]SrOTES AST) QrERTES. 
39 
Observations on the Terms " Permeen" " Permian,'' and " Dyas." By 
Jules Marcou. Boston. 1862. 
These " Observations " have been reprinted by M. Jules Marcou, from 
the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, in -which he 
refers directly to the article by Sir Roderick Murchison, printed in the 
last year's January number of this magazine, and gives a list of dates in 
respect to the priority of the term " Permian." 
M. Marcou also refers to his own memoir, "Dyas and Trias," in the 
* Archives de la Bibliotheque XJniverselle de Geneve,' 1859, as treating the 
two questions entirely distinct. Since the first publication of M. Mar- 
con's paper, M. Ludw ig, one of the associates of Dr. Geinitz, has been to 
Russia, and has published the results of his researches, under the title 
* Geogenische und geognostische Studien auf einer Reise durch Russlaiid 
und den Ural.' We have not yet seen this work, and therefore cannot 
say of our own knowledge whether it does or does not bear out M. 
Marcou's statement that it gives ample facts and sections to show "the 
inapplicability of the term 'Permian' to the Dyas of Saxony; a term 
which indeed would not have been for a moment maintained if its typical 
localities were in a more accessible part of the world." 
M. Marcou next considers the necessity of the union of Dyas and Trias 
into a great geological period — the New Red Sandstone. This period he 
considers in time and space to be of the same importance as the Grauwacke 
or Paleozoic, Carboniferous, Secondary, Tertiary, and Recent periods. He 
has never admitted the union of the New Red Sandstone with the Carbo- 
niferous or the Secondary. 
JEtude sur VEtarje Kimmeridien dans les Environs de MontheJiard. By 
Dr. Cii. Contejean. Leipzig : J. Rothschild. 1860. 
Acting on the recognized principle of marking geological periods by 
particular pahrontological faunae. Dr. Contejean has set about to deter- 
mine the boundaries and members of the Kimmeridian formation of 
Montbeliard, and in the Jura, France, and England. To the want of due 
regard to palaeontological evidences, and the too great importance attached 
to petrographical facies, Dr. Contejean attributes the great number of 
purely artificial divisions — the limitation of the S3'stematizing of the beds 
being thus restricted to the mere differences of mineral composition, ^^ith- 
out due regard to palaeontological horizons. In the Jura, the massive 
Astarte, Pterocera, and Virgula marls" are ordinarily taken as the base 
of the Kimmeridge group ; upon these are superimposed directly thick in- 
termediate limestones, often sterile or but slightly fossiliferous, These 
divisions may be strictly conformable to subpelagic regions, where the 
marly beds alone received the organic debris. "But," well asks Dr. 
Contejean, " are these good divisions in themselves, and can they be 
applied more generally?'^ This question he answers in the negative, and 
cites the very rich fossiliferous localities of Montbeliard and Ponentruy as 
evidence. In those regions, formerly littoral, the limestone strata which 
separate the marls have received the relics of faunas hitherto not appre- 
ciated, but which are of equal value with those of the marls, and conse- 
quently entitled to rank as independent sub-groups. Moreover, the 
faunas of certain marl horizons are in no wise difi'erent from those of the 
limestones in their respective vicinities ; and thus the natural limits of the 
divisions are not always restricted either to the base or to the surface of a 
marl-bed ; whilst some limestones belong to two, or even three, different 
