XCVlll PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



to give up the expectation that real coal may be found in the district 

 between Heraclea and the Gulf of Nicomedia. 



In my address last year I alluded to the communication made by 

 M. Tchihatcheff to the Geological Society of France respecting the 

 geology of Asia Minor. Those remarks referred chiefly to the 

 southern parts of that peninsula. I now learn that he has also 

 made some interesting discoveries in tertiary geology along the 

 northern shore. An eocene deposit was unexpectedly discovered in 

 the neighbourhood of Samsoun, on the Black Sea, mixed up with 

 melaphyr rocks. Near the village of Kadikieui, amongst the hills 

 and ravines, were found in great numbers shells of almost all the 

 species which are now living in the Black Sea, as Tellina, VenuSy 

 Cardium, Pecten, a variety of Ostrea edulis^ and Rotella lanceolata. 

 The only extinct species found were a Natica and Turritella suh- 

 angulata, Brocchi. The surface of the trap-rocks on which these 

 shells are distributed appears to be occasionally covered with a very 

 thin coating of a dark marly limestone. In these thin bands, Num- 

 mulites Ramondi, Defr., N^ irregularis, Desh., with Alveolince and 

 Operculince, and innumerable fragments of comminuted shells, are 

 found. From the occurrence of this nummulitic formation in the 

 neighbourhood of Samsoun, and the existence of the recent shells, 

 M. Tchihatcheff deduces the following conclusions : — 



The melaphyrs and traps which play such an important part along 

 the whole of this northern shore of Asia Minor must have burst 

 forth before the Nummulitic period ; and at a very recent period 

 these trap-rocks and the whole coast must have been submerged, 

 and the waters of the Black Sea not only covered the plain where 

 Samsoun now stands, but beat against the hills on which the village 

 of Kadikieui, now two leagues distant from the sea, is placed. 



I am acquainted with several localities in Asia Minor where the 

 recent forms alluded to by M. Tchihatcheff may be found at various 

 elevations along the coast of the Black Sea ; but I was not aware of 

 eocene forms having yet been found there. They are however abun- 

 dant in the interior, and I have myself found the nummulitic forma- 

 tions nearly in the meridian of Samsoun, or S.W. from it, and about 

 100 miles to the south ; and in other parts of Asia Minor they are 

 abundantly met with. 



Egypt. — Mr. Leonard Horner has published in the volume of the 

 Philosophical Transactions for 1855, an account of recent researches 

 near Cairo, undertaken with the view of throwing light upon the 

 geological history of the alluvial land of Egypt. The following is 

 an outline of Mr. Horner's argument on this subject. One of the 

 most difficult problems in geology is to ascertain, even approxima- 

 tively only, the time which has elapsed during the period of the 

 formation of any particular series of strata, even when the inquiry is 

 confined to the most recent of the tertiary deposits. In considering 

 the means by which this difficulty might be overcome, it occurred to 

 Mr. Horner that, if there were a country in which a certain alteration 

 in the level of the land had taken place within historical time, and 

 where the entire change under consideration presented throughout a 



