346 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [ Feb. 23, 
workable beds of coal, which are referred by German geologists to the 
Wealden. These beds have been very fully described, and their 
numerous points of resemblance to the English Wealden shown, by 
many German geologists, especially by Koch, Dunker, and Von 
Meyer*, and more recently by Crednert. In Brunswick this form- 
ation does not occur; and the presence there of Lower Neocomian 
beds is therefore a very significant fact. 
With regard to the stratigraphical relations of the Neocomian 
beds in North Germany it is not easy to arrive at any very definite 
conclusion, the country not having been mapped in sufficient 
detail. The manner, however, in which the Cretaceous beds are 
found overlapping and resting on different members of the Neoco- 
mian appears to indicate the existence, as in England, of an uncon- 
formity between these two series. Similarly the Hilsconglomerat 
(Lower Neocomian) of Brunswick appears to le indifferently on any 
of the older rocks, and is therefore probably unconformable to the 
Jurassic series. 
VI. Concivston. 
We have thus seen that the Neocomian beds of Yorkshire and 
Lincolnshire are the most westerly development of a great mass of 
strata, of the same age, stretching over a wide area in Northern 
Europe. It is true that the beds of this age are neither so well 
exposed nor do they attain so great a thickness as in the south of 
Europe ; but they nevertheless present us with a remarkably similar 
succession of faunas. At the eastern and western extremities of 
the area, in Brunswick and in Yorkshire respectively, the marine 
series is complete, and we have the three divisions of the Neocomian 
formation all developed; but in the intermediate districts of West- 
phalia, Hanover, and the Hartz, the marine beds represent only the 
Upper and Middle Neocomian, and these rest upon the freshwater 
strata of the North-German Wealden. 
The section at Speeton Cliff derives additional interest from the 
fact that it is by far the most complete exposure of the Neocomian 
beds over the whole of the great North-European area. ‘The sec- 
tions elsewhere are more or less isolated and fragmentary ; but at 
Speeton we find the key by means of which they may be identified 
and correlated. 
We have seen that, over the North-European area, a remarkable 
uniformity of character is maintained among the Neocomian strata 
(and the same is, to a certain extent, true also of the Cretaceous 
and Jurassic), indicating that this district forms a natural province, 
not improbably representing an ancient sea-basin. The ridge of 
Paleeozoic land traced by Mr. Godwin-Austen in his celebrated me- 
moir ‘ On the Possible Extension of the Coal-Measures beneath the 
South-Eastern part of England” + may not improbably have formed 
* “ Monographie der Norddeutschen Wealdenbildung,” &c. (1846), Palzeon- 
tographica, &e. 
t+ Ueber die Gliederung der oberen Juraformation und der Wealden-Bildung 
im nordwestlichen Deutschland (Prague, 1863). 
t Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xii. 1856, p. 38. Seealso Mr. 8. V. Wood, jun., 
