386 
SECOND REPORT- 1832 . 
kum. With respect to this country the most valuable recent 
Memoirs are those of Oeynhausen and Dechen on the carbo¬ 
niferous and transition districts of the South; with these we 
may compare Cauchy’s Essay on the province of Namur, to 
which a prize was awarded by the Brussels Academy; and the 
communications of MM. Dumont and Davreux on the province 
of Liege, in which it appears that the coal of that district is, 
like that on the northern edge of our Northumberland district, 
an inferior series, beneath the carboniferous line. The district of 
Brabant has been fully described by Morven, and that of Lux¬ 
embourg by La Riviere. 
Our geographical survey of the progress of our science will 
next conduct us to the Alpine districts. The interesting ex¬ 
cursions of Saussure through these magnificent chains in the 
last century were among the first causes which attracted the 
attention of European science to subjects of geological investi¬ 
gation ; but we still remained without anything like a precise 
and systematic general view of their structure, until Ebel, in 
1808, published his treatise Ueber die Bau der Erde in den 
Alpen Gebirge, which contains a detailed account of the cen¬ 
tral primitive axis and of the lateral zones of secondary Alpine 
limestone and tertiary nagelflue, together with a comparative 
view of the other principal European mountain chains, and a 
more minute description of the Jura; the whole being illustrated 
with geological maps and sections exhibiting a near approxima¬ 
tion to correctness. Soon after this date Brochant also greatly 
extended our knowledge of these mountain groups, by proving 
that much of the formations immediately bounding the central 
axis, to which previously a far higher antiquity had been as¬ 
signed, belonging undoubtedly to the secondary class; still how¬ 
ever the correct identification of the members of the lateral cal¬ 
careous zones with the equivalent formations in other portions 
of Europe remained without any satisfactory elucidation,—a fact 
which may be partly explained from the very unusual charac¬ 
ters which these formations here assume ; a variation to be 
attributed to circumstances which during the grand convul¬ 
sions of this chain have greatly modified the more recent 
depositions accumulated on its flanks *. Prof. Buckland, 
* In approaching and entering into the composition of these vast mountains 
the ordinary characters of the secondary rocks undergo a very material change, 
exhibiting that degree of compact consolidation which usually marks rocks of 
much older formation. A similar alteration of character, and assumption as it 
were of features of higher antiquity, may even be observed in the transition 
rocks under the same connexion ; for w T e find, according to Murchison, lime¬ 
stone as highly crystalline as any primitive marble, and alternating with mica- 
