ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OP THE PRESIDENT. 181 



forget, that in our experiments we can never have the volume of 

 materials, the amount of pressure, and above all, the duration of time 

 with which nature has worked ; and each of these, singly and com- 

 bined, must have had important influence in modifying the results. 



Permian System. 



The soundness of the principles on which Sir R. Murchison and 

 M. de Verneuil first proposed to establish this great division, has 

 been confirmed by subsequent observations both by themselves and 

 by others, and appears to be recognised by the geologists of all 

 countries. The name of Permian, too, has been as willingly adopted 

 as that of Silurian was, being at once convenient and appropriate, 

 and recalling the locality where a true type of the series can be re- 

 ferred to. In their first journey to Russia, only a part of the region 

 where these rocks predominate was examined ; but they saw enough 

 then to satisfy them that some new classification was called for, and 

 Sir R. Murchison developed his views and those of his associates at 

 the Meeting of the British Association at Glasgow in 18^0, and in a 

 paper read before this Society in the following spring. In his Address 

 as President at our Anniversary in 1842, he referred to his second 

 journey in the summer of 1841, and announced the discovery, that 

 these newer red sand deposits, covering an enormous portion of 

 European Russia, constitute a separate zoological system, distinct in 

 age from the Trias, and comprehending in ascending order our Lower 

 New Red Sandstone (the rothe-todte-liegende of Germany), our Mag- 

 nesian Limestone (the Zechstein of Germany), and the sandstones 

 and conglomerates that constitute the lower member of the hunter, 

 or variegated sandstone of the Germans (represented by the Gres 

 des Vosges of France) ; and leaving the Trias, composed of the Up- 

 per Bunter-sandstein, Muschelkalk and Keuper, as the lowest of the 

 secondary rocks, and the commencement of new orders in various 

 forms of life. Sir R. Murchison maintained the same views in his Ad- 

 dress of 184S ; and in the spring of 1844, in a paper which he read 

 to this Society, he gave a full confirmation of the correctness of his 

 original conclusions, after a more careful examination of the fossils 

 collected from the Permian series in Russia, and comparison of 

 them with those collected in different parts of Germany and Poland, 

 which countries he visited for the special purpose of examining in 

 situ the characters of the lower members of the New Red Sandstone 

 series in their long-established typical forms. The Permian system 

 therefore consists of a series of conglomerates, sandstones, clays, 

 marls, common limestones and magnesian limestones, all under a 

 great variety of forms, and intermediate between the Carboniferous 

 and Triassic groups. It contains a peculiar fauna and flora, mingled 

 however with a proportion of the animal and vegetable remains of the 

 Carboniferous scries, on which its beds repose, and tiius connected 

 with the palaeozoic class of deposits ; whereas the Triassic series, 

 which succeeds in ascending order, has not yet been found, it is said, 

 to contain any palaeozoic forms, whether animal or vegetable. The 

 Permian system, the authors of the 'Geology of Russia' observe, 



