ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixi 



to the south-west is a pomt of some mterest. He agrees so far with 

 M. EHe de Beaumont and M. Sismonda, respecting the section at Petit 

 Coeur, as to admit that the coal-measure plants and the belemnites 

 do really appear to lie in the same formation. 



Proceeding in the ascending order, our colleague then notices the 

 Upper Alpine or Oxfordian Jurassic limestones, reminding us of the 

 labours of M. Merian and other Swiss geologists in the Jura, of M. 

 Studer in the Swiss Alps, and of M. Sismonda in the French and 

 Savoy Alps, adding a notice of those of M. de Zigno, of Padua, in 

 the Venetian Alps, and giving an account of a section from Pedescola, 

 in the valley of Attico, to the plateau of Setti Communi. This sec- 

 tion, examined during the Scientific ^Meeting at Venice, extends from 

 dolomite, of great thickness, and inferred to be of the liassic age, 

 upwards to the nummAilitic limestone and grits of Gallio. 



The cretaceous series is treated of under the head of lower and 

 upper Neocomian limestones, gault, upper greensand, and chalk, 

 and represented as reposing conformably upon the Jurassic or oolitic 

 series beneath. And here Sir Roderick remarks that, with a few 

 local exceptions, there appears to have been a continuous series of 

 marine deposits in the Alps, as in the Jura, with no great dissever- 

 ments to the completion of the cretaceous series, and, in most in- 

 stances, not mitil after the deposit of the still higher nummulitic 

 group. Looking at the Alpme cretaceous series generally, our col- 

 league points out, that its lowest member, named the Neocomian 

 limestone, is the thickest and most important of its formations. 

 Above this comes a deposit referred to the greensand or gault, in 

 which the well-known summit of the ^Montague des Fis, with its fos- 

 sils, is included. This in its turn is surmounted by the equivalent 

 of the white chalk of Northern Europe, which Sir Roderick considers 

 he has discovered Anth certainty in a clear natural section exposed at 

 Thones in Savoy. 



After numerous details and sections connected with the accumula- 

 tions above noticed. Sir Roderick Murchison proceeds to the chief 

 object of his communication, viz. that the flanks of the Alps exhibit 

 a true transition from the younger secondary into the older tertiary 

 strata, and that the older supracretaceous rocks occur abundantly, 

 and well-characterized, in the south of Europe, extending thence 

 eastward into Asia. To prove this view, numerous sections are de- 

 scribed in Savoy, Switzerland and Bavaria, through beds considered 

 equivalent to the lower greensand, the gault, and upper greensand of 

 the British series, to a limestone containing Tnocerami and Anan- 

 chytes ovata, and referred to the white chalk. Conformable trans- 

 itions from this Inoceramus limestone into the nummulitic and shelly 

 rocks above are adduced, particularly near the Hohersentis in 

 Appenzell and near Sonthofen in Bavaria, where the beds, ha^-ing 

 all the characters of the great supracretaceous groups, or Jiyschy 

 still contain a Gryphsea, not to be distinguished from the G. vesi- 

 cidaris. Above this zone, fossils kno^^■n to be contained in the true 

 cretaceous series are not fomid. The overlymg nummulitic and 

 shelly deposits are linked together by position and fossils, and on the 



