Structure of the Easter?! Alps. 387 



among which the Chara tuherculata (?) is the most abundant. Opercula of 

 PaludinaB, shells of a Cypris, scales of fish, and fragments of the skeletons of 

 certain species of Mammalia are commonly found associated with the coal. 

 The few specimens of bones which we procured from this place are too im- 

 perfect to give any specific information ; but a fine jaw of a species of Anthra- 

 cotherium (?), obtained from the works at Scheineck, is to be seen in the 

 museum at Gratz. These bones have precisely the same mineral character 

 and general appearance as those which occur in a similar deposit at Cadibuona, 

 in Piedmont. The lignite of the two places is undistinguishable, and occurs 

 in both at the base of the respective tertiary systems with which it is asso- 

 ciated. 



In certain laminte of the coal-bed of Scheineck a passage is, here and 

 there, seen from wood with a dicotyledonous structure into mineral charcoal ; 

 in other laminae the coal appears to have resulted from the compressed leaves ; 

 in those parts which enclose the bones (Anthracotheria ?) it is nearly in a state 

 of jet*. 



2. Blue, calcareous shale and sand, &c. 



The carboniferous strata are surmounted by sandy, blue and dark-coloured 

 calcareous shales, in which (especially near Kreitzpetter, along the western 

 side of the Sausal-hills) we discovered many well-preserved shells; several 



* Lignite, of very different structure and age from that above described, occurs in many parts 

 of Styria. For example, the vast masses of lignite near Lankowitz and Voitsberg cannot in 

 any respect be assimilated to that in the old tertiary deposits, and arc moreover entirely cut 

 otf from the Gratz basin. 



The river Kainach, in its course from the Stub and Pach Alp, flows through narrow gorges of 

 primary rocks, and waters successively several, small, bowl. shaped expansions, on the sides of 

 which the lignites are heaped up : and hence we may perhaps conclude, that these mountain depres 

 sions were local and temporary receptacles of great numbers of drifted forest trees, of turf, &c. 

 These lignites are in fact nothing more than brown coal in its first state of carbonization, the 

 •woody structure being still preserved ; in which respect they resemble the brown coal of the 

 Rhine, of Hesse Cassel, and of Bovey in England. To the Bovey coal they are also analogous 

 in containing no traces of any animal remains, marine, iluviatile, or terrestrial. 



The most important of these deposits, at Oberdorf, near Voitsberg, has at one place a thick- 

 ness of 72 feet, and is worked in a Iof(y, subterranean chamber 720 feet in length. It is in parts 

 very pyritiferous ; and near its base rests upon, and alternates with, unctuous pipe-clay and brick. . 

 earth. These clays are found abundantly all round Voitsberg and Oberdorf, deposited at one 

 place on mica schist ; at another on white, crystalline, primary limestone ; at a third on fucoid 

 shales and coarse grits, the only secondary rocks in the region. 



The brown coal occurs at very dllTerent levels, being at Lankowitz several hundred feet higher 

 than at Oberdorf; and the beds, or rather heaps, of the mineral at the former place, are hori. 

 zontal or inclined, according to the nature of the broken surface on which they rest. 



R. LM. 

 3d2 



