MIDDLE EOCENE STRATA OE FRANCE. 
275 
tinguishing the detached Eocene and Upper Miocene for¬ 
mations scattered over those and other adjoining provinces. 
The discovery of the remains of Palaeotherium and other 
mammalia in some of the upper beds of the calcaire grossier 
EOCENE FORAMINIFERA. 
Fig. 219, 
Fig. 220. 
Fig. 221. 
Calcarina rarispina, Spirolina stenostoma, TnlocnUna injiata, 
Desh. Desh. Desh. 
a. Natural size. h. Maguified. 
shows that these land animals began to exist before the dep¬ 
osition of the overlying gypseous series had commenced. 
Lower Calcaire grossier, or Glauconie grossiere (B. 1, p. 252). 
—The lower part of the calcaire grossier, which often con¬ 
tains much green earth, is characterized at Auvers, near Pon- 
toise, to the north of Paris, and still more in the environs 
of Compiegne, by the abundance of nummulites, consisting 
chiefly of JSF, Icevigata^ N. scabra^ and N. LamarcM^ which 
constitute a large proportion of some of the stony strata, 
though these same foraminifera are wanting in beds of sim¬ 
ilar age in the immediate environs of Paris. 
Soissoiinais sands, or Lits coquilliers (B. 2, p. 252). —Below 
the preceding formation, shelly sands are seen, of consider¬ 
able thickness, especially at Cuisse-Lamotte, near Compiegne, 
and other localities in the Soissonnais, about fifty miles N.E. 
of Paris, from which about 300 species of shells have been 
obtained, many of them common 
to the calcaire grossier and the 
Brackleshara beds of England, and 
many peculiar. The Nummulites 
planulata is very abundant, and the 
most characteristic shell is the Ne- 
rita conoidea^ Lam., a fossil which 
has a very wide geographical range; for, as M. d’Archiac re¬ 
marks, it accompanies the nummulitic formation from Europe 
to India, having been found in Cutch, near the mouths of the 
Indus, associated with Nummidites scabra. No less than 33 
shells of this group are said to be identical with shells of the 
London clay proper, yet, after visiting Cuisse-Lamotte and 
Nerita conoidea, Lam. 
Syn. N. Schmidelliana, Chemnitz. 
