Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 2.djvu/61

 CHAP. VI. 1831), it is said that Mr. Clift has also identified fragments of the teeth and bones of the hippopotamus and ox. From these data the deposit of Gmund appears to belong to the middle part of the tertiary series.

The slaty marls and limestones of Oeningen, some of them bituminous and fetid, which rest upon the "molasse" of the Rhine valley, contain plants, insects, one shell, numerous fishes, some reptiles, and mammalia, of which the following is a synopsis, from Meyer, Murchison, &c.

Mr. Murchison's examination of Oeningen led him to believe that it was to be referred to one of the most recent tertiary aeras (Geol. Proc. vol. i. p. 169 and 330.): but M. Agassiz, finding all the numerous fishes of this deposit to be of extinct species, regarded it as of higher antiquity than was generally supposed; and as both the tortoise (chelydra serpentine Bell) and the fox are extinct species, while the analogies offered by the insects, plants, &c., are in most instances merely generic, this may prove the most satisfactory conclusion.