GEOLOGICAL FEATURES. 



185 



tliat have been sunk in the surface strata. Instead of folding, tilting, and 

 overlapping diversely, and thus producing all the varieties of soil reflected in the 

 vegetable contrasts of the surface, the superimposed rocks maintain their regular 

 parallelisms for vast spaces, their disintegration everywhere supplying the same 

 soil, overgrown by the same species of plants. The granitic and gneiss formations 

 of Scandinavia, Finland, and the region between the White Sea and the Neva 

 basin are succeeded by palaeozoic and carboniferous rocks stretching south and 



Fi^r. 90. — View in the Dnieper Steppes. 



east to the very heart of Central Asia. Then come the new red sandstones, 

 comprising those Permian formations which take their name from the vast 

 government of Perm, and which extend along the base of the Ural, between the 

 Caspian steppes and the shores of the Frozen Ocean. Jurassic strata skirt the 

 Permian southwards, overlapping them in the centre, thus forming an irregular 

 triangle tapering slowly from the northern tundras to the banks of the Volga. 

 Farther south, chalk, tertiary^ and recent formations are disposed round a granitic 



