﻿106 Dr. Feistmantel — Bohemian Coal Fauna and Passage-Beds. 



the British Association at Glasgow in September last, it will certainly 

 not be without interest, to give some geological and historical notes 

 on this most important occurrence, and I may, I trust, be allowed 

 to do so in the Geological Magazine. 



The question whether these beds, with a Fauna of Permian aspect, 

 but occurring with a Carboniferous Flora, are to be taken as of 

 Carboniferous age, or, guided by the animal relics, as Permian, or 

 whether they should be considered as intermediate between the two, 

 occupied the greater part of my time whilst engaged upon the 

 pal^ontological examination of the Bohemian Coal-fields. 



1 have reported several times on this subject, and I constantly 

 maintained almost the same opinion, considering these Gas-coals first 

 as Lowest Permian, later as Passage-beds between the Carboniferous 

 and Permian formations ; but as all my reports are published in 

 German, my repeating them in this place is certainly justified. 



As the animal-remains in the Gas-coal occurred only in the 

 above-mentioned Coal-basins,' I will especially speak of them. 



My chief object has always been to show that in Bohemia (and 

 certainly also in other localities) there is no strict boundary between 

 the Carboniferous and Permian ; on the contrary, that these formations 

 are in very close connexion, as is shown in the association of a 

 Flora of Carboniferous character with animals mostly of Permian 

 character in the above-mentioned districts, namely, in the Gas-coals 

 of the Pilsen- and Kladno-Rakonitz basins, which formerly, at least 

 to a great extent, were considered as truly Carboniferous, but now 

 must be modified, although there are still authors who assert that 

 the Flora alone must decide the age of these strata. 



^.—GEOLOGICAL AND PAL^ONTOLOGICAL NOTES. 

 I. — General Consideration of the above-mentioned Coal-basins. 



These the richest Coal-deposits in Bohemia can, properly speak- 

 ing, be considered as only one continuous area, as they are in no 

 place distinctly interrupted ; they begin in the south-west,^ in the 

 neighbourhood of Dobrzan and Mautau, and extend in a N.E. direc- 

 tion by the city of Pilsen as far as Plass, where generally the end of 

 the Pilsen basin is taken ; but quite in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood, on the so-called " Mlatzer tanb," the other basin begins with 

 a narrow band, which extends across Shelles, Technitz, Horzowitz, 

 and so on across Eakonitz, Kladno, until it reaches about twenty 

 English miles north of Prague as far as the river Elbe, where it 

 apparently ends. 



Both these basins have further in common : a. that there is a 

 Coal-bearing portion, with Coal-seams of different quality and thick- 

 ness in successive order, and, b. there is a portion of Red Sandstones 

 without Coal-seams, or at least without productive Coal-seams, also 

 in successive order. 



' Some of the same geijera and species also occur again higher in the true Permian, 

 in N.E. Eohemia, Silesia, Saxony, the Saarbriick basin, etc. 



2 See Maps of the Vienna Geological Institution. 



