164 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [DeC. 13, 



These crystalline schists in the gorge of the Funster-Miinster Pass are 

 seen to be permeated by thin courses of brilliantly white dolomite *, 

 seeming to indicate, that in the great metamorphism to which these 

 rocks had been subjected, thin courses and veins of limestone which 

 were subordinate to them, had been transformed into a network of 

 dolomite. 



In following the watershed of the Alps from Austria into Switzer- 

 land and thence into the Savoy Alps, it becomes apparent that the 

 zone of metamorphism widens. Not only is the place of those rocks, 

 which in their eastern prolongation are palaeozoic, taken by crystalline 

 masses, but the metamorphism-)* has so extended, if I may thus 

 speak, laterally from centre to flanks, as to affect in numberless in- 

 stances the middle and even the younger secondary deposits, and in 

 one or more tracts, as will be hereafter shown, has even converted 

 into a crystalline state the strata called flysch, which I now consider 

 to be of tertiary age. 



No vestige of any fossil palaeozoic animal has yet been brought to 

 light in the Western Alps, — a fact, indeed, which accords with the 

 phaenomenon on which I am insisting, viz. that on the west the Alps 

 have undergone a more intense degree of metamorphism than on the 

 east. I shall have occasion to return to the consideration of this 

 subject in speaking of those rocks of Savoy which contain belemnites 

 and coal-plants. 



In thus briefly touching upon the palaeozoic rocks, in order to 

 show that they have a distinct and indisputable existence only in the 

 Eastern Alps, I ought to add that even there no traces have yet been 

 discovered of the uppermost portion of such palaeozoic series. The 

 Permian system, so copiously developed in Northern Europe and 

 especially in Russia, seems, in fact, never to have been deposited in 

 Southern Europe. 



The Trias. — The group, which crops out at various points from 

 beneath the great mass of secondary limestones of the Eastern Alps, 

 and is interposed between them and the palaeozoic rocks above-men- 

 tioned, w as correctly placed by Professor Sedgwick and myself in the 

 parallel of " Keuper, Muschelkalk and Bunter Sandstein J." For this, 



* These veins, though so white on fracture, weather yellow under the atmo- 

 sphere and the action of water, 



f I have no intention of going into any details respecting the extension of me- 

 tamorphism from centre to flank in the Swiss and Savoy Alps, I had the great 

 advantage of making an excursion last summer with M. Studer, who pointed out 

 to M. P. Merian, M. Favre, and myself, the lateral extension of this phsenome- 

 non in the mountains which encase the glacier of Grindelwald, They have been 

 called " coins " or comers of gneiss, that wedge into and invade the Jurassic lime- 

 stone which they overlap at great altitudes. The appearances conveyed no idea 

 of wedges of any pre-existing cr}'stalHne rock of higher antiquity than the lime- 

 stone, having been forced into the latter ; but on the contrary were plain proofs 

 to my mind, that an action of metamorphism ramifying laterally had invaded and 

 altered the Jurassic strata in situ. — See M. Studer's communication, Bull, Geol. 

 Fr. vol. iv, p, 209. 



X See the foreign synonyms of the legend attached to our INIap, M. Morlot is 

 in error in attaching to this red zone the name of " Rothliegendes ?" — for that 

 rock, which is a part of the Permian system, does not, as already stated, exist in 

 the Alps. 



