THE URAL MOUNTAINS. 75 



from its composition it is entirely made up of fragments 

 of ancient Uralian rocks the great Permian deposit must 

 have been accumulated, not only after the completion of 

 the silurian, devonian, and carboniferous systems, but 

 after their consolidation, and either after or during their 

 mineralisation with copper ores. This is a clear and 

 undeniable conclusion, at which the field-geologist who 

 has examined this region arrives ; for, in whatever parallel 

 of latitude he may trace this ancient detritus, he invari- 

 ably finds it to be more coarse and metalliferous as it 

 approaches the mountains from which its materials have 

 been derived, whilst in receding from them, such mineral 

 matter (always in the form of deposit, and never in the 

 condition of veins) as regularly dies away and is lost in 

 marine marls, sand, and limestone. But if the Ural 

 mountains were, as we contend they must have been, the 

 source whence all these cupriferous sediments, as well as 

 detritus and fossil vegetables, were supplied, very different 

 indeed must have been their former outline from that 

 which now prevails ; for on the western slope of the axis 

 down which the waters now flow into Fermi a, there are 

 no great vein-stores and original sources from which such 

 debris could have been derived. All the spots where the 

 largest veins, masses, and original centres of copper ore 

 occur, whether at Bogoslofsk, Nijny Taglisk, Gumeshefsk, 

 and Polofsk, south of Miask, or other and intermediate 

 places, are on the eastern side of the chief ridge. Supposing 

 that these mines were in the process of forming, or having 

 been formed, were undergoing destruction, during an era 

 in which the land had assumed its present outline, almost 

 every cupriferous particle and drop of water impregnated 

 with or transporting such mineral matter must have 

 descended into the adjacent low country of Siberia. By 

 no natural agency could any considerable quantity of such 

 coarse materials be now carried to the low countries on 

 the west, between which and all the great copper sources 

 which are known lies the ridge of the Ural range. Now, as 

 all the cupriferous detritus has been carried to the western 



