Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/234

222 an outlet, where sanidin bombs may reward the seeker, and bits of underlying Devonian slate are strewn through the strata of volcanic ash. Returning to Gillenfeld, we had a little something to eat and drink—the Germans never neglect the inner man—and went on past its crater-lakes to Daur, where we dined at Hotel Hommes. On the card of this inn is a sketch-map of the Eifel, and a geological map and minerals are about the house. While waiting for dinner we picked up a lot of augite crystals from the locality near by. After dinner we hired a dray-cart and pushed on to Dreis, arriving there late, to spend the third night. The next morning, after collecting basaltic hornblende east of the town, in crystals up to the size of an egg, mostly rounded a little by fusion, and taking also some of the olivine bombs, of which so many are scattered through the museums, we went rather across country to Gerolstein. There is much of interest on the way, first petrographic, afterward more paleontologic.

From Gerolstein various further excursions can be made. A visit to the ice-cave of Roth is refreshing in the heat of summer. But the summer tourist must not tarry. So on to Treves, and down the Moselle and up the Rhine, till passing through the ridge of Taunus we emerge into the upper plain of the Rhine at Bingen. From Bingen a side excursion to Münster-am-Stein, if no farther, is of great interest and beauty (17), and those who are attracted by the silver sheen of tiger-eye, the peacock hues of labradorite, or the delicate tracery of moss-agate, should not give Oberstein the go-by. Here, and near by, the semi-precious stones are polished for all Europe, and from Heinrich J. Steffen can be obtained specimens of the melaphyres in whose cavities agates are wont to come, and of the fossils of the region—trilobites and ophiuroids. The view from the station of town and river, and above two castles and a church curiously let into the rock, is said to be one of the three finest on the Rhenish railways.

Near Kreuznach I may mention Hackenheim churchyard and a little southeast as a place where fossils of the Mayence basin abound, and the valley from Kreuznach to Winterburg and back over the Welschberg, with its patch of Tertiary to Bockelheim, as giving a good section of the country. If you want to see more of the Mayence basin, a good way will be to seek the tall chimneys of the cement-factories and the neighboring limestone and clay-pits—e. g., those of Wiesenau. From this region immense quantities of cement are exported to America. The two sides of the great Rhine Valley, which has till recently been considered a typical case of dropping in, are not unlike. Most people go down the east side, and we will follow them. The Taunus region has some interesting porphyroids and sericite