H. H. Howorth — Elevation of the Urals. 439 



Thefirst and most obvious fact about the Urals which has struck all 

 travellers who have crossed them is that, although a mountain chain 

 virtually running from one sea to another, they form no frontier at 

 all, either botanically or zoologically. The plants and animals are 

 precisely alike on both sides of the range. It is true that the range 

 is not a very lofty one, nor are other ranges which do constitute 

 biological frontiers ; nevertheless it is a very remarkable fact that, so 

 far as we know, the Ural mountains do not form a frontier at all. 

 The continuity of life is complete right across them. They have led 

 to no isolation. It seems to me that this can only be accounted for 

 by the circumstance that they are a very new feature in the country. 

 Secondly, not only are the zoological and botanical features alike 

 on both sides of the range, but also the superficial loose deposits. 

 Those enigmatic continuous beds of black earth — " chernojem " as 

 the Russians call it — which are such a feature in European Russia, 

 are also found on the Asiatic side of the Urals. Whatever their 

 origin, which, like the origin of the loess, is shrouded in so much 

 doubt, they are clearly not marine, and do not preserve any marine 

 debris whatever, and, whether subaerial or a deposit from fresh 

 water, it remains remarkable that they should be precisely alike in 

 texture and contents on both sides of the chain. 



Thirdly, and this is a much more direct piece of evidence. It has 

 been remarked by one traveller after another that there are no traces 

 of glacial action in the Urals. Murchison, who examined the chain 

 from north to south with great care, says, " We have indeed fully 

 explained that those mountains and both their flanks are void of all 

 boulders and far-borne detritus. Though exhibiting proofs of 

 interior dislocation, the Ural is therefore a perfect contrast in this 

 respect to the Scandinavian chain. ... As there is no glacier in the 

 Ural up to 70° N. lat., so, according to the rules of the glacialist, 

 there never can have been one, since there are no moraines, nor any 

 striated and polished rocks in the whole region " (Russia and the 

 Ural Mountains, pp. 527-8). 



In an earlier paper he writes : "To the east of Grabovo, the road 

 runs in one of the lateral depressions, and little stony matter is to 

 be seen. The absence of all coarse detritus is, however, a phenome- 

 non which cannot but surprise every geologist accustomed to other 

 mountain chains, for he has now absolutely reached the foot of the 

 central ridge of the Ural, in which there are many lofty peaks, and 

 yet not a single far-transported block can be detected" {id. p. 358-9). 



It is not only in the chain itself that we miss these unmistakeable 

 proofs of the existence of former glaciers on a large scale. It is 

 the same in the adjoining plains of European Russia, where all the 

 erratics have come from Scandinavia and Finland. 



These facts converge very remarkably upon the conclusion that 

 the Ural chain was non-existent at the time when the Scandinavian 

 Mountains were shedding their boulders far and wide, but that they 

 are in fact a very modern feature in the country. The nature of 

 their contour and the way in which the sheets of auriferous gravel 

 and of Mammoth remains upon them occur point further not only 



