C. Schuchert — Russian Carboniferous and Permian. 155 



these waters, during Permian time, conditions were not favor- 

 able for the continuance of a normal marine life, and finally 

 these faunas die out here in the gypsum and copper-depositing 

 seas. To the south in a mediterranean, the faunas maintain 

 themselves in a healthy and prolific condition, spread eastward 

 across Asia and probably westward as far as El Paso, Texas ; 

 while other migrations seemingly of a somewhat different 

 facies, but having more of the Himalayan-Arctic impress, are 

 met with along the Pacific coasts from California far north 

 into Arctic western America. Under these circumstances, 

 it should not be expected that the Schwagerina zone of the 

 Urals will hold a horizon in India or America similar to that 

 in the Urals and Tim an. 



3. The question — Is there a Permian system or only a Per- 

 mian formation ? — is far from answered. In the area typical 

 for the rocks under consideration, the Perm Province in the 

 Urals of Russia, the normal marine Carboniferous fauna passes 

 into Permian deposits of an abnormal marine character and 

 finally into red gypsiferous shales devoid of life. Under such 

 an enviroment, an abundance of life, with progressive or nor- 

 mal evolution, is excluded and, as a rule, there remains only 

 the widely distributed species, and too often merely character- 

 less forms are present, which do not permit safe deductions to 

 be made in determining the chronology of a Permian system. 

 At present, there is no acceptable sequence of faunal events 

 for intercontinental correlation in the typical area and as far 

 as can now be seen there will certainly be none for the closing 

 events. The German Permian faunas are better known, but 

 as they are clearly only a part of a great sequence and as the 

 lower and upper stratigraphic members of this region are either 

 devoid of fossils or have no normal marine succession, positive 

 proof as to the entire sequence of events in a Permian system 

 can not be looked for in this country. In England, the con- 

 ditions seem to be those of Germany. In the Salt Pange of 

 India, either toward the close of the Carboniferous or early 

 in the Permian, a great glacial period was in progress, so that 

 in this region there are no normal marine beds in the lower 

 part of the section ; hence, no possible biological base for the 

 system is yet apparent. On the other hand, in the central 

 Himalayas above a vast series of Lower Carboniferous strata 

 (5,000 feet thick), there is a marked unconformity above which 

 occurs Permian sediments, parts of which are positively cor- 

 related with the uppermost group — the Chideru — of the Salt 

 Pange. These strata then continue without apparent break in 

 sedimentation into the Ceratites beds of the Triassic. This 

 time hiatus — a land interval with erosion — is probably equivalent 

 not only to all the Upper Carboniferous but possibly also to 



