The Student’s Elements of Geology
Glacial Formations of Pliocene Age. — Bridlington Beds. — Glacial Drifts of Ireland. — Drift of Norfolk Cliffs. — Cromer Forest-bed. — Aldeby and Chillesford Beds. — Norwich Crag. — Older Pliocene Strata. — Red Crag of Suffolk. — Coprolitic Bed of Red Crag. — White or Coralline Crag. — Relative Age, Origin, and Climate of the Crag Deposits. — Antwerp Crag. — Newer Pliocene Strata of Sicily. — Newer Pliocene Strata of the Upper Val d’Arno. — Older Pliocene of Italy. — Subapennine Strata. — Older Pliocene Flora of Italy.
It will be seen in the description given in the last chapter of the Post-pliocene formations of the British Isles that they comprise a large proportion of those commonly termed glacial, characterised by shells which, although referable to living species, usually indicate a colder climate than that now belonging to the latitudes where they occur fossil. But in parts of England, more especially in Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, there are superficial formations of clay with glaciated boulders, and of sand and pebbles, containing occasional, though rare, patches of shells, in which the marine fauna begins to depart from that now inhabiting the neighbouring sea, and comprises some species of mollusca not yet known as living, as well as extinct varieties of others, entitling us to class them as Newer Pliocene, although belonging to the close of that period and chronologically on the verge of the later or Post-pliocene epoch.
Bridlington Drift.—To this era belongs the well-known locality of Bridlington, near the mouth of the Humber, in Yorkshire, where about seventy species or well-marked varieties of shells have been found on the coast, near the sea-level, in a bed of sand several feet thick resting on glacial clay with much chalk débris, and covered by a deposit of purple clay with glaciated boulders. More than a third of the species in this drift are now inhabitants of arctic regions, none of them extending southward to the British seas; which is the more remarkable as Bridlington is situated in lat. 54°
north. Fifteen species are British and Arctic, a very few belong to those species which range south of our British seas. Five species or well-marked varieties are not known living, namely, the variety of Astarte borealis (called A. Withami); A. mutabilis; the sinistral form of Tritonium carinatum, Cardita analis, and Tellina obliqua, Fig. 120, p. 194. Mr. Searles Wood also inclines to consider Nucula Cobboldiæ, Fig. 119, p. 194, now absent from the European seas and the Atlantic, as specifically distinct from a closely-allied shell now living in the seas surrounding Vancouver’s Island, which some conchologists regard as a variety. Tellina obliqua also approaches very near to a shell now living in Japan.
Glacial Drift of Ireland.—Marine drift containing the last-mentioned Nucula and other glacial shells reaches a height of from 1000 to 1200 feet in the county of Wexford, south of Dublin. More than eighty species have already been obtained from this formation, of which two, Conovulus pyramidalis and Nassa monensis, are not known as living; while Turritella incrassata and Cypræa lucida no longer inhabit the British seas, but occur in the Mediterranean. The great elevation of these shells, and the still greater height to which the surface of the rocks in the mountainous regions of Ireland have been smoothed and striated by ice-action, has led geologists to the opinion that that island, like the greater part of England and Scotland, after having been united with the continent of Europe, from whence it received the plants and animals now inhabiting it, was in great part submerged. The conversion of this and other parts of Great Britain into an archipelago was followed by a re-elevation of land and a second continental period. After all these changes the final separation of Ireland from Great Britain took place, and this event has been supposed to have preceded the opening of the straits of Dover.*
Drift of Norfolk Cliffs.—There are deposits of boulder clay and till in the Norfolk cliffs principally made up of the waste of white chalk and flints which, in the opinion of Mr. Searles Wood, jun., and others, are older than the Bridlington drift, and contain a larger proportion of shells common to the Norwich and Red Crag, including a certain number
* See Antiquity of Man, chap. xiv.
of extinct forms, but also abounding in Tellina balthica (T. solidula, Fig. 116), which is found fossil at Bridlington, and living in our British seas, but wanting in all the formations, even the newest, afterwards to be described as Crag. As the greater part of these drifts are barren of organic remains, their classification is at present a matter of great uncertainty.
They can nowhere be so advantageously studied as on the coast between Happisburgh and Cromer. Here we may see vertical cliffs, sometimes 300 feet and more in height, exposed for a distance of fifty miles, at the base of which the chalk with flints crops out in nearly horizontal strata. Beds of gravel and sand repose on this undisturbed chalk. They are often strangely contorted, and envelop huge masses or erratics of chalk with layers of vertical flint. I measured one of these fragments in 1839 at Sherringham, and found it to be eighty feet in its longest diameter. It has been since entirely removed by the waves of the sea. In the floor of the chalk beneath it the layers of flint were horizontal. Such erratics have evidently been moved bodily from their original site, probably by the same glacial action which has polished and striated some of the accompanying granitic and other boulders, occasionally six feet in diameter, which are imbedded in the drift.
