THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 



DECEMBER 1841 



I 



LXII. First Sketch of some of the principal Results of a Second 

 Geological Survey of Russia. Communicated by Roderick 

 Impey Murchison, Esq., F.R.S., President of the Geolo- 

 gical Society. 



To the Editor of the Philosophical Magazine. 

 Dear Sir, 



T was my earnest wish to have complied earlier with your 

 request when I left this country, to send you from the spot 

 some account of my distant wanderings; but the desire to 

 avoid communicating early conceptions which might be mo- 

 dified by subsequent observation, induced me to stay my pen 

 until I could offer something worthy of a place in the Phi- 

 losophical Magazine. The short sketch which follows was 

 written at Moscow near the close of the journey, and is, with 

 some very slight alterations, the translation of a letter ad- 

 dressed to M. Fischer de Waldheim, the venerable and re- 

 spected President of the Society of Naturalists of that metro- 

 polis. Since then, besides the official report to the Minister 

 of Finance, the Count de Cancrine, 1 have submitted to His 

 Imperial Majesty, a tabular view of all the formations in Rus- 

 sia, accompanied by a general map and a section from the Sea 

 of Azof to St. Petersburgh. These documents, which will be 

 engraved in the course of the winter, are to be considered only 

 as the prelude to a long memoir with full illustrations of the 

 organic remains, mineral structure and physical features of the 

 country, which will be laid before the Geological Society of 

 London, as soon as, with the assistance of my fellow-labourers, 

 I shall have prepared the materials for the public eye. In the 

 mean time the friends of science must be happy to learn, that 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. 19. No. 126. Dec. 184-1. 2 E 



