(b) The Oignin, which flows from south to north. It receives the drainage of the lake of Nantua, a town noted for combs and silk weaving, and which communicates by the “cluse” of the Lac de Silan with the Valserine valley, and so with the Rhone at Bellegarde, and again with the various routes which meet under the walls of the fort of Les Rousses, while by the Val Romey and the Séran Culoz is easily gained.
(c) The Albarine, connected with Culoz by the “cluse” of Virieu, and by the Furan flowing south with Belley, the capital of the district of Bugey (the old name for the South Jura).
The “cluses” of Nantua and Virieu are now both traversed by important railways; and it is even truer than of old that the keys of the south Jura are Lyons and Geneva. But of course the strategic importance of these gorges is less than appears at first sight, because they can be turned by following the Rhone in its great bend to the south.
The range is mentioned by Caesar (Bell. Gall. i. 2-3, 6 (1), and 8 (1)), Strabo (iv. 3, 4, and 6, 11), Pliny (iii. 31; iv. 105; xvi. 197) and Ptolemy (ii. ix. 5), its name being a word which appears under many forms (e.g. Joux, Jorat, Jorasse, Juriens), and is a synonym for a wood or forest. The German name is Leberberg, Leber being a provincial word for a hill.
Politically the Jura is French (departments of the Doubs, Jura and Ain) and Swiss (parts of the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Bern, Soleure and Basel); but at its north extremity it takes in a small bit of Alsace (Pfirt or Ferrette). In the middle ages the southern, western and northern sides were parcelled out into a number of districts, all of which were gradually absorbed by the French crown, viz., Gex, Val Romey, Bresse and Bugey (exchanged in 1601 by Savoy for the marquisate of Saluzzo), Franche-Comté, or the Free County of Burgundy, an imperial fief till annexed in 1674, the county of Montbéliard (Mömpelgard) acquired in 1793, and the county of Ferrette (French 1648-1871). The northern part of the eastern side was held till 1792 (part till 1797) by the bishop of Basel as a fief of the empire, and then belonged to France till 1814, but was given to Bern in 1815 (as a recompense for its loss of Vaud), and now forms the Bernese Jura, a French-speaking district. The centre of the eastern slope formed the principality of Neuchâtel (q.v.) and the county of Valangin, which were generally held by Burgundian nobles, came by succession to the kings of Prussia in 1707, and were formed into a Swiss canton in 1815, though they did not become free from formal Prussian claims until 1857. The southern part of the eastern slope originally belonged to the house of Savoy, but was conquered bit by bit by Bern, which was forced in 1815 to accept its subject district Vaud as a colleague and equal in the Swiss Confederation. It was Charles the Bold’s defeats at Grandson and Morat which led to the annexation by the confederates of these portions of Savoyard territory.
Authorities.—E. F. Berlioux, Le Jura (Paris, 1880); F. Machacek, Der Schweizer Jura (Gotha, 1905); A. Magnin, Les lacs du Jura (Paris, 1895); J. Zimmerli, “Die Sprachgrenze im Jura” (vol. i. of his Die Deutsch-französische Sprachgrenze in der Schweiz (Basel, 1891). For the French slope see Joanne’s large Itinéraire to the Jura, and the smaller volumes relating to the departments of the Ain, Doubs and Jura, in his Géographies départementales. For the Swiss slope see 3 vols. in the series of the Guides Monod (Geneva); A. Monnier, La Chaux de Fonds et le Haut-Jura Neuchâtelois; J. Monod, Le Jura Bernois; and E. J. P. de la Harpe, Le Jura Vaudois.
(W. A. B. C.)
JURASSIC, in geology, the middle period of the Mesozoic era, that is to say, succeeding the Triassic and preceding the Cretaceous periods. The name Jurassic (French jurassique; German Juraformation or Jura) was first employed by A. Brongniart and A. von Humboldt for the rocks of this age in the western Jura mountains of Switzerland, where they are well developed. It was in England, however, that they were first studied by William Smith, in whose hands they were made to lay the foundations of stratigraphical geology. The names adopted by him for the subdivisions he traced across the country have passed into universal use, and though some of them are uncouth English provincial names, they are as familiar to the geologists of France, Switzerland and Germany as to those of England. During the following three decades Smith’s work was elaborated by W. D. Conybeare and W. Phillips. The Jurassic rocks of fossils of the European continent were described by d’Orbigny, 1840-1846; by L. von Buch, 1839; by F. A. Quenstedt, 1843-1888; by A. Oppel, 1856-1858; and since then by many other workers: E. Benecke, E. Hébert, W. Waagen, and others. The study of Jurassic rocks has continued to attract the attention of geologists, partly because the bedding is so well defined and regular—the strata are little disturbed anywhere outside the Swiss Jura and the Alps—and partly because the fossils are numerous and usually well-preserved. The result has been that no other system of rocks has been so carefully examined throughout its entire thickness; many “zones” have been established by means of the fossils—principally by ammonites—and these zones are not restricted to limited districts, but many of them hold good over wide areas. Oppel distinguished no fewer than thirty-three zonal horizons, and since then many more sub-zonal divisions have been noted locally.
The existence of faunal regions in Jurassic times was first pointed out by J. Marcou; later M. Neumayr greatly extended observations in this direction. According to Neumayr, three distinct geographical regions of deposit can be made out among the Jurassic rocks of Europe: (1) The Mediterranean province, embracing the Pyrenees, Alps and Carpathians, with all the tracts lying to the south. One of the biological characters of this area was the great abundance of ammonites belonging to the groups of Heterophylli (Phylloceras) and Fimbriati (Lytoceras). (2) The central European province, comprising the tracts lying to the north of the Alpine ridge, and marked by the comparative rarity of the ammonites just mentioned, which are replaced by others of the groups Inflati (Aspidoceras) and Oppelia, and by abundant reefs and masses of coral. (3) The boreal or Russian province, comprising the middle and north of Russia, Spitzbergen and Greenland. The life in this area was much less varied than in the others, showing that in Jurassic times there was a perceptible diminution of temperature towards the north. The ammonites of the more southern tracts here disappear, together with the corals.