268 Murckuou on the Permian System, 



beds of limestone identified with the Zechstein and Magnesian lime- 

 stone by their organic remains are overlaid by a great thickness 

 of marls, sands, and conglomerates, containing some of the same 

 types of life as the lower members, particularly the plants which are 

 very closely allied to and are in some instances identical with the 

 vegetables of the carboniferous era. It became therefore desirable 

 to ascertain whether similar palaeozoic features were to be found in 

 other parts of Europe. Now in Thuringia and Hesse Cassel, the 

 Zechstein is, in numerous localities, conformably surmounted by 

 red and spotted sandstones, in which no traces of fossils distinct from 

 those of the Permian era are observable, the only land plant found in 

 them (the Calamites arenarius) being inseparable from well-known 

 carboniferous forms. This overlying sandstone being perfectly con- 

 formable to the Zechstein, may, it is conceived (like the overlying 

 sandstones of Russia), be classed with that rock. In making this 

 suggestion, the authors disavow the intention of derogating in any 

 respect from the Trias of German geologists, also a tripartite system, 

 and of which the muschelkalk is the centre, with certain red and 

 mottled marls and sands beneath, and the keuper sandstone above. 

 The Triassic system does not contain a single Palaeozoic form, whe- 

 ther animal or vegetable, whilst the fauna and flora of the Permian 

 are both so connected with the carboniferous and inferior systems, 

 that they evidently constitute the last remnant of the same era. In 

 the whole geological series, therefore, no two systems are more com- 

 pletely separated than the Permian and the Trias, the one forming 

 the uppermost Palaeozoic stage, the other the base of the secondary 

 deposits. 



After showing that the " Gres de Vosges," as described by M. 

 Elie de Beaumount, is one of the arenaceous equavalents of the 

 Permian system, and after alluding to its development in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Strasburg and in other parts of Europe, where it is well 

 separated from the Trias, attention is directed to the fact, that as 

 far as researches had yet gone, the Trias is always conformable 

 to the Permian, whilst the " rothe-todte-liegende," or base of the 

 latter, is frequently unconformable to the carboniferous rocks on which 

 it rests, and out of whose detritus it has often been formed. These 

 phenomena, say the authors, prove that the most marked distinctions 



