8 
OTHER PHENOMENA DESCRIBED IN THIS WORK. 
formations by peculiar species, though connected with them by the general aspect 
of their fauna, and entirely different in all their organic contents from the overlying 
or triassic system. 
Finding that this supracarboniferous group was not only spread over a region 
of enormous dimensions in Russia, extending from the Volga to the Ural Moun- 
tains on the east, and from the Sea of Archangel to the southern steppes of Oren- 
burg, but that among certain fossils characteristic of the Zechstein in other parts of 
Europe, it also contained many new species of shells and a fauna somewhat differing 
from that of the carboniferous age, we have ventured to apply to it a collective 
name derived from the ancient kingdom of Permia, which was situated in the centre 
of the vast territories overspread by these deposits. 
In strata of the secondary period, Russia is much less rich than in those of pa- 
leozoic date. She contains, for example, no masses which can be distinctly 
referred to the New Red Sandstone or Trias ; for wherever we have attempted to 
define such beds, we have found them to be intimately associated with those of 
true Permian age 1 . This view has been strengthened by the entire absence of the 
muschelkalk in Russia proper ; one small and dubious representative of it only 
having been observed in the isolated hill called Mount Bogdo (steppe of Astra- 
khan) . 
The Jurassic deposits cover detached districts of Russia, from the Icy Sea on 
the north to the Caucasus in the south. In Russia proper they exist chiefly in 
the form of shales and sands, which are exclusively referable to the middle or 
Oxfordian member only of the oolitic or Jurassic series of other parts of Europe ; 
the lias and lower oolites, as well as the Kimmeridge and Portland or upper oolite, 
being everywhere wanting. 
Unlike the Jurassic, the Cretaceous system is exclusively confined to the southern 
half of Russia, where it often presents the peculiar characters and organic contents 
of the white chalk of other parts of the world, and in some tracts the equivalents, 
though never fully developed, of the greensand strata. 
1 These introductory pages being among the last printed in our hook, we take this opportunity of al- 
luding to a work hy Dr. Kutorga that has just appeared (2. Beitrag zur Palseontologie Russlands), which 
from the form of certain plants therein figured, as well as from a shell which that author considers to be 
a Posulonomya, might lead geologists to believe in the existence of Trias at Kargala near Bielebei in the 
government of Orenburg. We cannot, however, admit the inference of Dr. Kutorga (and of his fossils 
we may speak in the Appendix or second volume), more particularly as he states, on the authority of 
Major Wangenheim, who surveyed the tract, that the fossil beds of Kargala lie low in the series which 
we have demonstrated to be of Permian age. 
