428 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



Carboniferous formations ; the " Augite Porphyry " is the 

 contemporary of the Permo-Triassic and Liassic formations ; 

 the ''Trachyte" is correlated with the Jurassic and Cretaceous 

 formations; the "Basalt" with the Tertiary deposits; and the 

 Lava with the Diluvial and Alluvial accumulations. The 

 enumeration of the stratigraphical rock-succession undoubtedly 

 shows a considerable advance on the text-books with almost 

 exclusively Wernerian sub-divisions, which had hitherto held 

 the place of authority in Germany. 



Ami Boue, in his Geognostic Sketches in Germany (1829), 

 describes the series of formations and their distribution in 

 Germany. These sketches give a wonderfully comprehensive 

 view of the stratigraphical relations in Germany itself, and 

 draw a careful comparison between the character of the forma- 

 tions in Germany and their age-equivalents in other parts of 

 Europe. A much clearer insight is given into the leading 

 stratigraphical features of the Alps, Ami Boue's personal know- 

 ledge of the rock-succession in other countries enabling him to 

 form broader conceptions regarding different developments or 

 facies of formations belonging to the same geological epoch. 

 But still more important was the new light thrown by Ami 

 Boue upon the distribution of Tertiary deposits in Central 

 Europe. He pointed out that these deposits occur in five 

 well-defined basin-shaped areas : namely, the North-German, 

 Bohemian, Rhineland, Swiss-Bavarian, and Austro-Hungarian 

 depressions. Boue showed that in none of those areas were the 

 deposits identical in character with the deposits of the same 

 age in France and England. The exposition of these relation- 

 ships is one of the finest contributions to the stratigraphical 

 knowledge of the time, Boue relying almost entirely upon his 

 own independent observations. Boue's penetration is the more 

 remarkable since it was little aided by palseontological data, 

 and Boue was no great believer in the stratigraphical value of 

 fossils. 



Alexandre Brongniart was one of the most active Continental 

 pioneers of the application of palaeontological methods to the 

 problem presented by geological field-surveying. In 1829 he 

 made the attempt to describe all the rocks composing the 

 earth's crust in chronological order, and to introduce a new 

 nomenclature for the successive horizons of rock, which should 

 be quite independent of lithological features. In his system 

 Brongniart distinguished nine classes of Terrains, stating that 



