380 Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison on the 



base of the Alps (then presenting- an elevation widely different from what 

 they do at this time) — and that its bays or estuaries in some places penetrated 

 far within the exterior limits of the chain. In this way the details seem to 

 confirm the hypothesis by which we endeavoured (at the end of the former 

 chapter) to account for the presence of the overlying groups of Gosau, so far 

 within the secondary regions of the Alps. In making this remark, we do not 

 assume that the deposits of Gosau and Haring are of the same age ; all we 

 contend for is, that what we can prove to have taken place during one period 

 in the history of the Alps, may have taken place during another. 



3. Section fro7n Ortenburg, throngh Furstenzell, to the Banks of the Inn, 8^c. 



So far we have described a series of sections which, almost without excep- 

 tion, tend to prove the recent elevation of the Eastern Alps. If, however, we 

 cross the plains of the Danube to the outskirts of the Bohemian chain, we 

 no longer see the secondary and tertiary formations thrown up against it at a 

 high angle ; but we find them resting almost horizontally, like the deposits of 

 an ancient shore, among promontories and islets of primary rocks. Such is 

 their position in the section we are about to describe ; which extends, in a 

 direction about N.W. and S.E., from the hills near Ortenburg to the Inn, a 

 little to the west of the confluence of that river with the Danube*. 



A detailed description of this section would belong to the history of the 

 Bohemian, rather than of the Alpine chain. As it is, at least, geographically 

 connected with the subjects of this chapter, we may give it a passing notice 

 before we quit the north flank of the Alps, and proceed to describe the 

 deposits in the basins of Styria and Vienna. 



The section commences, towards the N.W., with a mass of granite, which 

 comes out, as a spur from the Bohemian chain, to the south side of the 

 Danube. It is a small-grained variety of the rock with much black mica. 

 The granite is surmounted by a white cretaceous rock containing black flints 

 and a few fossils : and from the whole of its characters, we could not help 

 regarding it, when seen on the spot, as a true chalk formation. Its planes 

 of stratification are marked by horizontal rows of flints, and it is overlaid by 

 sands, marls, and conglomerates. 



The geological sequence appears to be interrupted at the surface of the 

 cretaceous rock : for it is worn down (precisely as in the chalk formation of 

 England) into irregular pits and hollows, which are filled up with yellowish 

 green-sand. Higher up, these sands become regularly stratified, and contain 



* Plate XXXVI. Fis. 14. 



