340 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



river Melas, and mentioned by him as stretching across from 

 Galatia to Cappadocia. In both places, it is a hard red grit, asso- 

 ciated with strata of gypsum, and with red and grey marls ; and, in 

 the first case, also with salt. 



The grey limestone of Arghaneh, Kharput, and the Anti- 

 Taurus, must be referred to the vast calcareous deposit, which, 

 cotemporary with our green sand, occupies an enormous extent of 

 country in Italy, Dalmatia, Albania, Greece, and Syria, on the one 

 hand ; and in South France, Spain, the Balearic islands, Sardinia 

 and Sicily on the other, a zone in fact which, from what we find of 

 it again in Egypt and Algiers, appears to encircle the whole 

 Mediterranean. In the Taurus, as in many of those countries, it 

 has been upheaved and pierced by serpentine and diallage rock ; 

 and these are the circumstances which in the country I have en- 

 deavoured to describe, as well as in the Maremme of Tuscany, at 

 Monte Castelli, Rocca Tederighi, Monte Catini, &c, are associated 

 with the presence of the sulphuret of iron and of the sulphuret 

 and other ores of copper. The lower beds of this limestone, often 

 described under the name of scaglia, are not yet very definitely 

 referred to their place in the geological scale ; since they differ 

 much among each other, and are often poor in characteristic 

 fossils ; but the upper portion, with its nummulites and the marls 

 associated with it, retains more nearly the same type throughout. 



The date of the eruption of the serpentines, which are asso- 

 ciated with the cretaceous beds, has been referred by most ob- 

 servers to the tertiary epoch ; nor would it appear that those of 

 the Taurus are an exception, since their occurrence in dykes near 

 Arghaneh proves their outburst to have been subsequent to the 

 deposition of the limestones. 



I should be inclined to refer to the tertiary period also those 

 limestones which occur on the summit of the mountain west of 

 Arghaneh Maden, and contain imbedded fragments of serpentine ; 

 and also those which cap the mountains near the junction of the 

 Murad and Frat ; but the line of distinction, from the difficulty 

 of procuring fossils, is not easily drawn. It is however very 

 possible that a more accurate examination may show them to be 

 secondary, and thus prove the outburst of the serpentines to be of 

 remoter date than is generally supposed ; or, what is more likely, 

 to have happened not all at once, but at several successive periods. 



To the deposition of these calcareous strata have succeeded the 

 further elevation of the chain, and the formation of the existing 

 valleys ; phenomena probably contemporaneous with and due to 

 the same cause as those which produced the protrusion of the 

 igneous rock occupying several large tracts in the district under con- 

 sideration. A further study would doubtless prove these rocks to be 

 connected with the vast series of volcanic rocks, of the same general 

 character, which extend at intervals from the Katake kaumene of 

 Asia Minor to the Taurus, and thence to Mesopotamia on the one 

 hand, and through the north of Syria to Galilee on the other. The 

 protrusion of these rocks is one of the principal agents to which the 

 present configuration of this important tract of country is due. 



