106 Br. Feistmantel — Bohemian Coal Fauna and Passage-Beds. 
the British Association at Glasgow in September last, it will certainly 
not be without interest, to give some geological and historical notes 
on this rnost important occurrence, and I may, I trust, be allowed 
to do so in the Geological Magazine. 
The question whether tliese beds, with a Fauna of Permian aspect, 
but occurring with a Carboniferous Flora, are to be taken as of 
Carboniferous age, or, guided by the animal relics, as Permian, or 
whether they should be considered as intermediate between the two, 
occupied the greater part of my time wliilst engaged upon the 
palmontological examination of the Bohemian Coal-fields. 
1 have reported several times on tliis subjeot, and I constantly 
maintained almost the same opinion, considering these Gas-coals first 
as Lowest Permian, later as Passage-beds between the Carboniferous 
and Permian formations ; but as all my reports are published in 
German, my repeating them in tliis place is certainty justified. 
As the animal-remains in the Gas-coal occurred only in the 
above-mentioned Coal-basins, 1 I will especially speak of them. 
My cliief object has always been to show that in Bohemia (and 
certainly also in other localities) there is no strict boundary between 
the Carboniferous and Permian; on the contrary, that these formations 
are in very close connexion, as is shown in the association of a 
Flora of Carboniferous character with animals mostly of Permian 
character in the above-mentioned districts, namely, in the Gas-coals 
of the Pilsen- and Kladno-Rakonitz basins, which formerly, at least 
to a great extent, were considered as truly Carboniferous, but now 
must be modified, although there are still authors who assert that 
the Flora alone must decide the age of these strata. 
A . — GEOLOGICAL AND PA LtE ONTOLOGICAL NOTES. 
T . — General Consideration of tlie above-mentioned Coal-basins. 
These the richest Coal-deposits in Bohemia can, properly speak- 
ing, be considered as only one continuous area, as they are in no 
place distinctly interrupted ; they begin in the south-west, 2 in the 
neighbourhood of Dobrzan and Mantau, and extend in a N.E. direc- 
tion by the city of Pilsen as far as Plass, where generally the end of 
the Pilsen basin is taken ; but quite in the immediate neighbour- 
hood, on the so-called “ Mlatzer tanh,” the other basin begins with 
a narrow band, which extends across Shelles, Teclinitz, Horzowitz, 
and so on across Rakonitz, Kladno, until it reaclies about twenty 
English miles north of Prague as far as the river Elbe, where it 
apparently ends. 
Both tliese basins have further in common : a. that there is a 
Coal-bearing portion, with Coal-seams of different quality and thick- 
ness in successive Order, and, b. there is a portion of Red Sandstones 
without Coal-seams, or at least without productive Coal-seams, also 
in successive order. 
' Some of the same genera and species also occur again higher in the true l’ermian, 
in N.E. Bohemia, Silesia, Saxony, the Saarbrück basin, etc. 
2 See Maps of the Vienna Geological Institution. 