Cromer Forest-bed.—Intervening between these glacial formations and the subjacent chalk lies what has been called the Cromer Forest-bed. This buried forest has been traced from Cromer to near Kessingland, a distance of more than forty miles, being exposed at certain seasons between high and low water mark. It is the remains of an old land and estuarine deposit, containing the submerged stumps of trees standing erect with their roots in the ancient soil. Associated with the stumps and overlying them, are lignite beds with fresh-water shells of recent species, and laminated clay without fossils. Through the lignite and forest-bed are scattered cones of the Scotch and spruce firs with the seeds of recent plants, and the bones of at least twenty species of terrestrial mammalia. Among these are two species of elephant, E. meridionalis, Nesti, and E. antiquus, the former found in the Newer Pliocene beds of the Val d’Arno, near Florence. In the same bed occur Hippopotamus major, Rhinoceros etruscus, both of them also Val d’Arno species, many species of deer considered by Mr. Boyd Dawkins to be characteristic of warmer countries, and also a horse, beaver, and field-mouse. Half of these mammalia are extinct, and the rest still survive in Europe. The vegetation taken alone
does not imply a temperature higher than that now prevailing in the British Isles. There must have been a subsidence of the forest to the amount of 400 or 500 feet, and a re-elevation of the same to an equal extent in order to allow the ancient surface of the chalk or covering of soil, on which the forest grew, to be first covered with several hundred feet of drift, and then upheaved so that the trees should reach their present level. Although the relative antiquity of the forest-bed to the overlying glacial till is clear, there is some difference of opinion as to its relation to the crag presently to be described.
Chillesford and Aldeby Beds.—It is in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, that we obtain our most valuable information respecting the British Pliocene strata, whether newer or older. They have obtained in those counties the provincial name of “Crag,” applied particularly to masses of shelly sand which have long been used in agriculture to fertilise soils deficient in calcareous matter. At Chillesford, between Woodbridge and Aldborough in Suffolk, and Aldeby, near Beccles, in the same county, there occur stratified deposits, apparently older than any of the preceding drifts of Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. They are composed at Chillesford of yellow sands and clays, with much mica, forming horizontal beds about twenty feet thick. Messrs. Prestwich and Searles Wood, senior, who first described these beds, point out that the shells indicate on the whole a colder climate than the Red Crag; two-thirds of them being characteristic of high latitudes. Among these are Cardium Grœnlandicum, Leda limatula, Tritonium carinatum, and Scalaria Grœnlandica. In the upper part of the laminated clays a skeleton of a whale was found associated with casts of the characteristic shells, Nucula Cobboldiæ and Tellina obliqua, already referred to as no longer inhabiting our seas, and as being extinct varieties if not species. The same shells occur in a perfect state in the lower part of the formation. Natica helicoides (Fig. 117) is an example of a species formerly known only as fossil, but which has now been found living in our seas.
At Aldeby, where beds occur decidedly similar in mineral character as well as fossil remains, Messrs. Crowfoot and Dowson have now obtained sixty-six species of mollusca, comprising the Chillesford species and some others. Of these about nine-tenths are recent. They are in a perfect state, clearly indicating a cold climate; as two-thirds of them are now met with in arctic
regions. As a rule, the lamellibranchiate molluscs have both valves united, and many of them, such as Mya arenaria, stand with the siphonal end upward, as when in a living state. Tellina balthica, before mentioned (Fig. 116) as so characteristic of the glacial beds, including the drift of Bridlington, has not yet been found in deposits of Chillesford and Aldeby age, whether at Sudbourn, East Bavent, Horstead, Coltishall, Burgh, or in the highest beds overlying the Norwich Crag proper at Bramerton and Thorpe.
Norwich or Fluvio-marine Crag.—The beds above alluded to ought, perhaps, to be regarded as beds of passage between the glacial formations and those called from a provincial name “Crag,” the newest member of which has been commonly called the “Norwich Crag.” It is chiefly seen in the neighbourhood of Norwich, and consists of beds of incoherent sand, loam, and gravel, which are exposed to view on both banks of the Yare, as at Bramerton and Thorpe. As they contain a mixture of marine, land, and fresh-water shells, with bones of fish and mammalia, it is clear that these beds have been accumulated at the bottom of a sea near the mouth of a river. They form patches rarely exceeding twenty feet in thickness, resting on white chalk. At their junction with the chalk there invariably intervenes a bed called the “Stone-bed,” composed of unrolled chalk-flints, commonly of large size, mingled with the remains of a land fauna comprising Mastodon arvernensis, Elephas meridionalis, and an extinct species of deer. The mastodon, which is a species characteristic of the Pliocene strata of Italy and France, is the most abundant fossil, and one not found in the
Cromer forest before mentioned. When these flints, probably long exposed in the atmosphere, became submerged, they were covered with barnacles, and the surface of the chalk became perforated by the Pholas crispata, each fossil shell still remaining at the bottom of its cylindrical cavity, now filled up with loose sand from the incumbent crag. This species of Pholas still exists, and drills the rocks between high and low water on the British coast. The name of “Fluvio-marine” has often been given to this formation, as no less than twenty species of land and fresh-water shells have been found in it. They are all of living species; at least only one univalve, Paludina lenta, has any, and that a very doubtful, claim to be regarded as extinct.
