﻿Reviews — Heer's Primmval World of Switzerland. 83 



would understand the Jura Period thoroughly should pay these 

 classical quai-ries a visit on his journey to or from Munich, where, in 

 the National Museum, he will find a magnificent collection of the 

 type specimens of von Meyer's, Schlotheim's, Oppel's, Zittel's, and 

 many other celebrated palseontologists' figures and descriptions of 

 Lithographic limestone fossils. 



" During the succeeding Cretaceous Period, a great part of Switzer- 

 land was dry land, the sea covering chiefly the low ground from the 

 Lake of Constance to the Lake of Geneva; its northern coast ran 

 nearly in the direction of Schaffhausen by Aarau and Soleure to 

 Bienne, and thence extended further westward, quitting the limits of 



Fig. 3. Central Europe during the Cretaceous Period. The white portions represent 

 continents; and the shaded parts are seas. (Fig. 98, p. 175, Hear.) 



Switzerland. The sea no doubt covered these districts, where 

 strips of marine Cretaceous deposits are frequently met with, which 

 were formerly connected together. The southern shore of the 

 Swiss Cretaceous sea is shown generally by a line drawn from 

 the Lake of Wallenstadt to Altdorf, the Lake of Brienz and Bex ; 

 but there are numerous and deep inlets bringing the sea into the 

 interior of the Alps, as in the Canton of the Grisons, where the 

 Calanda and jDart of the chain of the Kalfeusen are formed of Creta- 

 ceous rocks." (p. 176.) 



Passing from the Cretaceous formation to the Tertiary Period, we 

 have in the Eocene slate-quarries of Matt, in the Canton Claris, the 

 most important Swiss locality for the remains of fossil fishes. Dry 

 land was at no great distance, as evidenced by the fossil remains of 

 two species of birds found at Matt. These beds must have under- 

 gone great pressure, as they closely resemble the Cambrian slates of 

 Bangor in their general appearance, though of a much darker hue ; 

 they are also largely quarried for the same economic purposes as our 



