54 Seeley—Fossil Whale. 
arch transversely ; and the valleys or hollows by which this 
ridge is now traversed, or trenched (M, the valley of Monnetier ; 
A, the hollow called Petite Gorge; B, that called Grande 
Gorge; and c, the descent towards the Valley of Croisette), 
owe their origin to denudation, guided by curvilinear fissures, 
which affect and partly shape the summits of all the inner lateral 
limestone-ranges, as far as the Aiguille de Varens. 
It is this guidance of the torrent-action by the fissures; the 
relation of the longitudinal fault to the great precipice; and 
the altered condition, not only of the beds on the cliff-side, but 
of the Molasse conglomerates on the eastern slope, to which 
J wish presently to direct attention: but I must give more 
drawings to explain the direction of these fissures than I 
have room for in this number of the Magazine; and also, 
before entering on the subject of the angular excavation of 
the valley at m, and curvilinear excavations at a and B, I 
want some answer to this question—cne which has long em- 
barrassed me :—The streams of the Alps are broadly divisible 
into three classes: ist, those which fall over precipices in which 
they have cut no ravine whatever (as the Staubbach); 2nd, 
those which fall over precipices in which they have cut ravines 
a certain distance back (as the torrent descending from the 
Tournette to the Lake of Annecy); and, 3rd, those which 
have completed for themselves a sloping course through the 
entire mass of the beds they traverse (as the Eau Noire, and the 
stream of the Aletsch Glacier). The latter class—those 
which have completed their work—have often conquered the 
hardest rocks; the Kau Noire at Trient traverses as tough a 
gneiss as any in the Alps; while the Staubbach has not so 
much as cut back through the overhanging brow of its own 
cliff, though only of limestone! Are these three stages of work 
in anywise indicative of relative periods of time ?—or do they 
mark different modes of the torrents’ action on the rocks? I 
shall be very grateful for some definiteness of answer on this 
matter. 
TI. On tHe Foss Neck-sones or A WHALE (Paztaocerus SrEpG- 
WICK1), FROM THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ELy.* 
By Harry Srsrey, F,G.S., Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, 
[Plate II.] 
HOUGH the oldest English Whales yet named are found 
in the Crag, Prof. Sedgwick, a quarter of a century since, 
obtained from Ely some anchylosed cervical vertebra evidently 
* This paper was read before the Phil. Soc. Cambridge, May 2, 1864. 
