1855.] MURCHISON AND MORRIS THE HARZ. 431 



look for clear evidences of the general succession of the strata. Nor 

 can we expect to find satisfactory proofs of order in the highly 

 minerahzed masses which range from Clausthal by Andreasberg 

 towards Hasselfeld, where deposits of very different age lie fre- 

 quently in juxtaposition, and are often highly altered, and enclose 

 veins of argentiferous galena, copper, &c. 



At the south-eastern extremity of the region, and where the 

 mountainous outline subsides into featureless low hills and plateaux, 

 the river Wippra, flowing in a deep valley, exposes peculiar crystal- 

 line rocks. These consist of masses of glossy, thinly foliated, grey 

 and greenish "shillat" or chlorite slate, with innumerable subordinate 

 laminse of white quartz. On the north bank of the gorge these 

 strata are well exposed on the sides of the steep precipitous road 

 which descends to the village of Wippra, where they are vertical or 

 very highly inclined, with a strike from N.E. to S.W. Though we 

 followed the Wippra valley, by the picturesque Schloss * of Ram- 

 melsberg and its eruptive rocks, amidst a reddish- coloured grau- 

 -v^acke, to Biesengerode, Vaterrode, and Lembach to Mansfeld, we 

 could see no natural sections exhibiting any consecutive order until 

 we met with the conglomerates of the Rothe-todte-liegende, lying un- 

 conformably on older strata, " grauwacke," the white quartz bands of 

 which had evidently afforded the pebbles of the red conglomerate. 



We incline to the belief, that the glossy chloritic and quartzose 

 slates of the Wippra are probably the oldest in the chain, and for 

 the following reasons : — First, that we are unacquainted with any 

 rocks like them in the general series of deposits of the Harz (which 

 we are about to notice), whilst they bear a strong mineralogical 

 resemblance to the oldest sediments of the Thiiringerwald. 2ndly. 

 That the Wippra schists most resemble (if indeed they are not a 

 southerly extension and probably an inferior portion of) those ad- 

 jacent strata near Harzgerode, which, judging from the fossils, are 

 supposed to be of Upper Silurian age. As, however, no country 

 can well be more featureless and obscure than the tract between the 

 Wippra and Harzgerode, we offer this surmise with caution ; the 

 more so, as the only rocks visible in the intervening tract are a few 

 bosses of greenstone or other igneous rocks with contorted flinty 

 slates (Kieselschiefer) . 



Silurian rocks'^. — In the tract extending from the environs of 

 Harzgerode on the east towards Guntersberg, Hasselfeld, and An- 

 dreasberg on the west, a series of low undulations expose here and 

 there bosses of limestone, in which fossils have been detected at a 

 few localities only. In one of these masses of limestone, as exposed 

 to the west of Harzgerode, and formerly noticed by Sedgwick and 

 Murchison, and also in another a mile or two further to the west, at 



* We are not aware that any other British geologists, except ourselves, have 

 examined the banks of the Wippra. 



t Since this memoir was read, I have been informed that M. Ad. Roemer has 

 discovered Graptolites in some of the schists of Lauthenthal, and the existence 

 of true Silurian rocks in the western as well as in the eastern Harz is thus 

 indicated. — R. I. Murchison, Sept. 11, 1855. 



