232 UPPER SANDSTONES. 



to believe this ring at rest, because they did not seek 

 after the causes of its figure, or else, even when these 

 were assigned, have maintained that it was so. Do the 

 latter profess their contempt of the rules of philoso- 

 phizing, or do they confess their ignorance of those 

 rules ? The dilemma is before them, to choose. 



Be this as it may, the lowest sandstone of this name 

 reposes on the muschelkalk in many places, as at 

 Helmstadt, near Schweinfurt, &c. and when this is 

 absent, as it is to the north of the Hartz, it is found 

 in contact with the red marl. In Bohemia it lies on 

 the coal series. As we cannot refuse our assent to 

 facts so detailed and so precise as those which relate to 

 this sandstone, it adds confirmation to the opinion 

 that the deposits of secondary strata are analagous 

 rather than identical, and have been produced under 

 different circumstances, in different original cavities or 

 seas. 



The Quadersandstein is described as generally fine, 

 and as whitish, yellow, brown, and reddish, consisting 

 of rounded quartz with occasional mica, and with an 

 argillaceous or argillo-ferruginous cement ; sometimes 

 also containing calcareous crystals and veins of quartz. 

 It is occasionally decomposed into extensive tracts of 

 sand, as in Bohemia ; and it contains few " subordi- 

 nate" beds; these being conglomerates of quartz 

 pebbles, or marls, or argillaceous strata, including 

 fragments of plants in the form of lignites ; as it is 

 sometimes also coloured grey by their fragments and 

 fibres. The plants in question are thought to differ 

 from those of the coal series, from which this rock 

 differs so materially in age and position ; yet to bear 

 an affinity to palms, and to the lycopodiolithes of 

 Schlotteim, comprising also carpolithes. The fossil 

 shells are pectines, turbines, terebratulae, gryphites, 



