( 66 ) 



On " (he Silurian Rocks of Bohemia,''^ uith a few Bemarks on 

 the Devonian Bocks of Moravia, in a Letter to Professor 

 Leonhard from Sir Roderick I. Murchison. With a 

 Plate. Communicated in Manuscript by the Author, 

 tln-ough M. Leonhard, for the Edinburgh New Philoso- 

 phical Journal. 



My dear Sir. — I avail myself of a day of leisure, to give 

 you a brief general view of the Silurian system of the centre 

 of Bohemia, as it has been most correctly named by M. 

 Barande.* To you who have kindly undertaken to make 

 better known to the scientific public of Germany, the results 

 of the researches of my colleagues, M. De Verneuil, Count 

 Keyserling, and myself, I have only to refer to the first chap- 

 ter of our work, to remind you of the very great importance 

 which is there attached to the labours of M. Barande. I 

 first visited Prague in 1829, secondly in 1843, and now I liave 

 spent a fortnight there in company with M. De Verneuil, in the 

 latter part of which we were j oined by Count Keyserling. Dur- 

 ing the first visit, Iknewnomoreof the succession of the paleo- 

 zoic series of rocks and fossils beneath the mountain or cai*- 

 boniferous limestone (herg-kalk'), than any of my brother geolo- 

 gists of Europe ; and my fellow-traveller on that occasion, 

 Professor Sedgwick, and myself, having chiefly in view the 

 development of the structure of the Eastern Alps,t we satis- 

 fied ourselves with an excursion along the left bank of the 

 Moldan, where, under the guidance of the able mineralogist 

 Profes.?or Zippe, we saw that large masses of limestone with 

 trilobites were subordinate to rocks which were then, with- 

 out distinction, termed " grauwacke,'' or " transition." With 

 the exception of a few trilobites, chiefly those described by 

 Count Sternberg,! the museum of Prague then offered few 

 palEeozoic fossils. Time rolled on, during which, by several 



* See Notice Prelirainaire sur le Systeme Silurian, et les Trilobites de Bolieme 

 par Joachim Barande. Leipsic, 18^6, p. 1. 



t See Transactions of the Geological Society of London, New Series, vol. iii,, 

 p. 301, and Philosophical Magazine, New Series, vol. viii., August 1830. 



\ See two Notices of Count Sternberg 1825 and 1833, in the Verhandbenger 

 des Vaterlandesches Museum, Prague. 



