48 Recent Literature. 
Karpinskir’s “ UBERSICHT DER PHYSIKE-GEOGRAPHISCHEN 
VERHÄLTNISSE DES EUROPÄISCHEN RussLanps.'—This brochure, 
with its series of small maps, is a valuable addition to our know- 
ledge of Russian geology. At the outset the author states the 
curious fact, that even the oldest sedimentary rocks of Russia have 
not been altered, clay and sand being recognizable even in Cambrian 
strata, and a layer beneath the sediments of the coal formation 
being in some places recognizable physically and chemically as turf. 
Crystalline gneiss comes to the surface in Finland, Olonetz and 
Archangel, also in Volhynia, Podolia, Cherson, ete., in the south of 
Russia. Crystalline rocks are met with at a depth of 100 Russian 
fathoms below St. Petersburg, and at 300 to 500 fathoms below 
oscow. 
The oldest sedimentary strata (Cambrian) are the plastic clays of 
the St. Petersburg and Esthonian governments. Upper Silurian 
sediments occur in localities distant from each other, in the govern- 
„ments just named, in the south of Poland, and in three points on 
the eastern limits of European Russia. There can be little doubt 
that the Cambro-Silurian sea extended across the centre of Russia, 
from the Baltic to the Ural. In Upper Silurian times this sea had 
become much smaller, and was for the most part limited to the west 
near the Baltic, with an outline in Podolia and northern Bessarabia. 
Upper Silurian beds also reappear in the north. Thus at the com- 
mencement of the Devonian probably almost all European Russia 
was dry land, though sea spread from the Urals far over Asia. 
The fauna of this eastern Lower Silurian sea strikingly resembles 
that of the basin of the same age in Western Europe, though 
separated from it by 200,000 square versts of Middle and Upper 
Devonian strata. This later Devonian sea extended from the Arctic 
Ocean to the Caspian region. Only about 150 species of inverte- 
brates are as yet known from the Devonian of Russia, whilst almost 
three times this number occur in Belgium. During the Carbonif- 
erous period the greater part of Russia was covered by the ocean, 
though the coast had advanced eastward since the Upper Devonian. 
beg on sea spread westwards over Asia to the Irtish 
an tal. 
1 Ubersicht der Bp deni as ng ep Verhältnisse Europäischen 
Russland wahrend der verflossen an geologischen Perioden. Von A. 
inski, a. d. ‘‘ Beitragen s. Kennt. d. Fon Rei 
: e iches. u. d. angren- 
zenden Lander Asicris.’’ St. Petersburg. 
