The Geological Survey of Italy

Abstract

MY friend Mr. W. Topley, in his interesting account of the Italian Geological Survey (NATURE, vol. xxv. p. 86), is quite right when he states that the geological surveyors seem now to have definitely fixed the position of the Carrara marbles in the Trias. If, however, he means to imply that the geological world at large will accept this decision, I fear he is mistaken. The patient toil, spread over many years, and carried on by M. Coquand with more than due regard to Buffon's advice to geologists, “Il faut voir beaucoup et revoir souvent,” gives him such authority when speaking on the structure of the Apuan Alps and he Campigliese, that nothing but the most absolute proof that he is wrong in regarding the metamorphic marbles of Carrara, as well as those of the Pyrenees (St. Béat, &c.), as being of Carboniferous age, will prevent foreign students of Italian geology from accepting his views on the matter. I have read, I think, all that has been written in Italy by De Stefani and others on the point in question since the publication in full of M. Coquand's mature conclusions in the Bulletin de la Société géologique de France, in 1874, and I still regard his position as entirely unassailed. In 1876 I published in the Geological Magazine a short résumé of M. Coquand's results, to which I would refer any who are interested in the subject.