564 Reviews — The Culm Flora of Moravian Silesia. 



sub-tropical character ; and thirdly, the period of the Lower Upper 

 Pliocene Tertiaries, when lauraceous plants, etc., were existing. 

 (Report, p. 28.) In conclusion, we agree with Mr. Brough Smyth 

 that " it is impossible to conduct a geological survey without the aid 

 of the palaeontologist : and such aid, to be of the highest use and 

 value, necessarily requires that all the fossils should be figured and 

 correctly described." J. M. 



II. — The Culm-Flora of the Moravian-Silesian Roofing-Slates. 

 Die Culm-Flora des Mahrisch-Schlesischen Dachschiefers. By 

 D. Stub, pp. 106, with 17 plates. Being No. 1. of vol. viii. of 

 the Abhandlungen der K. K. Geologischen Reichsanstalt. Vienna, 

 1875. 



THIS important memoir throws much light upon a point in the 

 geology of Central Europe which until recently was almost a 

 blank as far as accurate knowledge was concerned. As late as 1859 

 Ferd. Roemer described the great rock-series whence the fossil plants 

 so splendidly illustrated in the plates before us were derived, as "a 

 shapeless inarticulate mass," in which no organism had up to that time 

 been detected: That this series consisted of slate and sandstone, and 

 that it lay conformably upon a far-stretching " grauwacke " forma- 

 tion, which in its turn rested immediately upon the old crystalline 

 rocks of the Sudetic Mountains and upon the flanks of the " Briinn- 

 Blansko " Syenite range, thus covering a considerable portion of 

 Moravia and Silesia (Austrian), was about all that was known re- 

 specting it. In 1860 Roemer himself wrung the first secret from 

 these beds by discovering in them a locality for Posidonomya Becheri. 

 From that date progress was made through the labours of Roemer, 

 H. Wolf, Halfar, von Ettingshausen, von Hochstetter, and especially 

 of Herr Max Machanek, the manager of slate quarries in the district, 

 to whose zeal in collecting a large proportion of the species de- 

 scribed by Prof. Stur is due. It was ftmnd that here were Carbon- 

 iferous rocks lying upon Devonian beds, from which they were quite 

 undistinguishable except palaeontologically, and that further these 

 Carboniferous roofing-slates and grits could be referred to the Posi- 

 donomya-scliiefer or CWm-formation of Nassau and Western Westpha- 

 lia. The divisions now recognized in the Culm of Moravia and 

 Silesia are three in number, and are characterized as follows : 



1. The westernmost and lowest zone, which lies directly upon 

 the Devonian series, and comprises the two older varieties of roofing- 

 slate. It is from 3000 to 4000 fathoms (Klafter) thick, and consists 

 of sandstones, slates (Klotzschiefer), and yellowish fine-grained con- 

 glomerates yielding good building stone. 



2. The middle zone, 4000 to 5000 fathoms thick, is composed of 

 similar rocks to the last, but the enclosed slates are of the thin-split- 

 ting kind known as Blattelschiefer. 



3. The upper zone, also about 5000 fathoms thick, is the least 

 studied of the series, and is distinguished by a fine deep blackish- 

 blue Blattelschiefer. 



