SECOND REPORT -1832. 
to the strata and their importance : from his descriptions alone 
I was enabled satisfactorily to identify the scaglia as equivalent 
to our chalk, and to point out our oolites as represented by 
much of the Alpine secondary limestone, while as yet the Con¬ 
tinental war precluded English geologists from the possibility 
of personal examination. In 1818, in preparing a general sec¬ 
tion of Europe for the Oxford Lectures of my friend Prof. 
Buckland, I coloured the formations on the southern slope of 
the Alps on this principle. Arduino’s views on the volcanic 
action which has affected this district in the phenomena of the 
Euganean hills, Monte Bolca, &c., are equally excellent. 
However wide be the discrepance of mineralogical character, 
yet the relations of position and the organic remains contained 
may be considered as satisfactorily identifying the great mass 
of the Alpine limestones with our own oolitic series, and the 
upper members with our cretaceous formations ; but it has been 
well observed by Prof. Sedgwick, that while the aggregate of 
the organic remains of a formation generally presents an assem¬ 
blage nearly identical, yet the subordinate distribution of these 
remains is materially affected by the diversity of the mineral 
constitution of different portions of contemporaneous forma¬ 
tions : this indeed might have naturally been expected, just 
as we find some shells and zoophytes actually requiring a solid 
bottom to which they can firmly attach themselves, and others 
indifferent to this and equally found among drifting sand and 
mud ; on this principle we may account for the occurrence of 
certain shells principally in beds of limestone, while these are 
absent from the alternating shales and sands. “ Thus,” the Pro¬ 
fessor proceeds, “we perceive that in these Eastern Alps where- 
ever a secondary deposit approaches the mineral type of the 
English equivalents, the same approximation extends to the or¬ 
ganic remains from such observations we may hereafter hope 
satisfactorily to infer the causes which have induced such remark¬ 
able alterations throughout these vast mountainous groups. 
Germany .—Proceeding to the lower regions of Germany, we 
find, as the preceding remarks would lead us to expect, a much 
closer agreement, both mineralogical and zoological, between the 
oolitic series as there exhibited and our English equivalents *. 
* The Lias .—The inferior ferruginous oolite occasionally ( e. y. in Westphalia 
at the Buckeberg,) containing coal like that of Brora and the Eastern Yorkshire 
moorlands, are shown by Mr. Murchison to be easily identified with the cor¬ 
responding formations of our own island: he is inclined, though still with some 
hesitation, to compare the Solenhofen calcareous slates with the similar beds 
of Stonesfield. It is unnecessary to repeat, that in Western Germany and East¬ 
ern France the oolitic group immediately reposes on the arenaceous keuper and 