Of the marine shells, 124 in number, about 18 per cent are extinct, according to the latest estimate given me by Mr. Searles Wood; but, for reasons presently to be mentioned, this percentage must be only regarded as provisional. It must also be borne in mind that the proportion of recent shells would be augmented if the uppermost beds at Bramerton, near Norwich, which belong to the most modern or Chillesford division of the Crag, had been included, as they were formerly, by Mr. Woodward and myself, in the Norwich series. Arctic shells, which formed so large a proportion in the Chillesford and Aldeby beds, are more rare in the Norwich Crag, though many northern species--such as Rhynchonella psittacea, Scalaria Grœnlandica, Astarte borealis, Panopæa Norvegia, and others--still occur. The Nucula Cobboldiæ and Tellina obliqua, Figs. 119 and 120, before mentioned, p. 194, are frequent in these beds, as are also Littorina littorea, Cardium edule, and Turritella communis, of our seas, proving the littoral origin of the beds.
Red Crag.—Among the English Pliocene beds the next in antiquity is the Red Crag, which often rests immediately on the London Clay, as in the county of Essex, illustrated in Fig. 121.
It is chiefly in the county of Suffolk that it is found, rarely exceeding twenty feet in thickness, and sometimes overlying another Pliocene deposit, the Coralline Crag, to be mentioned in the sequel. It has yielded--exclusive of 25 species regarded by Mr. Wood as derivative--256 species of mollusca, of which 65, or 25 per cent, are extinct. Thus, apart from its order of superposition, its greater antiquity than the Norwich and glacial beds, already described, is proved by the greater departure from the fauna of our seas. It may also be observed that in most of the deposits of this Red Crag, the northern forms of the Norwich Crag, and of such glacial formations as Bridlington, are less numerous, while those having a more southern aspect begin to make their appearance. Both the quartzose sand, of which it chiefly consists, and the included shells, are most commonly distinguished by a deep ferruginous or ochreous colour, whence its name. The shells are often rolled, sometimes comminuted, and the beds have much the appearance of having been shifting sand-banks, like those now forming on the Dogger-bank, in the sea, sixty miles east of the coast of Northumberland. Cross stratification is almost always present, the planes of the strata being sometimes directed towards one point of the compass, sometimes to the opposite, in beds immediately overlying. That such a structure is not deceptive or due to any subsequent concretionary rearrangement of particles, or to mere bands of colour produced by the iron, is proved by each bed being made up of flat pieces of shell which lie parallel to the planes of the smaller strata.
It has long been suspected that the different patches of Red Crag are not all of the same age, although their chronological relation can not be decided by superposition. Separate masses are characterised by shells specifically distinct or greatly varying in relative abundance, in a manner implying that the deposits containing them were separated by intervals of time. At Butley, Tunstall, Sudbourn, and in the Red Crag of Chillesford, the mollusca appear to assume their most modern aspect when the climate was colder than when the earliest deposits of the same period were formed. At Butley, Nucula Cobboldiæ, so common in the Norwich and certain glacial beds, is found, and Purpura tetragona (Fig. 122) is very abundant. On the other hand, at Walton-on-
the-Naze, in Essex, we seem to have an exhibition of the oldest phase of the Red Crag; and a warmer climate seems indicated, not only by the absence of many northern forms, but also by the abundance of some now living in the British seas and the Mediterranean. Voluta Lamberti (see Figs. 123 and 124), an extinct form, which seems to have flourished chiefly in the antecedent Coralline Crag period, is still represented here by individuals of every age.
The reversed whelk (Fig. 125) is common at Walton, where the dextral form of that shell is unknown. Here also we find most frequently specimens of lamellibranchiate molluscs, with both the valves united, showing that they belonged to this sea of the Upper Crag, and were not washed in from an older bed, such as the Coralline, in which case the ligament would not have held together the valves in strata so often showing signs of the boisterous action of the waves. No less than forty species of lamellibranchiate molluscs, with double valves, have been collected by Mr. Bell from the various localities of the Red Crag.
