Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/23

Rh irrespective, however, of the question of whether there are or are not localities in Germany where the Zechstein passes upwards into a red rock, which forms no true part of the Bunter Saudstein of the Trias, we have only to look to the environs of Dresden, on the one hand, and to Lower Silesia on the other, to see the inapplicability of the word "Dyas" to this group.

Near the capital of Saxony, Dr. Geinitz himself pointed out to me that the Rothliegende is there divided into two very dissimilar parts; and these, if added to the limestone which is there interpolated, or to the true Zechstein of other places, constitute a Trias. Again, Beyrich, in his Map of Lower Silesia, has divided the vast Rothliegende of those mountains into Lower and Upper, the two embracing eight subdivisions according to that author.

In repeating, then, that the word "Permian" was not originally proposed with the view of affixing to this natural group any number of component parts, but simply as a convenient short term to define the Uppermost Palæozoic group, I refer all geologists to the very words I used in the year 1841, when the name was first suggested. In speaking of the structure of Russia, I thus wrote:—"The Carboniferous system is surmounted to the east of the Volga by a vast series of beds of marls, schists, limestones, sandstones, and conglomerates, to which I propose to give the name of 'Permian System,' because, although this series represents as a whole the Lower New Red Sandstone (Rothe-todte-liegende) and the Magnesian Limestone or Zechstein, yet it cannot be classed exactly, whether by the succession of the strata or their contents, with either of the German or British subdivisions of this age."

After pointing to the governments of Russia over which such Permian rocks ranged, I added:—"Of the fossils of this system, some undescribed species of Producti might seem to connect the Permian with the Carboniferous era; and other shells, together with fishes and saurians, link it more closely to the period of the Zechstein, whilst its peculiar plants appear to constitute a Flora of a type intermediate between the epochs of the New Red Sandstone or Trias and the Coal-measures. Hence it is that I have ventured to consider this series as worthy of being regarded as a system."

In subsequent years, having personally examined this group in the typical tracts of Germany as well as of Britain, I felt more than ever assured that, from the great local variations of mineral succession of the group, the word "Permian," which might apply to any number of mineral subdivisions, was the most comprehensive and best term which could be used, the more so as it was in harmony with the principle on which the term Silurian had been adopted.

Apart from the question of the substitution of the new word