GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 



i79 



well-known carboniferous shells^ and the upper division by 

 the great abundance of a foraminifera, to which Fischer de 

 Waldheim has applied the name of Fusulina. The establish- 

 ment of this triple subdivision has enabled the authors to 

 correct some important errors in previous classifications of 

 Russian deposits. But the most interesting feature in this 

 system, south of the central dome, occurs between the Don 

 and the Dnieper, and consists of a vast interlacement of 

 limestones, containing the same fossils as near Moscow, with 

 sandstones, shales, and numerous seams of bituminous as well 

 as anthracite coal. This series, the authors state, is distin- 

 guished from the coal measures of western Europe by the 

 absence of all beds containing fiuviatile or lacustrine remains. 

 Along the western flank of the Ural Mountains, the carboni- 

 ferous limestone is overlaid with grits, conglomerates, shales, 

 and flaggy limestones, containing new species of goniatites 

 and plants common to the whole carboniferous series. These 

 beds are considered by the authors to be the equivalents of 

 the British coal-fields, and the lower newer red sandstone, 

 or the rothe-todt-liegende of Germany, and reasons are given 

 for separating the latter with its English representative from 

 the newer red sandstone series, and making it the upper, but 

 an integral part of the coal measures. 



The next system of deposits, in ascending order, claimed 

 the particular attention of the authors, on account of the 

 difference of opinion which had been expressed respecting 

 its true geological position, and the most competent observers 

 having begged them to make it an object of careful research. 

 The series consists of inosculating deposits of limestones, 

 marls, and gypsum, with grits, sandstones, and conglomerates 

 containing copper,— of saliferous marls, sandstones, and rock 

 salt, and of bituminous grits ; and it is characterised by a 

 peculiar fauna, but it contains also the typical shells of the 

 magnesian limestone of England, and of the zechstein of 



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