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just mentioned, as well as tending to establish and confii'm the gi-and 

 generalizations, consequent upon clear determination of the distribution of 

 species over given areas in unlimited time. In England, as in the Northern 

 latitudes of Europe, (in Sweden, Norway, Bohemia, and Hungary,) this 

 formation is known only as a thin zone ; whereas in Southern Europe, 

 in the Alps and in Lombardy, (fee, it attains an enormous thickness, 

 nowhere wanting or devoid of life or organic remains, in some 

 regions possessing a peculiar "assemblage of forms, the bones, teeth, 

 and spines, &c., of fishes, as at Wlirtemburg and Northern Gennany, 

 <fec. ; in another typified by, and crowded with, bivalves, as in the Bavarian 

 Alps, Lombardy, and France; elsewhere, as in Sweden, Franconia, and, 

 perhaps, also the 'Gresten beds' of the Alps, remains of plants abound;" 

 but everywhere the Avicula contorta, which shell is cosmopolitan in the 

 strictest sense. In Saxony and Hanover, it attains considerable thickness, 

 associated with bone beds and breccia like our own at "Westbury. 



Thus, then, are these beds at Garden Clifi", the equivalents and repre- 

 sentatives of one of the most remarkable deposits in Europe ; and the 

 student may here acquaint himself with all the main facts of the gi'oup, so 

 far as they are to be met with in this countiy. Each month brings out and 

 establishes fresh evidence of its originally wide-spread condition over the 

 west and centre of England, and its intimate relationship to the grand mid- 

 European deposits in the plains of Lombardy, and the gorges and slopes of 

 the Great and Bavarian Alps. The coast of Londonderiy and Antrim, in 

 Ireland, gives unequivocal proof of its having once occupied an immense 

 area, now covered by the waters of the North Atlantic, or buried beneath 

 the ancient Lava flows and Basaltic Columns that form the coast line of 

 the great Causeway. An irregular but clearly defined Line traceable 

 from Bedcar and the bold headlands on the Yorkshire coast, to the cliffs 

 of Dorsetshire, attests its continiiity through our own Island, yielding 

 and exhibiting to us on its way, through the varied but constant agency 

 of denudation, the magnificent sections at Watchett, Penarth, Westbuiy, 

 Aust and Axmoutli. The English Channel flows over that area whose 

 western boundary line stretches from Lyme Regis to Cherbourg, Valognes, 

 and Caen. In Southern France its lines are traceable from Montpellier 

 to Lyons, CharoUes, and Nevers ; thence north-east to Nancy, Thionville, 

 and on to Luxembiirg. From Basle and the flanks of the Jura, to Stutt- 

 gart, Bamberg, Coburg, and Baireuth, its shells, sandstones, and shales, 

 are easily determinable. All along the Bavarian Alps, from Feldk near 

 the Ehine, to Salzburg, Gresten, and Vienna, they occur in vast deposits 

 constituting whole mountain ranges. In the northern parts of the plains 



