56 REPORT—1843. 
to the remains of the calcaire grossier of Paris; and on the whole, judging also from 
the ancient appearance of the terrestrial fauna, he is disposed to consider this basin 
of an early tertiary age. M. Herman von Meyer, drawing his conclusions from the 
vertebrata (the numerous fishes have not yet however been described), refers the de- 
posit to the age of the molasse and gypsum beds of Paris. The latter idea seems to 
be strongly sustained by the existence of the Anthracotherium, and of an animal 
between the Anoplotherium and Palzotherium of the Paris basin. 
However much surprise may be excited by the announcement, that the accumu- 
lations containing the gigantic Deinotherium form the uppermost part of the Eocene 
group of Lyell, Mr. Murchison considers the inference to be strengthened by the 
fact, that these beds rest upon the oldest brown coal and sand of Northern Germany, 
which near Mecklenburg has been found to contain concretions charged with marine 
remains, which, according to Count Miinster and M.von Buch, belong to the calcaire 
grossier, or London clay. Mr. Murchison expressed therefore his belief, that the 
great mass of the tertiary basin of the Rhine would be found to be-of the same age 
as the gypsum beds of Montmartre, or of the Ryde and Binsted strata of the Isle of 
Wight. 
Ancient Alluvia.—This basin is surmounted in ascending order by—lIst, coarse 
gravel, the materials of which have been derived from the adjacent mountains, and 
this by sand andldss. In the two latter, and in certain tufaceous beds, M.A. Braun 
and Professor Walchner of Karlsruhe have collected 96 species of shells, 56 of which 
are terrestrial and 40 fluviatile: of these 7 belong distinctly to species now living, 
and 9 others very closely approach to, or are varieties of, other living forms. The 
most abundant forms in the loss are with one exception very rare in a living state in 
the adjacent cultivated tracts, and the common species of such districts are of unfrequent 
occurrence in the loss. 
With these shells are associated the remains of Mammoth, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, 
and other extinct mammals, the bones of which have evidently undergone very little 
rolling or destruction; it being not uncommon (as at the mouth of the valley of 
Baden-Baden) to detect most of the bones of an entire animal near each other. 
From the composition of the drift and léss of the valley of the Rhine, and from the 
state of preservation both of the bones, and of the delicate land and fluviatile shells 
with which they are associated, Mr. Murchison infers, that in this region, as in the 
valleys of the Vistula in Poland, and enormous tracts throughout Russia and upon 
the Siberian flanks of the Ural, the superficial deposits containing these remains have 
been formed by comparatively tranquil operations, and that the great Mammalia in- 
habited tracts immediately adjacent to the spots where they are now entombed. 
On the Fossils of Polperro in Cornwall. By C. W. Pracu. 
Some time ago the author received from the Messrs. Couch, surgeons of Polperro, 
in a letter, two or three small portions of what they considered coral, but which Mr. 
Peach regarded as bone, and probably fish-bone. 
On the 20th of June last the author found that the fossils in question formed a 
large and extensive fish-bone bed, east and west of Polperro, containing immense quan- 
tities of portions of the Cephalaspis and Onchus of the Old Red Sandstone; also a few 
other indistinct and ill-defined shells, with portions of the skin or shagreen of Spha- 
godus, of the Upper Ludlow rock, all described in Mr. Murchison’s ‘ Silurian Re- 
mains,’ with other fragments not mentioned. - [Specimens were exhibited from that 
spot.] They are generally on the under side of the rocks. These are the rocks de- 
scribed in the fifth volume of the ‘ Geological Transactions,’ with ‘the transverse 
fracture,”’ which latter circumstance renders it a difficult matter to get out the speci- 
mens perfect. 
In Giggan Cove, Polperro, there is a large run of limestone, in which Goniatites, 
&c. are found: it runs along the coast east, and may be traced over Talland sand, to 
the rocks opposite the ‘‘ ore stone.” 
Mr. Peach has found a few and indistinct specimens of fish-bones from the Grib- 
bon along the coast to Mellendreth, two miles east of Looe. The Fowey fish rocks 
have the ‘‘ transverse fracture,” 
