THE 
HOWE OF GROLOGY 
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1895. 
ONE ChIEES AND. EXOTIC BLOCKS OF NORE 
SWITZERLAND. i 
THE cliffs and exotic blocks that occur along the north bor- 
der of the Alps and Carpathians have long remained as excep- 
tional in occurrence and as difficult of explanation as were for 
years the so-called newer gneisses lying upon the early paleozoic 
sediments of northwest Scotland. The following paper is a brief 
summary of the work of two summers along the cliff-belt in 
Switzerland, chiefly in the region of the Lake of Lucerne where 
these phenomena are most typically developed. It will be my 
endeavor to present and discuss some of the problems which this 
work has suggested rather than to give a description of the region. 
Introduction and definition of terms.—A glance at a good geo- 
logical map of Switzerland* shows that the northernmost chains of 
the Alps, striking about E. N. E—W.S.W. between Interlaken 
and the Upper Rhine valley (near the Sentis) are composed of 
Cretaceous strata with only rarely a patch of Jurassic rock exposed 
in the more deeply eroded anticlines and with Tertiary deposits 
filling in the synclines and in places reaching up over the backs 
of the more depressed Cretaceous folds. 
These Tertiary beds require our first attention. They consist 
of a thick series of gray or bluish slaty clays, shales and marls 
with subordinately included banks of limestone, sandstone, brec- 
*V. Geologische Uebersichts Karte der Alpen, by Dr. FRANZ NOE_ 1: 1,000,000, 
Vienna, 1890, $2.50. 
Vou. IIT., No. 7. 723 
