634 MR J. W. GREGORY ON THE MALTESE FOSSIL ECHINOIDEA. 



Table of Maltese Strata. 



TT « i,- r- ( a-- White Coralline Limestone, i 



Upper Coralline Limestone V " Gozo Marble." 



/o^rw r i\ \ <>• Keddisli-yellow Limestone. ( 



(300 feet), ) ~-._n.-r. 



v c. Soft White Limestone. 



Greensand (35 feet), a. Indurated Yellow Sand. (Clypeaster bed.) 



Blue Clay (40 feet), b. Friable Black Sand. 



I a. White rotten Limestone. (Fossils badly preserved.) 

 1st Nodule seam. 



b. Fine hard-grained Limestone. 

 2nd Nodule seam. 



c. Compact semi-crystalline Limestone. 

 3rd Nodule seam. 



d. Yellowish soft Limestone. (Fossils well preserved.) 

 4th Nodule seam. 



Scutella bed. 



Globigerina Limestone 

 (250 feet), 



i a. bciiteua bed. 

 Lower Limestone (500 ft.), I 7 ^ , , T . , 



v n \ b. Hard compact Limestone 



It is fortunate that the Maltese series of deposits begins and ends with shallow water 

 limestones, which admit of comparison on equal terms with their representatives on the 

 mainland. The succession which is of most value for this purpose is that so well 

 described by Segtjenza in his elaborate Memoir, " Le Formazioni Terziarie nella Provincia 

 di Reggio (Calabria)." # 



There are rocks in Sicily which seem to agree more closely lithologically with those of 

 Malta, but their Echinoidea have not been so well monographed. The Calabrian series 

 is of special value, as it includes a succession of littoral deposits from the Tongrian to the 

 Tortonian, that is, throughout both the Oligocene and Miocene systems. In the Tongrian 

 there we find Scutella striatula, Marc de Serr. (recorded, however, as S. subrotunda\), 

 which is the best-known fossil of the Lower Coralline Limestone. It is the most 

 characteristic species of the Tongrian throughout the Mediterranean basin ; in France it 

 occurs in the Calcaire a Asteries, while the true S. subrotunda (Leske, pars) is the typical 

 species of the Faluns of Leognan (i.e., the base of the Langhian). Similarly in the 

 Vicentin district the latter occurs in the Schio Schichten (Aquitanian), and S. tenera, Lbe. 

 (a very near ally of S. striatula), is the representative of the older species in the Lower 

 Oligocene. Similarly other Echinoids from the Lower Coralline Limestone have their 

 nearest allies in the Tongrian fauna ; thus Echinus tongrianus, Greg., most resembles 

 E. biarritzensis, Cott., from the Calcaire a Asteries in the south of France, and from the 

 Castel Gomberto beds of Vicentin (both of which are Tongrian). Unfortunately, the 

 larger bed of this division in Malta is so hard that the fossils have not been so well 

 collected as from higher horizons, and the specimens are usually covered by the limestone ; 

 but, so far as the fauna is known, it appears to be certainly Oligocene and probably 

 Tongrian. It may have been that the Scutella striatula fauna lived on longer in the south 



* Atti. R. Ac. Lincei, 3 a Ser. Mem., vol. vi., 1879, pp. 1-446, pi. i.-xvii. 

 t See the remarks on this species, ante, p. 597-98. 



