180 M. Eichwald's Geological Remarks nqxm 



form on the north coast by the Black Sea around Odessa, the 

 newest land-coast Jbrmation (Klistenland Formation.) 



Derhend. — The hills of Derbend are pretty uniform m struc- 

 ture, and consist of a tuffaceous shell-limestone of the tertiary 

 period, which alternates with sandstone. The tertiary limestone 

 which forms the hills around Derbend is of a yellowish colour, 

 and is so compact, that all the houses, and also the walls of 

 the town, are built of it ; and even the grave-stones are cut of 

 the same material. Some limestones are without fossil shells; 

 others, and those of a loose texture, are principally composed of 

 them. Those fossils have the same general characters with 

 those already enumerated. 



From the fossils in the shell-limestones, on the east and west 

 coast, it follows that the former inhabitants of the Caspian Sea 

 were principally bivalve shells, as is shewn to be the case at 

 present by the, generally, dead inhabitants of the sea in the 

 sand of the coast, and at the bottom of the sea. And as the 

 Caspian at present supports few species of shells, we find prin- 

 cipally only these or others closely allied to them, among the 

 petrifactions of the shell-limestone. Single species that occur 

 petrified in great numbers in particular localities, occur at pre- 

 sent either as rare inhabitants of the Caspian, as the Gly- 

 cymeres, Corbula, and Veneres, or are not found at all in the 

 Caspian but in the Black Sea, as Donaces and Serpulct ; only 

 the Mytili and Cardia are as numerous in the living as in the 

 fossil state. They are even with difficulty distinguishable as a 

 species from the fossil ones. In the same manner, we find also 

 small Paludina, both living and fossilized, on the coast and bot- 

 tom of the sea. 



As we do not find in the strata any petrifactions but of the 

 testacea, no fish for instance, it follows either that these animals, 

 the fishes, as they died, were dissolved and destroyed, so that no 

 traces of them were left behind, or that they did not exist as inha- 

 bitants of the Caspian, at the period of the deposition of the ter- 

 tiary limestone. This appears the more probable, as the fishes 

 of the Caspian are chiefly river fishes, which would first find 

 their way there on the sinking of the level of the sea, and from 

 the rivers which would then pour into the Caspian ; while the 

 testacea, as inhabitants of the sea, shew plainly a former con- 



