326 M. Eichwald's Remarks on tfie Caspian Sea. 



stone, without petrifaction, and an old and new sandstone, form 

 the coast and neighbourhood of the Balchan Bay. 



SotUh Coast of the Caspian. — Messenderari. — This coast, as 

 far as examined, appeared composed of porphyry, with compact 

 limestone and sandstone. Here, as in the Caucasus in general, 

 the lower hills are composed of limestone, and the more lofty of 

 porphyry, which often rises into mountains of enormous altitude : 

 the same arrangement of rocks are repeated on the south coast 

 of the Caspian, and also on the east coast. Frazer's observa- 

 tions show that similar geognostical relations occur in other parts 

 of Persia. 



Sketches of South European Nature — Italy. By Professor 

 Hausmann*. 



Xn order to understand the characters of a country, we must 

 first inquire into the external and internal constitution of the 

 mineral masses of which it is composed. These form the basis 

 on which rests every thing that lives and moves in a country, af- 

 fording the principal requisites for the support of vegetables and 

 of animals, and even for the existence of the men who inhabit 

 it. As in animals, the frame-work of their bones, and in trees 

 the stem and branches, have the chief influence upon the shape 

 of the whole, so does the aspect of a country depend chiefly 

 upon the nature of its elevations. The character of the land 

 is determined by the variety or uniformity of these elevations, 

 by their absolute as well as by their proportional height; by 

 their more or less flattened summits ; likewise by their extent, 

 their direction, and by their union or separation. But these ex- 

 ternal relations arise from the internal structure, whereon, there- 

 fore, the nature and the properties of the loose fruit-bearing 

 soil are entirely dependent. From this circumstance, the inter- 

 nal structure presents to us one of the principal conditions which 

 regard the animated surface of the soil -|-. 



« Translated from the German original by George F. Hay, Esq. 



■\ The author refers to a treatise published by himself at Gottingen, re- 

 garding the mutual relations of geology and agriculture, entitled Specimen 

 4e rei agrariie et salutariae fundamento geologico ; this was translated into 

 <5erman by Professor Karte, at Berlin, in 1825. 



