418 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
I'erliaps the last, however, luiglit be forced upon their iiotiee when they 
ariivedat the capital of tlie province, for let: /^i-ajiilcs currivres de Maastricht are 
too vast and too famotis to escape tlie attention of sight-seers. 
The fortress on St. Peter's Mount towers liigii above the sinuous walls and 
forts of the strong bulwarks wliicli defend tlic ancient town, while in the hill 
below it are cavernous passages of sueii intricate and dark extent that the 
M'andprer into them needs the guiding thread of Ariathie to insure his return 
to the light of day. 
To tlie geologist this mountain and its quarries have a higher interest than 
the wonderment they excite as iiierc gigantic excavations : the strata of 
which they are composed are the last formed of a great geological age before 
another vast geological period began — they are the termuiatiou of tlic 
secondary e})ocli, the Moijen-ajje, so to call it, of geological history. They arc 
tiic last-formed patches of the old cretaceous sea before the dawn of recent 
forms of life commenced with the earliest Tertiary beds. 
The soil of the Ducliy of Lunburg covers rocks of older and of younger age, 
from the carboniferous to the (puiternary ; but the chief purpose of the work 
under notice is to minutely detail those upjicr cretaceous beds — the chalk of 
Macstricht — where the chief geological interest centres, and which liave for many 
years attracted general attention, but wliieii only a resident could work out 
in their minutiiu, and so give to science the exact Ihnitations of the members of 
its reiiuirkable fauna to the speci;d zones or beds to which they are restricted, 
or which they serve to characterize, or to liiilv with other cretaceous deposits 
in other parts of the globe. Already a catalogue of eight hundred species of 
fossils has been noted down, and the superposition of the deposits tolerably 
well made out. 
To the scientific importance of these quarries but few could refrain from 
adding some words upon their iiistorical associations and tiuir antiquity. AI. 
I'aujas St. Fond, in his history of tliis mountain, prefaced his geological investi- 
gations with such an account, and Ilerr Binkhorst has made a like digression. 
Associated with the changing fortunes and vicissitudes of the successive 
generations that liavc resided on its soil from Koman days — perhaps days even 
more remote — unto our own, what wonder that to an inhabitant the legends of 
these gloomy caves should have an irresistible attraction. When were they 
lirst wrought out ? W ho \\ ere their first excavators ? Man caimot answer, 
and liistory is silent. 
When persecutions w-itli pagan fury were carried on against Christianity and 
civilization, religion, violently liauished from the light of day, found an asylum 
in these catacombs of the nortli, and the ministers of God, protected by tiie 
secrecy and de\-otion of the Limbourgese, celebrated their divine services sur- 
rounded by their enemies. 
We pass by too the brigandages in the IGth and 17th centuries, when Bohe- 
mian banditti' revelled iiiassaHable in tliese subterranean recesses ; and we leave 
untold scenes and incidents which have hajiponed in these caverns "vast and 
gloomy" during the many seigcs Macstricht has had to sustain; we forbear to 
tell the kmd or sinister offices'of gnomes or fairies with which superstition and 
fancy have peopled these obscure places ; we tell not the stories of all the 
gaunt skeletons of man, woman, or child who, lost in their wanderings, have 
perished there of want ; nor do we detail the oft-told torch-light combat of the 
Austrians and French in these darksome passages during the siege of 17'JJ^. 
All tiiese anecdotes and more our author repeats ; and in his introductory 
episode, as well as throughout the work, he appears to have gleaned materials 
from every available source. In this respect, ni tlic geological portion of this 
])ai-t of ins book, our author has shown extreme industry ; and liad the arrange- 
ment of the matter tiius collected been more methodical, the reader would have 
