254 



detect the trace of Belemnites, said to have been found here by 

 Dr. Boue. 



II. The memoir next describes the valley of the Danube. 



It is stated that the phenomena on the flank of the Bohemian 

 chain, even where it approaches very near to the Alps, are entirely 

 different from any that have been previously described. 



In a section from Vilshofen, on the Danube, to Schaerding, true 

 chalk with flints and characteristic fossils is seen, at Ortenburg, rest- 

 ing horizontally on black granite. The surface of this chalk is cor- 

 roded, and the fissures are filled and covered by sands with oysters, 

 and these again by blue marl, all wearing the aspect of the lower 

 tertiaries in England. These beds in the Inn-kreis, at Pielach near 

 Molk, &c. &c. stretch horizontally round promontories of gneiss and 

 granite, and offer a remarkable contrast to the verticality and dislo- 

 cations of the strata of the same age in the opposite and principal 

 chain of the Alps. 



These discrepancies of arrangement, when coupled with the dif- 

 ferences in the direction of the two chains, are cited as corroborating 

 some of the views of M. Elie de Beaumont : for the Bohemian 

 mountains trending from N.W. to S.E. are seen not to have been 

 moved from a very ancient period ; whilst the principal chain of the 

 Alps running from W.S.W. to E.N.E. is found to have undergone 

 one of its last convulsions posterior to some of the most recent ac- 

 cumulations. 



The tertiary deposits in the valley of the Danube and basin of 

 Vienna are cursorily enumerated. At Pielach and other places near 

 Molk, the lower blue marl or Tegel alternates with, and is sur- 

 mounted by, yellow sand ; and the lowest beds of this system are 

 presumed to be the equivalents of the London clay and lower Sub- 

 apennines. 



The middle and higher tertiary deposits are alone well seen in the 

 basin of Vienna, and this the author attributes to the gradual declen- 

 sion in the height of the Alps in their range to the east, by which the 

 older tertiaries, which rest on their edges, are not brought to day in 

 that neighbourhood. These lower beds have, however, been reach- 

 ed by borings near Vienna, where 300 feet of the inferior blue 

 Tegel have been traversed, even to the white sands. The lower 

 blue marl is covered by yellow sand containing many species of 

 shells, and this again passes up into upper blue marl. 



It is from these upper sands and marls, although of not half the 

 thickness of the lower, that nearly all the known shells of the basin 

 of Vienna have hitherto been collected ; and hence the author infers 

 that it is impossible to decide upon the comparative age of all the 

 formations in this basin until the species of the different deposits be 

 separately ascertained, — a work which he hopes to see accomplished 

 by M. Partsch. 



The blue marls and sands are proved to be overlaid by a pebbly, 

 calcareous conglomerate, which graduates upwards into the Leitha- 

 Kalk or great, white, coralline building-stone of Vienna, containing 

 bones of Tapir, Mastodon, &c. (Loretto, Margarethen, Eisenstadt, 



