Ixxviii PEOCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



and particularly of Arctic forms, than the Faluns of Touraine 

 or the beds of Bordeaux and of Dax, there are many facts 

 connected with the pliysical position of these beds which lead 

 to the inference that the Crag is at least contemporaneous with 

 the uppermost of the French beds, or, at all events, belongs to 

 the same formation. 



In the iirst place, the physical position of all these formations 

 is very similar. Only slightly raised above the level of the sea, 

 they lie in almost perfectly horizontal beds. Secondly, wherever 

 they occur they are the most recent Tertiary marine deposits, and 

 they are all equally associated with great coralline deposits. Thirdly, 

 the upper formations of the series in France, particularly near 

 Dax, contain a large proportion of recent forms, many of them 

 analogous to, if not identical with, forms now living in the Me- 

 diterranean. Now if we are told that there is a great difference 

 between the general facies of the Crag fauna and that of the 

 Faluns or the Upper Bordeaux beds, Ave must remember the vast 

 difference which exists in the present day between the fauna of 

 the coast of England and that of the coast of Portugal, or of 

 the Mediterranean, and particularly of the coast of Africa, many 

 of the forms of which are of a decidedly tropical character. It 

 must also be remembered that it is only with regard to the upper 

 beds of tlie French series that I would suggest the possibility of 

 a synchronism with our Crag deposits. 



More than one distinguished geologist has lately warned us 

 against looking for an identity of forms in the formations of tlie 

 same period, when separated by a considerable distance. And 

 when we recollect that, according to the views of Prof. Edward 

 Forbes, the separation of England from the Continent of Europe 

 had not yet taken place at the termination of the Miocene period, 

 we at once perceive that the sea, which, during the deposition of 

 the Crag, covered those parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, and other 

 localities on the East of England, could then only be connected with 

 the great Atlantic by the Grerman Ocean and round the North of 

 Scotland ; we need not therefore be surprised at the fact that 

 the facies of the Crag fauna should have an Arctic character, and 

 possess so few species in common with those of the Upper French 

 series, the sea of which was so close to the semitropical seas of , 

 Northern Africa. How small an amount of identical species 

 could we expect to meet with in two such seas, the one covering 

 the low lands of Touraine, and forming part of the Atlantic, the 

 other being in fact the Grerman Ocean, before the opening of the 

 channel which now connects it immediately with the Atlantic, and 

 when it was evidently only a great gulf extending southwards 

 from the Arctic seas. 



With reference to these Tertiary formations of the South-west 

 of France, I may mention that the Eev. Sanna-Solaro has 

 recently published a memoir, on the pelvis of Dinotherium, the 

 first which has been discovered in the Department of the Haute- 

 Glaronue, near Escranecarbe. This gigantic pelvis, which measured, 



