655 
some geologists may sée an additional reason for classing the Lower 
(New) Red Sandstone with the coal-measures, both having partaken 
of the same elevatory movements. Though such a consideration 
alone ought not to guide us in classification, the facts so recently 
put forward by Professor Sedgwick of the prevalenee of plarits of 
earboniferous species in this red sandstone, both in Cumberland atid 
in Warwickshire*, and the similar data, which I ascertained in Stafz 
fordshire, Shropshire, &c., may eventually lead us to consider all the 
sandstones beneath the magnesian limestone as naturally contécted 
with the carboniferous era, 4 view which my last researches in Rus- 
sia have also led me to adopt. In this respect, mdéed, the deposit 
agrees well with the rothe-todte-liegende of foreign atithors, which, 
ike our Lower Red Sandstone, contains both carboniferous plaits, 
and occasional thin seams of coal. 
From Mr. Trimmer we have received an account of the true geo- 
logical position of the Cucullea decussata, verifying that which was 
originally assigned to it by Mr. Webster, and confirming the just- 
ness of Mr. Parkinson’s opinion, that the species is distinet from the 
Cucullzz of the greensand, though in some more recent publications 
the Faversham fossil has been considered identical with the Cucul- 
lez of Blackdown. 
TERTIARY ROCKS. 
An important addition to our knowledge of the relations of the 
Tertiary rocks of Europe proceeds from the pen of Mr. Lye. On 
comparing the fossils of the Faduns of the Loire with those of the 
Cotentin, and again, by a comparison of both with the crag of Swf- 
folk, Mr. Lyell has corrected a view which he had formerly adopted, 
that these deposits were not formed during the same epoch. By 
an attentive examimation of different tertiary localities in Normandy, 
some of whieh seem to have escaped the notice of former ebser- 
vers, he has ascertained the existence of matiy of the true Suffolk 
erag fossils in deposits extending southwards as far as Sainteny. 
He then deseribes the Faluns, properly so called, at Dinan, Renies, 
Nantes, Angers, Dowé, Sevigné, and the tracts S. and S.E. of Tours, 
in some of which the great abundance of corals and echinoderms, 
and the small number of mollusks, present a perfect analogy to the 
white or coralline crag of Suffolk, though the fauna is quite distinct 
im species from the fauna of the coralline crag. From the existence 
of a number of detached points of Faluns, Mr. Lyell infers that a 
large part of France, now dramed by the Loire and its tributaries, 
was submerged during the Miocene period. Finally, he convinces 
himself that all the shells of these Freneh deposits belong to one 
group, and that they are really contemporaneous with the crag of 
Suffolk, though there may be shades of difference ir their telative 
ages. It is well to observe that so sound a geologist as Mr. Lyell 
does not shrink from identifying two distant deposits in which eighty- 
five per cent. of the fossils are of distinct species, fifteen species 
* See Geological Proceedings, November 1841. 
