Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 2.djvu/63

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CHAP. VI.
LACUSTRINE DEPOSITS.
49
Feræ Ursus spelæus.
Cervus valdarnensis.
———— new species.
Bos urus.
—— taurus.
—— bubalo affinis.

Cuvier also mentions the bones of a lophiodon from Val d'Arno. There is no geological evidence of the age of this deposit, except what its organic contents give. Mr. Lyell ranks it as meiocene: but, to judge from the list of mammalia, we should be disposed to place it in a later geological period; for here are no palæotheria nor anoplotheria of the Parisian eocene beds; no dinotheria or anthracotheria of the meiocene strata of Touraine, Käpfnach, &c.; while on the other hand, elephas indicus, hyæna radiata, and sus scrofa, if all living species! and Ursus spelæus, U. cultridens, Hyæna fossilis, Cervus euryceros, Bos urus, B. taurus,—all frequent in caverns and diluvial beds, &c., give to the list of animals a very modern aspect. By some authors (Meyer) the elephant of Val d'Arno is considered the same as that of the ordinary diluvium, and by Nesti it is called a new species (E. meridionalis).

The series of deposits in the upper Val d'Arno is as under:—

Upper layer
Thick beds of yellow argillaceous sand.
Second Thick masses of pebbles.
Third
Yellow sand, several fathoms thick, the middle and lower parts rich in bones.
Lowest bed
Thick blue argillaceous marl, with mica, with bones in the upper part.

The pebbles are largest and most numerous towards the north; the coarse sand abounds in the middle, and the finer sediment in the southern part of the basin, -the sands and blue marls lie commonly horizontal. The bones lie in the middle of the valley, on the right side of the Arno.

The lower Val d'Arno contains only marine deposits. (Bertrand Geslin, Ann. des Sci. Nat.)

Agreeing in many respects with the freshwater aggregations in Val d'Arno, is a remarkable lacustrine deposit, of small extent (one fourth of a mile across), resting in a