290 
SALT DEPOSIT OF WIELICZKA. 
M. Huot, with the tertiary. On the one hand, besides Nummulites, these beds con- 
tain, according to MM. Dubois and Huot, the Spondylus striatus (Goldf.), Podop- 
sis id. (Brongn.), a cretaceous shell, and a Terebratula, very closely approaching to 
T. carnea of the chalk ; and on the other, many species of shells absolutely identical 
with well-known fossils of the Paris and London basins, viz. Ostrea latissima (Desh.), 
(0. gig antea, Brander), Cerithium giganteum, Turritella imbricataria, Ovula tubercu- 
losa, Cardium porulosum, Voluta luctator, Ampullaria crassatina, &c. Seeing this as- 
semblage of fossils, we cannot but agree with M. Huot, that these Crimean beds must 
be classed as tertiary. On the whole, we consider their uppermost portion to be 
ot the same age as our shelly sands of Antipofka, w'hilst the lower beds seem most 
clearly to indicate a passage between the so-called secondary and tertiary rocks. 
II. Middle Tertiary Rocks {Miocene, 8fc.).— We have said that deposits of lime- 
stone, sand and marl, charged with sea-shells, are largely spread over the southern 
tracts of Russia, and that some of them have been compared by M. v. Buch with 
the Sub-Apennine strata of Italy. The latter constitute, in fact, the great accumu- 
lations of Podolia and Volhynia, explored by MM. Eichwald and Dubois, whence 
they extend into the southern parts of Poland on the west, and are prolonged into 
Moldavia, Bessarabia, and New Russia on the south and east. 
Salt Deposits of Wieliczka. — Judging from their position on the flanks of the 
outer or lower Carpathian chain, and from their passing under the sands and shelly 
beds which we are about to describe, w T e think that the saliferous deposits extending 
along the outer edge of the Carpathians, from Wieliczka to Bochnia and Stara-sol, 
constitute the lowest stage of this group. In a work devoted to the geology of Russia, 
it does not perhaps strictly fall within our province to treat of these saliferous depo- 
sits ; for they are all included within the Austrian dominions ; but as from their con- 
tiguity to the Russian frontier they are noted upon our Map, and as we examined 
them in situ, in order to place them in relation with the adjacent shelly tertiary de- 
posits of Poland and Russia, we may be permitted to express our own opinions con- 
cerning them ; particularly as the fact of their thinning out to the north must be 
considered of some practical importance. So long as the presence of rock-salt was 
supposed to be an indication of the age of the strata in which it occurs, the saliferous 
strata of Wieliczka were grouped with formations of much higher antiquity, in which 
that mineral most abounds (New Red Sandstone, &c.), but the discovery of certain 
shells in the matrix of the salt of Wieliczka has, for some years, led geologists to 
consider the deposit as of tertiary epoch, though its exact place in the series has 
not been determined. A perfectly correct view can, however, now be taken, both 
