Parr IV. Secr. iii, § 1] MIOCENE, | 861 
Central France.—Contemporaneously with the existence of the 
great Swiss Tertiary lake, one or more large sheets of fresh water lay in 
the heart of France. In these basins a series of marls and limestones 
(1500 feet thick in the Limagne d’Auvergne) accumulated, from which 
have been obtained the remains of nearly 100 species of mammals, includ- 
ing some paleotheres, like those of the Paris basin, a few genera found 
also in the Mayence basin, crocodiles, snakes, and numerous birds. This 
water basin appears to have been destroyed by volcanic explosions, which 
afterwards poured out the great sheets of lava, and formed the numerous 
cones and puys so conspicuous on the plateau of Auvergne. 
Vienna Basin.1—This area contains a typical series of later Tertiary 
deposits, sometimes classed together as “ Neogene.” At the bottom lies 
a group of marls and sandstones known as the “ Aquitanian stage,” con- 
taining occasional seams of brown-coal and fresh-water beds, but with 
intercalations of marine strata. The marine layers contain Cerithium 
plicatum, C. margaritaceum, &c. The brackish and fresh water beds yield 
Melania Escheri and Cyrena lignitaria. Among the vertebrates are Mastodon 
angustidens, M. tapiroides, Rhinoceros sansaniensis, Amphicyon intermedius, 
Anchitherium aurelianense, and numerous turtles. These strata have 
suffered from the upheaval of the Alps, and may be seen sometimes 
standing on end. It is interesting also to observe that the subter- 
ranean movements east of the Alps culminated in the outpouring of 
enormous sheets of trachyte, andesite, propylite, and basalt in Hungary 
and along the flanks of the Carpathian chain into Transylvania. The 
voleanic action appears to have begun during the Aquitanian stage, 
but continued into later stages. Further curious changes in physical 
geography are revealed by the other “ Neogene” deposits of south-eastern 
Kurope. Thus in Croatia the Miocene marls, with their abundant land- 
plants, insects, &c., contain two beds of sulphur (the upper 4 to 16 inches 
thick, the under 10 to 15 inches), which have been worked at Radoboj. 
At Hrastreigg, Buchberg, and elsewhere, coal is worked in the Aqui- 
tanian stage in a bed sometimes 65 feet thick. In Transylvania, and 
along the base of the Carpathian Mountains, extensive masses of rock- 
salt and gypsum are interstratified in the ‘““Neogene ” formations. 
Section III.—Miocene. 
§ 1. General Characters. 
The European Miocene deposits reveal great changes in the 
geography of the Continent as compared with its condition in earlier 
Tertiary time. So far as yet known, Britain was a land surface 
during the Miocene period; but a shallow sea extended towards the 
south-east and south, covering the lowlands of Belgium and the 
basin of the Loire and spreading over the south of France so as to 
connect the Atlantic Ocean north of Spain with the Mediterranean. 
It may have been an extension of the same sea that swept along the 
northern base of the now uplifted Alps, sending a long arm into the 
1 Suess, Der Boden von Wien, 1860. Th. Fuchs, Erlaéuterungen zur Geol. Karte der 
Umgebungen Wiens, 1873, and papers in Zeitsch. Deutsch. Geol. Gesell, 1877 (p. 653) 
Jahrb. Geol. Reichsanst. vols. xviii. et seg. Von Hauer’s Geologie. 
