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



At the Untersberg, the equivalents of the gault, upper greensand 

 and chalk, which repose upon neocomian limestone or hippurite 

 marble, are marls and marlstones, often not unlike malm-rock, and 

 variegated green and red bands, some of them approaching to scaglia, 

 in vrhich Professor Sedgwick and myself found Belemnites and Bacu- 

 lites with Inoceramus Cripsii (Sow.) and Trochus li7ieai'is. Next 

 come sandstone and calcareous grit, with many small nummulites, 

 followed by other strata of sandstone and blue marl, in which other 

 nummulites, with Operculinae, Dentalia and Serpulse, are associated 

 with shells having a tertiary aspect. Two or three species indeed of 

 these fossils, such as Auricula simulata (Sow.) and Dentalium grande 

 (Desh.), have been considered identical with species of the London 

 and Paris basin. 



In following the cretaceous rocks from Bavaria into Austria, their 

 upper member or the equivalent of the chalk is no longer to be seen in 

 the form of the white limestone, which is so clear a horizon in Savoy, 

 Sv^itzerland and Western Bavaria. Even at the sections of the Un- 

 tersberg between Reichenhall and Salzburg, the band containing the 

 chalk fossils is, as above stated, made up of grey, green and red marls 

 and marlstone. In the valley of Gosau, still further to the east, the 

 lithological change is still more decisive ; for not only is there no trace 

 of a white limestone, but the group so loaded with fossils, many of 

 which are unquestioned cretaceous species, with many peculiar ter- 

 tiary-like forms, consists of soft shale and sandy marl, with impure 

 dark-coloured limestones. Reverting however to the sections of the 

 strata above the cretaceous rocks of the Untersberg*, I may affirm, 

 that they exhibit the same general ascending order as at the Griinten, 

 near Sonthofen, and other places, i. e. from a true cretaceous zone, 

 (the equivalent of the chalk being in a very different mineral state,) 

 through certain strata of marl and sandstone into masses with num- 

 mulites and shells, all of which are unknown in the strata below. On 

 the other hand, it is eiadent that beds having the characters of the 

 *' flysch," are not merely the expanded overlying member of the num- 

 mulitic group, but often inosculate with bands of nummulites, and 

 even descend as at Gosau into strata with the true cretaceous fossils. 

 Again, we readily see, that notvrithstanding a local dislocation, the 

 highly fossiliferous nummulitic strata of Kressenberg are but a full 

 development of one of these upper bands of limestone, of which I have 

 mentioned many examples. 



Not having personally revisited Kressenberg, I can only suggest 

 that the intermixture of a few cretaceous fossils with the acknowledged 

 tertiary types of that locality may be explainedf by their having been 

 obtained from the Bergmeister (as at Sonthofen, see p. 206), who may 



* The reader must be told, that the true cretaceous rocks with fossils of the age 

 of the gault and chalk, are with great difficulty detected in the slopes between the 

 Untersberg and Reichenhall, owing to the quantity of verdure and detritus which 

 obscure the slopes ; but although to a great extent hidden and of no great thick- 

 ness, they certainly exist in the ravines mentioned by Professor Sedgwick and my~ 

 self. See GeoL Trans,, New Series, vol. iii. p. 346. 



t See Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. vol. iii. p. 344, note. 



