VUl 
PREFACE. 
that geologists, having one continuous and special object, could long con- 
tinue to act in concert with an expedition mainly devoted to statistical 
inquiry 1 ,— a difficulty which had, indeed, been foreseen by the Imperial 
Minister of Finance, the Count de Cancrine, under whose auspices the 
arrangement had been made, and whose executive officer as chief of the 
staff of the Imperial School of Mines, General Tcheffkine, had selected 
Lieutenant Koksharof, an intelligent young mineralogist, to attend the 
English and French geologists. At Vitegra, then, Mr. Murchison and 
M. de Verneuil took leave of the expedition of the Baron A. von Meyen- 
dorf, and thence travelled to Archangel, the edges of the White Sea, 
Pinega, &c., whence they ascended the banks of the great river Dwina 
to Ustiug- Veliki, in the heart of the government of Vologda 2 . Meeting 
with their other friends at that town, the parties again separated. Mr. 
Murchison, after making a very wide circuit through Vologda, by Tchere- 
povetz, and round to Yaroslavl and Kostroma, once more joined Baron 
von Meyendorf at the latter place. They descended the Volga together 
to Jurievetz, where they parted, and only casually met again in Moscow; 
the English and French geologists having in the meantime visited Nijny 
Novogorod, Murom, Jelatma, Kacimof, Riaizan and Kolomna. 
Returning northwards by Moscow, Mr. Murchison and M. de Verneuil 
were enabled to correct some previous errors respecting the geological 
equivalents of the chief rocks around that metropolis, and to show, 
that instead of belonging to the Oolitic series, as had been surmised, 
they were of Carboniferous age, and were surmounted by Jurassic shales. 
Finally, an examination of some deep recesses in the Valdai Hills, the 
southern edges of Lake Ilmen, and the banks of small rivers between 
' See Baron A. von Meyendorf ’s instructive statistical map of Russia, which resulted from this survey 
trerman edition, M. Schropp and Co., Berlin. 
. , P ™ fessor Elasius having been taken ill at Ustiug, Count Keyserling kindly resolved upon remaining 
v it is nend. Their operations were thereby much interfered with, and their exploration of the 
country south and west of Moscow was retarded till long after the snow fell. Count Keyserling deve- 
loped some results of his observations in memoirs read before the Moscow Natural History Society and 
Professor Blasius has since published a sketch of his travels, Brunswick, under the title of « R ei ’ im 
Europseischen Russland, 1844.” " e lm 
