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



The latter are surmounted by marly sandy beds, approaching in cha- 

 racter to molasse, which gradually pass up into the true marine 

 molasse. 



The marine molasse of the cantons St. Gallen and Zurich dips to the 

 N.W., and is clearly surmomited by enormous accumulations which 

 constitute the upper nagelflue, and throughout which nothing but ter- 

 restrial or freshwater remains have been detected, the species, of the 

 genera Melania, Helix, Planorbis, Lymnea, being apparently undistin- 

 guishable from those of the nagelflue and molasse beneath the marine 

 strata. It is probably this great upper member which is for the 

 most part thrown into the remarkable inverted position exhibited in 

 the diagrams figs. 12 & 14. In a portion of this upper member at 

 Kapfnach, and in the Albis Hills near Zurich, are found freshwater 

 beds, in which HeUces and seeds of Chara occur together with the 

 bones oi Mastodon angustidens, FalceomcBryx, OrygotheriumJEscheri^ 

 ChaJicomys Jdgeri, Cervus lunatus, Hyotherium medium, Rhinoceros 

 Schinzii, all species recently described by M. Herman von Meyer. 

 In the same deposit, leaves of Acer as well as parts of palmaceous 

 plants are seen*. 



Again, molasse and conglomerate occur in still higher positions ; 

 i. e. in the summits of the ranges near Zurich, where the pebbly beds 

 are very cavernous, and have given rise to the name of " lochrige 

 Nagelfluh;" but no characteristic organic remains have been found 

 in it. 



In following the surfaces of these vast accumulations as they recede 

 from their dislocated and highly inclined positions on the flanks of the 

 Alps into the great trough which extends up to the Jura, we find the 

 beds becoming more and more horizontal, in which position they 

 range up to the edges of the latter mountains. The same order of 

 strata is however observable, and every here and there we see — notably 

 near Baden in Switzerland — courses of marine shelly marls and sands 

 charged with the same group of subapennine fossils f and covered by 

 freshwater nagelflue. 



The vegetable remains of the molasse seem all to be referable to a 

 warm or Mediterranean climate, and they are all extinct species. To 

 this consideration I shall presently revert. 



* The Mastodon angustidens occurs at several other localities, viz. Buchberg, 

 Elgg, Greit, &c. The Rhinoceros incisivus is found at Elgg, and the Rhinoceros 

 Schinzii (Herm. v. Meyer) was extracted from nagelflue at Bolingen, near the foot 

 of the Albis, where it is associated with Unio Escheri and extinct species of 

 Paludina, Melania, &c. Molasse fossils, including tortoises, are also in force at 

 Winterthur. This upper group of molasse with mammalia is clearly separated from 

 the horizontal older alluvia of these regions, of which there is a fine example at 

 Utznach, in which the Elephas primigenius or mammoth occurs, with land and 

 freshwater shells, and pines, and other vegetables of existing forms. 



f See the list of these fossils in the excellent monograph of the Baden country, 

 by Professor Mousson of Zurich, " Geologische Skizze der Umgebungen von 

 Bade im Canton Aargau von Alb. Mousson, Zurich, 1840." In this work the 

 reader will find a very instructive tabular arrangement of all the Jurassic and 

 underlying rocks, which are very closely paralleled by fossil species with the 

 oolitic deposits of England. 



