186 EUSSIA IN EUROPE. 



table-land crossing the southern steppes obliquely. Comparecl witb tbese almost 

 horizontal layers, scarcely rising here and there in gentle undulations, and 

 stretching almost unchanged in their outward aspect and inward structure for 

 hundreds of thousands of square miles, what an endless variety is presented by all 

 the little worlds of Western Europe — Tyrol and Switzerland, Germany, France, 

 Italy, Iberia, Great Britain ! The depression connecting the Black and Baltic 

 Seas by the Dnieper and Oder basins separates two distinct geological worlds, 

 differing in every respect, in the form of their outlines, the prominence of their 

 reliefs, the lie of their stratified rocks. In the west the land records frequent 

 and complicated revolutions ; in the east it speaks of slow and regular oscillations. 

 While Western Europe was being upheaved into highlands and torn into deep 

 valleys, the lands of the Dnieper and Volga maintained an almost changeless level 

 above the surrounding seas. 



Superficially Russia is divided into two vast and perfectly distinct regions, one 

 marked by the traces of glacier action, the other destitute of erratic boulders or 

 glacial marls. With the exception of the plains stretching along the foot of the 

 Ural, the whole of Northern Russia was exposed, during the glacial period, to the 

 influence of the crystalline masses which moved from Scandinavia and Finland 

 towards the west, south, and east, from Scotland to Poland, and thence to the 

 shores of the Kara Sea, in a vast circle over 2,400 miles in periphery. The former 

 theory that the erratic boulders of this region had been transported on marine 

 floating ice has now been finally abandoned. Marine detritus nowhere accompanies 

 these blocks, which are always associated with the remains of land mammals 

 and fresh-water shells. During the glacial epoch all North Russia resembled the 

 Swedish slopes of the Kjolen, where the glaciers, alternately advancing and 

 retreating, spread over chaotic tracts, where moraines and rocks are intermingled 

 in strange confusion with lakes and peat beds. 



Lacustrine and River Systems. 



While bearing a marked resemblance to North Russia in the gentle undulations 

 of its surface, South Russia clearly differs from it in its geological history, as well 

 as in the nature of its soil and flora. South of Tula, Razan, and Kazan no more 

 erratic boulders occur, and those which Murchison fancied he had seen near 

 Yoronejh, in the Don basin, are now regarded as of local origin. Whore the 

 southern " black lands " begin, all traces of the old glaciers disapj)ear. The 

 low-lying lacustrine and boggy regions strewn with boulders are thus sharply 

 separated from the territory where the vegetable soil has had time to develop 

 during long geological epochs. The contrast between the flora of both regions is 

 complete. In the north the prevailing plant is the fir, in the south a species of 

 stipa (kovti), a humble grass, with which are associated many other plants of like 

 appearance. A great many growths belonging to the southern flora are arrested 

 by the limits of the boulder region as by a wall of fire, although otherwise thriving 

 under a northern climate, and easily cultivated in the gardens about Moscow and 



