30 KELIQU1JE AQTJITANIC^E. 



Terrasson the red beds consist of conglomerate and pebbly sandstones, formed 

 of pebbles and grains of quartz (mostly milk-white, but occasionally hyaline), 

 with a reddish cement of ferruginous clay; the sandstones also contain de- 

 composed felspar, and are often micaceous and fissile: their angle of dip is 

 sometimes as much as 40. They are classed as the Ores bigarrt or Bunter 

 Sandstone the lowest member of the Trias. 



In their upper portion occurs some limestone, supposed to be equivalent to the 

 Muschelkalk. In some places this appears as concretionary nodules, with traces 

 of Corals ; elsewhere it expands into great stratified lenticular masses. 



Still higher beds are red and green variegated sandstones, laminated and false- 

 bedded, quartzose and micaceous, with a white argillaceous cement. These are 

 regarded as the Marnes irisees, or Keuper Sandstone, the uppermost division of 

 the Trias. 



The Infra-lias (f), the Lias (g), and the Oolite (h, i, j). Still further west- 

 ward, and lying (for the most part unconformably) on the above-mentioned in- 

 clined Triassic beds, are thin grey quartzose sandstones (Infra-lias, or Ores de 

 Lias) and some magnesian limestones, characterized by Gryphcete and Belem- 

 nites, referable to the Lias*. Further to the north the Infra-liassic beds lie on 

 the old crystalline rocks, with the interposition of beds of arkosef. At some 

 places they comprise gypsiferous clays, and their sandstones and breccias are 

 full of barytes, oxides of manganese and iron, and other minerals. 



The Oolite follows to the south-west, and is represented by (1st, h) thin bands 

 of crystalline limestone (often dolomitic, and either friable or hard and cellular), 

 succeeded by (2nd, i) yellow limestones, more or less oolitic, and compact white 

 oolitic limestones (Oolithes miliaires), in which large lenticular Coral-beds are 

 recognized ; and lastly, in some places, the series is completed by (3rd, j) shales 

 and thin limestones, characterized by Exogyra virgula. 



One of the hills near Condat, about a mile to the north-west of the Railway- 

 station, and on the slope of which (at about 260 feet above the valley) the Bade- 

 goule Cave is excavated, consists of yellowish limestone belonging to the Oolitic 

 series. One band of shells, from the upper part of the hill, is composed of 

 numerous donaciform Bivalves, very much like M. Buvignier's Hettangia Bro- 

 liensis % from the upper sandy limestone of the Lias of Breux. 



* The Lias is more fully developed to the South-east. 

 t Granitic materials disintegrated and rearranged. 



i ' Statistique geologique &c. du Departement de la Meuse,' par Amand Buvignier, 1852, p. 14, pi. 10. 

 figs. 22-25. The genus Hettangia (or Tancredia) belongs to the Lias and the Lower Oolite. 



