p. W. Stuart-Menteath — Appendix to Pyrenean Geology. 417 



to the entire Pyrenees. I have consequently dealt with those 

 observations and their sources in 25 pages of the "Bulletin" of the 

 Biarritz Association, obtainable from Dulau & Co. In the report 

 of M. Bertrand's lectures I find only a reconstruction of a section 

 of Magnan, and in his volume I discover a reconstruction of the 

 500 sections of M. Eoussel. His own additions are what he terms 

 ' coupes perspectives,' to my mind a contradiction in terras, and in 

 my experience the most fruitful source of paradox in geology. 

 Magnan began his work by confounding the Tertiary with the Trias 

 in the Aveyron, and assuming that continuous folds were present 

 where isolated bosses are characteristic. On these convenient errors 

 he added section to section along the entire Pyrenees, and hence finally 

 confounded the Trias with the Tertiary in the Biarritz district. 

 M. Bertrand copied these errors at Biarritz, and has worked back along 

 the whole course of Magnan and his subsequent imitators. 



M. Termier, the most expert disciple of the official geology in the 

 Alps, has been called to the rescue, and has already published and 

 elucidated the maps of Biarritz and St. Jean Pied de Port. His 

 conclusion, from the data he is required to justify, is summarized in 

 the Compte Bendu of Soc. Geol. of 2nd December last, and in the text 

 of the maps. He finds that the entire Pyrenees, including all Southern 

 Europe and the north of Africa, consist of rocks shovelled in confusion 

 and reversal from distant and unknown sources. The types of the 

 entire scale of fossils of the south hence demand radical revision. 

 Anomalies in the Paris basin are already referred to mechanical 

 inversion. The scale constructed by "William Smith is selected from 

 a comparatively small patch of rocks bordered by the biggest charriages 

 described in Suess' latest volume. M. Bertrand states that Suess has 

 informed him that the Pyrenees will be interpreted in his final volume. 

 Since 1883 I have awaited that revision of the scale of fossils which 

 Suess then promised as an essential section of his work. The hints of 

 Neumayr, Walther, and many others have not enabled me to dispense 

 with the PaUontologie Frangaise. 



It is waste of time to ignore the officially presented aspects of 

 a problem involving the essential structure of the most typical and 

 most accessible of all mountain chains. Alpine geologists habitually 

 quote the abundant literature of the typical Pyrenees. M. Bresson, in 

 applying the Alpine theory to Gavarnie, complains that I had not ex- 

 plained why I referred the facts to illusion. I had found the emergence 

 of the same rocks to the east of Arreau, which M. Bresson has ignored, 

 at fifteen miles to the north of their disappearance on the southern 

 side ; and I stated that I was not prepared to believe the entire 

 Pyrenees to be a shovelled mass, as M. Termier has already announced 

 and as M. Bertrand has approximately maintained. For all mining, 

 tunneling, and other industrial work the consequences are of 

 transcendent importance. A theory which destroys the accepted scale 

 of fossils on which its every contention is practically based, suggests 

 hasty mapping rather than a revolution in geology. In presence of the 

 gorgeous maps and sections of the latest volume of the Survey, 

 a practised mining surveyor must remember that his regular proof that 

 a map is worthless is the simple circumstance that paradox is its 



DECADE V. — VOL. V. — NO. IX. 27 



