Permian Rocks of the Continent.

Germany is the classic ground of the Magnesian Limestone now called Permian. The formation was well studied by the miners of that country a century ago as containing a thin band of dark-coloured cupriferous shale, characterised at Mansfield in Thuringia by numerous fossil fish. Beneath some variegated sandstones (not belonging to the Trias, though often confounded with it) they came down first upon a dolomitic limestone corresponding to the upper part of our Middle Permian, and then upon a marl-slate richly impregnated with copper pyrites, and containing fish and reptiles (Protosaurus) identical in species with those of the corresponding marl-slate of Durham. To the limestone they gave the name of Zechstein, and to the marl-slate that of Mergel-schiefer or Kupferschiefer. Beneath the fossiliferous group lies the Rothliegendes or Rothtodtliegendes, meaning the red-lyer or red-dead-lyer, so-called by the German miners from its colour, and because the copper had DIED OUT when they reached this underlying non-metalliferous member of the series. This red under-lyer is, in fact, a great deposit of red sandstone, breccia, and conglomerate with associated porphyry, basalt, and amygdaloid.

According to Sir R. Murchison, the Permian rocks are composed, in Russia, of white limestone, with gypsum and white salt; and of red and green grits, occasionally with copper ore; also magnesian limestones, marl-stones, and conglomerates.