66 PROC. COTTESWOLD CLUB vol. xiii. 



Geology 



After this lengthy description of the quarries, it is time 

 to give some notice of the geology. 



The Apuan Alps, considered as a continuation of those 

 of Switzerland, have been described as an elevated ellipse 

 or dome-shaped structure, with Secondary beds and 

 schists on either side of a central crystalline nucleus. To 

 what age the latter belongs has been, and is, the vexata 

 qnestio. That this marble nucleus is altered limestone 

 admits of no doubt ; but how altered and to what series it 

 belongs, has been much disputed. The south-western 

 flanks of the mountains in the Torano valley near Carrara 

 are of Secondary age, as the Museum at Carrara contains 

 fossils from these beds characteristic of the Lower Lias, 

 and Rhaetic, e.g.. Lower Lias Ammonites, and Avicula 

 contorta from the schists at Graguana farther up the 

 valley, north of Torano. The Italian geologists generally, 

 with Stefani at their head, trace an orderly succession 

 from the Lias through the Rhsetic and Triassic beds 

 downwards to the marble series, which they consider to 

 be altered Triassic beds. M. Coquand, in his communi- 

 cation to the Comptes rendues,* " On the Age and Position 

 of the White Statuary Marble of the Pyrenees and the 

 Apuan Alps, in Tuscany," considers them to be of 

 Carboniferous age, contemporaneous with the saccharoid 

 marble of St. Beat, in the Pyrenees : he gives the order of 

 succession as Lias, Rhaetic, Permian, and Carboniferous, 

 its base being Carrara marble. 



It is unnecessary to give a longer list of the various 

 opinions as to the position of these rocks, ranging from 

 the Mesozoic to the Palaeozoic series. Since these views 



* Compt. lend. t. lxxix., p. 411, 1875. 



