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On the Geological Signification of the word “ Flysch.” 
By M. StTupmrR. 
The name flysch, proposed for the first time in 1827 by M. 
Studer, has since given rise to much confusion. M. Studer, going 
back to its origin, thus gives the history and explanation of it. 
The unfortunate name flysch appeared for the first time in 1827, 
in two Memoirs on the valley of Simme, inserted in Leonhard’s 
Journal, and in the Annalles des Sciences Nat. It was a local 
denomination which I proposed to designate,—a somewhat complex 
ealcareo-slaty formation in the Simmenthal, covered with Portland 
limestone. After this, M. Alexander Brongniart, to whom I had 
sent the Portland fossils of Simmenthal, made the mistake of re- 
ferring these fossils to the flysch formation, which was thus arranged 
among the highest of the jurassic formations. The following year, 
M. Keferstein (Teutschland, v. 559) availed himself of this name to 
designate, by a single expression, almost the whole limestones of 
the Alps, arenaceous and slaty, which he thought proper to con- 
sider as constituting a single formation, corresponding in the geolo- 
gical scale to the inferior cretaceous formation of the north of 
Europe, but including all the series of fossils from the carboniferous 
limestone to the tertiary formations (Naturgeschichte des Erdkér- 
pers, i. 276.) In my work on the Western Alps of Switzerland, 
which appeared in 1834, I described, as lying between the lakes of 
Thun and Geneva, three zones of marly-schistose formations, com- 
posed of rocks almost identical, and containing the same Fucoides, 
but whose parallelism did not appear to me evident. That I might 
prejudge nothing, I indicated these three zones by different names ; 
calling the formation which composes this chain, and which appears 
to dip under the Portland chain of Spielgarten, Niesen slates and 
sandstones. I reserved the name flysch for the formation of Sim- 
menthal superior to this chain; and, in applying the name of 
Gurnigel sandstone to the formation superior to the Chatel or Ox- 
ford limestone, which forms the exterior limit of the Alpine country, 
-—observing, at the same time, that nothing prevents us regarding 
these two latter formations as identical. About this same time, in 
the Autumn of 1833, I made my first excursion with M. Escher 
among the mountains of Entlibuch, on which I made a report, in- 
serted in Leonhard’s Journal for 1834. We ascertained that a 
thick formation of marly slates and fucoidal sandstones, differing in 
nothing, as regarded the rocks, from the flysch of Simmenthal, 
covered the nummulitic formation of the cretaceous chain of the 
Neiderhorn, Schratten, and Mont-Pilate; and, dating from this 
period, confusion, hitherto unknown in Swiss Alpine geology, began 
to be introduced into our own publications. 
M. Escher gave a precise geological meaning to the name flysch, 
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