336 Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison on the 



leave small cavities in the rock*. Some of the more compact varieties of 

 these thin beds, resemble the indurated chalk of Antrim ; others are not un- 

 like ordinary, upper green-sand, or planer kalk of the Germans. These are 

 succeeded by a great system of shivery, dark-coloured, micaceous siiale and 

 marl, with numerous, strong- bands of calcareous grit, on the surfaces of which 

 are very large Gryphites (?), TrigonijE, Terebratulte, &c. f . In this group 

 we also observed some beds of black, hard limestone, and of dark-coloured, 

 greenish sandstone, with concretions of chert. The whole of the strata com- 

 posing the summit and flanks of the Alp-Spitz we refer, on a broad scale of 

 comparison, to the chalk and green-sand series. 



Overlying the preceding group, is an immense development of very 

 coarse conglomerate (quite distinct from the millstone grits of the Alpine green- 

 sand), and of hard gritstone and shale ; which, between the Alp-Spitz and the 

 town of Nesselwang, are exposed in the castle -hill, being cut through by a 

 mountain-torrent, and exhibit a thickness, according to our estimation, of 

 more than 2000 feet — the whole being in a nearly vertical position, and quite 

 parallel to the group last described. The lowest members of this series are 

 composed of an indurated, red conglomerate, the inclosed fragments of which, 

 are made up of Alpine limestone and red sandstone, some rounded and others 

 angular, followed by sandstone and indurated shale. The red conglomerates 

 again set on, in beds from twenty to thirty feet thick each, alternating with 

 strong bands of calcareous grit, and, here and there, separated by courses of 

 thin-bedded, red shale and sandstone. 



After many repetitions of similar strata, in which the conglomerates always 

 predominate, is seen a bed of lignite about twelve feet thick. This lignite is 

 placed between an indurated, red, sandy, micaceous shale, in some places so 

 hard as to look like grauwacke , and a fine red conglomerate. It is exposed 

 by the side of the torrent in a nearly vertical position, and was formerly 

 worked by horizontal galleries \. Above the coal are variegated shales and 

 marls, containing traces of another coal seam, and with subordinate beds of 

 grit, having a prismatic structure, transverse to their vertical direction. Fi- 



* In the lowest part of the Bregenz section (Plate XXXVI. fig. 3.), rocks of a precisely 

 similar structure appear on the northern base of the Stautfen, associated with the ferriferous 

 nummulitic deposits of Haslach. 



t This series of shales and calc-grits is of great thickness, and is probably on the parallel of 

 the nummulitic iron ores of Sonthofen, forming the extreme limit of the secondary system of the 

 Alps. We did not, however, discover any nummulitic beds in this section. 



X It was extensively worked about fifty years ago ; but the cheapness of wood-fuel in Bavaria 

 caused the works to be abandoned. 



