term "Dyas" to the "Permian" Group of Rocks. 69 



self have appealed, in the work on ' Bussia and the Ural Mountains,' 

 and which I have further developed in Memoirs read before the 

 Geological Society and in my two editions of ' Siluria,' be shown to 

 be inaccurate, I hold to the opinion that there are tracts in which 

 the Zechstein is simply a fossiliferous zone in a great sandstone 

 series, to which no division by numerals can be logically applied. 

 Even if I do not appeal to the natural evidences in England, Eussia, 

 and parts of Germany, but refer to those tracts where the Zechstein 

 or Magnesian Limestone has no natural red cover, I may well ask, 

 does not the word " Permian," in the sense in which it was origi- 

 nally adopted, serve for every tract wherein the uppermost palaeo- 

 zoic fossil animals and plants are found, whether the strata of which 

 the group is composed form, as in Eussia and Silesia, one great series 

 of alternations of plant-bearing sandstones and marls in parts con- 

 taining bands of fossiliferous limestone, or whether, as in other 

 tracts, the Zechstein stands alone (as near Saalfeld), or in others, 

 again, where the group is tripartite, and even quadripartite ? Quite 

 irrespective, however, of the question of whether there are or are 

 not localities in Germany where the Zechstein passes upwards into a 

 red rock, which forms no true part of the Bunter Sandstein of the 

 Trias, we have only to look to the environs of Dresden, on the one 

 hand, and to Lower Silesia on the other, to see the inapplicability 

 of the word " Dyas " to this group. 



Near the capital of Saxony, Dr. Geinitz himself pointed out to 

 me that the Eoth-liegende is there divided into two very dissimilar 

 parts ; and these, if added to the limestone which is there inter- 

 polated, or to the true Zechstein of other places, constitute a Trias. 

 Again, Beyrich, in his Map of Lower Silesia *, has divided the vast 

 Eoth-liegende of those mountains into Lower and Upper, the two 

 embracing eight subdivisions according to that author. 



In repeating, then, that the word " Permian " was not originally 

 proposed with the view of affixing to this natural group any number 

 of component parts, but simply as a convenient short term to define 

 the Uppermost Palaeozoic group, I refer all geologists to the veiy 

 words I used in the year 1841, when the name was first suggested. 

 In speaking of the structure of Eussia, I thus wrote : — " The Car- 

 boniferous system is surmounted to the east of the Yolga by a vast 

 series of beds of marls, schists, limestones, sandstones, and conglo- 

 merates, to which I propose to give the name of ' Permian System,' 

 because, although this series represents as a whole the Lower New 

 Ecd Sandstone (Eothe-todte-liegcnde) and the Magnesian Limestone 

 or Zechstein, yet it cannot be classed exactly, whether by the suc- 

 cession of the strata or their contents, with either of the German or 

 British subdivisions of this age f." * * * * * 



After pointing to the Governments of Eussia over which such 



Permian rocks ranged, I added: — " Of the fossils of this system, 



some undescribed species of Producti might seem to connect the 



Permian with the Carboniferous era ; and other shells, together with 



* See also ' Siluria,' 2nd edit. p. 343. 



f Phil. Mag. six. p. 419. 



