PROCEEDINGS 



OF 



THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



1831. No. 22. 



May 1 1th. — William Richardson, Esq. M.A. of Christ Church Col- 

 lege, Cambridge, and Bedford Row, London, was elected a Fellow 

 of this Society. 



The reading of a paper entitled " Notes on the Secondary Forma- 

 tions of Germany, as compared with those of England," by Roderick 

 Impey Murchison, Esq. Pres.G.S. F.R.S. &c, was begun. 



May 25th. — The Rev. Thomas Worsley, M.A. of Downing College, 

 Cambridge ; and the Rev. Robert Willis, M.A. of Caius College, 

 Cambridge, — were elected Fellows of this Society. 



The reading of the paper by Mr. Murchison, begun at the last Meet- 

 ing, was concluded. 



This communication is derived from a series of memoranda which 

 the author has extracted f.-om note-books, written as he passed through 

 various parts of Germany in the last three years ; and he presents it 

 to the Geological Society in the hope, that it may rouse the atten- 

 tion of his countrymen to the increasing geological interest of that 

 country, and to the various valuable native publications which de- 

 scribe its subdivisions. He endeavours to point out, in ascending 

 order, all the German formations from the surface of the carboniferous 

 rocks up to the newest tertiary deposits, showing, as far as is possi- 

 ble, their analogies and discrepancies when compared with those of 

 England, and entering into detail on such points only as fell directly 

 under his own observation. He refers for an account of places not 

 visited by himself, to the general work of M. Bou6, and to various 

 local authorities. 



In citing, with much praise, the recently published maps and sec- 

 tions of Hoffmann on North-Western Germany, the English inquirer 

 is cautioned against the general application, in Germany, of that part 

 of the table of superposition, in which the coal-measures are desig- 

 nated as some beds, subordinate to a vast thickness, 3000 or 4000 

 feet, of red sandstone and conglomerate, the whole of which are 

 grouped by Hoffmann under the one term of rothe-todte-liegende. It 

 is shown, on the contrary, that, however well this classification may 

 apply to a small part of Germany, it is by no means the rule in the 

 N.E. part of Bavaria, in Bohemia, and Westphalia ; in all of which 

 countries there are successions in the carboniferous series, very simi- 

 lar to those in England, accompanied with large expansions of moun- 

 tain and transition limestones. The author, therefore, adopts that 

 view of Professor Sedgwick which restricts the name of rothe-todte- 



