472 Dr. Wheellon Hind— The Culm of W. Germany. 



to the Culm faunas. The Konigsberg Beds are underlain by a 

 grauwacke or grit, and the Herborn Beds or Posidonien Schiefer 

 are overlain by a similar rock, and it is therefore surmised that this 

 grauwacke represents a definite horizon and demonstrates the relation 

 of the Visean beds of Konigsberg to the Posidonomya shales of Herborn. 

 The whole district is much disturbed, faulted, and overthrusts are 

 many and on a grand scale, the Konigsberg Beds are themselves 

 much contorted and broken, and the exposures very small, that 

 sufficient detail of stratigraphy does not obtain. 



Near Konigsberg, 400 yards east of the village, is a small section 

 which shows the following succession: — 



Posidonien Schiefer. 



Cherts. 



Diabase. 



Upper Devonian. 



A succession similar to that which exists at Herborn. These beds are 

 cut off by a fault and then the section shows grauwacke, on which 

 lies the slaty breccia containing the Visean fauna. 



In the absence of detailed stratigraphical evidence of the relation of 

 the Konigsberg Beds, it is argued that the beds with Yisean fauna 

 cannot be below the Posidonomya cherts, because there is no room for 

 them between the Devonian diabase and the chert. But it is forgotten 

 that the lowest Culm fauna, the Breitscheid or Prolecanifes compressus 

 fauna, which is admitted to be below the Posidonomya beds, is absent 

 at Konigsberg. And further, this argument begs the whole question, 

 because it assumes that there was no interval or unconformity between 

 the outburst of the Devonian diabase and the deposit of the Posidonien 

 Schiefer. 



The question is not one that demands much imagination, however. 

 The Visean fauna found at Konigsberg is that which is always found to 

 immediately precede the Prolecanites compressus beds and normally 

 should be only a few feet below it, and it is not therefore at all 

 strange to find evidences of both faunas in very close pi'oximity, but 

 it is important to recognize that the Culm of "Western Germany is late 

 Carboniferous, and not Tournaisian, and the appeal to palaeontology 

 pronounces a very definite and certain verdict on this point. The 

 solution of the question was impossible in Germany, on account of 

 the absence of sections and the disturbance, contemporaneous and 

 afterwards, due to volcanic activity and earth-movements. It is of 

 the greatest interest to find that the questions of the relation of 

 the Tipper Devonian to the Culm are practically identical in Germany 

 and Devonshire, and to know that the oldest Carboniferous rocks in 

 Germany are late Visean. 



Kecent work in Belgium by Dr. Purves,' M. Cornet," and 

 M. Eenevier afford additional evidence for the views advanced in the 

 above paper. 



1 Bull. I'Acad. Roy. Belg., ser. iii, pt. ii, No. xii. 



2 Am. Soc. Geol. Belg., t. xxxii, pp. 139-52. 



