GO Sir R. I. Murchison on the inapplicabity of the new 



The term " Permian " was proposed twenty years ago for the 

 adoption of geologists, without any reference whatever to the litho- 

 logical or mineral divisions of the group ; for I well knew that a 

 certain order of mineral succession of this group prevailed in one 

 tract, which could not be followed out in another. After surveys, 

 during the summers of 1840 and 1841, of extensive regions in 

 Russia in Europe, in which fossil shells of the age of the Zechstein of 

 Germany, and the Magncsian Limestone of England, were found to 

 occur in several courses of limestone, interpolated in one great series 

 of red sandstones, marls, pebble-beds, copper-ores, gypsum, <Src, and 

 seeing that these varied strata occupied an infinitely larger super- 

 ficial area than their equivalents in Germany and other parts of 

 Europe, I suggested to my associates, when we were at Moscow in 

 October 1851, that we should employ the term " Permian " as de- 

 rived from the vast Government of that name, over which and several 

 adjacent Governments we had traced these deposits. 



In a letter addressed to the late venerable Dr. Fischer von Wald- 

 heim, then the leading naturalist of Moscow, I therefore proposed 

 the term " Permian " *, to represent by one unambiguous geogra- 

 phical term a varied mineral group, which neither in Germany nor 

 elsewhere had then received one collective namef adopted by geolo- 

 gists, albeit it was characterized by one typical group only of animal 

 and vegetable remains. As the subdivisions of this group in Ger- 

 many consisted, in ascending order, of Roth-liegende, with the sub- 

 ordinate strata of Weiss -liegende, Kupfer-Schiefer, and Lower and 

 Upper Zechstein, and in England of Lower Red Sandstone and Mag- 

 nesian Limestone, with other accompanying sands, marls, &c, so well 

 described by Sedgwick J, the name of " Permian" — purposely de- 

 signed to comprehend these various strata — was readily adopted, and 

 has since been generally used. Even Geinitz himself, as well as his 

 associate, Gutbier, published a work under the name of the ' Per- 

 mische System in Sachsen'§. Naumann has also used the term in 

 reference to the group in other parts of Saxony; whilst Goppert has 

 clearly shown that the rich Permian Flora is peculiar and charac- 

 teristic of this supra- carboniferous deposit. In England, France, and 



* See Leonhard's ' Jahrbuch ' of 1842, p. 92 ; and the Philosophical Magazine, 

 vol. xix.'p. 418, " Sketch of some of the Principal Results of a Geological Survey 

 of Russia." 



t It is true that the term Peneen was formerly proposed by my eminent 

 friend, M. d'Omalius d'Halloy; but as that name, meaning sterile, was taken 

 from an insulated mass of conglomerate near Malmedy in Belgium, in which 

 nothing organic was ever discovered, it was manifest that it could not be con- 

 tinued in use as applied to a group which was rich in animal and vegetable 

 productions. 



| Trans. Geol. Soc. London, New Series, vol. hi. p. 37. 



§ I may here note that the great Damuda formation of Bengal, with its fossil 

 flora and animal remains, including Saurians and Labyrinthodonts, described by 

 Professor Huxley, has recently been referred (at least provisionally) to the Per- 

 mian age, by Dr. Oldham, the Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India. 

 In fact, Dr. Oldham actually cites the plant Temiopteris, of the "Permian heels 

 of Geinitz and Gutbier in Saxcmy" in justification of his opinion. See ' Me- 

 moirs of the Geological Survey of India,' vol. in. p. 204. 



