Chap. XIII.] PERMIAN ROCKS OF RUSSIA AND GERMANY. 
313 
On the contrary, in the central tracts between the Ural Mountains and the 
Volga (as on the Dioma and Kidash, tributaries of the River Kama) the lime- 
stone, which in some tracts assumes a definite horizon and is underlain by- 
coarse grits, is repeated at various levels in a succession of beds, interlaminated 
with sandstones, as well as yellow, white, and greenish marls, occasionally con- 
taining Plants, also small seams of impure coal, — the whole being surmounted 
by red grits and conglomerates, with copper-ore. 
The calcareous and gypseous deposits which interlace this series are throughout 
characterized by a similar group of fossils, and even by some of the same species 
as those of the Zechstein of Germany and the Magnesian Limestone of England ; 
whilst the beds of copper-grit, with the greatest part of the red conglomerates, 
which in the vast undisturbed region of Permia are uppermost, contain bones 
of a genus of Reptiles which in Germany occurs in the copper-slate beneath that 
limestone. Plants, also, which are generically allied to the old Carboniferous 
flora are of frequent occurrence in the Governments of Perm, Orenburg, and Ka- 
zan, where they often lie in red sands and marls above all the limestones. 
Indeed several of these vegetables are identical with species described by Colonel 
Gutbier from the argillaceous beds of Zwickau in Saxony, belonging to the Roth- 
liegende beneath the Zechstein ; and Goppert has since demonstrated the gene- 
rality of this arrangement. 
The exploration of this diversified Permian group of Russia, therefore, taught 
geologists not to dwell on the local mineral distinctions of Central or Western 
Europe, but to look to the wide spread of certain fossil remains, which, in vastly 
distant countries, occupy the same general horizon, though in different subdivi- 
sions of a group which clearly lies between the Carboniferous rocks beneath and 
all those overlying strata which are called Secondary or Mesozoic. 
The survey further proved, by the extension of some of these fossils upwards 
into red and green marls and sands far above the chief bands of limestone with 
well-known Zechstein fossils, that the Zechstein could no longer be properly 
considered, as in Germany, the summit of this natural group. Let us now, 
therefore, consider the natural features and characters of the group in that 
country. 
Permian Rocks of Germany. — Before the publication of the work entitled 
1 Russia and the Ural Mountains,' above referred to, and three years after the 
word 1 Permian' had been proposed, I reexamined those tracts of Germany 
where rocks of this age are best developed and had long been known through 
the writings of native geologists. Having since explored these lands upon three 
different occasions, during the first two of which I was accompanied by Professor 
Morris, and in the last by Professor Rupert Jones, a condensed view, with some 
additional illustrations, of the development of this natural group in Germany is 
offered. 
In the early days of our science, when Werner and his cotemporaries clearly 
distinguished the different strata now united as the Permian group, it was 
natural that geologists should adopt the names applied to these rocks by the 
miners of Saxony. The extraction of copper from a widely persistent but 
thin course of dark- coloured cupriferous shale, necessarily led the native work- 
men to assign certain names to the strata above and below the money-making 
band. Hence, the overlying red variegated sandstones being generally named 
' Bunter Sandstein,' or variegated sandstone, the limestone beneath this, and im- 
mediately above the copper-schist, was termed ' Zechstein ' * ; the whitish and 
* In a letter to myself, Leopold von Buch sug- this calcareous rock was the cover which, being 
gested that the word Zechstein was probably pierced, led to the bed of ore from which the 
derived from the Italian Zecchino, or Sequin, miner derived his profit, 
formerly a well-known coin in Germany, because 
