ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixxxiii 



observations on the brown-coal of North Germany, that no German 

 geologists had ever stated that the Septaria-clay had been found 

 under the brown-coal, and that I was consequently in error in 

 assuming the existence of two distinct brown-coal formations, the 

 one above and the other below the Septaria-clay formation of Berlin, 

 Magdeburg, &c., as I had asserted in my Address from this chair last 

 year. In making this communication, I observed that this correction 

 of what I had supposed to be the order of stratification in North 

 Germany would be attended with important results, as we could in 

 this case no longer recognize that connected system of superposition 

 of strata which I believed had been made out between the Westeregeln 

 beds near Magdeburg {Tor.grien inferieur of Dumont), and the more 

 recent Miocene formations of the Vienna basin. I also stated that I 

 trusted that the exertions of the many able German geologists now 

 engaged in the investigation of the Tertiary formations of Germany, 

 would soon enable us to ascertain more correctly the true connexions 

 between the tertiaries of North Germany and the younger deposits of 

 the Vienna basin. 



I have consequently been much interested in finding in the last 

 volume of the Journal of the German Geological Society * a commu- 

 nication from Dr. Koch to Prof. Beyrich, in which he states that in 

 the course of a geological examination of the districts of Carentz and 

 Conow in the neighbourhood of Domitz, he had discovered a Septaria- 

 clay formation. A subsequent visit, after the clay beds had been 

 further opened out, procured him some interesting and characteristic 

 fossils, proving it to belong to the true Septaria-clay. Amongst these 

 were Nucula Deshayesiana, Nyst, Lucina unicarinata, Nyst, or L. 

 ohtusa,^ejr., Fleurotoma subdenticulata, Miinst. Goldf., with a cast of 

 a Nucula resembling N. Chastelii, Nyst, besides many well-preserved 

 species of Foraminifera. The position of these beds led Dr. Koch to 

 the conclusion that they underlie the browivcoal formation, which 

 is extensively developed in that district. Should the further inquiries 

 which Dr. Koch intended to make at a subsequent period confirm 

 this statement, it will show that, contrary to the hitherto-received 

 opinion of the German geologists, there really does exist a brown- 

 coal formation superior to the Septaria-clay, and it may possibly 

 turn out after all, as there is as yet no positive evidence against it 

 according to Prof. Beyrich' s own remarks, that the brown-coal for- 

 mation of Brandenberg really does occupy the position I had origi- 

 nally assigned to it. At all events, there is still a vdde field open for 

 future investigation and discoveries in the Tertiary formations of 

 North Germany. 



With regard to Southern Germany, however, there is no doubt of 

 the existence of brown-coal of a much younger date. I find in the 

 Neues Jahrbuch of Leonhard and Bronn for 1855, p. 206, a state- 

 ment that Prof. M. P. Lipoid describes the brown-coal of Wildsfluth 

 in Upper Austria, in the district of the Inn, as belonging, according 

 to the vegetable remains it contains, to the upper division of the 

 Tertiary formation, and that it must therefore be considered as 

 * Zeitschrift der deutschen geol. Gesellschaft, vol. vii. part i. p. 11. 



