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is no trace of the common plants of the under-lying coal. Those 
plants being imbedded in a whitish or cream-coloured finely levi- 
gated clay-stone, and their leaves being brought into beautiful 
relief by being invariably as green as if they had peculiarly and 
happily dried in an herbarium, form admirable subjects for the 
most precise distinctions of the fossil botanist. In Silesia (at 
Ruppendorf, and other localities west of Waldenberg, between 
Breslau and Glatz) there is a fine development of strata from the 
base of the Rothe-todte-liegende (where that deposit overlies a 
productive coal-field based upon true mountain limestone) into 
other red sandstones and shales, which have a marked aspect, 
from being interlaced with bands of black, bituminous, thin_, 
flaggy limestone. Though doubts had been entertained as to 
the age of this limestone, Mr. Murchison does not hesitate to 
consider it as the equivalent of the Zechstein, and the whole red 
group of which it forms a member as the counterpart of the Per- 
mian system ; for, besides its very clear position, this calcareous 
flagstone contains plants and fishes similar to those of the Per- 
mian rocks of Russia. Among the former the Neuropteris con- 
ferta, nov. spec, of Goppert, has been identified with the most 
common fern brought from Russia. The most abundant fish is 
the Palceoniscus Wratislaviensis. Ag. On this occasion Mr. Mur- 
chison passed rapidly over the zoological proofs that the Zech- 
stein and Kupfer Schiefer of Germany are the equivalents of the 
calcareous beds of the Permian system of Russia, as these had 
been gixen in detail in memoirs read before the Geological So- 
ciety. He stated, however, that his opinion was now perfectly 
in harmony with that of Prof. Phillips ; namely, that the Pauna 
of the Zechstein, or magnesian limestone, has so much of the 
same general zoological type as the carboniferous limestone, that 
it must also form a part of the palseozoic series. Mr. Murchison 
then proceeded to consider the age of these lower beds of the 
Bunter-sandstein, which had been hitherto included in the trias, 
on lithothogical evidence only. They contain no fossils, either 
