Foreign Notices : — France. 657 



artificial inclined plane, in the hollow of a regular excavation made from. the 

 top to the bottom of the hill, which is also the inlet to Tours from Paris, 

 by way of Versailles, Rambouillet, Chartres, Vendome, &c. This deep 

 cutting or tranchee has exposed to view the stratification of this cote of 

 the Loire in a manner highly gratifying to the geologist. The beds or 

 different rocks of which it is mostly composed are all more or less de- 

 cidedly calcareous. Several of them contain rare and curious, as well as 

 many of the more common, fossil shells *, which abound in Touraine far 

 beyond any thing of the sort I have ever met with elsewhere. Without 

 referring to the right bank of the Loire from above Amboise to below 

 Bourgueil, the left bank of the Cher from near Montrichard to its junction 

 with the Loire at Brehemont, the banks of the Indre and Vienne every 

 where, the country from Chanchevrier in the northern part of the province 

 to St, Maure on the confines of Poitou, but above all that most extra- 

 ordinary mass of many square miles of fossil shells, called by the French 

 les Falunieres, perhaps hardly to be paralleled ; the tranchee in the 

 fauxbourg St. Symphorien at Tours offers, notwithstanding its bare and 

 rugged appearance, a rare, lasting, and delightful subject for study to the 

 lover of natural history. From the telegraph stationed at the top of La 

 Tranchee, where the traveller leaves the Paris road, to Chateau du Loire, 

 which is in the department of La Sarthe, a few miles beyond the boundary 

 of Touraine (department of the Indre and Loire), the surface of the 

 country is pleasingly varied with hUI and vale, flat lands intervening occa- 

 sionally for a few miles together. 



The vine is the prominent and favourite object of culture throughout ; 

 but at Chateau du Loire, where they boast of making a superior wine, the 

 vineyard country ceases. The vine is not cultivated to advantage farther 

 north, though they make indifferent wines at Le Mans, and even in the 

 neighbourhood of Alencon. The soil also becomes more sandy, and the 

 subsoil less calcareous ; though near Le Mans to the north, there is excel- 

 lent marl, and fossil shells are sparingly embedded in rocks belonging to the 

 " calcaire jurassique " of M. de Humboldt. About Alen9on the primitive 

 measures m.ake as it were an irruption into the more recent formations, 

 and quarries of granite are woi'ked to a considerable extent between that 

 city and Prez en Pail. 



Between Ecommoy and Le Mans the road passes through the forest of 

 Bersay for several miles ; a national forest, which contains much fine oak, 

 with underwood of the common and mountain ash, and other sorts usually 

 met with in the large woods of the south and west of England. Very large 

 plantations of the pinaster (Pinus maritima [see p. 699.]) of about ,30 years' 

 growth are intermixed in vast masses with the native productions of the 

 forest. They have been raised from seed sown on the spot, as is common 

 in France both in public and private forests, and are of good heights, but 

 slender in bulk for want of timely thinning. Every where, without regard 

 to soil or climate, the government and individuals continue to plant this 

 worthless tree ; content to raise whole forests of them for firewood, instead 

 of cultivating the Norway spruce, the larch, or even the Scotch pine, as 

 local circumstances might indicate, the timber of which is applicable to 

 much more valuable purposes. Bands of Chouans from La Vendee or 

 the uncivilised part of Britany were said to infest this large forest ; but 

 we met with no interruption in travelling through it, nor with any well- 

 attested proof of the fact, though the constituted authorities at Le Mans, 

 we found, expected the production of our passports, a requisition seldom 



* Amongst the latter are found the Terebratulse of different sorts in 

 high preservation ; and of the former I had the good fortune to meet with 

 a delicate fossil, which M. Du Jardin, the professor of chemistry, says is 

 not yet named, and that he only had before found one of the same kind. 

 Vol. VII. —No. 35. uu 



