HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



horizons. Certain fossiliferous marls with Myophona Whate- 

 leyi and Kefersteini were described by Curioni, and identified 

 with St. Cassian strata. The Esino limestone of the Lombardy 

 Alps, which had been placed in Escher's succession below the 

 " Megalodon " (Dachstein) dolomite, was ascribed by Curioni 

 to a position above this dolomite. 



The geological section of the Alps from Passau to Duino, 

 which was prepared by Hauer, represents the high-water 

 mark of the geology of the eastern Alps in the year 1857. 

 The interposition of the " Raibl " strata, characterised by 

 Myophona Whateleya at the base of the Dachstein lime- 

 stone, was the chief advance upon the previous systematic 

 attempts. The position, extension, and fauna of the Raibl 

 strata had been described by Ami Boue as far back as 1835, 

 and twenty years later in more detail by Fotterle. In 1857, 

 Hauer published a special monograph of the Raibl fauna, 

 which was supplemented in 1858 by Bronn's description of 

 the fishes, Crustacea, and plants of the black Raibl shales. 

 These works undoubtedly helped to elucidate the faunas of the 

 southern zone of the Alps. 



Three highly fossiliferous series of earthy deposits had now 

 been determined in the midst of the masses of Alpine lime- 

 stone : Kossen beds, in which Leopold von Buch had first 

 found Gervillias and other bivalves near Tegern See in Bavaria 

 (1828); the Raibl series and the Wengen- Cassian series; more- 

 over, the pelagic faunas of the calcareo-dolomitic rocks had 

 been fairly well investigated. It might, therefore, have been 

 reasonably expected that the stratigraphical difficulties would 

 no longer prove so insurmountable. As a matter of fact, these 

 seemed in no way diminished, and this was in itself an indication 

 that the palaeontological method, which had been so success- 

 fully applied in the case of the English Jurassic formation in 

 the Paris basin, or the German Trias, was not enough to unlock 

 the mysteries of Alpine structure. The Triassic succession 

 given by Hauer for the southern Alps in 1858 may be quoted, 

 since it held the place of authority with the Austrian Survey 

 for several decades. He differentiated in the geological map of 

 the Lombardy and Venetian Alps the following seven horizons 

 as a palaeontological sequence : 



