80 
WHITE LIMESTONE OF MOSCOW — MIATCIIKOVA 
ETC. 
into two or three courses, alternating with thin seams of shale and impure coal. 
This hand is overlaid in the neighbourhood of Serpuchof, as in the Valdai Hills, 
by other courses of grey limestone, sometimes associated with shale, which near 
the former place is of red and greenish colours, and in these rocks we collected 
Orthis resupinata, 0. arachnoidea, Spirifer glaber (Sow.), and S. ( Anomia ) trian- 
gularis (Mart.). 
W hite Limestone of Moscow, with Spirifer Mosquensis. — This limestone is very 
characteristic of the Russian carboniferous group, in which it occupies a central 
place and has an enormous extension. It ranges, in fact, from the neighbourhood 
of Moscow, to the south of Kolmogor near Archangel, and well developed at many 
places around Moscow, it stretches out from near Serpuchof along the course of 
the Oka to the south-east into the government of Riaizan. In this woodcut we 
«. White and magnesian carboniferous limestone with Spirifer Mosquensis. 
f), c. Lower shale with Ammonites, Bclcmnites, and sands and shale with Jurassic fossils. 
d. Tertiary siliceous sandstone. 
e. Detritus and drift, with northern blocks. 
offer a general view of the relations of this white limestone to the overlying strata 
as seen on both banks of the river Moskva, near Miatchkova, to the south of 
Moscow. When examined in a single quarry and in tracts where the strata 
of all ages are so generally horizontal, the overlying Jurassic beds appear to he 
conformable to the carboniferous limestone ; but on examining the country it is 
found, that the surface of the latter rock is uneven, rising and sinking beneath the 
superjacent strata, like the corroded chalk of Western Europe beneath the Tertiary 
deposits. 
The prevalent characters of the rock, as it appears in the governments of Tver 
and Moscow, is a white, more or less coarse-grained, limestone, or “ calcaire 
grossier 1 .” At the quarries of Miatchkova, represented in part of the above 
1 All the limestone coloured light yellow on the map of the environs of Moscow, ‘ Oryctographie 
de Moscou’, 1830-1837, by M. Fischer de Waldheim, is of the carboniferous age. Guided too much 
by lithological characters, M. Fischer referred some of these beds to the coral rag, and at the time of his 
publication considered them to be superior to the Lias, but recently our excellent friend has seen cause 
to change his mind and adopt our views. In the sequel we shall have numerous occasions to express 
our obligations to Dr. Fischer, and to show how much service he has rendered to science by his publica 
tions on organic remains. 
