78 THE DEVONIAN AND CARBONIFEROUS. [blul.80. 



the top of the Carboniferous system and to treat the appearance of the 

 Permian type of fossils as indicating a new system, there has been no 

 recognized standard for the settlement of the question. 



In the same way at the base, where the last Devonian fossils are 

 separated from the Coal Measures by deposits lacking marine fossils, 

 the determination of the line of division between Devonian and Car- 

 boniferous has occasioned considerable dispute, which would certainly 

 have been less had there been a recognized standard section of the Car- 

 boniferous system outside America which might be referred to as a 

 standard in all cases of difference of opinion about our own rocks. 



In order that we may have such a standard, I shall describe more in 

 detail the Carboniferous system as first defined for English geologists. 1 



The English author who first appreciated the importance of group- 

 ing certain rock formations with the Coal Measures to form what now 

 is called a system, was W. D. Conybeare. 2 The German geologist, 

 Werner, and the school of geologists that followed him, had called the 

 Coal Measures the "Independent Coal Formation" or "Stein Koh- 

 lengebirge." Conybeare subdivided the " Transition and Secondary 

 formations" of Werner into orders, and his medial order was called the 

 u Medial or Carboniferous order." Here were included " the rock forma- 

 tions, which ought to be considered together with the Coal Measures." 

 In his classification these formations were, " I. The Coal Measures. II. 

 The Millstone grit and shale. III. The Carboniferous or Mountain lime- 

 stone. IV. The Old Red sandstone." 3 His " Supermedial order" in- 

 cluded all the rocks from the Coal Measures to the Tertiary, substan- 

 tially what we now call Mesozoic. His Submedial order was the " Grau- 

 wacke" of Werner. 



Conybeare prominently notices that the formations of the " Medial 

 or Carboniferous order " are the rocks which form the " Pennine chain" 

 (spelled by him Penine) of mountains in northern England. He 

 carefully defines the position and structure of the range, and pro- 

 poses the retention of the name " Pennine," which was first applied to 

 them by the early Roman colonists of the island. 4 Other exhibitions 

 of Carboniferous rocks are mentioned by him, but here alone he found 

 the whole series represented, and the rocks of the Pennine range were 

 the typical rocks of the system which Conybeare defined. 



In Hughes's "Geography of British History" (London, 1863), we 

 find the " Pennine range" defined as "applied by general consent to 

 the extensive range of high ground stretching south from the Cheviot 

 Hills to the district of the Peak in Derbyshire, about 170 miles in 

 length, " stretching from the border of Scotland southward to the val- 



'A portion of this chapter has been read before the Indianapolis meeting of the American Geologi- 

 cal Society, and an abstract appears in its bulletin, vol. n, pp. 16-19. 



2 Couybearo ami Phillips, Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales. London, 1822, p. 323. 



3 Op. cit., p. 325. 



4 See OuUinos of the Geology of England and Wales, pp. 365, 366, 



