STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 537 



The Tertiary deposits of the Svvabian plateaux were studied 

 by Quenstedt and Probst; those in Baden and Wiirtemberg 

 were elucidated by Mandelslohe, Zieten, Klein, Miller, and 

 Schill. 



The sub-Alpine band of Tertiary deposits in Bavaria com- 

 prises the Flysch deposits of Eocene and Lower Oligocene age 

 forming hills in front of the limestone mountains. On the 

 undulating plains stretching northward are the Oligocene 

 brown-coal strata and the younger Tertiary deposits. Sand- 

 berger, in 1853, was the first to recognise the Oligocene age 

 of the brackish-water strata worked for coal at Miesbach, 

 Penzberg, and Peissenberg. He identified Cyrena semistriata 

 and other typical Upper Oligocene forms in the marls, and he 

 compared the fauna of the marine series below the productive 

 beds with the middle Oligocene fauna of the Weinheim sands 

 near Alzey. 



Giimbel in 1861 gave a full geological and palaeontological 

 account of these Tertiary deposits in his large volume on the 

 Bavarian Alps. A new monograph on the fauna of the South 

 Bavarian Oligocene Molasse, by H. Wolff, places the whole of 

 the marine and brackish-water Oligocene formations of Southern 

 Bavaria in the Upper Oligocene horizon. Similar conclusions 

 had been formed by Theodor Fuchs and K. Mayer regarding 

 the age of the equivalent deposits in the sub-Alpine band of 

 Switzerland and Austria. 



From what has been said it is evident that it was no longer 

 difficult to determine the main divisions of Tertiary strata 

 after the true principle had been discovered of identifying the 

 relative age of the component members from a comparison of 

 the faunas contained in them with one another, and with 

 existing genera and species. But the attempts to provide a 

 systematic zonal sub-division of the series, capable of general 

 application, proved fruitless. Geographical areas and biological 

 provinces attained a very high degree of local differentiation in 

 Europe during Tertiary epochs, so that basins of deposit which 

 appear to have had some kind of communication, or were at 

 least very close to one another, nevertheless exhibit marked 

 peculiarities in the lithological and palaeontological develop- 

 ment. Each basin passed through its own history of sedi- 

 mentation, in nearly all cases a most chequered history. An 

 area that was at one time an alluvial flat would at other times 

 be usurped by an oceanic inundation, and again become dry 