At and near the base of the Red Crag is a loose bed of
brown nodules, first noticed by Professor Henslow as containing a large percentage of earthy phosphates. This bed of coprolites (as it is called, because they were originally supposed to be the fæces of animals) does not always occur at one level, but is generally in largest quantity at the junction of the Crag and the underlying formation. In thickness it usually varies from six to eighteen inches, and in some rare cases amounts to many feet. It has been much used in agriculture for manure, as not only the nodules, but many of the separate bones associated with them, are largely impregnated with phosphate of lime, of which there is sometimes as much as sixty per cent. They are not unfrequently covered with barnacles, showing that they were not formed as concretions in the stratum where they now lie buried, but had been previously consolidated. The phosphatic nodules often collect fossil crabs and fishes from the London Clay, together with the teeth of gigantic sharks. In the same bed have been found many ear-bones of whales, and the teeth of Mastodon arvernensis, Rhinoceros Schleiermacheri, Tapirus priscus, and Hipparion (a quadruped of the horse family), and antlers of a stag, Cervus anoceros. Organic remains also of the older chalk and Lias are met with, showing how great was the denudation of previous formations during the Pliocene period. As the older White Crag, presently to be mentioned, contains similar phosphatic nodules near its base, those of the Red Crag may be partly derived from this source.
White or Coralline Crag.—The lower or Coralline Crag is of very limited extent, ranging over an area about twenty miles in length, and three or four in breadth, between the rivers Stour and Alde, in Suffolk. It is generally calcareous and marly--often a mass of comminuted shells, and the remains of bryozoa* (or polyzoa), passing occasionally into a soft building-stone. At Sudbourn and Gedgrave, near Orford, this building-stone has been largely quarried. At some places in the neighbourhood the softer mass is divided by thin flags of hard limestone, and bryozoa placed in the upright position in which they grew. From the abundance of these coralloid mollusca the lowest or White Crag obtained its popular name, but true corals, as now defined, or zoantharia, are very rare in this formation.
* Ehrenberg proposed in 1831 the term Bryozoum, or “Moss-animal,” for the molluscous or ascidian form of polyp, characterised by having two openings to the digestive sack, as in Eschara, Flustra, Retepora, and other zoophytes popularly included in the corals, but now classed by naturalists as mollusca. The term Polyzoum, synonymous with Bryozoum, was, it seems, proposed in 1830, or the year before, by Mr. J. O. Thompson.
The Coralline Crag rarely, if ever, attains a thickness of thirty feet in any one section. Mr. Prestwich imagines that if the beds found at different localities were united in the probable order of their succession, they might exceed eighty feet in thickness, but Mr. Searles Wood does not believe in the possibility of establishing such a chronological succession by aid of the organic remains, and questions whether proof could be obtained of more than forty feet. I was unable to come to any satisfactory opinion on the subject, although at Orford, especially at Gedgrave, in the neighbourhood of that place, I saw many sections in pits, where this crag is cut through. These pits are so unconnected, and of such limited extent, that no continuous section of any length can be obtained, so that speculations as to the thickness of the whole deposit must be very vague. At the base of the formation at Sutton a bed of phosphatic nodules, very similar to that before alluded to in the Red Crag, with remains of mammalia, has been met with.
Whenever the Red and Coralline Crag occur in the same district, the Red Crag lies uppermost; and in some cases, as in the section represented in Fig. 126, which I had an opportunity of seeing exposed to view in 1839, it is clear that the older deposit, or Coralline Crag, b, had suffered denudation, before the newer formation, a, was thrown down upon it. At D there was not only seen a distinct cliff, eight or ten feet high, of Coralline Crag, running in a direction N.E. and S.W., against which the Red Crag abuts with its horizontal layers, but this cliff occasionally overhangs. The rock composing it is drilled everywhere by Pholades, the holes which they perforated having been afterwards filled with sand, and covered over when the newer beds were thrown down. The older formation is shown by its fossils to have accumulated in a deeper sea, and contains none of those littoral forms such as the limpet, Patella, found in the Red Crag. So great an amount of denudation could scarcely take place, in such incoherent materials, without some of the fossils of the inferior beds becoming mixed up with the overlying crag, so that considerable difficulty must be occasionally experienced by
the palæontologist in deciding which species belong severally to each group.
Mr. Searles Wood estimates the total number of marine testaceous mollusca of the Coralline Crag at 350, of which 110 are not known as living, being in the proportion of thirty-one per cent extinct. No less than 130 species of bryozoa have been found in the Coralline Crag, and some belong to genera unknown in the living creation, and of a very peculiar structure; as, for example, that represented in Fig. 127, which is one of several species having a globular form. Among the testacea the genus Astarte (see Fig. 128) is largely represented, no less than fourteen species being known, and many of these being rich in individuals. There is an absence of genera peculiar to hot climates, such as Conus, Oliva, Fasciolaria, Crassatella, and others. The absence also of large cowries (Cyprea), those found belonging
exclusively to the section Trivia, is remarkable. The large volute, called Voluta Lamberti (Fig. 123, p. 196), may seem an exception; but it differs in form from the volutes of the torrid zone, and, like the living Voluta Magellanica, must have been fitted for an extra-tropical climate.
