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it, rocks of the same age in the South of Russia, or on the banks 
and in the neighbourhood of the river Donetz, are in parts emi- 
nently productive of good bituminous as well as anthracitic coal. 
Among the sections described, one from Karakuba, on the river 
Kalmiuss, to the neighbourhood of Bachmuth, shows a regular suc- 
cession, in ascending order, from beds of conglomerate and red 
sandstone, forming the base of the carboniferous system, through 
various bands of limestone, alternating with many courses of sand- 
stone and shale with numerous seams of coal, 
In this wide carbonaceous tract, coal is extracted by the impe- 
rial government at two spots only. These pits were first opened in 
the last century, by Mr. Gascoigne and a small company of English 
miners, formerly employed by the Russian government. The shaft 
section at Lissitchi Balka, the chief of these places, and situated to 
the north of the iron foundries of Lugan and to the east-north-east 
of Backmuth, clearly shows that all the best seams of coal of this 
tract are subordinate to the central part of what English geologists 
call the mountain limestone. Including small and profitless seams, 
twelve beds of coal occur at this locality, seven of which are ex- 
tracted for use. The greater part of the coal is of fair quality, and 
some is exceediagly good and chiefly bituminous ; and all these 
beds, with a great amount of shale and sandstone occupying a thick- 
ness of 800 English feet, are interlaced with thin courses of lime- 
stone, which are charged with Spirifer Mosquensis, Producius anti- 
quatus, Orthis lata, O. planissima, Bellerophon, Turritella, Pecten, 
Nautilus, and a small Trilobite, thus leaving no doubt that the coal 
is subordinate to the same series of beds which in the North of 
Russia, beyond the great Devonian axis before described, is void of 
the mineral, and yet contains the same fossils. In examining these 
tracts of coal, the authors perceived a close analogy between them 
and those of the North of England. In the South of England, as in 
the North of Russia, no coal occurs in the lower or calcareous divi- 
sion of the system; but in Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland 
sandstone and-shales are interpolated and the mountain limestone 
is expanded, as on the Donetz, into a great complex series ( Yore- 
dale Rocks of Phillips), including seams of coal. 
In the mineral composition of this carboniferous tract there is 
a striking analogy to the condition of the great British coal-field of 
South Wales; for one'end of the tract contains anthracitic, and 
the other bituminous coal, though the strata are, it is believed, 
of the same age. In the Russian case, the anthracitic masses oc- 
cupy the eastern end of a tract, the major axis of which trends 
from west-north-west to east-scuth-east, and the bituminous coal is 
on the west. In the tract where the anthracite prevails, the lime- 
stone seems’to thin out, and there are consequently fewer fossils, » 
Unlike the flat and untroubled regions of northern and central 
Russia, this carboniferous tract is often highly dislocated, and is 
everywhere thrown into broad and rapid undulations. In the chief 
mines at Lissitchi Balka the strata dip about 20°, and are there-— 
fore easily worked and drained; but at Uspenskoi, near Lugan, 
