H. S. WILLIAMS — THE CARBONIFEROrS SYSTEM. 17 



of Werner into orders, and his medial order was called the " Medial or Carboniferous 

 order." Here were included " the rock formations which ought to be considered to- 

 gether with theCoal Measm-es." In his classification these formations were, -'I. The 

 Coal Measures, II. The Millstone grit and shale, III. The Carboniferous or Moun- 

 tain limestone, lY. The Old Red Sandstone."* His " Super-medial order " included 

 all the rocks from the Coal Measures to the Tertiary ; substantially what we now call 

 Mesozoic. His " Sub-medial order " was the " Grauwacke " of Werner. 



Conybeare prominently notices that the formations of the Medial or Carboniferous 

 order are the rocks which form the Pennine (spelled by him " Penine ") range of 

 mountains in northern England. He caz'efully defines the position and structure of 

 the range and proposes the retention of the name Pennine, which was first applied 

 to it by the early Roman inhabitants of the island. Other exhibitions of Carbonif- 

 erous rocks are mentioned by him, but here alone he found the whole series repre- 

 sented ; and the rocks of the Pennine range were the typical rocks of the system which 

 Conybeare defined. 



In Hughes' " G-eography of British History" " (London, 1863) we find the Pennine 

 range defined as " applied by general consent to the extensive range of high ground 

 stretching south from the Cheviot hills to the district of the Peak in Derbyshire, 

 about 170 miles in length," stretching " from the border of Scotland southward to 

 the valley of the Trent " (p. 20). It is composed " entirely of rocks belonging to the 

 Carboniferous series " (p. 22). 



H. B. Woodward, in his " Geology of England and Wales " (1887), page 149, de- 

 scribes this range as " a faulted anticlinal of lower Carboniferous rocks, supporting 

 on the east the coal fields of Northumberland, Yorkshire and Derbyshire, and on the 

 west the Lancashire and Cheshire coal fields." As was pointed out by Conybeare, the 

 rocks of this range not only contain the typical series of rock formations to which he 

 applied the name " Carboniferous order," but each of the members of that system. 



De la Beche (1831-1833) followed the classification of Conybeare, but dropped the 

 terra " medial " as a synonym. John Phillips (1837) adopted the name Carbonifer- 

 ous, with " system " instead of " order," in the same sense as proposed by Conybeare ; 

 and Murchison, in " TheSiluriaa System " (1839) made classic the names " Silurian 

 system," "Old Red system," "Carboniferous system," "New Red system," and 

 " Oolitic system." 



After these authors, geologists in general have adopted the name Carboniferous sys- 

 tem for one of the great groups of rocks composing the grand geologic column. 



All of these early English authors were in unison in distinctly excluding the rocks 

 afterward (in 1841) called " Permian" by Murchison, and at that time going under 

 the names " New Red sandstone " and " Magnesian limestone," " Saliferous system " 

 and " New Red system." 



Conybeare, De la Beche, and John Phillips agreed in including the upper Old Red 

 sandstone in the Carboniferous system, while Murchison after them (in 1839) sepa- 

 rated from the Carboniferous the lower member as a distinct system. On page 169 of 

 his "Silurian System," he says that he "applied the name ' Old Red system ' to the 

 old red sandstones of previous writers in order to convey a just conception of their 

 importance in the natural succession of rocks, and also to show, that as the Carbon- 

 iferous system in which previous writers have merged it * * * is surmounted by 

 one red group, so is it underlaid by another." 



*Jbid., p. 335. 

 J 1 1— Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 2, 1S90. 



