2 ( J0 Scientific Travellers. 



Letter to M. Fischer de Waldheim, Ex-President of the Society 

 of Naturalists of* Moscow. 



{Translation.) 

 My DEAlt Sir, Moscow, Oct, 8, 1841. 



As you have taken a lively interest in the success of the 

 geological expedition which I have just completed, accom- 

 panied by my friends M. de Verneuil, Count de Key sel- 

 ling, and Lieutenant Koksharoff, I hasten to communicate to 

 you some of its chief results; and I do so with real pleasure, 

 because in requesting you to present them to the Society ot 

 Naturalists of Moscow, I acquit myself of a duty towards a 

 distinguished body which has done me the honour of placing 

 my name in the list of its foreign members. 



The wide extension in the North of Russia of the Silurian, 

 Devonian and Carboniferous Systems, as proceeding from the 

 last year's survey, by the same observers and our friend the 

 Baron A. de Meyendorf, is already known to you from the 

 abstracts of memoirs communicated to the Geological Societies 

 of London and Paris. Our principal objects this year were, — 

 1st. To study the order of superposition, the relations and geo- 

 graphical distribution of the other and superior sedimentary 

 rocks in the central and southern parts of the empire. 2nd. 

 To examine the Ural Mountains, and to observe the manner in 

 which that chain rises from beneath the horizontal formations 

 of Russia. 3rd. To explore the carboniferous region of the 

 Donetz, and the adjacent rocks on the Sea of Azof. 



Our last year's survey had pretty nearly determined the li- 

 mits of the great tract of carboniferous limestone of the North 

 of Russia. On this occasion we have added to its upper part 

 that remarkable mass of rock which forms the peninsula of the 

 Volga near Samara, and which, clearly exposed in lofty, vertical 

 cliffs, and charged with myriads of the curious fossils Fusilina, 

 constitutes one of the striking features of Russian geology. 



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 re- 

 presents as a whole, the lower new red sandstone {Rohte todte 

 liegende) and the magnesian limestone or Zechstein, yet it can- 

 not be classed exactly (whether by the succession of the strata 

 or their contents) with either of the German or British sub- 

 divisions of this age. Moreover the British lithological term 

 of lower new red sandstone*, is as inapplicable to the great 



* See Silurian System, p. 54. 



