1843.] 227 



flinty hardness, which consists almost wholly of the casts of organic 

 remains (see Mr. Forbes's catalogue), and mixed with the casts are 

 shapeless nodules of the sandstone of the same colour and texture. 

 This deposit preserves its peculiar character wherever the freestone 

 group of beds is found. It is best exhibited in the island of Gozo, m 

 the Bay of Marsa el Forno on the north-west coast, and at the base 

 of the cliffs under Fort Chambray, when it forms rocky ledges two 

 or three hundred yards broad, extending along the coast, and rising 

 only a foot or two above the sea-level. 



the lowest bed of the group is a yellowish-white calcareous free- 

 stone (H), from forty to fifty feet thick. This is the stone which is 

 commonly used for building in the two islands. From the facility 

 with which it may be cut by the hatchet, or formed by the lathe, 

 this stone, both in the rough state, in the state of slabs, and when 

 turned into pillars, balustrades, vases, and other architectural orna- 

 ments, is used extensively in all the public and private edifices of 

 Malta and Gozo, and is an article of considerable export to all parts 

 of the Mediterranean. A fossil turtle was found in this bed, near 

 Casal Luca, south of the city of Valetta. 



No. 4. 

 The lowest of the four deposits of the Maltese Islands is a yel- 

 lowish-white semi-crystalline limestone (I) of very considerable 

 thickness, since nearly 400 feet of it in perpendicular depth are 

 visible on the north-west coast of the island of Gozo. From_ its dura- 

 ble properties it is extensively quarried for building in various parts 

 of the island of Malta, more especially to the west of the city, near 

 the village of Musta, and on the denuded flat to the west of Valetta. 

 The author has made a detailed examination of only about twenty 

 or thirty feet of the uppermost strata of this deposit. Owing to the 

 hardness of the rock it is difficult to detach from it perfect speci- 

 mens of the fossils. 



Malta is divided into two parts by a great fault, which cuts 

 the island transversely to the axis of the chain, and to the north- 

 west lets down the strata about 300 feet. Gozo also is divided, a 

 little way inland from the strait which separates it from Malta, by a 

 fault running also transversely to the axis of the chain, and producing 

 to the south-east nearly the same amount of depression in the strata 

 which is occasioned, in the opposite direction, by the fault of Malta. 

 The joint effect of these two disturbances is, to let down the deposits, 

 in the space between the two faults, to the depth above-mentioned, 

 that being about half the height above the sea-level of the most ele- 

 vated points in each of the two islands. In the sunken tract he the 

 Straits of Frieghi which separate Malta from Gozo, and midway be- 

 tween the two principal islands, the small island of Commo. 



The Maltese fault is clearly displayed by a vertical section m the 

 sea- cliff, on the south-west coast of the island, near the west end of 

 the Gianhina valley. (See Section 4.) From the coast the fault 

 passes beneath the northern face of the Ben-gemma hills, along the 

 line of that valley, its course being indicated by the different levels 

 at which the respective strata crop out on its opposite sides. It 



