244 
ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY. 
Professor Beyrich. has made known to us the existence of 
a long succession of marine strata in North Germany, which 
lead by an almost gradual transition from beds of Upper 
Miocene age to others of the age of the base of the Lower 
Miocene. Although some of the German lignites called 
Brown Coal belong to the upper parts of this series, the most 
important of them are of Lower Miocene date, as, for exam¬ 
ple, those of the Siebengebirge, near Bonn, which are associa¬ 
ted with volcanic rocks. 
Professor Beyrich confines the term Miocene ” to those 
strata which agree in age with the faluns of Touraine, and 
he has proposed the term Oligocene ” for those older for¬ 
mations called Lower Miocene in this work. 
Lower Miocene of Italy—In the hills of which the Superga 
forms a part there is a great series of Tertiary strata which 
pass downward into the Lower Miocene. Even in the Su¬ 
perga itself there are some fossil plants which, according to 
Heer, have never been found in Switzerland so high as the 
marine Molasse, such as Sanksia longifolia^ and Carpinus 
grandis. In several parts of the Ligurian Apennines, as at 
Dego and Carcare, the Lower Miocene appears, containing 
some nummiilites, and at Cadibona, north of Savona, fresh¬ 
water strata of the same age occur, with dense beds of lig¬ 
nite inclosing remains of the Anthraeotherium magnum and 
A, minimum^ besides other mammalia enumerated by Gas- 
taldL In these beds a great number of the Lower Miocene 
plants of Switzerland have been discovered. 
Lower Miocene of England—Hempstead Beds.— We have 
already stated that the Upper Miocene formation is nowhere 
represented in the British Isles; but strata referable to the 
Lower Miocene period are found both in England, Scotland, 
and Ireland. In the Hampshire basin these occupy a very 
small superficial area, having been discovered by the late 
Edward Forbes at Hempstead near Yarmouth, in the north¬ 
ern part of the Isle of Wight, where they are 170 feet thick, 
and rich in characteristic marine shells. They overlie the 
uppermost of an extensive series of Eocene deposits of ma¬ 
rine, brackish, and fresh-water formations, which rest on the 
Chalk and terminate upward in strata corresponding in age 
to the Paris gypsum, and containing the same extinct gen¬ 
era of quadrupeds, Palmotherium^ Anoplotherium^ and others 
which Cuvier first described. The following is the succes¬ 
sion of these Lower Miocene strata, most of them exposed 
in a cliff east of Yarmouth : 
1. The uppermost or Corbula beds, consisting of marine 
sands and clays, contain Valuta JRathieri^ a characteristic 
