234 BELGIAN AND BRITISH MIOCENE. [Ch. XIV. 



considerable affinity to that of Suffolk, about two-thirds of the 65 

 shells obtained from it being common to the Suffolk Coralline Crag, 

 and somewhat less than half of the whole being of living species. 



About the year 1862, an important discovery was made at Edeghem, 

 in the environs of Antwerp, of another deposit somewhat older than 

 the Black Crag. In excavating for brick earth, they came upon a bed 

 of argillaceous sand, in which no less- than 152 fossils were found, com- 

 prising 145 mollusca and echinoderms, and some zoophytes, especially 

 a large species of Flabellum. All these have been examined and tabu- 

 lated by M. Nyst, and carefully compared with the fossils of other Miocene 

 and Pliocene deposits of Europe.* These Edeghem beds, which re- 

 pose on Lower Miocene clay, the " Eupelian " of Dumont, are most 

 nearly related by their fossils to the Black Crag above alluded to, but 

 they betray many indications of greater antiquity. Fifty-eight of the 

 species are new to the Belgian tertiaries, and of these 14 only, or 

 about 25 per cent., are recent. Of the whole 145 Edeghem shells, 52 

 are considered by Nyst as living species, besides 5 others, which are 

 probably identical with the living, making, if all are accepted, a pro- 

 portion of 39 per cent., which is decidedly smaller than that observed 

 in the Antwerp Black Crag (see above, p. 208). A still more signifi- 

 cant indication of the connection of the Edeghem sands with an older 

 or Miocene period is afforded, first, by the fact that no less than 83 of 

 the 145 mollusca are falunian, as shown by M. Nyst's tables, or, in 

 other words, a proportion of 56 per cent, are specifically identical with 

 shells occuring in the Upper Miocene beds of North Germany, Tour- 

 aine, the Vienna basin, the Bordeaux faluns, and other localities un- 

 questionably of Upper Miocene date ; secondly, what is perhaps even 

 more in favor of their antiquity, there occur in them shells of the 

 genera Conits, Ancillaria, and Oliva, all of which are not only want- 

 ing in the Red and Coralline Crag of Suffolk, and in the Upper and 

 Middle Crags of Antwerp, but are also absent from the lowest or Black 

 Crag of Antwerp. These same genera are also met with in the strata 

 of the Bolderberg in Belgium, a true Upper Miocene formation, the 

 fauna of which recedes still farther from that now existing in the pro- 

 portion of its shells of living species. 



Upper Miocene (?) of Belgium and England. — Diest Sands. — M. 

 Nyst is of opinion that the formation called by Dumont' the Diestian 

 .s of the same age as the sands of Edeghem — a conclusion which is 

 probably well founded. These ferruginous sands and sandstones of 

 Diest are well seen near the town of that name, about thirty miles 

 north-east of Brussels. They abound in green grains, resembling in 

 mineral character the ferruginous beds of the Lower Greensand in the 

 south-east of England. The strata contain but a small number of 

 fossils, the Terebratula grandis being one of the few which are well 

 preserved. The Diest sands are conspicuous as forming the cappings 



* Nyst, Bulletin Acad. Roy., Bruselles, 1862. 



