FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 



19/ 



wonder, and which have more than once excited the curiosity and 

 admiration of the illustrious and much regretted Dumont, who sometimes 

 honoured me with a visit. 



Brussels, I should also inform my readers, stands upon the lower or 

 more ancient of the tertiary strata. D'Omalius d'Halloy classes its strata 

 in the middle Eocene formation; the town and its environs are built 

 upon an immense bed of sand, often calcareous, and presenting 

 frequently blocks of calcareous sandstone, which gradually blend into 

 a sort of shining quartzite, known as gres Uiisant by the Belgian and 

 French geologists, and blocks or strata of white or yellowish limestone. 

 These are all employed, to a certain extent, for building and paving, 

 but the stones they furnish are not large enough to be very valuable. 

 This deposit ia tolerably rich in fossils, most of which are also 

 found in the lower strata of the Paris tertiaries, which are of the 

 same age."^ 



At Groenendael — a lovely spot to the south of Brussels, a small 

 village, 



" Where greenwoods, lakes, and fragrant flowers, 

 Mossy banks and sweet-scented bowers. 

 Chase from our thoughts toil, care, and strife, 

 Recal bright summer-days of life,'' 



and which affords a far better harvest to the botanist than to the 

 " brother of the hammer " — the sand and blocks of sandstone are im- 

 pregnated with a great quantity of yellow oxide of iron (JArnonite), 

 which, when found in crystalline blocks of a darker colour, is extracted 

 for working, as it forms a tolerable iron-ore. At Laeken, the favourite 

 residence of king Leopold, we have another and more recent 

 stratum of sand, belonging, perhaps, to the upper Eocene ; but geologists 

 are divided in opinion as regards its relative age. 



Among other fossils brought to me from the middle Eocene sand of 

 Schaerbeek were some magnificent specimens of a sort of cocoa-nut. f 

 Once upon a time these " cocoa-nuts " {Nipadites) grew and flourished 

 at Brussels ; now-a-days it is as much as we can do to keep the hardy 

 date-palm alive in this climate. In the same strata with the cocoa- 



^ Our readers should refer to Sir C. Lyell's " Memoir on the Tertiary Forma- 

 tions of Belgium," in the Journ. Geol. Soc, vol viii, for details of the structure and 

 paleontology of that country, and for references to other authors and geologists 

 who have treated of the same subject. — Ed. Geologist. 



t See Lyell's Memoirs, op cit. p. 344 and pi. 19, for an account and figures of 

 these palm-nuts, allied to those of the Nij^a. — Ed. Geologist. 



