NUMMULITIC LIMESTONE. 



197 



known as the nummulitic limestone. This very charac- 

 teristic rock is more massive and more -widely spread 

 than any other Tertiary deposit, and, in its thickness and 



Fig-. 61. — A Ximnnulite, Tiewed from abore, and horizontally bisected. 



identity of structnre over large areas, recalls the mountain 

 limestone of the Palteozoic epoch. It is, indeed, abso- 

 lutely one mass of nnmmulites, of which sections are 

 disjslayed on every fractured surface ; and it was probably 

 an open sea dejjosit, which must have taken incalculable 

 ages for its fornration. It occurs in southern Europe in 

 both the Alps and Pyrenees, attaining a thickness of 

 several thousand feet in the former, and occurring at 

 elevations of more than 10,000 feet above the sea-level. 

 In the Pyrenees it forms a beautiful white crystalline 

 marble. On the south of the Mediterranean, nummulitic 

 limestone is found again in the mountains of Algeria 

 and Morocco. In eastern Europe it reappears in the 

 Carpathians, and thence may be traced into the Caucasus 

 and Asia Minor. All travellers to India are familiar with 

 the Mokattam range of bare mountains on the western 

 shore of the upper part of the Red Sea, which are likewise 

 almost entirelv composed of this same limestone. It is, 

 indeed, a common Ijelief among the Egy23tian peasantry 

 that the larger disc-like nnmmulites are lentils left by the 

 builders of the pyramids, and subsequently turned into 

 stone. From the Caucasus and Asia Minor the nummu- 

 litic limestone mav be followed into Persia, Baluchistan, 

 Sind, the Punjab, and so into the Himalaya. Thence 



