402 PALEOZOIC TIME. 



2. Disturbances in Foreign Countries. 



The disturbances through the course of the Paleozoic ages in Europe 

 appear to have been more numerous and diversified than in America. 

 But they were inferior in extent to those that attended ■ its close. 

 Murchison remarks that the close of the Carboniferous period was 

 specially marked by disturbances and upliftings. He states that it was 

 then " that the coal strata and their antecedent formations were very 

 generally broken up, and thrown, by grand upheavals, into separate 

 basins, which were fractured by numberless powerful dislocations." In 

 the north of England, as first shown by Sedgwick, and also near 

 Bristol, and in the southeastern part of the Coal-measures of South 

 Wales, there is distinct unconformability between the Carboniferous 

 and lowest Permian. Elie de Beaumont has named this system of 

 dislocations the system of the North of England. Between Derby and 

 the frontier of Scotland, the mountain-axis is of this date, and trends 

 between north and north-northwest ; the region is remarkable for its 

 immense faults. The great dislocations of North Wales may be of 

 the same epoch. 



Yet, while it is manifest that the period between the close of the 

 Carboniferous and the beginning of the Triassic was one of enormous 

 disturbances, it is not always clear to what time in this interval par- 

 ticular uplifts should be referred. In the Dudley coal field, the Per- 

 mian beds, according to Murchison, are conformable to the Carbonifer- 

 ous ; but, at the close of the Permian (or at least before the middle of 

 the Trias), there were great dislocations. In other coal regions, as 

 those of France and Belgium, and of Bohemia about Prague, there is 

 other evidence of physical changes, in the absence of Permian beds ; 

 while, also, in many places, the beds of the coal regions are much 

 contorted. De Beaumont's System of the Netherlands includes disloca- 

 tions of Permian beds, along the foot of the Hartz Mountains, and in 

 Nassau and Saxony, which preceded the deposition of the Triassic. 

 He distinguishes examples of this system of disturbances in France 

 and some other parts of Europe, and also prominently in South Wales. 

 To his System of the Rhine, he refers dislocations and elevations of the 

 Permian sandstone of the Vosges (Gres de Vosges), along the moun- 

 tains of the Vosges, the Black Forest, and the Odenwald, and shows 

 that they antedate the Triassic period. 



In Russia, as well as England, there are tracts where the Permian 

 strata follow on after the Carboniferous without unconformability. It 

 was in this closing part of the Paleozoic era, either after the Car- 

 boniferous or after the Permian, that the rocks of the Urals were 

 folded and crystallized ; for Carboniferous rocks are flexed and altered 

 in the same manner as in the Alleghany region. 



