Upper Miocene of the Bolderberg, in Belgium.—In a small hill or ridge called the Bolderberg, which I visited in 1851, situated near Hasselt, about forty miles E.N.E. of Brussels, strata of sand and gravel occur, to which M. Dumont first called attention as appearing to constitute a northern representative of the faluns of Touraine. On the whole, they are very distinct in their fossils from the two upper divisions of the Antwerp Crag before mentioned [(p. 204)], and contain shells of the genera Oliva, Conus, Ancillaria, Pleurotoma, and Cancellaria in abundance. The most common shell is an Olive (Fig. 146), called by Nyst Oliva Dufresnii; and constituting, as M. Bosquet observes, a smaller and shorter variety of the Bordeaux species.

So far as the shells of the Bolderberg are known, the proportion of recent species agrees with that in the faluns of Touraine, and the climate must have been warmer than that of the Coralline Crag of England.

Upper Miocene Beds of the Vienna Basin.—In South Germany the general resemblance of the shells of the Vienna tertiary basin with those of the faluns of Touraine has long been acknowledged. In the late Dr. Hörnes’s excellent work on the fossil mollusca of that formation, we see accurate figures of many shells, clearly of the same species as those found in the falunian sands of Touraine.

According to Professor Suess, the most ancient and purely marine of the Miocene strata in this basin consist of sands, conglomerates, limestones, and clays, and they are inclined inward, or from the borders of the trough towards the centre, their outcropping edges rising much higher than the newer beds, whether Miocene or Pliocene, which overlie them, and which occupy a smaller area at an inferior elevation above the sea. M. Hornes has described no less than 500 species of gasteropods, of which he identifies one-fifth with living species of the Mediterranean, Indian, or African seas, but the proportion of existing species among the lamellibranchiate bivalves exceeds this average. Among many univalves agreeing with those of Africa on the eastern side of the Atlantic are Cypræa sanguinolenta, Buccinum lyratum, and Oliva flammulata. In the lowest marine beds of the Vienna basin the remains of several mammalia have been found, and among them a species of Dinotherium, a Mastodon of the Trilophodon family, a Rhinoceros (allied to R. megarhinus, Christol), also an animal of the hog tribe, Listriodon, von Meyer, and a carnivorous animal of the canine family. The Helix turonensis [ (Fig. 38)], the most common land shell of the French faluns, accompanies the above land animals. In a higher member of the Vienna Miocene series are found Dinotherium giganteum [(Fig. 136)], Mastodon longirostris, Rhinoceros Schleiermacheri, Acerotherium incisivum, and Hippotherium gracile, all of them equally characteristic of an Upper Miocene deposit occurring at Eppelsheim, in Hesse Darmstadt; a locality also remarkable as having furnished in latitude 49° 50′ N. the bone of a large ape of the Gibbon kind, the most northerly example yet discovered of a quadrumanous animal.

M. Alcide d’Orbigny has shown that the foraminifera of the Vienna basin differ alike from the Eocene and Pliocene species, and agree with those of the faluns, so far as the latter are known. Among the Vienna foraminifera, the genus Amphistegina (Fig. 147) is very characteristic, and is supposed by d’Archiac to take the same place among the Rhizopods of the Upper Miocene era which the Nummulites occupy in the Eocene period.

The flora of the Vienna basin exhibits some species which have a general range through the whole Miocene period, such as Cinnamomum polymorphum [(Fig. 138)], and C. Scheuchzeri, also Planera Richardi, Mich., Liquidambar europæum [ (Fig. 135)] Juglans bilinica, Cassia ambigua, and C. lignitum. Among the plants common to the Upper Miocene beds of Œningen, in Switzerland, are Platanus aceroides [(Fig. 141)], Myrica vindobonensis, and others.

Upper Miocene Strata of Italy.—We are indebted to Signor Michelotti for a valuable work on the Miocene shells of Northern Italy. Those found in the hill called the Superga, near Turin, have long been known to correspond in age with the faluns of Touraine, and they contain so many species common to the Upper Miocene strata of Bordeaux as to lead to the conclusion that there was a free communication between the northern part of the Mediterranean and the Bay of Biscay in the Upper Miocene period.