ASCENDING CARBONIFEROUS SUCCESSION ON THE KALMIUSS. 
The chief and lower limestone of these southern steppes might, from its light 
grey colour, thickness and position be strictly compared with the great “ Scar 
limestone” of English geologists. After several undulations in hills to the north 
of Karakuba, it plunges under flagstones and grits with plants. At Bechef the 
latter are surmounted by shale and sandstone with plants and thin seams of coal, 
which are again overlapped by other strata, often undulating, but still on the 
whole inclining to the north. Among these are hard flagstones, of white, grey 
and light pinkish colours, the surfaces of which are occasionally discoloured by 
carbonaceous matter. These beds are followed by hard, greyish grits, and these 
again by thinnish courses of encrinite limestone. This series ol beds is very 
analogous in lithological succession to the group which in \ orkshire, Cumber- 
land, Westmoreland, and other northern counties of England, overlies the great 
Scar limestone (limestone and shale of Sedgwick, Yoredale rocks ol Phillips). 
The analogy is further borne out by the occasional outcrop of a thin seam ol 
coal, no bed of which has yet been worked to profit. Sinkings, however, have 
been made both by Russian engineers and by M. Le Play, under the directions 
of M. Demidoflf, the results of which are not yet known to us. 
In proceeding to the north, the impure limestone and grits which overlie the 
lower limestone, undulate, inclining on the whole to the north-north-east, and at 
Gorbatchofskaya, the strata dip steadily in that direction (see section, PI. I. fig. 1.). 
They consist in ascending order of yellow micaceous sandstone, with carbonaceous 
surfaces, much resembling the moorstone ol the Yorkshire dales, and with it aie 
associated flagstones, very similar to those which abound upon the banks ol the 
Ure near Hawes, on the Tees above Barnard Castle, and at Biignal upon the 
Greta. As in those parts of England, the surfaces of the flags are also often co- 
vered with large serpuline bodies. These beds are followed by black shivery shale, 
greyish shale, and quartzose sandstone, above which appear masses of dark- 
coloured, bituminous encrinite limestone, the surfaces of which are distinguished 
by peculiar corallines, resembling branching sea-weeds, identical in form with an 
undescribed species, which we have seen in the limestones ol this age near Howick 
in Northumberland and at Ingleborough in Yorkshire. This bed is succeeded, or 
rather it inosculates with a stronger grey limestone, the harder beds of which form 
distinct scars in the sides of the hills on the right bank of the Kalmiuss, that river 
being here reduced to the size of a brook. Though there are many undulations, 
the prevalent dip is to the north-north-east ; thus proving, both geometrically as 
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