292 JPi'of. JSfordensliibld — Transport of Volcanic Bust. 



The Statuary Marbles have in turn been referred to the — 



1. Eruptive series. 1829, Savi. 



2. Cretaceous. 1833, Savi. 



3. Oolite (without fui'ther specialization). 1843, Savi. 



4. Palaeozoic, probably Carboniferous. 1845, Coquand. 

 6. Jurassic and Liassic. 1845, Pilla. 



6. Infi-a-Lias and Rhsetic. 1847, Pilla. 



7. Lower Lias. 1851, Savi and Meneghini; 1856, Cocchi; 1862, Savi. 



8. Base of Verrucano (Trias or Permian). 1862, Capellini. 



9. Lower Carboniferous. 1864, Coccbi; 1875, Coquand. Generally ad- 



mitted. 



Let us hope that these ill-treated beds have now found a permanent 

 rest. Still it is painful to see how long it has taken for the truth to 

 prevail in this case. Had not the unlooked-for discovery of fossili- 

 ferous Carboniferous beds taken place, the very clear strati- 

 graphical evidence adduced by Coquand in 1845, strengthened by 

 his determination of Triassic beds at Spezia, would have gone for 

 nought against the preconceived theories of high authority. 



Curiously enough, at about the same time that all doubts were 

 cleared regarding the beds of the Apuan Alps, an exactly similar 

 proof positive was forthcoming as to the real age of a range of 

 saccharoidal limestones at St. Beat, in the Pyrenees. M. Leymerie, 

 a great authority on Pyrenean geology, regarded these raarbles as 

 metamorphosed Jurassic. Indeed, they have at all times been looked 

 upon as the French representatives of the Carrara marbles. Now 

 that fossils of Carboniferous age have been found in the series, M. 

 Leymerie, although forced to own them Palasozoic, refuses to admit 

 that his adversary, Dr. Garrigou, is right in calling them Car- 

 boniferous, and prefers to refer them vaguely to a pre-Carboniferous 

 age on the ground that at St. Beat itself, where the rock is most 

 strongly metamorphosed, no fossils have been found, although it 

 is proved stratigraphically to be but the continuation of a fossiliferous 

 horizon discovered by M. Coquand again. 



It is, however, by this time generally accepted by all conversant 

 with French geology, that the St. Beat marbles have now been 

 proved to be equivalent to the statuary marbles of Carrara, and to 

 be, like them, of Carboniferous Limestone age.^ 



II. — Distant Tkansport of Volcanic Dust.^ 



By Prof. A. E. Nordenskiold, 



Foreign Correspondent of the Geological Society, London. 



(Translated by Alex. Leslie, Esq., Aberdeen.) 



JUST a year ago the Academy received information that the day 

 before there had fallen at Haga (a royal residence in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Stockholm) rain mixed with snow, which brought down 

 with it such a quantity of impurities that all the windows of the 

 plant-house and the hot-beds there were covered with a fine grey 

 ash-like dust. 



' For Messrs. Garrigou and Leymerie's spirited controversy, see Comptes Rendus, 

 t. Ixxviii. p. 1629, t. Ixxix. pp. 53, 145, and 328. 



2 Discourse at the Annual Festival of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1876. 



