1855.] MURCHISON AND MORRIS — THURINGERWALD. 411 



tion exhibits, as we shall indicate, some members of the Silurian of 

 Bohemia and of the Devonian and Lower Carboniferous of the 

 Rhenish provinces ; the two latter groups being unknown in Bo- 

 hemia. If this is what might be expected in tracts lying in an inter- 

 mediate position between the gorges of the Rhine and the country 

 of Prague, we shall have to point out distinctions in the details of 

 succession which it is important to note, as occurring in Thuringia on 

 the one hand and in the Harz upon the other. 



Attention will also be pointedly directed to those younger palaeo- 

 zoic deposits which overlie the small patches of coal known in 

 Central Germany, and which one of us has described in other works 

 as the ** Permian Group." Indicating the great break above all the 

 series from a primordial base up to the Lower Carboniferous inclusive 

 (the wide-spread " Grauwacke " of old geologists) as separating all 

 such deposits from the overlying and youngest palaeozoic strata, it will 

 be shown by what agency the original direction of the lower portion 

 whose strike is universally from N.E. to S.W. has been changed to 

 N.W. and S.E. as respects the geographical outline. Brief and 

 general as the sketch is, it will point out the agreements and discre- 

 pancies of these German rocks as compared with each other, and 

 refer them to types which are well known to British geologists. 



Whilst the sectional woodcuts will explain some of these varied 

 relations, a Tabular View (see p. 448) of the general order of the 

 Palaeozoic rocks of Germany with the lower secondary rocks which 

 immediately overlie them is appended to the memoir, and in that table 

 we have paralleled the foreign rocks with their English analogues. 



The Thuringerwald. — In the work called * Siluria,' recently 

 published, we have given a succinct view of the succession of the 

 strata in the Thuringerwald, as an addition to the first general sketch 

 of that tract which appeared many years ago in the ' Transactions of 

 the Geological Society.' In that work we have cited the map of 

 Richter of Saalfeld* as most illustrative of the southern portion of 

 this mountainous tract, and have particularly adverted to the map of 

 Credner of Gotha as developing with great accuracy the features of the 

 northern Thuringerwald. M. Credner having now completed his map 

 of the whole chain, we had the advantage of consulting it on our last 

 excursion. When collated with a general view by the same author 

 printed in the ' Transactions of the Academy of Erfurt f ,' that map 

 gives so clear a view of the range in question, that the present com- 

 munication might at first sight seem superfluous. But, in truth, it 

 is still important to make our foreign contemporaries understand the 

 true application of our insular terms in classifying their older rocks ; 

 whilst our countrymen will, we hope, be made to apprehend more 

 clearly the manner in which the physical divisional lines between the 

 respective palaeozoic formations of Germany differ from those which 

 have been observed in England. 



Viewed in a geographical sense, the Thiiringerwald is a mountain- 



* Zeitschr. Deutsch. Geol. Gesell. Berlin, vol. iii. p. 536. pi. 20. 

 t Denkschrift der Konigl. Ak. gemeinniitziger Wissensch. zu Erfurt, 1854. 

 VOL. XI. PART I. 2 F 



