1848.] MURCHISON ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE ALPS. 223 



very like the subapennine marls of Brocchi, dip under yellow sand- 

 stones and pebbly conglomerates like those of Monte Grado near 

 Bassano (i). In the marls are the Venericardia costata. Area Bi~ 

 luvii, Pyrula clatlwata, with species of the genera jNIurex, Natica, 

 &c., which clearly characterize the blue marls of the subapennine 

 strata; whilst the large Ostrea Virginica is found in the overlying 

 yellow limestones and conglomerates. Being aware that M. de Zigno, 

 who has already written on the subject, and has sustained my former 

 ^dews, is about to publish a detailed account of all the species in 

 the tertiary fossiliferous strata of the tract between the Brenta and 

 the Piave, I will not attempt to give palaeontological details. I will 

 merely now say, that from the order of the strata and from the fossil 

 shells which our party collected, and also from those we inspected in 

 the museum of M. Parolini of Bassano, I still entertain no doubt that 

 the sections afford an ascending series from the surface of the chalk 

 up into deposits of the subapennine age. M. Ewald of Berlin*, an 

 excellent palaeontologist, who in common with M. Leopold von Buch, 

 M. de Verneuil and myself, regarded all the lower portion as eocene, 

 thought that the sandy bands and calcareous grits, which there lie 

 above the nummulitic group, might prove to be the equivalents of the 

 miocene. 



But it is with the nuramulite group that we are now occupied, and 

 I must leave to local observers the future details and exact delimi- 

 tation of each tertiary subdivision. It is enough for me to prove 

 that the cretaceous system is here distinctly and conformably over- 

 laid by true lower tertiary deposits, and that the facts which I an- 

 nounced so long ago have now been amply verified ; viz. that tertiary 

 rocks, both lower and upper, are in this tract parallel to the secondary 

 rocks, and have been upheaved and set on edge by forces which also 

 affected the adjacent Alps. The lower tertiary group is specially 

 characterized between Bassano and Possagno by containing, in addi- 

 tion to nummulites, Fusus longcBvus, F. intortus, Pleurotoma semi- 

 colon, Turritella imbricataria, and a whole suite of shells and many 

 corals completely distinct from those of the chalk, and which are 

 either known tertiary forms of Northern Europe, or species peculiar 

 to the localities. In following the same zone westwards into the 

 Bregonze Hills, and the tracts around Vicenza and Schio, or to the 

 interesting, isolated hill called Monte Yiale, it is seen to contain all 

 the species enumerated by Brongniart, among which the following 



* Highly valued and esteemed by M. von Buch and all the geologists and 

 palaeontologists of his country, M. Ewald seems almost to shun publication. The 

 views which he put forth at the Venice meeting were eagerly caught up by all 

 his auditors. He has since written to me, insisting on the indisputable zoological 

 proofs that these deposits are eocene. He has not seen the species of Gryphaea 

 which I collected in the Northern Alps, and which has been named G. vesi- 

 culosa, but he contends that the species of this genus known in the Vicentine, 

 and published by Brongniart as G. columba, is not a known cretaceous fossil. 

 At the same time he admits that the Terebratula caput -serjjentis rises from 

 the chalk into the eocene deposits. It is to be hoped that M. Ewald will soon 

 be enabled to resume his journeys southwards, and thus complete a catalogue 

 of all the fossils of the nummulitic group, in which he has already made great 

 progress. 



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