of Edinburgh^ Session 1862-63. 
79 
The following Communications were read : — 
1. Notes on the Geology of Liineburg, in the kingdom 
of Hanover. By the Kev. Kobert Boog Watson. 
Liineburg is the capital of the old Hanoverian duchy of the 
same name. It stands on the small navigable river Ilmenau, about 
thirty miles S.E. from Hamburg, and about 150 feet above the 
sea. The country around is a flat sandy heath, from which the 
gypseous limestone rock of the Kalkberg rises, not unlike Dum- 
barton Castle, to a height of 180 feet above the plain. The strata 
which here present themselves are — 
1. Eecent sea sand. 
2. Boulder sand, sometimes 100 feet thick, full of boulders large 
and small, of gneiss, chalk, flints, flint-fossils, and great lumps of 
amber. — Absent from the site of the town and from the Kalkberg^ 
but present at elevations in the neighbourhood considerably greater 
than either. Liineburg was not therefore, as it has been described, 
“ a Helgoland in the Boulder Clay sea.” (Both. Zeitschrift der 
Deutschen Geol. Gesell. 1860.) 
3. Miocene clay, with fossils, sometimes from 200 to 300 feet 
thick. — It rests unconformably on the chalk ; but within the town, 
and round the Kalkberg, where the chalk is absent, it lies directly 
on the gypsum. It has not been disturbed by intrusion from below, 
as the underlying strata have been, but its upper surface has been 
violently torn and abraded during the Boulder Clay period. It often 
crops out through the overlying sands, and its presence is generally 
indicated by fine woods of forest trees. 
4. Upper white chalk, with flints and characteristic fossils. — 
Absent from the site of the town and around the Kalkberg, but 
spreading out all around, appearing on the surface, however, only 
in one patch on the north side of the town. 
5. Triassic clays, limestones, and shales, with fossils. — Present 
on the surface only in a patch west of the chalk, and intermediate 
between the chalk and the Kalkberg, but found below the surface 
in a thin layer over the entire site of the town, and further met 
with wherever borings have been made through the chalk. 
6. Gypsum and anhydrite. — Found wherever borings have been 
