Southern Flank of the Tyrolese Alps near Bassano. 281 



beds having gradually increased their inclination to angles 

 from 70° to 80°, run out like so many walls into the channel 

 of the Brenta ; whilst some of the intermediate marls being 

 washed out, the fossilist is enabled, when the river is low, to 

 collect the remains of each layer by inclosing himself between 

 the projecting beds of stone, the upper and lower surfaces of 

 which are thus placed on either side of him. The perfect 

 state of preservation of the shells in these vertical beds is a 

 distinct proof that the dislocation of strata, even when vertical, 

 does not, as some geologists have imagined, necessarily pro- 

 duce any derangement or destruction of their organic con- 

 tents. These strata mount into a steep hill, on the summit of 

 which is the little church of St. Bovo, at least from six to seven 

 hundred feet above the river, and where they form an outline 

 nearly as peaked and grotesque as that of the adjoining dolo- 

 mite, or of any other crystalline rocks ; thus showing that ex- 

 ternal form may be entirely due to the inclination of the beds, 

 without any reference to the structure or age of the rock. 

 After passing along the edges of a considerable thickness of 

 blue marly strata, much of which has been swept away by the 

 river, there occurs a very compact brown and pink-coloured 

 limestone, containing small multilocular shells and nummu- 

 lites. This limestone is the lowest of the members of the ter- 

 tiary series, and the beds having now become absolutely ver- 

 tical, are seen in contact with the red scaglia with flints or 

 representative of the chalk, without the slightest appearance 

 of unconformable deposition, the edges of the two formations 

 having a parallel direction from W. to E., as seen in the verti- 

 cal piers on both sides of the river, on the west bank of which 

 they rise together into a lofty hill. 



The upper beds of the scaglia are red and fissile, precisely 

 like those described at Possagno, with flints both in layers 

 and in nodules, and few or no organic remains. The lower 

 beds are thicker and more compact, and gradually losing the 

 red colour, they pass into a beautiful white saccharoid marble, 

 a variety of which is largely quarried (and called Biancon di 

 Pove)*. The vertical edges of this rock are seen for several 



* Maraschini, in his "Saggio Geologico del Vicentino" is inclined to con- 

 sider the scaglia a tertiary formation, chiefly because in the districts he ex- 

 amined, it is unconformable to the inferior or Jura limestone. This author's 

 sections, however, were all made in the country west of the Brenta, where 

 the deposits being traversed by a variety of trap rocks, cannot be selected 

 as proofs that the unconformability of the strata is due to any other than a 

 partial cause ; for in the district I now describe, and where igneous rocks 

 have not penetrated, it has been shown that all the deposits are perfectly 

 conformable. But in some of the adjoining regions to the west, and even 

 when intermixed with volcanic rocks, the same deposits are again strictly 

 conformable ; and for a full account of these interesting phenomena N. of 

 Verona, I refer the reader to a most able memoir of Dr. Ciro Pollini, 

 " Lettera Geologica sui Monti Veronesi." (Biblioteca Italiana, vol. xxviii.) 



Nn 



