126 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Jan. 3, 



4. On the Tertiary Formations of the North q/* Germany; 

 with special reference to those of Hesse Cassel and its neigh- 

 bourhood. By W. J. Hamilton, Esq., Pres. G.S. 



Contents. 



I. Tertiary beds of Hesse Cassel. 



1. Sections at Habichts Wald and Wilhelmshohe. 



2. Sections near Ober Kaufungen. 



3. Sections at tbe Hirschberg. 



II. Tertiary beds of Westeregeln near Magdeburg. 

 III. The relative age of the Tertiary Beds of Northern Germany. 



Introduction. 



The observations contained in the following pages are intended as 

 supplementary to those which I laid before the Society on the 22nd 

 February last*. The subject is one of growing interest, and is, I am 

 happy to say, attracting the attention of the geologists of the north 

 of Germany and of Vienna. We have therefore every reason to hope 

 that, from their combined exertions, many years will not elapse before 

 we shall possess a complete table of the chronological history of the 

 marine tertiary beds of Germany. Under these circumstances, and 

 considering the comparatively limited extent of my additional obser- 

 vations, made last autumn, I should have deemed it premature to 

 bring them on this occasion under the notice of the Society, had I 

 not been desirous of availing myself of this opportunity to correct 

 an error into which I was unconsciously led in my former commu- 

 nication, in which I have attributed an opinion to a distinguished 

 German geologist which he never entertained, and which is at vari- 

 ance with what he has already published on the subject. I trust 

 that my friend Dr. Sandberger will accept this explanation as suffi- 

 cient reparation for the error which I have committed. 



At page 292 of the 10th volume of our Journal, in alluding to 

 the tertiary deposits of Westeregeln near Magdeburg, I have stated, 

 apparently on the authority of Dr. Sandberger, that its exact relations 

 to the beds of the Mayence basin have been made out, and that it 

 overlies the Brown-coal formation of the Westerwald, which is itself 

 the uppermost of the two Brown-coal formations of the Mayence 

 basin. It is needless now to inquire how I was led to make this 

 statement, or to explain what now appears to me to have been the 

 cause of having been misled. It is enough to state that Dr. Sand- 

 berger' s opinion, which he has published in his last workf on the 

 Mayence basin, is that the Westeregeln or Magdeburg sands, which 

 are stated by Dr. Beyrich and others J to be older than the Septaria- 

 clay of Berlin, &c., are of the same age as the Weinheim sands, and 

 consequently much older than either of the Brown-coal formations 

 of the Mayence basin. I believe it is the opinion of other German 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. See. vol. x. p. 254 et seq. 



t Untersuchungen iiber das Mainzer Tertiar Becken, von D. F. Sandberger. 

 Wiesbaden, 1853, p. 79. 



X See Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologisch. Gesellschaft, 1851, vol. iii. p. 216. 



