TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 55 



clitnatal conditions than now obtain. Mr. Murcliison then concluded by summing up the 

 views arrived at by his coadjutors (M. de Verneuil and Count Keyserhng) and himself 

 concerning the newer palaeozoic rocks, explaining that the Permian strata* (so named 

 from their great development in the ancient kingdom of Permia) were connected with 

 the lower palaeozoic deposits (the Carboniferous, Devonian andSilurian),not onlyby the 

 generic fades of the fauna, but also by species of Producti, Terebratulae, &c., which 

 lived in earlier periods. The land plants found in these strata approach also very 

 nearly to those of the carboniferous rocks, and according to M. Adolphe Brongniart, 

 are in some instances identical with them. 



The termination of the Permian system, on the contrary, is marked by an entire 

 change in animal life, and so far as we yet know, in vegetable life also, the fossils of 

 the red mai'ls, the muschelkalk, and the keuper (the trias of foreigners and the upper 

 new red sandstone of English geologists) being wholly distinct from those of the pa- 

 laeozoic series 



Copies of a tabular list of the organic remains of the Permian system, as prepared 

 by Mr. Murchison and M. de Verneuil, and intended to form part of a work to be 

 published on the geology of Russia, were then laid before the Section. 



New Swedish and Nonoegian Maps. — Mr. Murchison next called attention to a 

 lithological map of Sweden, now in preparation, in which a great number of the ancient 

 crystalline rocks are distinguished from each other by different colours, and their 

 flexures marked. A portion of this map had been shown to Mr. Murchison by the 

 Baron Berzelius, under whose superintendence it will be published. Allusion was 

 made also to a geological map of the Christiania district, by Professor Keilhau, and 

 to a new geological map of the northern part of Norway by the same author. 



A Geological Map of the British Isles and part of France was exhibited by 



Mr. J. Knipe. 

 This map, the author states, was intended to supply a want that existed at the 

 time he undertook the work, when the separately published Geological Maps of 

 England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland were imperfect and not constructed to any 

 uniform scale, or according to any uniform method of colouring. 



On the Exeter Amygdaloid. By the Rev. David Williams. 



The author remarked that so long as twenty-five years ago, Mr. Greenough had 

 pointed out the difficulty of distinguishing between the red marl and the toadstone of 

 Heavitree, and stated, that judging from the specimens he exhibited to the meeting, 

 and from the sections represented by his diagrams, the trappean matter did not appear 

 to him to have been injected into the variegated marl and sandstone. Mr. Williams con- 

 sidered that these specimens and sections exhibited every gradation, from a perfectly 

 fused sandstone, to a partially freckled surface caused by the incipient process of con- 

 version, and that in this respect they presented the appearances seen at the boundary 

 walls of granite veins, indicating the process of reduction always in advance of the lava 

 sea within, while its efforts at reducing the bounding rocks contained in itself the ele- 

 ments of compensation and correction in thus working out safety valves and channels 

 of communication with the surface of the globe over the several volcanic areas. 



The author remarked with reference to these changes, that the greater or less 

 amount of alteration and the presence or absence of granite vein-like processes or cavities 

 eroded in the adjacent rocks, would enable an observer to distinguish whether any 

 igneous rock had been generated and crystallized in situ, or was a contemporaneous 

 and erupted product, and in illustration quoted the section of the Raddon quarry, 

 where the presence of three thin seams of unfused grit, ten and twelve feet long, give 

 the trap to that extent only the appearance of bedding. He argued that the presence 

 of these lines of sandstone perfectly insulated in the amygdaloid was inexplicable on 

 the hypothesis of injection, but was a natural result of fusion, certain portions of 



* The Permian st/stem comprehends the formation of the lower new red sandstone (Rothe- 

 todte-liegende), Magnesian limestone (kupfer-schiefer and zechstein), and also a portion of 

 the overlying red sandstone, which has been hitherto inaccurately grouped with the trias. 



