1848.] MURCHISON ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE ALPS. 231 



Deicke) exhibit the strata with marine shells intercalated between 

 freshwater deposits, which contain the Melania Escheri (Merian) 

 and Planorbis hispidus, Pupa, Melanopsis, and small' Potamides, with 

 seams of lignite, &c. 



The enumeration of the fossils of the marine molasse of St. Gallen, 

 though far from being complete (not more than a third of the species I 

 saw are mentioned), is I think sufficient to prove that these beds are 

 of nearly the same age as the blue subapennine marls of Italy, and 

 therefore of what has been called the older pliocene age. The marine 

 shelly beds of the molasse in the canton of Berne, also low in the 

 series, are equally referred by Professor Studer to this age ; for al- 

 though the shells there are neither so well preserved nor so numerous 

 as at St. Gallen, the presence of the Panopcea Faujasi, Pecfen lati- 

 costatus (Brod.), Cyprina Islandica, Tellina tumida (Brong.), all 

 characteristic shells of the subapennine deposits amidst those which 

 are recognizable, leaves little doubt on the subject. In Berne, as in 

 St. Gallen and Zurich, the marine beds in question surmount (accord- 

 ing to Professor Studer) a widely-spread lower freshwater deposit. 



In the canton Vaud, where remains of tortoises, crocodiles and 

 extinct quadrupeds occur, the order of superposition and relations of 

 the different masses of the molasse are obscurely seen, particularly in 

 the undulating region between the lakes of Neufchatel and Geneva. 

 Still it is right to observe, that in the environs of Vevey, where mo- 

 lasse and conglomerate abound, no traces of any marine remains have 

 been found ; the only fossil indeed known there being a Palmacites 

 of some size, detected by M. Collon *. There the tertiary conglomerate 

 and molasse are truncated, and with an inverted dip (jfig. 4, p. 182) 

 seem to dip under the adjacent secondary rocks as in the diagrams 

 (figs. 12 & 14, pp. 195, 200), though here they are in contact with 

 rocks of the age of the Oxfordian Jura. 



That marine strata overlie freshwater conglomerates, is indeed 

 clearly perceived in the environs of Chambery and other parts of 

 Savoy. The Canon Chamousset accompanied me to sections, where a 

 conglomerate made up of the detritus of the adjacent neocomian lime- 

 stones contains freshwater shells and lignite. In that tract, where 

 all the intervening strata, representing the gault, upper greensand, 

 chalk, nummulitic limestone and flysch, are absent, the freshwater 

 conglomerate reposes at once on the secondary neocomian limestones 

 from whence its materials have been derived, and passes upward into 

 the marine molasse, as exposed in the woodcut (fig. 5, p. 184). 



This lower freshwater accumulation in Savoy is not less than 

 1000 feet thick. Its lowest beds consist of limestone conglomerates 

 followed by red marls and marlstone with green veins and spots, and 

 occasional gypsum. Then follow other calcareous pebble bands, con- 

 taining subordinate courses of marly limestone with freshwater shells. 



* M. Blanchet of Lausanne has a rich collection of fossils from these fluvio- 

 lacustrine deposits of the canton de Vaud. He beUeyes that these mixed deposits 

 are of different ages, each varying according to its proximity or remoteness from 

 the chain of mountains from which it was washed into the bay by rivers (see his 

 Supplement). 



