446 ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE 
nearly impossible to distinguish them from the uninjured dead 
shells, which are thrown upon the beach. Some of them haye 
preseryed their colour, particularly the red ones, so as to de- 
ceive any one. 
St Hospice is a long narrow peninsula, which from its sin- 
gularly fantastic shape, forms a most beautiful feature in the 
country, and is, for the most part, covered with olive trees ; 
some of these are so large, and present such an aspect of anti- 
quity, that they are considered by the country people to be six 
or seven hundred years old. The neck by which it is joined to 
the mainland is the lowest part of it, and there it may be seventy 
or eighty feet above the level of the sea. M. Risso has descri- 
bed* a deposite of sea-sand and shells, which was found in ex- 
cavating a well in this peninsula, at the height of 20 metres 
above the sea-mark. They had only gone down three metres 
when the deposite in question was penetrated, which was found 
to be five metres in thickness. The shells were here discovered 
in such a perfect state, that when Risso presented them as fossil 
productions in Paris, his veracity was somewhat questioned. 
On the east side of the Peninsula of St Hospice, not three 
hundred yards from this spot, on the edge of the cliff, I found 
what appears to be a continuation of the above deposite but 
here not more than fifteen or twenty feet above the level of 
the sea. They lie on a mass of blue clay belonging to the se- 
cond limestone, and are either imbedded in a fine white dry 
sand, or mixed with a proportion of clayey marl, and in one 
place were so abundant, that they may be taken out by the 
handful. The bed which contains these shells differs in thick- 
ness; in some places it may measure from 12 to 15 feet. The 
upper part of it is frequently so indurated, that it requires the 
hammer 
ee 
» Journal des Mines, No. 200. 
