401 
Geology of the Environs of Petersburg . 
the Ligovca river. West of it, as well as to the south of the hills of 
Doudorof, there are extensive and almost impassable bogs ; further 
eastward, the country is again more peopled and cultivated. What 
I have called table land is not absolutely flat : that part west of the 
Ligovca is varied with narrow and parallel ridges of gravel, in the 
hollows between which are some deep but small peat bogs ; while 
behind Coir ova, where the whole country appears a bog, a few 
insulated villages, as Ruzina and Venerezy, &c. are seated on some 
accumulations of gravel, which rise as islands in the waste. Both 
in the boggy and in the dry district, the scarcity of running water 
is remarkable : west of Crasnoe Celo is a very considerable district, 
absolutely without it, contained within the Ligovca, the Strelca and 
the Poudost rivers.* Nor are lakes frequent ; although they abound 
in the country on the north of the Neva. 
The general face of the country, as it will appear from the sketch 
and the sections, Fig. 1 and 2, Plate 29, consists of terraces of 
great regularity, but inconsiderable height, supporting different tracts 
of flat country, on which a few insulated hills are placed. This 
description is equally applicable to the country on the left as on the 
right bank of the Neva, although there is a considerable difference 
in the soil and its productions. Nothing can be more dismal than 
the general appearance of that district on the right bank of the Neva. 
Sands and bogs afford but a scanty vegetation in the few spots 
where the woods are sufficiently cleared to allow of some miserable 
attempts at agriculture; and in the remaining tracts, the forests are 
for the most part stunted by the continual cutting to which they are 
* The limestone escarpment, more especially that part between the denudations of 
Ropsha and Crasnoe Celo, is called in the old Russian maps, the Shoundorovsky hills, 
from the farm Shoundoroya, still remaining on it, and which was probably the oldest 
settlement. The western extremity is the highest, and commands a magnificent view both 
towards the gulf and towards Doudorof, especially near the great oak. In the village of 
Rusky Coporsky, the limestone crops out in the street, yet the inhabitants send for 
limestone to Visotsky or Crasnoe Celo ! 
3 s 2 
