298 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY". [Mar. 4, 



member containing marine remains, to represent the German Zech- 

 stein, or Magnesian Limestone of Britain. They have all, therefore, 

 been referred by native geologists to the Roth-todt-liegende, or what 

 I call Lower Permian. Being furnished by my old friend M.Haidinger 

 with the Map of the Austrian Geological Survey of the tract lying 

 to the south of the Riesengebirge, I endeavoured to complete my 

 acquaintance with those deposits which, in a previous year, I had 

 seen in the environs of Braunau and Charlottenbrnnn, on the south- 

 eastern slopes of the same chain. On this occasion I examined 

 them on the line of railroad from Pardowitz and Josefstadt to Liebe- 

 stadtl and Semil ; which railroad, having a direction from S.AV. 

 to N.E., exhibits a complete transverse section of the whole group. 

 I was accompanied by Dr. Anton Fritsch, of Prague, whose accom- . 

 plishments as a naturalist and geologist were of the greatest ser- 

 vice, and without whose assistance in talking his native Bohemian 

 language I could have acquired little information on the spot. 



In 1857, M. Emil Porth described these deposits in a memoir pub- 

 lished in the ' Jahrbuch cler k. k. geologischen Reichsanstalt ' *. First 

 enumerating the varieties of crystalline and metalliferous rocks of 

 which the southern portion of the Riesengebirge is composed, he shows 

 how the lowest member of the ' Roth-liegende,' or his ' conglomerate,' 

 dips away from the older chain at angles varying from 20° to 48°, 

 with some intercalated shale-beds containing Plants. He speaks of a 

 bed of bituminous schist or 'Brandschiefer' near the base of the series, 

 which contains remains of Fishes and Plants and gypsum-crystals. 

 Above these he notices a succession of particoloured argillaceous 

 sands and clays, containing copper-ores ; and then the peculiar sand- 

 stone which is termed ' arkose'— in parts a coarse grit, and partly 

 conglomeratic, with some manganese. In other parts this so-called 

 arkose is a sandstone with interpolated layers of dark-red and white, 

 fine-grained sands, and small courses of limestone. Then follow 

 sands and argillaceous beds, limestone, marls, and other bituminous 

 schists ; the culminating masses of the whole group being deep -red 

 shale and micaceous sandstone, with harder siliceous beds. Besides 

 these varied deposits, M. Porth mentions thick bands of regular inter- 

 stratified igneous rocks, chiefly the melaphyr-porphyry, with amyg- 

 daloids and traps, quartzose porphyry, bands of basalt, &c. 



The most recent, however, of the descriptions of the Roth-liegende 

 of this tract is by M. Jokely, and was published in 1862 f. This 

 author (who surveyed the tract, and prepared the Austrian geological 

 map thereof, with which I Avas obligingly furnished by M . Haidinger, 

 as stated above) divides the Roth-liegende into three principal parts. 

 The uppermost of these consists chiefly of hard shales and marl, 

 with some sandstone, a little limestone, and some harder siliceous 

 beds ; the second of other and darker-coloured marls, shales, and 

 sandstones, passing down into arkose-grit and sandstone ; and the 

 third of bituminous shale (Brandschiefer and Schiefer), intercalated 



* Bericht iiber seine diesjahrigen geologischen Aufnahmen in Nord-ostlichcn 

 Bohmen. Seite 701. 



f Jahrb. dei-k. k. geol. Reiohsanstalt Wien. 1852. No. o. p. 381. 



