﻿116 Dr. Feis f mantel — Bohemian Coal Fauna and Passage-Beds. 



opinion, taking this Gas-ooal in the Kladno-Eakonitz Coal-field to be 

 analogous to the Kohlenrothliegendes in the Saarbriicken basin, or 

 in other words as Lower Permian, in which my own explanations 

 were acknowledged. 



About the Niirschan Gas-coal, from which so many more animals 

 are known, and from whence Dr. A. Fritsch has obtained the greater 

 part of his material, the literature is a little more complicated. 



First we find the Gas-coal mentioned in Prof. Geinitz's voluminous 

 and important work, " Steinkohlen Deutschlands und anderer Lander 

 Europas," 1865, i. vol. ; but the Professor did not know any animals 

 from there, and of the plants only two species are specially mentioned, 

 amongst which, as the most frequent, Sphenojpteris Gravenhorsti, 

 Brong., which I found again in my examinations. The Professor 

 knew the Gas-coal also only from the mines in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of Niirschan. 



More lately, however, in 1870, I visited this Coal-field and 

 collected plants in the more western mines of Niirschan, as well 

 from the Gas-coal as from the Shale above, in the mines of Dr. 

 Pankraz, while Dr. Anton Fritsch had already at that time some 

 material of animal-remains to determine. 



At that time he wrote the first note^ and spoke of these re- 

 mains as Permian ; at the same time I wrote my first paper on the 

 plant-remains from this stratum in June, 1870,^ and pointed out 

 already strongly as very interesting the occurrence of this Permian 

 Fauna with an almost entirely Carboniferous Flora. 



In a reference to this paper of mine in Geinitz und Leonhard's 

 Jahrbuch, 1870, the Carboniferous age of the plants was acknow- 

 ledged, the Permian character of the animals could not be denied ; 

 and to explain this, an immigration or colonization of those 

 migratory animals (as they are called there) in the Carboniferous 

 strata was suggested as possible. But it certainly says that in our 

 Pilsen basin the Carboniferous Flora was still growing, while these 

 Permian animals had already begun to live, which only proves the 

 existence of the former in Permian times. 



Later I paid three more visits to this Coal-field and wrote my 

 other papers on this subject.^ In all these papers I declared as 

 a palseontological maxim, that in this case the animal-remains will 

 certainly have to decide, and that a surviving of an already exist- 

 ing Flora is more natural, and I then declared the Niirschan Gas- 

 coal as also of lowest Permian ; parallel with Herr Weiss's Kohlen- 

 rothliegendes. 



Prof. Geinitz, however, maintained his view of an "immigration" 

 of "dyadic forms." 



^ Sitzungsbericlite der k. bohm. Gesellsch. d. "Wissensch. 1870. April. 



2 Ibidem, June, 1870. 



•* lieitrag zur Keniitniss und Ausdehnung des Niirschaner Gasschiefers, etc., Jahrb. 

 d. k. k. geol. Reichsanst. 1872. — Ueber das Verhaltniss der bohm. Kohlen- und 

 Permformation, etc.. Ibidem, 1873.- — A letter to Prof. Geinitz, in Geinitz und 

 Leonhard N. Jabrb., 1872, p. 303. — Ueber den Niirschaner Gasschiefer, Zeitschr. d. 

 D. geol. Gesellsch. 1873. — Ueber Verbreitung und geol. Stellung der verkieselten 

 Araucaritenstamme, etc., Sitzungsb. d. k, bohm. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. 1873, etc. 



