158 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [DcC. 13, 



had been established by their normal order of position and their 

 imbedded organic remains. As soon however as Broehant (1808) 

 declared his belief, that large crystalline masses of the Central and 

 Savoy Alps, which had previously been considered of primary age, 

 belonged to the earlier sedimentary or transition period, a new field 

 of research was prepared ; and Dr. Buckland made a still more 

 important step, in a very able essay, wherein he boldly synchronized, 

 in a general manner, the so-called transition rocks of Broehant, with 

 our secondary British types'*^. Stimulated by such examples, and 

 also by the researches of Brongniart, Yon Buch, E. de Beaumont, 

 Boue', Lill von Lilienstein and others. Professor Sedgwick and my- 

 self published our views in a memoir in the Transactions of the Geo- 

 logical Society f, accompanied by a general geological map of the 

 Eastern Alps. Since that period, however, much progress having 

 been made, by applying to this chain the more accurate knowledge of 

 the order of equivalent formations, I had the strongest desire to 

 revisit my old ground, to compare it with those regions of the Alps 

 formerly unexplored by me, yet rendered classic by the discoveries of 

 my contemporaries, and to correct any erroneous views 1 might have 

 entertained. The great stimulus to my researches was, however, that 

 I could not reconcile some of the phaenomena I had formerly seen 

 with the view of succession adopted in nearly every work and map of 

 modern times, which represent the so-called cretaceous deposits of 

 the Alps and Italy as being succeeded at once by the younger tertiary 

 strata, almost to the entire exclusion of the eocene or older tertiary. 

 One small tract only (the Vicentine) was supposed by some authors 

 to be of lower tertiary age, whilst others even classed it with the chalk. 

 I felt as certain as when we wrote our memoir, that however Professor 

 Sedgwick and myself might have erred in regard to the age of the 

 Gosau deposits, there were still good evidences of the transition from 

 secondary to tertiary on which we had insisted, and which could not 

 be put aside nor overlooked. For example, I was convinced, that 

 there could be no mistake in the sections on the flank of the Venetian 

 Alps near Bassano, which I presented to this Society before I ex- 

 plored the Austrian Alps, — sections that pointed out in the clearest 

 manner the passage from the surface of the chalk into the oldest 

 tertiary strata, and from them into newer deposits with subapennine 



* See Annals of Philosophy, an. 1821, vol. xvii. p. 450. It is also but justice to 

 the late Mr. Bakewell, to state that in examining the Alps of Savoy and the Taren- 

 taise in the same summer as Dr. Buckland, he arrived at a similar conclusion 

 (see Travels in the Tarentaise and various parts of Grecian and Pennine Alps, 

 vol. ii. p. 410). In relation to my own researches I may now state, that in the 

 year 1829 I went along the Maritime Alps, and aftenvards, by Turin, to the Vicen- 

 tine, with Sir C. Lyell. In the autumn of the same year I made the Bassano sec- 

 tion and traversed the Tyrolese Alps. In 1829 Professor Sedgwick and myself 

 examined the Eastern Alps, Styria and Illyria. In 1830 I returned alone to the 

 Eastern Alps, and did not revisit them until 1847. In 1843 I made an excursion 

 from Cracow to the Carpathian chain with Professor Zeuschner, and in the years 

 1847 and 1848 I was chiefly occupied in collecting data for this memoir. 



t Vol. iii. Second Series, p. 301 ; and Phil. Mag. and Ann. of Phil. N. S. vol. viii. 

 Aug. 1830. 



