The Miocene formations of Switzerland have been called _ Molasse_, a term derived from the French _mol_, and applied to a _soft_, incoherent, greenish sandstone, occupying the country between the Alps and the Jura. This molasse comprises three divisions, of which the middle one is marine, and being closely related by its shells to the faluns of Touraine, may be classed as Upper Miocene. The two others are fresh-water, the upper of which may be also grouped with the faluns, while the lower must be referred to the Lower Miocene, as defined in the next chapter. Upper Fresh-water Molasse.—This formation is best seen at Œningen, in the valley of the Rhine, between Constance and Schaffhausen, a locality celebrated for having produced in the year 1700 the supposed human skeleton called by Scheuchzer “homo diluvii testis,” a fossil afterwards demonstrated by Cuvier to be a reptile, or aquatic salamander, of larger dimensions than even its great living representative, the salamander of Japan. The Œningen strata consist of a series of marls and limestones, many of them thinly laminated, and which appear to have slowly accumulated in a lake probably fed by springs holding carbonate of lime in solution. The elliptical area over which this fresh-water formation has been traced extends, according to Sir Roderick Murchison, for a distance of ten miles east and west from Berlingen, on the right bank of the river to Wangen, and to Œningen, near Stein, on the left bank. The organic remains have been chiefly derived from two quarries, the lower of which is about 550 feet above the level of the Lake of Constance, while the upper quarry is 150 feet higher. In this last, a section thirty feet deep displays a great succession of beds, most of them splitting into slabs and some into very thin laminæ. Twenty-one beds are enumerated by Professor Heer, the uppermost a bluish-grey marl seven feet thick, with organic remains, resting on a limestone with fossil plants, including leaves of poplar, cinnamon, and pond-weed (_Potamogeton_), together with some insects; while in the bed No. 4, below, is a bituminous rock, in which the _Mastodon tapiroides_, a characteristic Upper Miocene quadruped, has been met with. The 5th bed, two or three inches thick, contains fossil fish, e.g., _Leuciscus_ (roach), and the larvæ of dragon-flies, with plants such as the elm (_Ulmus_), and the aquatic Chara. Below this are other plant-beds; and then, in No. 9, the stone in which the great salamander (Andrias Scheuchzeri) and some fish were found. Below this other strata occur with fish, tortoises, the great salamander before alluded to, fresh-water mussels, and plants. In No. 16 the fossil fox of Œningen, _Galecynus Œningensis,_ Owen, was obtained by Sir R. Murchison. To this succeed other beds with mammalia (_Lagomys_), reptiles, (_Emys_), fish, and plants, such as walnut, maple, and poplar. In the 19th bed are numerous fish, insects, and