458 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY. 



plete absence of true Carboniferous plant-types indicate that 

 the Gondwana Coal-measures are younger than the Car- 

 boniferous epoch, and, on the other hand, the superincumbent 

 strata of the Gondwana system contain Triassic plant-remains, 

 hence the Glossopteris series in which the coal-seams occur 

 are thought to be of Permian or possibly Permo-Triassic age. 



A system resembling the Gondwana system of Southern India 

 is present in South Australia, in South and East Africa, and 

 in Brazil; littoral and fluviatile sandstones, conglomerates, 

 shales, and locally well-developed Coal-measures form in all 

 those localities the concluding group in the Palaeozoic suc- 

 cession. 



The similarity in the character of the deposits has suggested 

 to geologists the idea that these areas may at that epoch have 

 been connected with one another as the broken coast-line of 

 some southern ancient continent, and this whole region of 

 Permian coal-bearing deposits is sometimes referred to col- 

 lectively for convenience as "Gondwana Land." Quite recently, 

 a Glossopteris was found in the Russian Permian formation, and 

 this discovery affords an important link in the comparison 

 between the Russian facies and the facies of Gondwana Land. 

 In South Africa, the Gondwana system consists of con- 

 glomerates, clays, and sandstones, and in these Permian 

 species of Glossopteris have also been identified. This system 

 rests unconformably upon Carboniferous rocks and is itself 

 unconformably succeeded by shales, which pass upwards into 

 the Karroo beds. The identification by Amalitzky of Permian 

 Anthracosias at the base of the Karroo beds has led to the 

 general assumption that the main body of the Karroo beds is 

 of Triassic age. 



The intimate connection of the Permian system with the 

 Trias in the Southern Hemisphere, in India, and in Russia, 

 appeared to confirm the views of Conybeare, who in 1832 

 had associated the Magnesian Limestone with the Red Con- 

 glomerates and the Bunter Sandstone as a united Poikilitic 

 group. Brongniart applied the name Poikilitic only to the 

 Bunter Sandstones; Buckland, in his ideal section of the 

 earth's crust, combined the Permian and Triassic succession and 

 termed it "Poikilitic System." Marcou (1859), John Phillips 

 (1871), and the English Committee of the International Con- 

 gress of Geologists in London (1888), supported the union of 

 the Dyas and Trias into one group, to be placed in the 



