Vol. 58.] SUBALPINE PLIOCENE CONGLOMERATES. 459 
to Savigny, and about 300 yards south of a group of houses called 
‘les Cases,’ there is a quarried exposure of Deckenschotter con- 
glomerate about 20 metres in depth and at about the 800-metre 
contour, that is, practically on the plateau. This deposit is probably 
part of a much more extensive occurrence of Deckenschotter in situ, 
and derives special interest and importance from the fact that it is 
met with at an altitude of fully 400 metres, or about 1300 feet above 
the present Lake of Geneva. 
The next important exposure of Deckenschotter occurs about 
+ miles north-east of Rolle,’ immediately below the Trigonometrical 
Survey point called Signal de Bougy (709 metres above sea-level). 
There a cliff of Deckenschotter, varying from 20 to 30 metres in 
thickness, and resting upon Molasse, extends for some distance at 
about the 650-metre contour, or 300 metres above the present 
lake-level. 
These two deposits exhibit all the characteristics of Decken- 
schotter, and their occurrence at practically the same elevation 
above sea- and lake-level as the Albis and Uetliberg deposits near 
Zurich invests them with special significance. 
(3) On the heights above Bellegarde * (right bank of the Rhone), 
near Chatillon, there occur, at contour 450 to 500, that is about 
200 metres above the present valley-floor,? extensive deposits of 
Deckenschotter-conglomerate similar to that of Lausanne and 
Rolle. These deposits thus appear to constitute the link between 
the Lausanne deposits and those of the Dombes district east of 
Lyons. 
(4) The plateau of the Dombes, forming an irregular quadrangle 
between Lyons, Thoissey, Bourg, and Meximieux, and extending to 
a distance of about 25 miles north and east of Lyons, is composed 
of blue marine marl of Middle Pliocene age, which is covered 
by a sheet of reddish conglomerate about 20 metres thick, 
generally passing into and resting upon sand of the same colour, 
and overlain by clayey morainic, and, therefore, more or less 
1 My attention was first drawn to these deposits by Prof. Renevier, of 
Lausanne, who, however, was then disposed to regard them as either inter- 
Glacial or pre-Glacial. The extensive gravel-bank of the Boisde la Batie, near 
the junction of the Rhéne and Aare at Geneva, is, in my view, inter-Glacial ; and 
the same applies to the Dranse deposit near Thonon, both being at low altitudes 
and overlain by moraine of the third glaciation. A. Favre describes the former 
as ‘pre-Glacial’ (‘alluvion acqueuse’) and the latter as ‘Glacial’ in his 
‘ Recherches Géol. Savoie’ vol. i (1867) pp. 89 & 78. 
2 It is interesting to note that, as early as 1859, Venetz (Soc. Helv. Sci. Nat. 
Nouy. Mém. yol. xviii) endeavoured to show that the Rhone Glacier had 
advanced three times. ‘The first advance (in Pleistocene times) was beyond the 
Jura, when the Bellegarde Valley was, according to his estimate, at least 200 
metres higher than now ; the:second, to the foot of the Jura, as far as Soleure ; 
and the third, as far as Noville, at the head of the present Lake of Geneva. 
A fourth local advance occurred, in his opinion, towards the end of prehistoric 
times, as far as Obergestelen, in the Upper Rhone Valley. 
