Remarks on the Level of the Molasse in the Eastern Alps. 139 
regularly following the present water-courses, and being 
formed by them after the tertiary sea had disappeared from 
the country, really mark the former higher river-/evel itself. 
We are thus led to distinguish two sorts of levels of depo- 
sition: First, In standing water, in seas or lakes, at a cer- 
tain depth below the surface, dependent on the configura- 
tion of the water reservoir; secondly, as produced by run- 
ning water, rivers, or torrents, and, in this case, marking the 
highest level attained by the water. Sea-beaches, not form- 
ing strata of much importance, and only tracing a line along 
the shore when this is not steep, have not been considered 
here. If they existed in the tertiary seas of the eastern 
Alps, they must have been easily obliterated during the dilu- 
vial period. 
Lake of Hallstadt. 
AM 
/ 
pe ee = Watermark 
ST ee Pe Plane of deposition 
Letter from William Fraser Tolmie, Esq., Surgeon in the Service 
of the Hudson Bay Company. 
The superficial formations along the shores of Puget’s 
Sound, Admiralty Inlet, and by the southern side of the Straits 
of Juan de Fuca, to within a few miles of Cape Flattery, is 
in some places, as here, a gravel bed of from 200 to 400 feet in 
thickness above the level of the sea; in more numerous locali- 
ties itis a whitish-yellow, loamy earth, this being the character 
of the cliffs and promontories of the western coast of Whid- 
bey’s Island, and, as Captain Wood, of H. B. M’s. surveying 
vessel, informed me, from Port Discovery to the neighbour- 
hood of Cape Flattery, which portion of the coast he surveyed 
in 1846. The prairie in general, from Nisqually to Puyallip, 
is elevated from 200 to 350 feet above the sea-level, and its 
ascent is sudden and steep. All the clumps or belts of pines 
not bordering the river-banks, the sea, or lakes, grow on ele- 
vated knolls or table-lands, many of which have only a cover- 
ing of grass and scattered oaks; some are raised 50 or 60 
feet above the level of the prairie, and it is remarkable that 
