, the Raibl, and the 

 Sandling beds have long been classic localities for students 

 of geology; their faunas have been described in compre- 

 hensive monographs, and are accessible for study in many 

 museums. But the sequence of beds in the Tyrolian Alps 

 is still a matter for discussion, hardly any two writers 

 agreeing as to the exact position of any two beds. And 

 this has made it very difficult for extra-European stratig- 

 raphers to avoid serious blunders in comparing individual 

 beds with their supposed equivalents in the Alpine section. 

 The writer had been at work on the Californian section 

 nearly two years before it was published that Mojsisovics 

 had given up his Juvavic and Mediterranean Triassic prov- 

 inces, and that part of the Hallstatt section was upside 

 down. It was therefore a perplexing thing to find in Cali- 

 fornia an intermingling of Juvavic and Mediterranean types, 

 and also to find the faunas in inverted order as compared 

 with the Alps. But the recent revisions carried out by 

 Mojsisovics, Bittner, G, von Arthaber, and Tornquist in 

 the Tyrolian province have thrown much light on the 

 problems and have given a section that will in most cases 

 stand the test of further work. 



The Karnic stage is known with marine cephalopod 

 faunas in the upper Daonella beds and the Tropites lime- 

 stone of the Himalayas. Not many species are known, and 

 those poorly preserved, but enough to show that the same 

 types that abounded in the Alps and in California at this 

 time also occurred in India. In India as in California this 

 stage is characterized by the occurrence together in the 

 same rocks of Trachyceras and Tropites, while in the Alps 

 the Trachyceras zone lies below that of Tropites and the 

 two are never intermingled. Another peculiarity is that in 

 California there are many species identical with those in 



