464 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



the field, to define their true succession, to distinguish their 

 diverse local developments, to comprehend their remarkable 

 metamorphosis due to chemical and dynamical causes, have 

 been some of the chief themes in Alpine geology for the last 

 fifty years. The most skilled Alpine geologists have devoted 

 their energies to the difficulties of the Alpine Trias, and still it 

 is only possible to record a partial success. 



To go back to Leopold von Buch, that experienced geologist 

 several times travelled in South Tyrol, the Salzkammergut, 

 Styria, and Carinthia, and published a series of pamphlets 

 which, though short, were closely packed with observations on 

 the stratigraphy. A small map of South Tyrol appeared in 1822 

 giving a general survey of his results, and it shows how very 

 little information he had gleaned regarding the geological age 

 and relations of the masses of " Alpine Limestone," and the 

 members of the Secondary Alpine rocks generally. 



Keferstein compiled a geognostic map of Tyrol and Vorarl- 

 berg in 1821; it shows at the north edge of the Alps a small 

 band of Bunter Sandstone striking from Brixlegg to Kitzbichel, 

 reappearing in the Kloster valley of Vorarlberg, and continuing 

 westward from that to Lake Walen. In the southern Alps the 

 Schlern mountain, near Botzen, is surrounded by a horseshoe- 

 shaped outcrop of sandstone, and at the Peitler Kofi a sand- 

 stone and conglomerate band begins which follows the Puster 

 valley eastward and ceases at Innichen. The broad tracts of 

 limestone north and south of the Central Alps are simply 

 indicated with one colour on Keferstein's map and designated 

 "Alpine Limestone" (Zechstein). 



The coloured geological map of Germany compiled by Buch, 

 and published by Schropp in Berlin (1826), showed no note- 

 worthy advance in the Alps, neither was there much additional 

 insight to be gained from Sedgwick and Murchison's Geological 

 Sketch-map of the eastern Alps (1831). In the latter the ex- 

 tension of the red sandstone is fairly correctly entered in North 

 Tyrol, in the Salzkammergut, in Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; 

 the zones of limestone on the north and south are still left 

 undivided, although they are treated as " Jura " limestone in- 

 stead of Zechstein. This map and several geological sections 

 accompanied a treatise on the Structure of the Eastern Alps, 

 by the two famous British geologists. Their contribution to 

 Alpine literature was scarcely less powerful in its influence 

 than their works on the Palaeozoic rocks of Great Britain. By 



