12] 
The Wealden formation, including the Purbeck stone, is 
extensively developed in the north of Germany, and is overlaia 
a great argillaceous deposit containing marine shells, similar bo. 
to the oolitic and cretaceous systems. Of the fossils found in the 
Wealden of England, almost every species occurs in Germany, in- 
cluding even the minute Cypris tuberculata, C. granulosa, and C. 
Valdensis. Last autumn, Herr Roemer discovered the Wealden with 
its characteristic shells, near Bottingen, in the High Alps. He 
possesses also the Lepidotus Mantelli of the English Wealden, from 
Saxony. ‘The Portland sand occurs in the north of Germany, but 
the Portland stone and the Kimmeridge clay are so intimately con- 
nected by their fossils, that the intermediate sandy beds cannot be 
considered as a separate deposit. The chalk with flints occurs pos- 
sibly in the Hartz. The greensand series is extensively developed, 
the Flammenmergel of Hausmann being the upper greensand of 
England, and the quader-sandstein the lower. Herr Roemer be- 
lieves that the gault also exists in Northern Germany. 
A paper was then read on the classification of the older rocks of 
Devonshire and Cornwall, by the Rev. Professor Sedgwick, F.G.S., 
and Roderick Impey Murchison, Esq., F.G.S. 
In a communication read in 1837, the authors explained their 
general views respecting the older rocks of Devon and Cornwall, 
but having recently changed one part of their classification, they 
have hastened to place their reasons for doing so upon record, before 
the Geological Society. On three out of four of the essential 
points in their former communication, the authors’ views remain 
unchanged ; they adhere to the belief, which they were the first to 
put forth, that the greater portion of Devonshire belongs to the true 
carboniferous system, and that the succession and lithological cha- 
racters of the different mineral masses in North and South Devon, 
which they then pointed out, remain unaltered. In proof of this 
there were suspended, during the reading of the paper, the same 
sections as were exhibited at Bristol in 1836. The change, there- 
fore, which they propose, is to remove the lowest rocks from the 
Cambrian and Silurian systems to the old red; and their reason for 
making this alteration is founded on zoological evidence recently 
obtained, which shows that the organic remains of these deposits 
are of a peculiar character, approaching in the upper division, the 
fossils of the carboniferous strata, and in the lower, those of the Si- 
lurian system; as well as upon the previously ascertained regular 
sequence or passage from the carboniferous strata, through all the 
subjacent series of deposits. 
The fossil plants of the culm basin having been formerly deter- 
mined to be, as far as recognizable, true coal measures remains, and 
the deposit having been therefore assigned to the era of the carbo- 
niferous system, the order of superposition being also clear, the 
strata underlying the coal basin might naturally be referred to 
the old red sandstone, if the organic remains found in them, belonged 
to a natural group, intermediate between the fossils of the carboni- 
