14 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
the Allier to Scrope’s celebrated river section, when we were 
struck by what appeared to be, at a short distance, some large 
bright blue flowers. On approaching them they proved to be 
dwarf elder bushes ( Sambucus niger) covered with a quantity 
of small azure chafers (a species of Hoplia ), a beautiful insect 
much used in Paris and other towns for brooches, necklaces, 
■&c. So numerous were these blue chafers that the panicles of 
the elder-flowers were studded with them, and presented a 
remarkable spectacle. 
Scrope’s section of the cliff on the banks of the Allier at the 
base of the Puy de Pallet is well known, and the principal 
point to direct attention to is the lowest bed, exhibited when 
the river is low — which it was not at our last visit. It is a 
limestone, charged with volcanic fragments as if there had 
been a volcano on the borders of the lake, which erupted an 
abundance of scoriae. Over this lies a limestone full of the casts 
and remains of land and freshwater shells, some of them snail 
shells ( Helicidce ) washed into the lake ; others freshwater shells, 
such as Planorbis and Lymncea , which lived in the waters. It 
is probable that these beds on the Allier represent those at the 
base of Grergovia, where also TJnios are found. The highest bed 
of the section is full of volcanic matter. The beds dip west- 
ward, and behind the cliff we see the isolated mass of the Puy 
de Pallet, composed of strata similar to those of Grergovia, 
though so masked by vineyards and cultivation that it is 
difficult to make out their succession. The basaltic platform, 
too, is much broken up at the surface by atmospheric action 
and decay. The observer will see the cliff near the road to 
the village of Pallet, capped with a river drift of an ancient 
Allier, which flowed far above the present river level. Again, 
he will not fail to remark a road section before descending the 
hill to Pallet, where a thick mass of atmospheric drift overlies 
the old river-bed, and that this must have accumulated under 
different circumstances to the present. 
The Mont Dove. — The road from Clermont to Mont Pore 
passes by Montrognon and the moutonnee-looking granitic 
rocks to Fontfredde and Kandanne, which is the place for the 
traveller to make inquiries about ponies or horses when at 
Mont Pore les Bains. So late was the spring of 1876, that 
between Kandanne and the Rochers Sanadoire and Tuiliere 
we passed pine woods with numerous branches lately broken 
off by the weight of May snows, and hardly a plant showed its 
blossoms along the great tract of ancient lava currents over 
which the road passes. We passed some time in the examination 
of those well-known rocks — the Kochers Sanadoire and Tuiliere 
— and there are none more grand and picturesque in the Mont 
Pore country. They rise like giant pyramids on the opposite 
