150 MR. H. KTNASTON ON THE [May 1 894, 



the Gamsthal in Styria, the basin of St. Wolfgang, and Neue Welt, 

 near Wiener Neustadt. With one exception they are always found 

 resting unconformably on the older Secondary rocks of the Alps, 

 and with one exception again are never associated with either 

 older or younger Cretaceous beds. 



In the Gosau district they dip on the average in a southerly 

 direction, and the degree of inclination varies from almost hori- 

 zontal in the more southerly part of the area to an angle of about 

 60° towards the north and north-west. The Gosau Beds of this 

 district correspond on the whole in their fauna and stratigraphical 

 divisions with those of most of the other areas, and they consist of 

 conglomerates, limestones with Hippurites and corals, estuarine beds 

 with a mixed fauna, dark-grey marls crowded with molluscan 

 remains, and micaceous sandstones, flags, and shales, sandy marls 

 and grits, etc., without any fossils. 



The fossils from the Lower beds constitute a rich and varied 

 fauna, in which corals, gasteropoda, and lamellibranchiata are 

 especially well represented, while cephalopoda and brachiopoda are 

 comparatively rare, and echinodermata almost entirely absent. The 

 greater majority of the fossils are peculiar to these beds. Those 

 species which are found in other areas seem to prove that the 

 Gosau Beds are of Upper Cretaceous age, and that they represent 

 the whole of the Senonian, and the uppermost part of the Turonian 

 system of the South of France — that is to say, from the zone of 

 Hijipurites comu-vaccinum to the zone of Belemnitella inclusive, or 

 in England from the zone of Holaster planus or the Chalk Rock to 

 the zone of Belemnitella mucronata inclusive, while the Upper un- 

 fossiliferous portion of the series may possibly represent the Danian 

 system. 



The Gosau Beds are, on the whole, of shallow-water origin, with 

 beds indicating estuarine conditions near their base, and were 

 deposited in narrow bays in the Upper Cretaceous Sea of Southern 

 and Central Europe on the northern flanks of the Eastern Alps. 

 Probably, towards the close of Upper Cretaceous times, the southern 

 area of the Gosau district was cut off from the sea so as to consti- 

 tute a lake-basin, in which the Upper unfossiliferous series was 

 deposited. 



The Gosau Beds owe their present isolated and elevated position 

 to the last great period of mountain-building in Central Europe, 

 which took place at the close of the deposition of the Nummulitic 

 series and the Flysch. 



Discussion. 



The President said that the Geological Society must ever take a 

 deep interest in the district referred to in this paper, in consequence 

 of the classic memoir by Murchison and Sedgwick published many 

 years ago. Since then the district had been investigated by several 

 distinguished geologists, and we were indebted to the Author for his 

 excellent summary of the present state of our knowledge as to the 



