Ixii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



north flank of the Alps, especially at Sonthofen and Kressenherg, as 

 well as on the high summit of the Diablerets and Dent du Midi, re- 

 present the lower tertiary of the Vicentine. The upper portion of 

 this group is theff/sch of the Swiss, the Wiener Sandstein, and to a 

 great extent the Macigno of the Italians ; and Sir Roderick remarks, 

 that the whole group of the nummulitic rocks and *' flysch" is not, 

 as many geologists suppose, an upper portion of the cretaceous series, 

 but really represents the true eocene tertiary accumulations. Seeing 

 the conformable state of the various deposits noticed, and the appa- 

 rent continuation of physical causes which has permitted a kind of 

 passage, lithologically, of the one deposit into the other in succession, 

 our colleague maintains that under such conditions the limits of for- 

 mations can be alone defined by their imbedded organic remains. In 

 concluding this part of his communication, he refers to the aid he 

 has received during his Alpine researches from Prof. Studer, M. 

 Escher of Zurich, Prof. Brunner of Berne, and M. Zigno. Having 

 thus referred the nummuhtic group to the lowest supracretaceous ac- 

 cumulations. Sir Roderick adverts to the marked interval in nearly 

 all parts of the Alps between the last-formed strata of this group and 

 the next overlying deposits, so generally admitted to be tertiary. He 

 then passes to the Molasse and Nagelflue of the northern Alps, citing 

 the labours of Prof. Studer, M. Escher and other geologists, and di- 

 vides the mass into lower deposits considered to have been formed in 

 fresh water, central accumulations of marine origin and of Sub-apen- 

 nine or Phocene age, and an upper group, the great overlying portion 

 of Molasse and Nagelflue, of terrestrial and freshwater origin. Still 

 follomng up an ascending series of accumulations, we attain the well- 

 known lacustrine deposit of (Eningen, remarkable for having en- 

 tombed in it only lost species of animals and plants, though formed 

 after marine phocene beds, containing shells not distinguishable from 

 those of molluscs now living. And here Sir Roderick remarks that 

 the terms Miocene and Pliocene cannot be correlatively deduced from 

 submarine and freshwater accumulations, for if this be done in Swit- 

 zerland, miocene types of lost species overhe marine phocene forms. 



Our colleague then considers the cretaceous and nummulitic rocks 

 of the Carpathians, with reference to the different ages of the so- 

 called Carpathian sandstones, giving an account of an examination 

 of them by him, in 1843, in company with Professor Zeuchner, a 

 sketch of which only had previously appeared in his work on Russia 

 and the Ural Mountains. In the general succession of rocks between 

 the Tatra chain and the low country of the Vistula near Cracow, a 

 mass of nummuhtic limestone reposing upon secondary rocks (among 

 which some, from their fossils, are referred to the Liasso-Jurassic 

 beds of the Alpine hmestone, and others above them may represent 

 the upper Jurassic beds and even part of the cretaceous deposits,) 

 dips beneath shale and sandstone resembling the flysch of the Alps. 

 The fossils are noticed as such that no doubt can he entertained of 

 these beds being of the same age with the nummulitic rocks of the 

 Alps. Mention is made of sandstones with green grains and Neocomian 

 fossils having a wide range, a large portion of which have been termed 



