TRIAS OF GERMANY. 
375 
salt lake, called the Balir Assal, near the Abyssinian front¬ 
ier, which once formed the prolongation of the Gulf of Tad- 
jara, but was afterwards cut off from the gulf by a broad bar 
of lava or of land upraised by an earthquake. “Fed by no 
rivers, and exposed in a burning climate to the unmitigated 
rays of the sun, it has shrunk into an elliptical basin, seven 
miles in its transverse axis, half filled with smooth water of 
the deepest caerulean hue, and half with a solid sheet of glit¬ 
tering snow-white salt, the offspring of evaporation.” “ If,” 
says Mr. Hugh Miller, “ we suppose, instead of a barrier of 
lava, that sand-bars were raised by the surf on a flat arena¬ 
ceous coast during a slow and equable sinking of the surface, 
the waters of the outer gulf might occasionally topple over 
the bar,-and supply fresh brine when the first stock had been 
exhausted by evaporation.” 
The Runn of Cutch, as I have shown elsewhere,^ is a low 
region near the delta of the Indus, equal in extent to about 
a quarter of Ireland, which is neither land nor sea, being dry 
during part of every year, and covered by salt Avater during 
the monsoons. Here and there its surface is incrusted over 
with a layer of salt caused by the evaporation of sea-water. 
A subsiding movement has been witnessed in this country 
during earthquakes, so that a great thickness of pure salt 
might result from a continuation of such sinking. 
TRIAS OF GERMANY. 
In Germany, as before hinted, p. 369, the Trias fii’st re¬ 
ceived its name as a Triple Group, consisting of tAvo sand¬ 
stones with an intermediate marine calcareous formation, 
which last is wanting in England. 
NOMENCLATURE OF TRIAS. 
German 
French 
English 
Keuper .... 
Marnes irisees . 
(Saliferous and gypseous 
( shales and sandstone. 
Muschelkalk . . . 
(Muschelkalk, ou 
( coquillier. 
calcaiiej. yyan ting in England. 
Bimter-sandstein . . 
Gres bigaiTe 
(Sandstone and quartz- 
* ' ( ose conglomerate. 
Keuper.—The first of these, or the Keuper, underlying the 
beds before described as Rhsetic, attains in Wiirtemberg a 
thickness of about 1000 feet. It is divided by Alberti into 
sandstone, gypsum, and carbonaceous clay-slate.f Remains 
of reptiles called JSFothosaurus and Phytosmirus^ have been 
found in it with Labyrinthodon; the detached teeth, also, of 
* Principles of Geology, chap, xxvii. 
t Monog. des Bunter-Sandsteins. 