The occurrence of a species of Lingula at Sutton (see Fig. 129) is worthy of remark, as these Brachiopoda seem now confined to more equatorial latitudes; and the same may be said still more decidedly of a species of Pyrula, supposed by Mr. Wood to be identical with P. reticulata (Fig. 130), now living in the Indian Ocean. A genus also of echinoderms, called by Professor Forbes Temnechinus (Fig. 131), occurs in the Red and Coralline Crag of Suffolk, and until lately was unknown in a living state, but it has been brought to light as an existing form by the deep-sea dredgings, both of the United States survey, off Florida, at a depth of from 180 to 480 feet, and more recently (1869), in the British seas, during the explorations of the “Porcupine.”
Climate of the Crag Deposits.—One of the most interesting conclusions deduced from a careful comparison of the shells of the British Pliocene strata and the fauna of our present seas has been pointed out by Professor E. Forbes. It appears that, during the Glacial period, a period intermediate, as we have seen, between that of the Crag and our own time, many shells, previously established in the temperate zone, retreated southward to avoid an uncongenial climate, and they have been found fossil in the Newer Pliocene strata of Sicily, Southern Italy, and the Grecian Archipelago, where they may have enjoyed, during the era of floating icebergs, a climate resembling that now prevailing in higher European latitudes.* The Professor gave a list of fifty shells which inhabited the British seas while the Coralline and Red Crag were forming, and which, though now living in our seas,
* E. Forbes Mem. Geol. Survey of Gt. Brit., vol. i, p. 386.
were wanting, as far as was then known, in the glacial deposits. Some few of these species have subsequently been found in the glacial drift, but the general conclusion of Forbes remains unshaken.
The transport of blocks by ice, when the Red Crag was being deposited, appears to me evident from the large size of some huge, irregular, quite unrounded chalk flints, retaining their white coating, and 2 feet long by 18 inches broad, in beds worked for phosphatic nodules at Foxhall, four miles south-east of Ipswich. These must have been tranquilly drifted to the spot by floating ice. Mr. Prestwich also mentions the occurrence of a large block of porphyry in the base of the Coralline Crag at Sutton, which would imply that the ice-action had begun in our seas even in this older period. The cold seems to have gone on increasing from the time of the Coralline to that of the Norwich Crag, and became more and more severe, not perhaps without some oscillations of temperature, until it reached its maximum in what has been called the Glacial period, or at the close of the Newer Pliocene, and in the Post-pliocene periods.
Relation of the Fauna of the Crag to that of the recent Seas.—By far the greater number of the recent marine species occurring in the several Crag formations are still inhabitants of the British seas; but even these differ considerably in their relative abundance, some of the commonest of the Crag shells being now extremely scarce--as, for example, Buccinum Dalei--while others, rarely met with in a fossil state, are now very common, as Murex erinaceus and Cardium echinatum. Some of the species also, the identity of which with the living would not be disputed by any conchologist, are nevertheless distinguishable as varieties, whether by slight deviations in form or a difference in average dimensions. Since Mr. Searles Wood first described the marine testacea of the Crags, the additions made to that fossil fauna have not been considerable, whereas we have made in the same period immense progress in our knowledge of the living testacea of the British and arctic seas, and of the Mediterranean. By this means the naturalist has been enabled to identify with existing species many forms previously supposed to be extinct.
In the forthcoming supplement to the invaluable monograph communicated by Mr. Wood to the Palæontographical Society, in which he has completed his figures and descriptions of the British crag shells of every age, list will be found of all the fossil shells, of which a summary is given in the table, p. 202.
To begin with the uppermost or Chillesford beds, it will be seen that about 9 per cent only are extinct, or not known as living, whereas in the Norwich, which succeeds in the descending order, seventeen in a hundred are extinct. Formerly, when the Norwich or Fluvio-marine Crag was spoken of, both these formations were included under the same head, for both at Bramerton and Thorpe, the chief localities where the Norwich Crag was studied, an overlying deposit occurs referable to the Chillesford age. If now the two were fused together as of old, their shells would, according to Mr. Wood, yield a percentage of fifteen in a hundred of species extinct or not known as living.
