329 



The whole of this slaty group of Solenhofen, &c. is seen near the 

 mouth of the Altmiihl to thin out between masses of dolomite j the 

 whole being surmounted by green-sand and cretaceous deposits. 



The author inclines to the opinion that the higher members of the 

 oolitic groups of England, viz. Coral Rag, Portland Stone, &c, have 

 not yet been defined in any part of central Germany, though they 

 may exist in Hanover ; and he is unable to say whether the limestone 

 of Nattheim, Heidenheim, &c, so abundant in corals, is referrible to 

 the upper part of the great oolite or to the coral-rag. 



Green Sand. — It is remarked that wherever this formation shows 

 itself in Germany, it is nearly always divisible, as in England, into 

 lower or siliceous sandstone, and upper or cretaceous sandstone ; 

 the former known in certain districts as the quader sandstein, the 

 latter as the planer halh. Numerous sections exhibiting these two 

 formations are given in various parts of southern Hanover and the 

 northern flank of the Hartz, where the lower sandstone is sometimes 

 a highly ferruginous rock, at others a white sandstone, in which cha- 

 racter it ranges from the northern flank of the Hartz into Saxony 

 and Bohemia. In Westphalia the green-sand series is said to ap- 

 proach still closer to the mineral type of the English group, and sec- 

 tions are described near Bidofeld, Soest Weil, &c. in which not only 

 an upper and a lower green-sand with many characteristic fossils are 

 described, but also traces of a separating stratum of blue marl or gault. 



Chalk. — The author states that the chalk is quite as clearly sepa- 

 rated from the planer halk in Hanover, as the chalk of the South 

 Downs is from the malm rock or upper green-sand in Western Sussex. 

 He remarks that on the northern flank of the Hartz, Professor Sedg- 

 wick and himself observed it to be quite vertical, whilst the under- 

 lying green-sands were by great faults thrown up into unconformable 

 juxta-position ; and he further refers to a memoir recently read by 

 himself, in which the chalk with flints is stated to occur in southern 

 Bavaria, resting in horizontal strata on the granite of the Bohemian 

 mountains ; and he points out as a necessary inference arising there- 

 from, that the Hartz and Bohmerwald-Gebirge have been elevated 

 at distinct periods. 



Tertiary Formations. — Those peculiar transition -tertiary forma- 

 tions described by Professor Sedgwick and the author at Gosau, and 

 in the Austrian Alps, are stated to have been not as yet discovered in 

 central Germany, but only along certain points encompassing it, such 

 as at Maestricht, in the Baltic, the Carpathians, and the Alps. The true 

 tertiary formations, though of considerable extent in different parts of 

 the country, particularly in Hanover, Westphalia, &c, are stated to 

 have been hitherto little attended to by native authors. Without en- 

 deavouring to give anything like a general account of the tertiary de- 

 posits of Germany, the author rapidly enumerates several localities 

 where there are great exhibitions of sands, clays, lignite, &c. of the 

 age of the plastic and London clays, particularly at Hesse Cassel, 

 and the environs, where the brown coal, &c. of this epoch is traversed, 

 and in parts prismatized by the overlying basalt (Meisner, &'c). The 

 lower tertiaries are again spoken of as appearing in many points near 



