HAUER ON THE CEPHALOPODS OF THE SALZKAMMERGUTS. 17 
tions which they contain. When the succession of the formations 
in the eastern Alps is once established with complete certainty, and 
the fossils peculiar to each are known, then their greater or less simi- 
larity to the formations of northern and western Europe will appear 
of itself, whereas the attempt to find a parallelism between individual 
beds has always led to very unsatisfactory results. The limestone of 
the eastern Alps contains a far greater number of fossils than is 
usually supposed, and every day brings new discoveries. Assuredly 
here more than in almost any other place, accurate paleeontological 
study is the indispensable assistance to unravel the very various and 
highly-developed formations that are comprised under the collective 
name of the Alpine limestone. 
The relations of the Hallstatt marble beds to the neighbouring for- 
mations are as yet but imperfectly investigated. They occur, in 
almost vertical strata, on the summit of the Sommerau and Steinberg- 
kogels in the Hallstatt Salzberg, immediately on the border of the 
salt-formation. Their relation to this deposit, whose mode of 
origin is still very doubtful, is not. certainly determined. V. Lill 
considers them as lying below the salt-formation, but this opinion still 
requires more thorough examination. 
The lower portion of the Salzberg, towards the Echernthal, as well 
as all the other mountains surrounding the Hallstatt lake, consist of 
a grey, very distinctly stratified, limestone, forming the lower beds of 
the so-called older group of Alpine limestone, and especially charac- 
terized by the frequent occurrence of a large bivalved shell. The 
same shell, which will assuredly in future form one of the most im- 
portant means of recognizing a peculiar horizon (étage) in the Alpine 
limestone, occurs in many places in the Alps, as, among others, at 
the waterfall near Golling, well-known under the name of the Salza- 
dfen, and on the summit of the Dachstein, where M. Simony says 
it is found in innumerable specimens. This grey limestone is de- 
veloped to a vast extent near Hallstatt, but lies under the marble. 
Below the grey limestone, but whether immediately or separated by 
strata of a different character is still undecided, follow the beds which 
V. Lill has named the red slate of Werfen, and still deeper greywacke, 
in which the mining director Erlach has recently found, at, Dienten 
in Salzburg, true transition petrifactions. Among them are Orthoce- 
ratites, Cardium priscum, Goldf., as near Beraun in Bohemia, and 
other fossils, all changed into iron pyrites. 
An exactly analogous succession of strata to that in the vicinity of 
Hallstatt exists in the southern Alps in the district of Bleiberg. 'The 
geognostic relations of this region, partly exhibited in the lead-mines 
which have been wrought there for many centuries, were first 
thoroughly explored by L. von Buch. The opalescent shell marble, 
well-known in all mineral collections, which forms a thin bed in a 
black-coloured clay-slate, known in the Bleiberg under the name of 
Lagerschiefer, contains beautiful specimens of the Ammonites Johan- 
nis Austria, V. Klipsteim, and consequently corresponds to the marble 
beds of Hallstatt ; but not, as V. Lill supposes, to what he calls the 
slaty sandstone group of the Alpine limestone. Below it, and di- 
VOL. IV.—PART I. c 