| CHILLESFORD AND ALDEBY BEDS | |||
| Total number |
Not known as living |
Percentage of Shells not known as living |
|
| Bivalves | 61 | 4 | 9·5 |
| Univalves | 33 | 5 | |
| Brachiopods | 0 | 0 | |
| NORWICH OR FLUVIO-MARINE CRAG | |||
| Bivalves | 61 | 10 | 17·5 |
| Univalves | 64 | 12 | |
| Brachiopods | 1 | 0 | |
| RED CRAG (Exclusive to many derivative shells) |
|||
| Bivalves | 128 | 31 | 25·0 |
| Univalves | 127 | 33 | |
| Brachiopods | 1 | 1 | |
| CORALLINE CRAG | |||
| Bivalves | 161 | 47 | 31·5 |
| Univalves | 184 | 60 | |
| Brachiopods | 5 | 3 | |
To come next to the Red Crag, the reader will observe that a percentage of 25 is given of shells unknown as living, and this increases to 31 in the antecedent Coralline Crag. But the gap between these two stages of our Pliocene deposits is really wider than these numbers would indicate, for several reasons. In the first place, the Coralline Crag is more strictly the product of a single period, the Red Crag, as we have seen, consisting of separate and independent patches, slightly varying in age, of which the newest is probably not much anterior to the Norwich Crag. Secondly, there was a great change of conditions, both as to the
depth of the sea and climate, between the periods of the Coralline and Red Crag, causing the fauna in each to differ far more widely than would appear from the above numerical results.
The value of the analysis given in the above table of the shells of the Red and Coralline Crags is in no small degree enhanced by the fact that they were all either collected by Mr. Wood himself, or obtained by him direct from their discoverers, so that he was enabled in each case to test their authenticity, and as far as possible to avoid those errors which arise from confounding together shells belonging to the sea of a newer deposit, and those washed into it from a formation of older date. The danger of this confusion may be conceived when we remember that the number of species rejected from the Red Crag as derivative by Mr. Wood is no less than 25. Some geologists have held that on the same grounds it is necessary to exclude as spurious some of the species found in the Norwich Crag proper; but Mr. Wood does not entertain this view, believing that the spurious shells which have sometimes found their way into the lists of this crag have been introduced by want of care from strata of Red Crag.
There can be no doubt, on the other hand, that conchologists have occasionally rejected from the Red and Norwich Crags, as derivative, shells which really belonged to the seas of those periods, because they were extinct or unknown as living, which in their eyes afforded sufficient ground for suspecting them to be intruders. The derivative origin of a species may sometimes be indicated by the extreme scarcity of the individuals, their colour, and worn condition; whereas an opposite conclusion may be arrived at by the integrity of the shells, especially when they are of delicate and tender structure, or their abundance, and, in the case of the lamellibranchiata, by their being held together by the ligament, which often happens when the shells have been so broken that little more than the hinges of the two valves are preserved. As to the univalves, I have seen from a pit of Red Crag, near Woodbridge, a large individual of the extinct Voluta Lamberti, seven inches in length, of which the lip, then perfect, had in former stages of its growth been frequently broken, and as often repaired. It had evidently lived in the sea of the Red Crag, where it had been exposed to rough usage, and sustained injuries like those which the reversed whelk, Trophon antiquum, so characteristic of the same formation, often exhibits. Additional proofs, however, have lately been obtained by Mr. Searles Wood that this
shell had not died out in the era of the Red Crag by the discovery of the same fossil near Southwold, in beds of the later Norwich Crag.
Antwerp Crag.—Strata of the same age as the Red and Coralline Crag of Suffolk have been long known in the country round Antwerp, and on the banks of the Scheldt, below that city; and the lowest division, or Black Crag, there found, is shown by the shells to be somewhat more ancient than any of our British series, and probably forms the first links of a downward passage from the strata of the Pliocene to those of the Upper Miocene period.
Newer Pliocene Strata of Sicily.—At several points north of Catania, on the eastern sea-coast of Sicily--as at Aci-Castello, for example, Trezza, and Nizzeti--marine strata, associated with volcanic tuffs and basaltic lavas, are seen, which belong to a period when the first igneous eruptions of Mount Etna were taking place in a shallow bay of the Mediterranean. They contain numerous fossil shells, and out of 142 species that have been collected all but eleven are identical with species now living. Some few of these eleven shells may possibly still linger in the depths of the Mediterranean, like Murex vaginatus, see Fig. 132. The last-mentioned shell had already become rare when the associated marine and volcanic strata above alluded to were formed. On the whole, the modern character of the testaceous fauna under consideration is expressed not only by the small proportion of extinct species, but by the relative number of individuals by which most of the other species are represented, for the proportion agrees with that observed in the present fauna of the Mediterranean. The rarity of individuals in the extinct species is such as to imply that they were already on the point of dying out, having flourished chiefly in the earlier Pliocene times, when the Subapennine strata were in progress.
