414 
SILURIA. 
[Chap. XVII. 
Professor Coquand, moreover, lias described a succession of strata in the same 
tract, which he views as being also of Permian age*, thus confirming the opinions 
of M. Adolphe Brongniart and the authors of ' Russia and the Ural Mountains 'f. 
Nowhere, however, within the limits of the country is there any limestone to 
represent the great calcareous centre or Zechstein ; and the group is therefore 
wanting in those animal remains which constitute its essential distinctions. 
In the hard and subcrystalline rocks of the South of France, which lie to the 
south of the great granitic plateau of that region (that is, the Montagne Noire, 
between Lodeve and Pezenas), no clear succession of the older rocks has been 
determined ; and until recently they were considered, to a great extent, unfos- 
siliferous. 
Within these few years, however, MM. Fournet and Graff discovered at 
Neffiez near Pezenas % a very singular small oasis, in which there occur thick 
masses of green slate with large Lower-Silurian Asaphi, succeeded by other beds 
laden with several characteristic Lower-Silurian fossils, whilst higher strata con- 
tain Cardiola interrupta and Graptolites. Then there are red limestones charged 
with unequivocal Upper-Devonian types, as recognized by de Verneuil ; these 
are Goniatites amblylobus and Cardium palmatum of Westphalia, Nassau, and 
the Eifel. This rock is also identical with the ' Marbre griotte' of the Pyrenees, 
which Leopold von Buch classed as Devonian. Again, we have in this one little 
spot true Carboniferous deposits ; for, though there are only a few beds of their 
lower members, the fossils are unequivocal — namely, Productus gigas, P. semi- 
reticulatus, Euomphalus acutus, Caninia gigantea, &c. The series is even ter- 
minated upwards by some workable beds of coal. 
Such, says de Verneuil, is the palasontological order of the strata, if we look 
only to the fossils, and compare them with those of all other known countries in 
the world. 
Whilst this is the universal and normal order in America, Asia, and Europe, 
these members of the series, so distinct elsewhere, were at one time supposed to 
be physically intermixed at this little anomalous spot of Neffiez ! but MM. 
Fournet and Graff, who had called attention to this apparent intermixture of 
Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous fossils, no longer maintain the opinion 
they at first expressed. In fact, the tract has manifestly been subjected to vio- 
lent dislocations ; and my associate de Verneuil has always thought that the ap- 
parent anomaly is due to one of those inversions or reversals known in the Alps, 
America, and many other regions, and to which I have already called attention 
in my remarks on Britain and Germany (pp. 97, 145, 403). 
The Palaeozoic formations again protrude to the surface in the Corbieresto the 
south of the plains of Languedoc ; and, rising from beneath the younger deposits, 
they also form, as has long been known, a central portion of the Pyrenees. In 
that chain, the altered limestones, or ' Marbres griottes' §, which occur as con- 
cretionary masses in the schists, and are charged with Goniatites, are unques- 
tionably Devonian. The schists of Gedre, between St. Sauveur and Gavarnie, 
and also at Les Eaux Bonnes and other places noticed by M. Leymerie||, contain 
fossils of the same age. 
Just as in the Eastern Alps, the Ural, and many mountain-chains which have 
* Bull. Soc. Ge'ol. France, 2nd series, vol. xii. list of fossils given by M. de Verneuil would lead 
p. 128 ; and xiv. p. 13. us to suppose that the rocks near Les Eaux Bonnes 
| See ' Russia and the Ural Mountains,' vol. i. belong to the Lower Devonian. True Lower De- 
J Bull. Soc. Ge'ol. France, 2nd series, vol. viii. vonian fossils have been detected recently (1865), 
p. 44. by M. de Mercey, between Les Eaux Bonnes and 
$ This ' Marbre griotte ' of the valley of Cam- Cauterets, among which de Verneuil recognized 
pan is well described by M. Dufre'noy. some species identical with those of Leon and 
II See Bull. Soc. Ge'ol. France, 1856, where the Asturias. 
