4 GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 



sisting of old transported materials. They play an important part in 

 the centre of the Peninsula, since the great tahle-lands of Castille and 

 La Mancha and the plains of Andalusia consist almost exclusively of 

 this modern formation. We find throughout the whole of Castille 

 deposits apparently formed by the heaping together of violently trans- 

 ported materials, and which in this respect differ entirely from the 

 marls, gypsum and compact limestones on which they he. This forma- 

 tion consists principally of rolled quartz pebbles accumulated in great 

 masses, either without any coherence, or cemented together by a fer- 

 ruginous argillaceous matrix. Numerous observations tend to show 

 that this boulder formation belongs to the third tertiary period. In 

 Old Castille it overlies the freshwater limestone of the middle period, 

 and on the borders of the Mediterranean, from Malaga to Gibraltar, 

 it overlies shells characteristic of the third tertiary epoch. 



In the neighbourhood of Cordova this diluvial formation overhes 

 the second tertiary deposit ; and on the E.N.E. side of the city is an 

 argillaceous deposit full of rounded stones overlying the shelly hme- 

 stone, which contains Terebratulae and other shells identical with those 

 of the formation of Corcega. The transported matter in the basin of 

 Badajoz consists of a conglomerate of rolled stones, with an argilla- 

 ceous cement, collected in banks 60 or 70 varas above the Guadiana. 

 The rocks of which the conglomerate is made up are principally quartz- 

 ites, grauwacke slates, and other transition rocks, which are also found 

 in situ. 



The same volume (p. 2 1 3) contains an account of a tertiary formation 

 in the immediate neighbourhood of Madrid, by Don Joaquin Ezquerra. 

 It consists of a freshwater gypsum, having at a considerable distance 

 from each other two bone-beds, containing mammalian remains. In 

 the lower of these beds were found the remains of elephants and masto- 

 dons, exhibited in the National Museum of Madrid. The upper bone- 

 bed consists of a fine siliceous sand, of a bluish-white colour, and about 

 a foot in thickness. The mammalian remains are very numerous, but 

 are almost all waterworn and injured by transport, and difficult to be 

 identified. The author, mistrusting his own palseontological know- 

 ledge, submitted them to the examination of Prof. Bronn of Heidel- 

 berg. They have been referred to the following species : Mastodon 

 longirostrisy Kaup, Mastodon Aurelianense, Cuv., Sus palcBochcerus, 

 Kaup, and a ruminant resembling the deer, and called Cervus matri- 

 tensis. 



Prof. Bronn, in a letter to the author, has given it as his opinion, 

 derived from an examination of the organic remains, that they belong 

 to the miocene period, inasmuch as all the above-mentioned species 

 are most abundant in the formations of that period, and he conse- 

 quently considers this bed as belonging to the same age as the basins 

 of Vienna and Mayence. 



The third volume contains a geognostic and mineralogical descrip- 

 tion of the district of Catalonia and Aragon, by D. Amalio Maestre, 

 from which I have extracted the following observations on the tertiary 

 formations of that region. The tertiary formation of the plain of 

 Tarragona is about 150 varas in thickness, varying somewhat occa- 