Yet since the accumulation of these Newer Pliocene sands and clays, the whole cone of Etna, 11,000 feet in height and about 90 miles in circumference at its base, has been slowly built up; an operation requiring many tens of thousands of years for its accomplishment, and to estimate the magnitude of which it is necessary to study in detail the internal structure of the mountain, and to see the proofs of its double axis, or the evidence of the lavas of the present great centre of eruption having gradually overwhelmed and enveloped a
more ancient cone, situated 3½ miles to the east of the present one.*
It appears that while Etna was increasing in bulk by a series of eruptions, its whole mass, comprising the foundations of subaqueous origin above alluded to, was undergoing a slow upheaval, by which those marine strata were raised to the height of 1200 feet above the sea, as seen at Catera, and perhaps to greater heights, for we can not trace their extension westward, owing to the dense and continuous covering of modern lava under which they are buried. During the gradual rise of these Newer Pliocene formations (consisting of clays, sands, and basalts) other strata of Post-pliocene date, marine as well as fluviatile, accumulated round the base of the mountain, and these, in their turn, partook of the upward movement, so that several inland cliffs and terraces at low levels, due partly to the action of the sea and partly to the river Simeto, originated in succession. Fossil remains of the elephant, and other extinct quadrupeds, have been found in these Post-Pliocene strata, associated with recent shells.
There is probably no part of Europe where the Newer Pliocene formations enter so largely into the structure of the earth’s crust, or rise to such heights above the level of the sea, as Sicily. They cover nearly half the island, and near its centre, at Castrogiovanni, reach an elevation of 3000 feet. They consist principally of two divisions, the upper calcareous and the lower argillaceous, both of which may be seen at Syracuse, Girgenti, and Castrogiovanni. According to Philippi, to whom we are indebted for the best account of the tertiary shells of this island, thirty-five species out of one hundred and twenty-four obtained from the beds in central Sicily are extinct.
A geologist, accustomed to see nearly all the Newer Pliocene formations in the north of Europe occupying low grounds and very incoherent in texture, is naturally surprised to behold formations of the same age so solid and stony, of such thickness, and attaining so great an elevation above the level of the sea. The upper or calcareous member of this group in Sicily consists in some places of a yellowish-white stone, like the Calcaire Grossier of Paris; in others, of a rock nearly as compact as marble. Its aggregate thickness amounts sometimes to 700 or 800 feet. It usually occurs in regular horizontal beds, and is occasionally intersected by deep valleys, such as those of Sortino and Pentalica,
* See a Memoir on the Lavas and Mode of Origin of Mount Etna by the Author in Phil. Trans., 1858.
in which are numerous caverns. The fossils are in every stage of preservation, from shells retaining portions of their animal matter and colour to others which are mere casts. The limestone passes downward into a sandstone and conglomerate, below which is clay and blue marl, from which perfect shells and corals may be disengaged. The clay sometimes alternates with yellow sand.
South of the plain of Catania is a region in which the tertiary beds are intermixed with volcanic matter, which has been for the most part the product of submarine eruptions. It appears that, while the clay, sand, and yellow limestone before mentioned were in course of deposition at the bottom of the sea, volcanoes burst out beneath the waters, like that of Graham Island, in 1831, and these explosions recurred again and again at distant intervals of time. Volcanic ashes and sand were showered down and spread by the waves and currents so as to form strata of tuff, which are found intercalated between beds of limestone and clay containing marine shells, the thickness of the whole mass exceeding 2000 feet. The fissures through which the lava rose may be seen in many places, forming what are called dikes.
No shell is more conspicuous in these Sicilian strata than the great scallop, Pecten jacobæus (Fig. 133), now so common in the neighbouring seas. The more we reflect on the preponderating number of this and other recent shells, the more
we are surprised at the great thickness, solidity, and height above the sea of the rocky masses in which they are entombed, and the vast amount of geographical change which has taken place since their origin. It must be remembered that, before they began to emerge, the uppermost strata of the whole must have been deposited under water. In order, therefore, to form a just conception of their antiquity, we must first examine singly the innumerable minute parts of which the whole is made up, the successive beds of shells, corals, volcanic ashes, conglomerates, and sheets of lava; and we must afterwards contemplate the time required for the gradual upheaval of the rocks, and the excavation of the valleys. The historical period seems scarcely to form an appreciable unit in this computation, for we find ancient Greek temples, like those of Girgenti (Agrigentum), built of the modern limestone of which we are speaking, and resting on a hill composed of the same; the site having remained to all appearances unaltered since the Greeks first colonised the island.
It follows, from the modern geological date of these rocks, that the fauna and flora of a large part of Sicily are of higher antiquity than the country itself. The greater part of the island has been raised above the sea since the epoch of existing species, and the animals and plants now inhabiting it must have migrated from adjacent countries, with whose productions the species are now identical. The average duration of species would seem to be so great that they are destined to outlive many important changes in the configuration of the earth’s surface, and hence the necessity for those innumerable contrivances by which they are enabled to extend their range to new lands as they are formed, and to escape from those which sink beneath the sea.
