218 
ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY. 
larger dimensions than even its great living representative, 
the salamander of Japan. 
The OEningen strata consist of a series of marls and lime¬ 
stones, many of them thinly laminated, and which appear to 
have slowly accumulated in a lake probably fed by springs 
holding carbonate of lime in solution. The elliptical area 
over which this fresh-water formation has been traced ex¬ 
tends, according to Sir Roderick Murchison, for a distance of 
ten miles east and west from Beiiingen, on the right bank of 
the river to Wangen, and to (Eningen, near Stein, on the left 
bank. The organic remains have been chiefly derived from 
two quarries, the lower of which is about 550 feet above the 
level of the Lake of Constance, while the upper quarry is 150 
feet higher. In this last, a section thirty feet deep displays 
a great succession of beds, most of them splitting into slabs 
and some into very thin laminae. Twenty-one beds are enu¬ 
merated by Professor Heer, the uppermost a bluish-gray marl 
seven feet thick, with organic remains, resting on a limestone 
with fossil plants, including leaves of poplar, cinnamon, and 
pond-weed {Potamogeto7i)^ together with some insects; while 
in the bed No. 4, below, is a bituminous rock, in which the 
Mastodo7i tapiroideSj a characteristic Upper Miocene quadru¬ 
ped, has been met with. The 5th bed, two or three inches 
thick, contains fossil fish, e. g., Leuciscus (roach), and the larvae 
of dragon-flies, with plants such as the elm ( TJlmus)^ and the 
aquatic Chara. Below this are other plant-beds; and then, 
in No. 9, the stone in which the great salamander {A^idrias 
Scheuchzeri) and some fish were found. Below this other 
strata occur with fish, tortoises, the great salamander before, 
alluded to, fresh-water mussels, and plants. In No. 16 the 
fossil fox of (Eningen, Galecynus CEningensis^ Owen, was ob¬ 
tained by Sir R. Murchison. To this succeed other beds with 
mammalia {Lagomys)^ reptiles {Emys)^ fish, and plants, such 
as walnut, maple, and poplar. In the 19th bed are numerous 
fish, insects, and plants, below which are marls of a blue in¬ 
digo color. 
In the lower quarry eleven beds are mentioned, in which, 
as in the upper, both land and fresh-water plants and many 
insects occur. In the 6th, reckoning from the top, many 
plants have been obtained, such as Liqiddambar^ Daph^iogerie^ 
Podogonium^ and Ulmus^ together with tortoises, besides the 
bones and teeth of a ruminant quadruped, named by H. von 
Meyer Palmomeryx eminens. No. 9 is called the insect-bed, 
a layer only a few inches thick, which, when exposed to the 
frost, splits into leaves as thin as paper. In these thin laminae 
plants such as Liquidambm\ Daphnoge^ie^ and Glyptostrohus^ 
