Sir R. 1. Murchison's Notes on the Alps and Apennines. 281 



in parts highly crystalline, contain recognizable remnants of 

 Upper Silurian, Devonian, and carboniferous deposits, as 

 proved by organic remains ; but no traces of the Permian 

 system* of the author, so abundant in Russia, Germany, and 

 England, have been found in them or in any part of Southern 

 Europe. In the same regions, viz., in the South Tyrol and 

 the Salzburg Alps, the above-mentioned palaeozoic formations 

 are succeeded by trias, with true " muschelkalk'* fossils, as 

 recently expounded by Von Buch, Emmerich, Von Hauer, and 

 other geologists. But in following the central parts of the 

 chain from Austria into Switzerland and Savoy, all fossil evi- 

 dences of these palaeozoic and triassic deposits cease ; which, 

 if ever they existed, have been obliterated by the very power- 

 ful action of metamorphism which has affected the Western 

 Alps. The presence, however, of undoubted species of old 

 coal plants in Savoy has led some geologists to believe that 

 the carboniferous system had some representative there ; 

 whilst M. E. de Beaumont and M. Sismonda contend, that the 

 association of such plants with belemnites proves that they 

 occur in the lias of this part of the chain (Mont Blanc, Ta- 

 rentaise, and Maurienne), so clearly recognized by its nume- 

 rous animal organic remains. Sir R. Murchison allows, after 

 personal inspection, that in the much-disputed locality of 

 Petit Coeur, the coal-plants and anthracite really appear to lie 

 in the same formation with the belemnites as described by 

 M. E. de Beaumont. 



After a notice of the better acquaintance of geologists at 

 this day with the fossils of the secondary rocks of the Alps 

 than when Professor Sedgwick and himself described them, — 

 and after shewing the great value of the Oxfordian group of 

 Von Buch as the clear uppermost zone of the Jurassic lime- 



* The term *' Permian," derived from the vast region of Russia, where this 

 uppermost Palaeozoic system is more largely developed than in any part of the 

 world hitherto examined (see Russia in Europe and Ural Mountains), em- 

 braces in its meaning the Rothe Todt-liegende, Kupfer-schiofer and Zechstein 

 of the German geologists, and among the latter, Professor Naumann, Dr 

 Geinitz, and Capt. Gutbier, have recently adopted the new term. In England 

 the term includes the Lower Red sandstone, and themaguesiau limestone. As 

 far as researches have gone, it wpuld appear that the Permian system is omitted 

 in Southern Europe. 



