The Lower Limestone attains a height of about 400 feet above the sea-level.
A nodule-seam frequently replaces the Scutella- or Orbitoides-stratum, and is made up of detached fragments of the parent rock and the Calcareous Sandstone firmly cemented together. At Bas-el-Kala, in Gozo, it is represented by a remarkable bed of oyster-shells, chiefly belonging to Ostrea Boblayei.
The difficulties attending examinations of the cliff-sections, together with the indifferent state of preservation, render the enumeration of the fauna of the lowermost bed more imperfect than that of the others. Besides the foregoing, Ostrea navicularis, a fossil of the Sand bed, is also common in the lowermost rock. Pecten cristatus, Bronn?, is apparently also plentiful, together with P. squamulosus of the Sand and Calcareous Sandstone; and what has been named P. varius is also apparently common to all the formations excepting the Calcareous Sandstone. Spondylus quinquecostatus, or else a very closely allied species, is common to the Upper and Lower Limestones besides the Calcareous Sandstone. But the characteristic and most plentiful fossils, especially in the uppermost portions of the Lower Limestone, are casts of Conus, some of large size, and other genera not sufficiently preserved to admit of specific determination, among others Haliotis, of which there are apparently more than one species; indeed the genus is represented in all the formations.
The Brachiopoda are Terebratula minor and Thecidium Adamsi, common also to the Calcareous Sandstone.
The Echinodermata identified by me amount to 20 species, of which 13 are also common to the Calcareous Sandstone, 1 (H. scillæ) to the Marl, 3 to the Sand bed, and 11 to the Upper Limestone—to wit, Cidaris melitensis, Psammechinus Ducei, Echinolampas Kleinii, Hemiaster Cotteaui, Schizaster Scillæ, S. Parkinsonii (the most common Echinoid in the Maltese rocks), Toxobrissus crescenticus, Brissus cylindricus, B. oblongus, Eupatagus De-Koninckii, Spatangus delphinus.
Foraminifera in this bed, noticed in Geol. Mag. vol. iii. p. 152.
I must here take notice of a remark of M. Fuchs in a note to his paper on the "Age of the Tertiary Beds of Malta"[1], wherein he observes "that the statement advanced by Spratt, Adams, and other authors, that the same species of Pecten and Echinida recur in the Lower as well as in the Upper Limestone," is not correct, and that the error may have arisen from confounding P. Haueri and deletus of the lower beds with P. spinulosus and costatus, which occur equally plentifully in the upper beds. Again, the writer observes "that, with the exception of the Thecidium Adamsi from the Lower Limestone, all the remaining Brachiopoda were exceedingly rare, although, according to the statements of the authors, they are said to occur not only in great quantities, but are even said sometimes to form whole banks." M. Fuchs further states that "he was unable
- ↑ Berichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munich, lxx. p. 92.
