110 SHAFT SECTION OF THE IMPERIAL COAL WORKS OF LISSITCHIA-BALKA. 
structure, it does not appear that these concretions are numerous enough to in- 
duce the Russian miners to use them. All the best iron manufactured in the 
Imperial Zavods is brought from the Ural chain and its flanks h In order to dry 
the upper portion of these mines, a noble adit, nearly seven feet high, resembling 
in its dimensions one of the ancient mining conduits of the Romans, is now nearly 
completed, and we ascended it from its outlet at the mouth of one of the chief ra- 
vines, examining the bands of sandstone and shale along the sides. Anxious to 
explore still lower strata than those which will be drained by this adit, General 
Tcheffkine has resolved to sink yet deeper shafts, and then to dry the lower mines 
by a steam-engine, which was almost finished when we left the place. 
The fossil contents of the limestone which alternate with these coal-seams, prove 
most clearly that the whole occur upon the same geological horizon as those which 
are the most productive of coal throughout the other parts of this region, viz. the 
middle carboniferous or Moscow limestone ; for the engineers had collected a suite 
of the fossils characterizing each stratum, to illustrate a carefully drawn vertical 
section prepared by them, of which the opposite woodcut is a reduced copy . 
We thus had the means of naming each species on the spot, and in presence of the 
persons who had actually seen it in its place in the coal-shafts, and this scrutiny 
convinced us, that the whole of the great mass here passed through is the repre- 
sentative of the central or Moscow limestone. The Spirifer Mosquensis, for example, 
so characteristic of that zone, and which we have never found associated with the 
Productus giganteus of the lowest limestone, here ranges from one of the upper 
beds of limestone to the very lowest calcareous bed of the annexed list. The 
Productus antiquatus, so characteristic of the mountain limestone of Britain, and 
indeed of Western Europe generally, is found in the uppermost fossil beds, where 
it is associated with an Orthis and the small Trilobite Otarion Eichwaldi (Fisch.), 
and again the same characteristic fossil occurs in argillaceous beds above the main 
coal, where it is accompanied by a small Productus, Orthis, Bellerophon, Turritella, 
1 The profusion of fine magnetic iron-ore in the Ural Mountains, and the immense quantities of the 
less valuable hydrate of iron which is spread out at intervals near the surface in the low countries of 
Russia, render it almost useless for the miner yet to think of working clay-iron ores, even though they 
occur, like those of Lissitchia-Balka, in association with coal and limestone. 
2 The opposite detailed section of the strata furnished to us by the Russian miners, was prepared by 
order of the Imperial Administration of Mines, whose intentions were completely carried out through the 
agency of Colonel Bethman, the director of the Zavod of Lugan, and mining chief of this country, with 
the aid of our friend Major TeplofF, and the director of the coal-mines Captain Smirnoff. 