Newer Pliocene Strata of the Upper Val D’arno.—When we ascend the Arno for about ten miles above Florence, we arrive at a deep narrow valley called the Upper Val d’Arno, which appears once to have been a lake, at a time when the valley below Florence was an arm of the sea. The horizontal lacustrine strata of this upper basin are twelve miles long and two broad. The depression which they fill has been excavated out of Eocene and Cretaceous rocks, which form everywhere the sides of the valley in highly inclined stratification. The thickness of the more modern and unconformable beds is about 750 feet, of which the upper 200 feet consist of Newer Pliocene strata, while the lower are Older Pliocene. The newer series are made up of sands and a conglomerate called “sansino.” Among the imbedded fossil
mammalia are Mastodon arvernensis, Elephas meridionalis, Rhinoceros etruscus, Hippopotamus major, and remains of the genera bear, hyæna, and felis, nearly all of which occur in the Cromer forest-bed (see Chap. 13, p. 191).
In the same upper strata are found, according to M. Gaudin, the leaves and cones of Glyptostrobus europæus, a plant closely allied to G. heterophyllus, now inhabiting the north of China and Japan. This conifer had a wide range in time, having been traced back to the Lower Miocene strata of Switzerland, and being common at Œningen in the Upper Miocene, as we shall see in the sequel (p. 218).
Older Pliocene of Italy.—Subapennine Strata.—The Apennines, it is well-known, are composed chiefly of Secondary or Mesozoic rocks, forming a chain which branches off from the Ligurian Alps and passes down the middle of the Italian peninsula. At the foot of these mountains, on the side both of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean, are found a series of tertiary strata, which form, for the most part, a line of low hills occupying the space between the older chain and the sea. Brocchi was the first Italian geologist who described this newer group in detail, giving it the name of the Subapennine. Though chiefly composed of Older Pliocene strata, it belongs, nevertheless, in part, both to older and newer members of the tertiary series. The strata, for example, of the Superga, near Turin, are Miocene; those of Asti and Parma Older Pliocene, as is the blue marl of Sienna; while the shells of the incumbent yellow sand of the same territory approach more nearly to the recent fauna of the Mediterranean, and may be Newer Pliocene.
We have seen that most of the fossil shells of the Older Pliocene strata of Suffolk which are of recent species are identical with testacea now living in British seas, yet some of them belong to Mediterranean species, and a few even of the genera are those of warmer climates. We might therefore expect, in studying the fossils of corresponding age in countries bordering the Mediterranean, to find among them some species and genera of warmer latitudes. Accordingly, in the marls belonging to this period at Asti, Parma, Sienna, and parts of the Tuscan and Roman territories, we observe the genera Conus, Cypræa, Strombus, Pyrula, Mitra, Fasciolaria, Sigaretus, Delphinula, Ancillaria, Oliva, Terebellum, Terebra, Perna, Plicatula, and Corbis, some characteristic of tropical seas, others represented by species more numerous or of larger size than those now proper to the Mediterranean.
Older Pliocene Flora of Italy.—I have already alluded to the Newer Pliocene deposits of the Upper Val d’Arno above
Florence, and stated that below those sands and conglomerates, containing the remains of the Elephas meridionalis and other associated quadrupeds, lie an older horizontal and conformable series of beds, which may be classed as Older Pliocene. They consist of blue clays with some subordinate layers of lignite, and exhibit a richer flora than the overlying Newer Pliocene beds, and one receding farther from the existing vegetation of Europe. They also comprise more species common to the antecedent Miocene period. Among the genera of flowering plants, M. Gaudin enumerates pine, oak, evergreen oak, plum, plane, alder, elm, fig, laurel, maple, walnut, birch, buckthorn, hickory, sumach, sarsaparilla, sassafras, cinnamon, Glyptostrobus, Taxodium, Sequoia, Persea, Oreodaphne (Fig. 134), Cassia, and Psoralea, and some others. This assemblage of plants indicates a warm climate, but not so subtropical an one as that of the Upper Miocene period, which will presently be considered.
M. Gaudin, jointly with the Marquis Strozzi, has thrown much light on the botany of beds of the same age in another part of Tuscany, at a place called Montajone, between the rivers Elsa and Evola, where, among other plants, is found the Oreodaphne Heerii, Gaud. (see Fig. 134), which is probably only a variety of Oreodaphne foetens, or the laurel called
* Feuilles fossiles de la Toscane.
the Til in Madeira, where, as in the Canaries, it constitutes a large portion of the native woods, but can not now endure the climate of Europe. In the fossil specimens the same glands or protuberances are preserved* (see Fig. 134) as those which are seen in the axils of the primary veins of the leaves in the recent Til. Another plant also indicating a warmer climate is the Liquidambar europæum, Brong. (see Fig. 135), a species nearly allied to L. styracifluum, L., which flourishes in most places in the Southern States of North America, on the borders of the Gulf of Mexico.
* Contributions à la Flore fossile Italienne. Gaudin and Strozzi. Plate 11, Fig. 3. Gaudin, p. 22.