8 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



areas in Shropshire and Staffordshire it is one great red arenaceous 

 series, with a few subordinate courses of calcareous conglomerate. 

 Following it to the north, Mr. Binnej has demonstrated that the 

 fossils of the Zechstein show themselves in the heart of red marls 

 which occupy on the whole a superior part of such a red series ; and 

 in tracing these rocks northwards he has demonstrated that there 

 are, besides, two great underlyiug masses, first of conglomerates and 

 breccias, and next of soft red sandstones, the latter attaining, as he 

 believes, a thickness of not less than 2000 feet. Here then the Per- 

 mian may be considered a Trias. Professor Harkness, in a memoir he 

 is preparing, estimates the thickness of these Lower Sandstones and 

 conglomerates to the N.E. of West Ormside, in Cumberland, at 4000 

 to 5000 feet, and shows that they are surmounted by marl-slates 

 bearing plants, thin-bedded red sandstone, grey shale, and sandstone 

 and limestone, the latter — the representative of the Magnesian 

 Limestone — being covered by red argillaceous shale.* JSTow in all 

 these cases the Permian is a series divisible into three or more parts. 

 But when we follow the same group into Scotland, it there parts with 

 its calcareous feature, and, becoming one red sandstone of vast thick- 

 ness, is again a Monas. 



I have entered into this explanation because my friend Dr. Gei- 

 nitz has seized upon one illustration in my work ' Siluria ' which 

 shows that in certain tracts, where the Zechstein or Magnesian 

 Limestone is subordinate to an enveloping series of sandstones, the 

 Permian of my classification is there as much a tripartite Paleozoic 

 group as the Trias of Central Grermany is a triple formation of Meso- 

 zoic age. Unless, therefore, the data to which my associates and 

 self have appealed, in the work on ' Eussia and the Ural Mountains,' 

 and which I have further developed in Memoirs read before the 

 Geological Society, and in my two editions of ' Siluria,' be shown to 

 be inaccurate, I hold to the opinion that there are tracts in which 

 the Zechstein is simply a fossiliferous zone in a great sandstone 

 series, to which no division by numerals can be logically applied. 

 Even if I do not appeal to the natural evidences in England, Eussia, 

 and parts of Germany, but refer to those tracts where the Zechstein 

 or Magnesian Limestone has no natural red cover, I may well ask, 

 does not the word " Permian," in the sense in which it was origi- 

 nally adopted, serve for every tract wherein the uppermost paleo- 

 zoic fossil animals and plants are found, whether the strata of which 

 the group is composed form, as in Kussia and Silesia, one great series 

 of alternations of plant- bearing sandstones and marls in parts con- 

 taining bands of fossiliferous limestone, or whether, as in other 

 tracts, the Zechstein stands alone (as near Saalfeld), or in others, 

 again, where the group is tripartite, and even quadripartite ? Quite 



* The rod clay or ar^illacoous shale which covers the limestone is surmounted 

 at Hilton, in C'umbcrlaiui, liy live hundred feet of red sandstone, which, though 

 perfectly conformabU> to tlu^ subjacont Permian i*ocks. he considers to belong to the 

 liuuter Sandstein of tlie Ti-ias. Here, then, as iu Grermany, the limestoue may 

 liave a x'cd cover, and yet the liunter Sandstein be intact. 



