PALAEOZOIC SUCCESSION IN NORTHERN EUROPE. 
6 * 
almost within the antarctic circle, the palaeozoic deposits succeed each other in the 
same order as in the British Isles. 
By our own researches it is shown, that the same palaeozoic order extends from 
the typical countries of Western Europe already explored, through Scandinavia 
into Russia, and thence into Asia. In justice, however, to the adventurous 
explorers of the north-eastern and southern parts of Siberia, we must state that we 
owe what acquaintance we possess of those lands not only to the published account 
of Baron Humboldt and Mr. G. Rose, but also to the travels of M. Adolph Erman, 
M. de Tchihatcheff and Professor Middendorff 1 . 
In Hindostan, so eminently British, we regret to say, that although the secondary 
rocks of that district have been to some extent described, and the tertiary deposits 
on the south flank of the Himalaya, with their extraordinary fossil contents, have, 
in the hands of British officers, thrown a flood of new light on the characters of 
the fauna of that recent period, no well-defined and precise labours have yet been 
devoted to the older rocks of the vast peninsula of India ; a fact the more extra- 
ordinary, when it is recollected, that without such researches those to whom the 
government of that country is entrusted can never really distinguish its old and 
true coal strata from those of comparatively worthless character. 
In Africa, particularly in its southern extremity, we are acquainted with Silurian 
rocks containing characteristic Trilobites and other organic remains, though in 
respect to their details and succession we can do no more than refer to what we 
formerly said of them (see Silurian System, p. 217.). 
Through the labours and collections of M. Strzelecki and other travellers, we 
learn that in Australia there are deposits loaded with fossils analogous to those of 
our carboniferous group, one of which approaches to the Productus antiquatus, 
another is a Conularia very near to C. quadrisulcata, and these deposits repose on 
strata in which corals of Devonian age have been discovered. 
Lastly, we come to the consideration of the extensive investigations which we 
1 M . A Erman has published a geological map of Siberia and several Silurian fossils from the banks 
°f the Lena in 57° north latitude. (Archiv fiir Russland, vol. iii. pp. 161 and 542.) M. Pierre de Tchi- 
hatcheff has explored the higher tracts of the Altai mountains bordering on China, from the Irtysh river 
to the Yenisei, where he observed a copious development of Devonian and carboniferous rocks. (Voyage 
Scientifique dans 1’ Altai Orientale, &c.) Professor Middendorff, after thoroughly exploring the Taimyr 
region of the far north, has retraversed Siberia to the extreme south-east or to the Shantar Isles in the 
Sea of Okhutsk ! and has shown that vast tracts, extending over the Stanovoi mountains and along the 
Amur frontier of China, consist of carboniferous and other palaeozoic deposits, with granites, greenstones 
and metamorphic rocks. (See Bull, de l’Acad. de St. Petersbourg, Dec. 1844.) 
