88 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PAL/EON TOLOGY. 



by Ferber's important series of works, bis Treatise on the 

 Mountains of Hungary, his Account of Travels, and his Con- 

 tributions to the Mineralogy of Bohemia (Berlin, T 774). Twenty 

 years later, another descriptive work on the minerals of Bohemia 

 was contributed by Franz Ambros Reuss, a mineralogist and 

 physician resident in Bilin. The same author wrote a Text- 

 book of Mineralogy that had a wide circulation. A pupil of 

 Werner's, Reuss treated the basalts of North Bohemia as rocks 

 of aqueous origin. 



The most gifted of the early stratigraphers was Johann Ehren- 

 reich von Fichtel (1732-95), a Hungarian by birth, whose 

 researches in Transylvania were published in 1780; a later 

 work on the Carpathian mountains appeared in 1791. The 

 first volume of Fichtel's Mineralogy of Transylvania contains 

 much valuable information about local occurrences of Tertiary 

 fossils in the low range of hills in front of the Transylvanian 

 Alps. In the second volume, Fichtel describes the massive 

 accumulations of rock-salt in Transylvania, and gives an 

 exhaustive technical account of the whole mining industry in 

 Transylvania, the Carpathians, and Galicia. A topographical 

 map shows the distribution of rock-salt in these areas. 



Local stratigraphical relations are now and then elucidated, 

 and the origin of the different kinds of rock is discussed, Fichtel 

 declaring himself to be a thorough Volcanist. Amongst rocks 

 of igneous origin Fichtel includes the granite composing the 

 highest mountains, and the gneiss, schist, limestone, and 

 metalliferous rock (rhyolite, dacite, trachyte) composing the 

 mountains of intermediate height; the rocks composing the 

 lower ranges in front of the middle and main chain are, he says, 

 of pelagic origin, and include sand, clay, and pebble deposits. 

 According to Fichtel, rock-salt originated by the evaporation 

 of a fluid mixture of salt and rock-oil, which had sapped into 

 huge crust-cavities after the cooling and consolidation of the 

 earth's crust. Such cavities, with their saline intercalations, 

 form, he says, the heart of the Carpathian mountains. 



Fichtel's later work is devoted chiefly to a careful enumera- 

 tion and description of the eruptive rocks in the Carpathians. 

 He distinguishes volcanic outbreaks, with which superficial lava 

 flows are associated, from volcanic upheavals, in the course of 

 which wide regions are affected, and masses of igneous material 

 are intruded in the crust. 



It can be easily understood that Fichtel's v/ork met with an 



