1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Bernician Series

BERNICIAN SERIES, in geology, a term proposed by S. P. Woodward in 1856 (Manual of Mollusca, p. 409) for the lower portion of the Carboniferous System, below the Millstone Grit. The name was suggested by that of the ancient province of Bernicia on the Anglo-Scottish borderland. It is practically equivalent to the “Dinantien” of A. de Lapparent and Munier-Chalmas (1893). In 1875 G. Tate’s “Calcareous and Carbonaceous” groups of the Carboniferous Limestone series of Northumberland were united by Professor Lebour into a single series, to which he applied the name “Bernician”; but later he speaks of the whole of the Carboniferous rocks of Northumberland and its borders as of the “Bernician type,” which is the most satisfactory way in which the term may now be used (Report of the Brit. Sub-committee on Classification and Nomenclature, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1888). “Demetian” was the corresponding designation proposed by Woodward for the Upper Carboniferous rocks.