STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 453 



Ferdinand Roemer in 1870 gave an accurate description of the 

 coalfields in Upper Silesia, and in 1882 Schiitze published an 

 account of the Lower Silesian and Bohemian Coal deposits. 

 The Saxony district was examined by H. B. Geinitz (1856), 

 who tried to determine two palaeontologically distinct zones in 

 the Productive formation, a lower zone exhibiting chiefly 

 Sigillarian remains, and an upper with Calamites and ferns in 

 greater profusion. A similar sub-division was attempted by 

 E. Weiss for the Coal Measures of the Saar basin, and 

 Schiitze and Stur also recognised sub-divisions of the Coal 

 Measures in Hungarian districts But these sub-divisions can 

 at the most have a local value ; geologists agree that the fossil 

 flora of the Coal Measures cannot admit of any general 

 palaeontological sub-division, as it presents a remarkably 

 uniform character throughout all parts of the world. 



E. Permian System. The youngest system of the Palaeozoic 

 epoch has played a noteworthy part in the history of Strati- 

 graphy. The industrial importance of the copper slate and 

 the metalliferous " Zechstein " group in Germany secured it 

 the attention of mineralogists for many centuries. The copper- 

 bearing deposits and the Coal Measures formed the chief 

 kernel of Werner's Flotz formations (ante, p. 58), and were 

 selected by the earliest German stratigraphers, Lehmann and 

 Fiichsel, for extended field examination. The recognition by 

 these stratigraphers of a definite series of lithological sub- 

 divisions, together with their representation of the field- 

 outcrop of these sub-divisions upon good maps may be 

 regarded as the starting-point in Germany of the present 

 methods in stratigraphical research. Fiichsel and Lehmann 

 tabulated the complete succession of the rocks now known as 

 Permian, from the Red Underlyer or basal series of coarse 

 conglomerates, shales, and sandstones, to the uppermost beds 

 of limestone, dolomite, and marls in the " Zechstein " or 

 'mine-stone series. At that time the Zechstein series of Central 

 Germany was not unnaturally confused with the stupendous 

 masses of limestone, dolomite, and interbedded marls in the 

 Alps and Jura mountains, and the apparent lithological 

 resemblance of the series was the source of the mistaken 

 conception held by early Alpine geologists regarding the age 

 of the so-called "Alpine limestone" and "Jura limestone." 



In England, Conybeare and Phillips identified quite 



