Chap. XIV.] 
CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS OF RUSSIA. 
365 
Carboniferous Rocks of Russia. — Of the Carboniferous group, as exhibited in 
Russia-in-Europe, it is enough to say that its lowest members only are there 
well developed. In the small section above given (p. 364), we see beds of Car- 
boniferous Limestone with traces of coal lying immediately on the red and green 
rocks with Devonian Fishes. To the north-east, or on the Andoma River in the 
Government of Olonetz, the calcareous members of this division swell out ; but 
even the few thin seams of poor coal above mentioned disappear and are repre- 
sented by one course of black and very slightly bituminous shale. 
Near Moscow, efforts have been made to reach coal by boring through the 
superjacent Jurassic rocks (Oxfordian), which there cover the Carboniferous 
Limestone j but, according to Helmersen, no coal was detected at a depth of 490 
feet. Ranging from Moscow by Serpuchof to Tula and Kaluga, where the Car- 
boniferous Limestone again comes out to the surface, seams of poor coal have 
been partially worked at Serpuchof and other places enumerated by Helmersen ; 
but they are of slight value only *. In the southern region of the Donetz, how- 
ever, between the Don and the Dnieper, where these lower strata reappear, 
the coal-seams are of much larger dimensions, and several of them are of much 
better quality. They are there all interstratified with beds of Carboniferous 
Limestone, like the Scotch coal-fields (p. 293). 
In the last tract, however, that horizontality of the Palaeozoic strata in the 
northern parts of this vast country, which would have rendered the coal-beds 
highly valuable, no longer exists. The limestone, sandstone, and shale, with 
the coal, have here been violently extruded to the surface through a cover of sur- 
rounding Permian, Jurassic, and Cretaceous deposits, and, being very highly 
dislocated, are consequently difficult and expensive to work. 
But if the Imperial Government should open out deep shafts, as I long ago sug- 
gested, by sinking through the secondary rocks to the east of the River Donetz t, 
the good beds of coal which she possesses in the south may be found to lie in valu- 
able and regular masses beneath the unbroken and surrounding Secondary rocks. 
Some of the grandest examples of the Carboniferous Limestones of Russia are 
to be seen on the banks of the Volga, near Syzran, the bend which that mighty 
river makes, as delineated on all maps, being caused by lofty cliffs of those rocks, 
which frown over the low region on the east. There, thick beds, containing 
numerous fossil species common to this division in many quarters of the globe, 
are laden with the small Fusulinae, first noticed by Pallas, which are remarkable 
in being among the oldest of the Foraminifers, — the Fusulina being in truth a 
prototype of the Nummulite, which became abundant so long afterwards in the 
Tertiary deposits. No coal-seams, however, have been detected in these rocks. 
Other and not less gorgeous masses of the same limestone are displayed on 
the western flank of the Ural Mountains, where they are united conformably in 
numerous undulations with underlying limestones containing Devonian fossils. 
Not repeating sketches which are given in another work, I would refer the reader 
to the woodcut at p. 366, in which masses both of Devonian and Carboniferous 
Limestone are seen in intimate connexion, but much dislocated at this spot, in 
the gorge of the River Tchussovaya on the western edge of the Ural Mountains. 
* Helmersen, ' Ueber die Bohrarbeiten auf 
Steinkohle bei Moskau und Serpuchow,' Me- 
langes Phys. et China. : Petersburg, 1856. See also 
Helmersen's recent work, ' G-isements de charbon 
de terre en Eussie:' St.-Pe"tersbourg, 1866. 
t In the work on Eussia I suggested that, if the 
Imperial Government should make trials for what 
may very probably prove to be a valuable and un- 
broken coal-field, sinkings should be made on the 
left bank of the Donetz, through some of those 
flanking horizontal Secondary formations, not 
distant from the edge of the up-cast and. dislo- 
cated coal-field. (See ' Eussia-in-Europe/ p. 118 
et seq.) I called the attention of the present 
Emperor to this important subject when I had 
the honour of an interview with his Imperial 
Majesty at Darmstadt in 1857, and when I pre- 
sented sections illustrating my opinion. 
