396 
Prof. Milne — Across Europe and Asia. 
The line of highest elevation, which has a general north and south 
direction along the summit of the Urals, is about 1500 (?) feet above 
the town. 
On either side of this line, and more or less at right angles to it, 
the rocks dip away in a generally east and west direction. This 
dip is, however, by no means distinctly marked in the neighbour- 
hood of Tagil, as the rocks are often so fractured, metamorphosed, 
and altogether altered, that they would require to be very carefully 
examined before it would be possible to speak of thern with any 
certainty. The rocks along the highest line are for the most part 
Silurian, as is indicated by the presence of Ortliis and other fossils. 
These rocks are made up of limestone, clay-slate. and sandstone. 
Running parallel to this Silurian band, but nearer to Tagil, there is a 
broad band of rock called diorite. The general character of this rock, 
from what I saw, was that of a highly chloritic and rauch altered 
stone, which was generally very soft, sometimes talcose, and some- 
tirnes calcareous. In one place it is dark red, and ten feet away it 
is dark green. Where its structure can be made out, it is seen to- be 
somewhat laminated. In places this appearance gave rise to the 
suspicion that it might be only an altered Silurian slate. 
It is along this band of diorite that the greater number of gold 
washings are situated. Here and there, cropping up through this 
band, are patches of a fine green Serpentine, and it is to the surface 
of the country marked by the outcrop of this latter rock that most 
of the platinum works are confined. 
Still farther to the east, and parallel to both the Silurian rocks 
and the diorite, there is a band which is generally felspathic. In 
the neighbourhood of Tagil, however, a patch of limestone seems to 
have been intercalated. This, from the evidence of a single fossil 
found at the time of my arrival, would appear to be of Silurian age, 
and probably the remnant of a fold of the rocks of similar age, 
which I have just described as forming the higher ground farther 
to the west. It is in this limestone, and on the border ground 
between it and the neighbouring dioritic and felsitic rocks, that 
the copper-mines are situated. Continuing still farther to the ea6t, 
bands of diorite, Serpentine, and limestone lie approximately 
parallel to each other and to those which I have just described. 
These repetitions of parallel bands of similar rocks suggest the idea 
that they are probably sections produced by denudation of foldings 
and crumplings of strata once horizontal. 
All tliese rocks are traversed by numerous faults running about 
15° W. of N., a direction to which but very few are counter. These 
faults, which are waved rather than straight lines along their out- 
crop, sometimes intersect at an acute angle. They are filled with 
a yellow ochreous clay, in which malachite occurs imbedded in 
nodular and other forms. It is upon a deposit of this sort that the 
great copper-mine of Nijni Tagil has been sunk. I believe Murcki- 
son described this mine as being in two faults, which lay between 
diorite and limestone, and which at the surface was marked by a 
worn-out hollow filled with alluvium and boulders. 
