72 REPORT — 1839. 



soria of Ehrenberg, and occupy the same place in the vegetable king- 

 dom as those do in the animal. 



On the Carboniferous and Devonian Systems of Westphalia. By 

 R. I. MuRCHisoN, Esq. F.R.S., F.G.S., ^c, and General Secre- 

 tary of the British Association. 



The author states that having in company with Prof. Sedgwick ex- 

 amined the older rocks of N. Western Germany and Belgium, it is the 

 intention of his friend and himself to lay before the Geological Society 

 of London a general memoir (illustrated by numerous fossils) on the 

 classification of these ancient deposits, showing a succession of the Car- 

 boniferous, Devonian (or old red,) and Silurian systems. 



The present communication bears chiefly upon one point of this 

 analysis, and is offered as a collateral proof of the geological position 

 of the culm-bearing strata of Devonshire and Cornwall, as stated by 

 Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison to the British Association in 

 the year 1836. 



Transverse sections in descending order, from the productive coal- 

 field of Westphalia on the N.N.W. to the older zoic rocks on the S.S.E. 

 were explained ; and one from Dortmund by Schelke to the neighbour- 

 hood of Linburgh and Iserlohn was specially adduced, in which the 

 various strata are exposed in fine natural sections in the following de- 

 scending order. 



1. Coal shales, coal, &c. (productive coal-field.) 



2. Millstone grit series, with many impressions of large plants, and 

 occasional thin seams of coal. 



3. Thinly laminated arenaceous sandstones and shales, containing 

 many grasses and small plants. 



4. Flat-bedded, black, bituminous limestone and shale, charged with 

 PosidonicB and Goniatites, and alternating with courses of flinty schist, 

 the kiesel-schiefer of German geologists. This band, identical in all 

 respects with the black or culm limestones of Devonshire described by 

 Professor Sedgwick and the author, is proved to be of the age of the 

 carboniferous or mountain limestone by containing at its western end 

 near Ratingen numerous well-known fossils of that formation. 



5. Devonian rocks : — the old red sandstone, consisting of psammites, 

 schists, and limestones of great thickness containing many of those 

 peculiar fossils of Devonshire which first led Mr. Lonsdale to suggest 

 to Mr. Murchison {vide Geol. Proceedings, 1839-40) that they would 

 prove to be of the age of the old red sandstone. 



6. Silurian rocks, &c., which rise up into mountain masses from be- 

 neath the overlying deposits*. 



* The author has corrected the abstract so as to make it agree with the views 

 adopted by Professor Sedgwick and himself after their last visit to Westphalia, 

 subsequent to the Birmingham Meeting. 



