300 Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison on the older Deposits, S^c. 



offer no opinion, as we found not one fossil among them ; simply remarking, by the 

 way, that their mineral characters agree well with those of the Devonian system. 



From Elbersreuth we made a short traverse to the N.W, and completed the fol- 

 lowing section. See PI. XXIII. fig. 16. 



1. Contorted masses of arenaceous flagstone and earthy schist, through which at one point bursts 

 out an amygdaloidal greenstone. 



2. Marble breccia, the structure probably produced by the vicinity of the eruptive trap, as is hypo- 

 thetically represented in our section. 



3. Beds of hard grey limestone with many Orthoceratites and large Encrinites, and we believe also 

 with traces of Clymenia, &c. Dip. W.S.W. 



4. A great precipitous gorge, beyond which the great Clymenia limestone rises at an angle of 40°, dip- 

 ping about E.S.E. Its fossils are very abundant ; and from this spot Count MUnster has obtained his 

 finest species of Clymenia. 



5. Under the whole limestone series are earthy schists containing Cardiola. 



In addition to the fossils peculiar to the beds above described, are several species in common with the 

 limestones of Wetzlar, Oberscheld, and Dillenburg. In England the Cardiola is indeed an upper Silurian 

 genus, but on the whole evidence we have little doubt that the calcareous rocks here described are Devo- 

 nian, and nearly on the parallel of the calcareous series in the neighbourhood of Hof. 



It would require much labour and many traverses to arrange systematically all 

 the masses of limestone that appear between Hof and Prusseck, and the chain of 

 the Fichtelgebirge. Count Miinster has, we believe, determined three distinct 

 bands of limestone containing ClymenicB, but they are not geologically far asunder, 

 and if our views be correct they all belong to one system. 



We here terminate our remarks on the calcareous series north of the Fichtel- 

 gebirge ; acknowledging their imperfection, and especially lamenting our present 

 inabihty of connecting these deposits with those which are expanded farther north 

 on the banks of the Saal. At the same time we may remark, that our visit, how- 

 ever rapid, satisfied us on one important point (and it was the chief object of our 

 visit to the Fichtelgebirge), viz. the age of the great calcareous masses we have 

 just described. Before our examination they had been classed with the oldest 

 Palaeozoic rocks : but seeing that these masses are overlaid by true carboniferous 

 limestone, and that they contain the intermediary types so often before alluded to, 

 we were convinced on the spot that they ought to be classed with our Devonian 

 system. 



We also believe that the rocks, which occupy the mountain tracts of Franconia 

 immediately to the north of the calcareous masses above described, are the equi- 

 valents of the slaty grauwacke of the Rhine, and therefore on the parallel of the 

 Silurian system. But we wish not to dwell on opinions which we are unable to 

 confirm, either by the evidence of sections, or by lists of characteristic fossils. 



