264 CRETACEOUS SYSTEM OF POLAND, THE CARPATHIANS, ETC. 
bedded, dingy white, and cream-coloured marlstones, occasionally very like the 
more chalky beds ot the upper greensand, or “ craie chloritee.” They there 
contain Inocerami with Spatangus cor-anguinum, Terebratula carnea, and other well- 
known chalk fossils ; and the basin, both at its northern and southern extremities, 
rests upon Jurassic strata. The rock, for example, on which the citadel of Cracow 
stands, which, from its white colour and imbedded flints, was long considered to be 
chalk, is, as we have before mentioned, the southernmost of these Jurassic 
zones. 
But as we have not had leisure to decipher the relative age of the different 
members of the Cretaceous system of Poland, we must refer to the works on that 
subject by M. Pusch, and also to the recent labours of Professor Zeuschner, who 
has thrown new light upon the fossil contents of the secondary formations of his 
native country. There is, however, one great geological feature which cannot here 
be passed over in silence, viz. the widely-diffused sandstone and shale which occupies 
so prominent a space upon our Map on the northern flank of the Carpathian chain, 
and is coloured by us as cretaceous. In so classifying the Carpathian sandstone, 
or “ Grtis des Carpathes,” we adopt the conclusions of the leader of German geo- 
logists, M. Von Buch, and of our precursor M. Boue, and are necessarily at variance 
with the newly-published opinion of M. Zeuschner, who accompanied one of us in 
a traverse across these outer ridges or “ contre-forts ” of the Tatra Mountains. In 
stating our own view, we must at the same time admit that, as a whole, the “ Gres 
des Carpathes ” is very different in mineral composition from the Quader Sandstein 
of the adjacent low countries of Silesia, Moravia, &c. ; and that, as yet, it has offered 
no distinct organic remains beyond those fucoids which have been considered as 
marking the lower stage of the Cretaceous system. We adhere, however, to our 
opinion for this plain reason ; that in our transverse section to the Tatra we 
found the lowest beds of this Carpathian sandstone composed of sand and dark 
shale, reposing upon a limestone 1 loaded with Nummulites, Pectens, Echini, &c 
which rock is clearly incumbent upon the Jura or Alpine limestone, — with its cha- 
racteristic fossils, and including in its lower beds some well known Lias species. 
In fact, we found the Tatra chain and its dependencies upon the north to be a 
repetition, as nearly as possible in all its parts, of the Austrian Alps, with the sur- 
vey of which one of us was formerly much occupied. The sandstone and shale of 
1 These Nummulites are distinct in specific characters from those occurring in rocks, which in the Pyre- 
nees, the Crimsea and other countries, constitute the uppermost cretaceous or lowest tertiary stratum 
