334 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Feb. 23, 
‘¢diluvial sand with boulders.” The exposures of the beds in ques- 
tion over this area are usually of a very limited character, and are 
almost entirely confined to such accidental openings as stone-pits 
and brickyards, while nowhere does any such key to the relations 
of the beds occur as that which is afforded by the grand cliff-section 
of Yorkshire. Owing to these causes the geologists of North Ger- 
many have been reduced, in the classification of their Neocomian 
strata, to rely, almost solely, upon paleontological evidence, espe- 
cially upon that obtained by comparison with the typical beds of the 
same age in Switzerland. An examination of the results thus 
arrived at, side by side with those obtained by the study of the very 
similar and much more favourably exposed beds of the North of 
England, while it, on the whole, confirms the views now generally 
held by Continental geologists, yet suggests some modifications of 
those views, of considerable interest and importance. 
It is not my intention to attempt any thing like a general de- 
scription of the Neocomian formation in Northern Germany ; this 
subject has been already most admirably treated in the works of 
Fr. Ad. Romer, Geinitz, Ferd. Romer, Beyrich, Ewald, and especially 
of yon Strombeck. What I propose is, to show the relations of the 
various strata of this age in Northern Europe with those in the 
northern parts of this country. To qualify myself for this task I 
have visited nearly all the most typical sections in North-western 
Germany, and have examined all the public and many of the private 
collections of fossils in that district ; and it is with much pleasure that 
I take the present opportunity of acknowledging the great amount 
of kind assistance which I received from several distinguished German 
geologists, among whom I may especially mention M. von Strombeck, 
of Brunswick, M. Hermann Romer, of Hildesheim, and M. Witte, of 
Hanover. 
1. Heligoland—We have seen that at Speeton the Neocomian 
strata, even before their full emergence from beneath the overlap- 
ping Chalk strata, are cut off by the denuding action of the North 
Sea. Intermediate between this section and those of North Germany, 
an important and extremely interesting link is afforded by the beds 
exposed in the little island of Heligoland, which is rapidly wasting 
away beneath the waves of the German Ocean. ‘The strata in ques- 
tion are exposed, not in the cliffs of the present island, but in certain 
banks, visible only at low water, about a small islet which is said to 
have been separated from the main island within historical times. 
The beds appear to be inclined at a considerable angle; and their 
succession is as follows :— 
(1) White Chalk, containing a large series of fossils, agreeing precisely with 
those of the Lower Chalk of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. 
(2) Variable beds of ‘“‘rust-yellow and yellowish red chalk or limestone,” 
some of which become more or less sandy, containing Belemnites mini- 
mus, List. 
(3) Blackish-blue pyritous clays (called Téch), containing many fossils mine- 
ralized by iron pyrites. 
(4) Beds with Oxfordian fossils, followed by others with Lias fossils. 
