3 
PALAEOZOIC CLASSIFICATION APPLIED TO GERMANY. 
De la Beche, Professor Phillips and the Ordnance Geological surveyors, large 
tracts of South Wales, which also had been grouped as Cambrian by Proiessoi 
Sedgwick and Mr. Murchison, have not only been proved to contain the same t\ - 
pical fossils as the Caradoc sandstones and Llandeilo flags, but also to be lor the 
most part mere replications and expansions of those Lower Silurian strata, assu- 
ming, however, to a great extent distinct lithological characters, due to numerous 
eruptions of igneous matter 1 . In North Wales, we have indeed convinced our- 
selves by personal examination of the flanks of Snowdon, that the most abundant 
organic forms of the oldest fossiliferous slates are certain species ot Orthidcs and 
Leptamce, which also abound in the typical Lower Silurian strata ; and we there- 
fore believe, that whilst the Snowdonian slates may be considered the lowest fossil 
stage in Britain, they are so zoologically united, that they cannot be geologically 
separated from the inferior strata of the Silurian region. From all these data then 
it followed, that the Cambrian system became identified with the published zoolo- 
gical type of the Lower Silurian rocks. We may now further state our belief, that 
in the British Isles, as in every other part of the world in which they have been 
observed, the Lower and Upper Silurian groups are so bound together by fossils 
common to the upper part of the one and the lower part of the other, that they 
really constitute one natural system ; though in most instances they may be use- 
fully distinguished on geological maps by different tints of the same colour. 
Such having been the progress made in the British Isles, from the period when 
this classification began to be worked out, down to the day at which we write, let 
us now cast a view over the contemporaneous advances of palaeozoic knowledge in 
other parts of the world. And, first, we may speak of Germany and Belgium. 
Though represented by thick masses of slaty grauwacke, particularly in the axis 
of the Ardennes, the Silurian type, such as we have described it, is very feebly 
represented by fossils, either throughout the Rhenish provinces 2 , or in the more 
i See Mr. Murchison’s Address to the Geological Society of London, 1842 (Proc. Geol. Soc., voL iv. 
p. 75), in which these observations of Sir H. De la Beche and his followers are noted. The complete and 
detailed elaboration of all the Upper and Lower Silurian rocks of North Wales, will, indeed, be one of 
the important results of that government survey, which will, doubtless, be rendered doubly valuable by 
the zoological illustrations of Professor Phillips and Professor E. Forbes, and by the clear and methodical 
field work of Mr. Ramsay and other geological surveyors. 
* In his very instructive work, “ Das Rheinische Uebergangs Gebirge, 1844, Dr. F. Roemer has indeed 
endeavoured to show, that all the fossiliferous grauwacke of the Rhenish provinces, as well as its overlying 
limestone, ought, from its fossils, to be classed as Devonian. 
