Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
The typoscript of this paper was found by me among my father's MSS., after his death on 11th April, 1923. There was evidence to show that it was written rather earlier than 1908, and it is obviously the first part of a paper which had been put on one side during the preparation of “The Pliocene Mollusca of Great Britain”. The typoscript ended with the heading “Floods of Miocene and Pliocene Periods”, but I have no reason to believe that this section was ever prepared. The three figures here reproduced were with the typoscript, but others which it had been intended to use in illustration of the paper have not been found.
page 28 note 1 Q.J.G.S., vol. xxiv, p. 105, 1868.Google Scholar
page 28 note 2 Q.J.G.S., vol. xxv, p. 7, 1869.Google Scholar
page 28 note 3 Geol. Mag., 1872, pp. 392–9 and 485–500.Google Scholar
page 28 note 4 Op. cit., p. 491.Google Scholar
page 32 note 1 Professor C. de Stefani has well said that Italy is la terre classique du Pliocène.
page 32 note 2 This is regarded by Meli (Boll. Soc. Geol. Ital., vol. xiii, p. 163, 1895Google Scholar) as a distinct species (C. aequalis Bronn) which may, however, be a geographical variety of the northern form. It appearéd at a comparatively late period in the Mediterranean, in which it is now unknown.
page 33 note 1 Dr. Scalia has kindly placed copies of his memoirs on these beds in the library of the Geological Society.
page 34 note 1 ProfessorMeli, (Boll. Soc. Geol. Ital., vol. xiii, 1895, p. 163) points out that most of the northern species found near Palermo, of which he gives a list of about a dozen, are absent from Monte Mario; and agrees that the latter contains a larger proportion of shells which are extinct, or found only in more southern seas.Google Scholar
page 35 note 1 If the reasoning here adopted be correct, evidence of similar conditions of increased rainfall and erosion during the Pleistocene Period ought to exist in North America.
page 35 note 2 La Seine, vol. i, “Le bassin Parisien aux Âges anté-historiques,” Paris, 1869.Google Scholar
page 36 note 1 The formation of peat within the channel of a river, upon soil constantly saturated, indicates a dry rather than a humid period. The frequent occurrence of floods, as M. Belgrand points out, would effectually prevent the accumulation of peat.