120 
CONCLUSION. 
contiguous tracts, it is obvious that there exists in this region a quantity of coal 
of good and fair quality, which, if opened out with spirit and industry, will tho- 
roughly justify the anticipation of Peter the Great, that it would benefit his de- 
scendants. Quantitative results, however, can only be measured by succeeding 
ages, when it may suit the interests of Russia to render the country in which the 
coal and limestone abound, the seat of mines and manufactures. In the mean 
time, though we have no desire to raise delusive hopes, and though we believe 
that this region will never be found to contain the same amount of mineral as 
any one of the productive tracts of Western Europe and America, we are justified 
in saying, that where steam-engines are not used (and with the exception of a 
small one at Lissitehia-Balka they are unknown) any coal-field must be considered 
in a virgin state when compared with the great carboniferous deposits of other 
countries. In the British Isles, at all events, we may affirm, that if no coals were 
extracted, except those which could be procured without the aid of steam, the 
natural supply would sink at once to a thousandth part of its present extent, 
and with this defalcation, Great Britain might quickly relapse into her condition 
of four centuries ago, little differing from that of the tracts in Southern Russia 
which we have been considering, and which at present are almost exclusively 
occupied by an agricultural people. 
Having now described all the carboniferous districts in the central and southern 
regions, we will next give a brief sketch of the deposits of this age on the western 
flanks of the Ural, and then terminate our account of the Carboniferous system 
of Russia by a general review of its organic remains. 
Postscript.— After the preceding pages were printed, we received a copy of the Fourth Volume of the splendid work 
of M. Anatole Demidoff, * Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale,’ which is entirely devoted to the description of the 
Carboniferous region of the Donetz. M. Le Play, an eminent French engineer, happily selected by M. Demidoff to 
ascertain the true mineral wealth of this tract, and to describe its physical and geological structure, has produced 
a work so replete with well-digested details, collected, not only from observations of the natural features of the 
region and the mines which have already been commenced in it, but also by numerous borings carried on by him- 
self or his assistants during a period of three years, that the Imperial Government will doubtless feel grateful to 
the accomplished person who has so liberally fostered these inquiries. 
In a large geological map, in which the demarcations of the carboniferous and crystalline rocks, and also of the 
overlying Secondary and Tertiary deposits are given, M. Le Play has grouped under darker colours, such parts of the 
tract as are known to be productive of coal, to distinguish them from those in which the mineral has not yet 
been discovered. This method, doubtlessly, carries with it a certain amount of information, but is deficient in 
stratigraphical meaning, for some of the beds so marked are in higher positions than others ; in some the coal is in- 
terlaced with limestone, and in others it is almost entirely subordinate to sandstone and shale ; in one tract anthracite 
