204 
EUROPEAN EQUIVALENTS OF THE PERMIAN SYSTEM. 
England, France, Belgium and America have no well-marked equivalents in Russia, 
nearly the whole of the carbonaceous matter in the empire being included in the 
lower or calcareous member of that system. 
We repeat, then, that the Permian rocks of Russia consist of an assemblage of 
sandstones, grits, conglomerates and marls, with subordinate bands of gypsum and 
limestone, which, without exactly following the same detailed mineral sequence as 
the deposits of similar age in Germany, is bound together by certain natural links ; 
and we are thereby induced to propose the word Permian, to designate a natural 
group in Europe, hitherto undistinguished by any common name. 
To dispel all uncertainty from the minds of our readers concerning the equiva- 
lents of the Permian system in Western Europe, and their prevalent relations to 
the strata beneath and above them, we annex the accompanying woodcut. 
33. 
1 
i 
[ LOWER SECONDARY. 
Supper palaeozoic. 
In exhibiting this diagram, we do not mean to assert, that the carboniferous strata 
are everywhere unconformable, as here represented, to the base of the Permian 
rocks. Sections in England have, indeed, already been cited, which show a per- 
fect conformity between these deposits ; though many other cases in the same 
country may also be appealed to, where they are as discordant as in Germany, 
and where the surface of the carboniferous strata has undergone denudation 
as well as dislocation anterior to the accumulation of the overlying deposits 1 . On 
the other hand, there is no example, in any part of Europe, of the slightest un- 
conformability between the upper part of the Palaeozoic or Permian rocks and the 
lower secondary or Trias ; and yet the carboniferous and Permian fossils have that 
striking community of character which we shall develope in the succeeding pages, 
whilst the Permian and Triassic fossils are entirely distinct. 
* See memoir of Professor Sedgwick, ut supra, Geol. Trans, vol. iii. plate 5. fig. 3. plate 6. fig. 1, &c. 
