Chap. I.] 
SILUEIAN EOCKS IN FOEEIGN LANDS. 
17 
much needed. After showing how these variously named strata constitute 
one natural group in Germany as in other countries, I proposed to my 
fellow-labourers, de Verneuil and von Keyserling, that the vast Russian 
territory of Perm should furnish the required name *. The general adop- 
tion of the term ^ Permian ' is, indeed, the best proof of its usefulness. 
In the opening chapter of 'Russia in Europe and the Ural Mountains,' a 
general view of this palaeozoic classification was given as applied to Germany, 
Prance, Belgium, and North America; and in all of these countries, as well as 
in Russia, it was shown that a similar ascending order prevailed, from a 
base-line of recognizable Silurian life, through Devonian and Carboniferous 
deposits. In the twenty- one years which have elapsed since the issue of that 
work, considerable additions have been made to our knowledge ; and all of 
them sustain the truth of the generalization. "We then scarcely knew of 
the existence of true Silurian deposits in Germany, nearly all the ' grau- 
wacke ' of the Rhenish Provinces and the Harz having been assigned to the 
Devonian series ; but since the opening out of the rich Silurian basin of 
Bohemia, which, in the skilful hands of M. Barrande, has become the 
palaeozoic centre of the continent, Thuringia and Saxony have been also 
found to contain Silurian rocks. 
In Spain, several mountain-chains have been shown by M. de Yerneuil 
and the late M. Casiano de Prado to consist of Silurian followed by Devonian 
and Carboniferous rocks ; whilst Mr. D. Sharpe has described the first and 
last of these groups as found in Portugal. Again, Sardinia, under the scru- 
tiny of General A. della Marmora, has exhibited its Silurian and superja- 
cent Coal deposits ; and Devonian and Carboniferous strata overlie older 
rocks in North and, partially, in South Africa f . 
In Siberia, the chief mineral features of which are described by Hum- 
boldt and Rose, my colleagues and myself have explained how the Silurian 
rocks of the Ural chain are succeeded by younger palaeozoic deposits. M. 
Pierre de Tchihatchef has indicated a great extension of similar formations 
over large tracts of Southern Siberia, in the Altai Mountains, and Asia 
Minor ; whilst to the north-east, since Adolf Erman traced. such rocks even 
to the Sea of Ochotsk, able Russian authorities, particularly Schmidt, Radde, 
and others, have mapped and described palaeozoic rocks in the vast countries 
around the Lake Baikal and extending from the region of the Amur to 
Mandchuria. 
In the giant Himalaya, where, a few years since, no systematic labours 
had been devoted to the older strata, we now know that Silurian rocks, 
covered by Secondary or Mesozoic deposits, exist in those the highest 
* See my letter to Dr. Fischer, Moscow, Oct. Trans. G-eol. Soc. Lond. vol. vii. 1856. According 
1841, printed in Leonhard's N. Jahrb., and in to my distinguished friend Dr. Livingstone, the 
Phil. Mag. vol. xix. p. 419. only European who has traversed and retraversed 
t For JSTorth Africa, see Coquand, Bull, de la South Africa, coming out in the west at St. Paul 
Soc. Ge'ol. de France, 2 sdrie, vol. iv. p. 1188. di Laonda (lat. 10°), and at Quilimane on the 
Some of the fossils collected by the lamented tra- east, there are strong beds of coal and ironstone 
veller Overweg, in his journey southwards, are on the banks of the Zambesi, and to the north-west 
also Devonian. For South Africa, the reader may of the Portuguese settlement of Tete. 
consult a Memoir by Mr. Bain, published in the 
