88 Prof. Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison.ow the 



repeatedly alternating with chlorite and mica-schist, also with 

 fine, glossy clay-slate containing crystals of pyrites. Higher 

 up the mountain are great masses of thin-bedded white cry- 

 stalline limestone overlaid by thickly bedded, blue limestone; 

 and the whole system passes into a series of lofty calcareous 

 peaks, the highest of which, in the Radstadter Tauern, is 

 9762 Vienna feet above the level of the sea. The highest point 

 of the calcareous peaks belonging to this system, east of the 

 Weiss Eck, is 8360 Vienna* feet above the same level f. We 

 had no opportunity for examining any of these elevated peaks 

 of the chain ; but from their mode of weathering we were led 

 to suppose that some of them were of dolomitic structure. 



On descending the north flank of the Tauern Alp we 

 found the same blue, thick-bedded limestone alternating with, 

 and graduating into micaceous and chloritic schist, and ap- 

 pearing by a north-easterly dip to be carried under the peaks 

 of the Radstadter Tauern. 



When we first found the organic remains in the calcareous 

 rocks above described, we supposed that the whole system 

 was probably an outlier from the great northern calcareous 

 zone, altered in structure by its contact with the primary for- 

 mations. The sections from the foot of the Tauern to the 

 banks of the Enns, proved that this opinion was untenable. 

 The rocks above described are not only interlaced with the 

 central system of the chain, but are inferior to a long series 

 of strata, considered, if we mistake not, as transition by all the 

 geologists who have described the Alps. 



This conclusion is made still more clear by the sections 

 laid bare in the gorge between Hof Gastein and Lend ; and 

 on the banks of the Salza between Lend and Werfen \. The 

 primary rocks of the valley of Gastein are supposed to termi- 

 nate above the gorge with some great masses of micaceous and 

 chloritic schist containing subordinate, thin beds of crystalline 

 limestone. These masses are succeeded, in the ascending 

 order — (1.) By an enormously thick calcareous series, generally 

 of slaty texture, but obscurely stratified, often arranged in 

 great vertical masses with an irregular cross cleavage : the 

 limestone is here and there so mixed with dark shale as to 



* In English feet the respective heights are 10-18.2 and 8708. 



\ In the Geological Map of Germany (published by Simon Sell ropp and 

 Co. of Berlin), all the region of the Alps between St. Michael and Racl- 

 stadt is erroneously represented as mica-schist. The calcareous chain con- 

 nected with the Radstadter Tauern extends westwards to Scheideck and 

 Dragstein. The Weiss Eck on the south, and Kalk Spitz on the east, are 

 detached masses belonging to the same svstem. 



\ See Plate II. fig. 2. 



become 



