VII.—The Permian-Trias Question

Extract

At the present stage of the controversy, it may seem, to those who have read carefully the paper of M. Marcou in the March Number of this Magazine, that very little remains to be said. Yet, however much it is to be regretted, it must be feared that insular prejudice still finds place with English geologists, and prevents them from seeing so clearly as they otherwise might do the full bearing of the evidence which we possess. I have thought, therefore, that at the present juncture it would be useful if one gave a short historical résumé of a few facts, taken partly from the introduction to Geinitz's great Monograph on the Dyas. The title of this work is of importance as an index of the stage at which the battle between the followers of Murchison in this country and the advocates of what we may call German views had arrived in the year 1862, when Geinitz's great work was published in Leipzig. Some years before this, Murchison had propounded his view of a “Palæozoic Trias” in his Siluria, and subsequently he went over a good portion of Central Germany with Prof. Morris, and on his return gave to the Geological Society his long paper on the Thüringen and Hartz country.