p. W. Stuart-Menteath — On the Pyrenees. 353 



I have attended for many years, and the accurate plans which they 

 have involved, prove the normal succession which I have already 

 mentioned as prevailing along 150 kilometres right and left of the 

 shifting sands that frequently obscure the Biarritz coast. 



Here I must pass on to the remaining sections presented to the 

 Congress. In these, the best work of Pyrenean geologists has been 

 altered by the method of M. Carez so as to confirm the paradoxes 

 of M. Marcel Bertraud. Until his recent treatment of the Biarritz 

 coast these sections of the Pic de Bugarach were the only example 

 in the Pyrenees of that stratigraphy which M. Bertrand has described 

 as typical in mountain chains. As published in the Bulletin des 

 Services of 1889 M. Carez' sections appeared conclusive. In January, 

 1901, my account of a careful examination of the ground was 

 suppressed by the Societe Geologique ; but a brief summary was 

 rescued and read by M. de Lapparent in November, 1900, and is 

 printed at p. 837 of the Bulletin of that year. Since then 

 M. Carez has admitted in the Bulletin des Services of May, 1901, 

 p. 65, that his chief proofs of abnormal carting of Urgoniau limestone 

 over Senonian marls are mere blunders of surveying. He had here, 

 as in other cases, drawn sections along the strike of the rocks, and 

 arbitrarily assumed that outcrops of intercalated Hippurite limestone 

 were superposed blocks of Urgonian. It is the habitual employment 

 of such methods of proving the paradoxes in question, that renders 

 all criticism of them obnoxious and enables it to be suppressed as 

 polemical. Worse examples could be cited in abundance, but 

 would inevitably be useless where verification on the ground can 

 be evaded. Under the guidance of the Congress by M. Carez, the 

 proofs which he has since repudiated must have appeared conclusive, 

 although the only proof which he now maintains would have 

 appeai-ed obviously inconclusive. The section in the Livret Guide, 

 represents the ridge north of Bugarach as faulted and broken, 

 although it is a completely visible normal anticline, as correctly 

 figured by M. Roussel. The latter observer, having studied the 

 ground in great detail, has at all points refuted M. Carez. But 

 it is enough to say that the Pic de Bugarach is a Palseozoic island 

 rising out of a mantle of Upper Cretaceous deposited around it. 

 This is proved by the fact that a similar island, admitted to be such 

 by M. Carez, rises out of the same mantle at three miles to the 

 north, while other islands, which M. Carez formerly misinterpreted 

 and has been induced to admit, similarly protrude to the south and 

 west. The relations between these islands and their mantle are 

 precisely analogous to those of the Pic he still refuses to comprehend. 

 The only pretext for any supposed difference lies in the absence of 

 fossils in the Pic de Bugarach, and in the presence of some encrusting 

 patches of Cretaceous on its surface. The section of the Pic pre- 

 sented to the Congress is purely ideal, it does not even attempt 

 accuracy as regards the outward outline, its representation of the 

 Cenomanien is in defiance of its visible arrangement, and the 

 mere notion that such sections can decide points of extreme delicacy 

 in stratigraphy is an outrage on practical geology which M. Carez 



DECADE IV. VOL, TX. XO. Till. 23 



