176 FALUNS OF TOURAINE. [Ch. XIV. 



and for which in 1833 I proposed the name of Miocene, selecting the 

 faluns of the valley of the Loire in France as my example or type. 

 No strata contemporaneous with these formations have as yet been met 

 with in the British. Isles, where the lower crag of Suffolk is the deposit 

 nearest in age. The term " faluns" is given provincially by French 

 agriculturists to shelly sand and marl spread over the land in Touraine, 

 just as the " crag" was formerly much used to fertilize the soil in Suffolk. 

 Isolated masses of such faluns occur from near the mouth of the Loire, in 

 the neighborhood of Nantes, to as far inland as a district south of Tours. 

 They are also found at Pontlevoy, on the Cher, about 70 miles above the 

 junction of that river with the Loire, and 30 miles S. E. of Tours. De- 

 posits of the same age also appear under new mineral conditions near the 

 towns of Dinan and Rennes, in Brittany. I have visited all the locali- 

 ties above enumerated, and found the beds on the Loire to consist princi- 

 pally of sand and marl, in which are shells and corals, some entire, some 

 rolled, and others in minute fragments. In certain districts, as at Doue, 

 in the department of Maine and Loire, 10 miles S.W. of Saumur, they 

 form a soft building-stone, chiefly composed of an aggregate of broken 

 shells, bryozoa, corals, and echinoderms, united by a calcareous cement ; 

 the whole mass being very like the Coralline Crag near Aldborough and 

 Sudbourn in Suffolk. The scattered patches of faluns are of slight 

 thickness, rarely exceeding 50 feet ; and between the district called 

 Sologne and the sea they repose on a great variety of older rocks ; being 

 seen to rest successively upon gneiss, clayslate, various secondary for- 

 mations, including the chalk ; and, lastly, upon the upper freshwater 

 limestone of the Parisian tertiary series, which, as before mentioned 

 (p. Ill), stretches continuously from the basin of the Seine to that of 

 the Loire. 



At some points, as at Louans, south of Tours, the shells are stained of 

 a ferruginous color, not unlike that of the Red Crag of Suffolk. The 

 species are, for the most part, marine, but Fig. 161. 



a few of them belong to land and fiuviatile 

 genera. Among the former, Helix turo- 

 nensis (fig. 45, p. 30) is the most abun- 

 dant. Remains of terrestrial quadrupeds 

 are here and there intermixed, belonging 

 to the genera Deinotherium (fig. 161), 

 Mastodon, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, 

 Chaeropotamus, Dichobune, Deer, and 

 others, and these are accompanied by 

 cetacea, such as the Lamantine, Morse, 

 Sea-Calf, and Dolphin, all of extinct 



species. Deinotherium giganteum, Kaup. 



Professor E.- Forbes, after studying the fossil testacea which I obtained 

 from these beds, informs me that he has no doubt they were formed 

 partly on the shore itself at the level of low water, and partly at very 

 moderate depths, not exceeding ten fathoms below that level. The mol- 



