[T] Sir William Thomson, who quotes Adams and Delaunay.
Viewed in this way, the great disturbances at the close of the Palæozoic period constitute one of the most instructive examples in the whole history of the earth of that process of collapse to which the crust was subject after long intervals, and of which no equally great instance occurs except at the close of the Laurentian and the close of the Mesozoic. The mineral peculiarities of the Permian are also accounted for by the above considerations. Let us now notice some of these. In nearly all parts of the world the Permian presents thick beds of red sandstone and conglomerate as marked ingredients. These, as we have already seen, are indications of rapid deposition accompanying changes of level. In the Permian, as elsewhere, these beds are accompanied by volcanic rocks, indicating the subterranean causes of the disturbances. Again, these rocks are chiefly abundant in those regions, like Western Europe, where the physical changes were at a maximum. Another remarkable feature of the Permian rocks is the occurrence of great beds of magnesian limestone, or dolomite. In England, the thick yellow magnesian limestone, the outcrop of which crosses in nearly a straight line through Durham, Yorkshire, and Nottingham, marks the edge of a great Permian sea extending far to the eastward. In the marls and sandstones of the Permian period there is also much gypsum. Now, chemistry shows us that magnesian limestones and gypsums are likely to be deposited where sea water, which always contains salts of magnesia, is evaporating in limited or circumscribed areas into which carbonate of lime and carbonate of soda are being carried by streams from the land or springs from below;[V] and it is also to be observed that solutions of sulphuric acid, and probably also of sulphate of magnesia, are characteristic products of igneous activity. Hence we find in various geological periods magnesian limestones occurring as a deposit in limited shallow sea basins, and also in connection with volcanic breccias. Now these were obviously the new Permian conditions of what had once been the wide flat areas of the Carboniferous period. Still further, we find in Europe, as characteristic of this period, beds impregnated with metallic salts, especially of copper. Of this kind are very markedly the copper slates of Thuringia. Such beds are not, any more then magnesian limestones, limited to this age; but they are eminently characteristic of it. To produce them it is required that water should bring forth from the earth's crust large quantities of metallic salts, and that these should come into contact with vegetable matters in limited submerged areas, so that sulphates of the metals should be deoxidized into sulphides. A somewhat different chemical process, as already explained, was very active in the coal period, and was connected with the production of its iron ores; but, in the Permian, profound and extensive fractures opened up the way to the deep seats of copper and other metals, to enrich the copper slate and its associated beds. It is also to be observed that the alkaline springs and waters which contain carbonate of soda, very frequently hold various metallic salts; so that where, owing to the action of such waters, magnesian limestone is being deposited, we may expect also to find various metallic ores.
