252 



cus, Myaplicata, Plicatulapectinoides, a small Gryphaea, Ammonites 

 and Belemnites, — fossils characteristic of the middle and lower 

 green sand. The overlying strata are a cream-coloured limestone 

 with Ammonites, passing up into a slaty, red, marly, limestone un- 

 distinguishable from Scaglia. The formations seen in the Grinten, 

 therefore, are a part of the lower, all the upper green sand, and 

 probably a portion of the chalk. 



9. Loioer Nummulitic Limestone and Shale, 8fc. (Sonthofen Iron 

 Ores). — The strata containing the iron ores at Sonthofen surmount 

 the preceding series in the gorge of the Starzlach. The author 

 considers them, from the character of their fossils, particularly Spa- 

 tangi, certain species of Nummulites, Belemnites, Terebratulae, 

 and Trigoniae, to be more connected with the cretaceous than with 

 the superior formations. To show the essential difference be- 

 tween the age of these iron ores of Sonthofen and those of the 

 Kressenberg, a detailed section is described from south to north on 

 the banks of the Traun, where a vast thickness of lower, nummu- 

 litic, calcareous grit, with shales, marls, and cretaceous beds (as ex- 

 hibited in vertical strata opposite the town of Arzt), are shown to 

 be of the same age as those of Sonthofen, and are clearly proved 

 to be overlaid by the nummulitic iron ores of the Kressenberg. 



10. Upper Nummulitic Iron Ores. — It is to the shelly iron ores at 

 Kressenberg, and not to those of Sonthofen, that Professor Sedg- 

 wick and the author assigned the place of transition-tertiary beds, — 

 a place, the correctness of which, it is contended, is now established 

 as clearly by the evidences of superposition, given in this memoir, 

 as it formerly was by Count Miinster, from the vast predominance 

 of tertiary fossils. 



The natural section on the Traun is then completed, by showing 

 that the transition-tertiary beds are conformably overlaid by inclined 

 strata of pebbly sandstone and marls, in the higher part of which, 

 near Traunstein, there are a number of shells unquestionably of 

 tertiary age. All these inclined strata are capped by a thick range 

 of horizontal coarse conglomerate. Sections made on the flanks of 

 the Untersberg confirm the observations of the previous year, and 

 show the Hippurite limestone dipping under the green sand and 

 shale, — the green sand and cretaceous beds surmounted by a vast 

 thickness of nummulitic, green grit; and this again overlaid by blue 

 marls with shells of the age of Gosau and Kressenberg*. 



Other localities are noticed, where detached remnants of both 

 the lower and upper nummulitic groups were visited by the author, 

 (St. Pancratz, Mattsee, &c), and the Gryphite abounding in these 

 beds is stated to be not the Gryphcea columba, but a new spe- 

 cies. Through the labours of Mr. Lonsdale, eight species at least of 



* This section as given last year (Phil. Mag. vol. viii. pi. 2. fig. 1.) ne- 

 cessarily terminated in ascending order with the river Saal, because the 

 Hogl on its northern bank consists of secondary grit and shale (green sand), 

 which being thrown off from the Stauffen, a promontory of Alpine lime- 

 stone, abuts unconformably against the tertiary strata described. 



