THE HERCYNIAN QUESTION. 



A Brief Review of its Development and Present Status, 

 with a few Remarks upon its Relation to the 

 Current Classification of Ameri- 

 can Paleozoic Faunas. 



Communicated to the Report of the State Geologist for 1888, by J. M. Claeke. 



At a meeting of the German Geological Society, held at Berlin, 

 March 6, 1867,* Prof. E. Beyrich directed attention to the character 

 of the fossil faunas contained in the lenticular limestones, intercalated 

 in the greywackes and slates of the Northern Hartz, in the vicinity of 

 Zorge and Wieda. Meager representations of these faunas had been 

 studied by Friedrich Adolph Rcemer in 1844, f and were regarded by 

 him as indicating an Upper-Silurian age ; but in the fifth of his sub- 

 sequent contributions^ to the palaeontology of this region, he expresses 

 the view that these were to be regarded as of Devonian age, and 

 termed the beds Wissenbach limestones, of equivalent horizon to his 

 Wissenbach shales, which he regarded as the parallel of the Rhenish 

 Wissenbach shales. These limestones he separated faunally from those 

 of the Eastern Hartz near Magdesprung and Harzgerode, and of the 

 Northern Hartz near Ilsenburg, which he still regarded as of Upper- 

 Silurian age. This separation was based essentially on the occurrence 

 of Goniatites in the limestones of Zorge and Wieda, while they were 

 unknown in the limestones of the Eastern Hartz. Beyrich, with new 

 data at his disposal, took exception to this view, finding in the mol- 

 luscan (especially Brachiopod and Capulid) characters of the various 

 exposures of the fauna, essential unity and Lower-Devonian import ; 

 he furthermore suggested the -direct parallelism of the fauna with 

 that of the upper Stages of the Bohemian basin (F, G, H). Barrande 

 had regarded the fauna of his Stage E as typical Silurian (=Wenlock- 

 Niagara), and those of his subsequent Stages as a post-, or 

 supra- typical-Upper-Silurian, without an exact equivalent in the 

 European palaeozoic. Certain specific identities and affinities in the 

 Hartz and Bohemian faunas had already been established, and there- 

 from Beyrich suggested that the Stages F, G, H, might properly be 



*Zeitschr. der deutseh. geolog. Gesellsch, Vol. XIX, p. 247, 1867. 



t Yersteinerungen des Harzgebirges, 1844. 



t Beitri'tge zur geolog. Kenntu. d. nordw. Harzgeb. Y, 1866. 



