T. BELT ON THE STEPPES OE SOUTHERN RUSSIA. 



847 



inland, and forms hills rising more than 50 feet above the general 

 surface. In the Museum at Nova Tcherkask I saw remains of the 

 Mammoth and Irish Elk ; and Captain Scariatine, to whom I must 



Fig. 4.— Section below Nova Tcherkask. (Scale 50 feet to 1 inch.) 



W///M 4 feet. Black soil. 



10 feet. Dark brown unstratified clay. 



Black earth 

 Diluvium 

 Sandg 



Congerian strata ... 



Sarmatic or 



Passage- \ 20 feet - 

 beds. 



— or 



4 feet. Irregular bed of sand. 



10 feet. Stratified ferruginous limestone, false-bedded 

 in some parts. Shells of Cardium and Dreissena 

 common. 



White and brown sands with seams of clay. 



Dark laminated clays with impressions of shells. 



Sand. 



Sand with many shells (marine). 



express my obligations for much kindness and information, ascer- 

 tained for me that they had been obtained near the town in the 

 lower part of the diluvial clay. 



Going inland from Taganrog northward, along the line of the 

 Taganrog- and-Karkov railway, the bed-rocks are at first completely 

 concealed beneath the diluvial clay. Some of the sections in small 

 valleys cut down through about 50 feet of it without reaching its 

 base. Near Pokrofsky, about eight miles north of Taganrog, the 

 Steppe Limestone comes in places nearly to the surface, and is 

 exposed in the railway-cuttings and in the small valleys. The way 

 in which the clay covers the limestone and fills up inequalities worn 

 in it shows that the latter had been much denuded before the 

 former was spread out. In some parts a knob of limestone reaches 

 nearly to the surface of the level steppe, the flat character of which 

 is entirely due to the diluvial clay. In others, some of the old 

 valleys in the limestone have been partly opened out again in the 

 clay that had filled them up. The old Aralo-Caspian sea, in which 

 the limestones were deposited, had been lowered, and the strata 

 subjected to subaerial denudation, before the diluvium was de- 

 posited and the irregularities of the older rocks levelled up to an 

 even surface. 



From Pokrofsky, the country on the line of railway gradually 

 rises northward as far as Nikitofka, situated in the Donetz coal- 

 field, where it attains a height of about 1000 feet above the sea. 

 Up to 800 feet above the sea the diluvial clay is generally thick ; but 

 above that height in the coal-district it is thin and irregular, and 

 often consists of not more than a few feet of the black soil. East- 

 ward from Nikitofka the surface of the country rises still higher, 

 and attains its greatest elevation near Evanofka, at a height of 

 1210 feet above the sea. The country here loses its steppe-like 

 appearance, and the Carboniferous strata often crop up in long 

 ridges. The slopes of the hills, however, are all covered with the 



