GONIATITE GRITS OF ARTINSK. 
129 
ceous schist and black and white quartz, but sometimes containing fragments 
of the older Silurian and Devonian limestones with Pentameri and other fossils. 
This fossiliferous grit, generally known in Russia as the “ Gres d’Artinsk,” occu- 
pies a large surface of country : usually covered by verdure and little excavated, 
it is seldom exposed in good and deep sections. Upon the Ufa, however, ten 
versts from Artinsk, we met with a quarry which furnished us with four new spe- 
cies of Goniatites. One of these is very closely allied to known forms of the Carbo- 
niferous system, and holds a place intermediate between the Goniatites striatus 
(Sow.) and the G. Listen (Sow.), combining the ornaments of the shelly covering 
of the former with the general outline of the latter. These Goniatites are, indeed, 
associated with unquestionable carboniferous fossils, one of which is the Nautilus 
tuberculatus (Phill.), fragments of Orthoceratites, &c., and thus all doubt concern- 
ing the age of the beds is removed. 
The bands of grit in this quarry are of yellowish, brown and grey colours, from 
one to four feet thick, and are separated from each other and surmounted by shale. 
The grit is both fine and coarse-grained, and occasionally passes into a conglo- 
merate, the whole having here a thickness of 100 feet. A quantity of plants, 
which we believe to belong to Lepidodendron and Calamites, but of which we regret 
not to have brought away good specimens, are interlaced with the Goniatites and 
other shells, among which is a small Ortlioceratite. The most curious of the vege- 
table remains are numerous small fruits about the size of a large nut 1 . 
In continuing the section to the west of Artinsk, the same group of beds is pro- 
longed to near the Zavod of Sarana, where a hill at least 500 feet high, is com- 
posed of strata of carboniferous limestone, which rise out at a sharp angle from 
beneath the basin of calciferous grit and conglomerate we have just described. 
Let us for the present pass over the phenomenon of the unconformability of the 
Goniatite grit in this tract to the carboniferous limestone, due doubtless to local 
dislocation, since we shall adduce an example of complete conformability on the 
flanks of the South Ural. It is sufficient for our present purpose to point out, that 
this rock clearly overlies the limestone and millstone grit, and that by their fossil 
contents, all these deposits must be grouped in the same system. The carboni- 
ferous limestone on the banks of the Ufa (we are now speaking of the western 
> Some of these nut-like remains of plants were brought away. They resemble certain fossil fruits 
which we have since obtained through Mr. J. Walker of Calderstone House, near Liverpool, from the 
gritty sandstone of Wickersley, east of Rotherham, and near the junction of the coal measuies with the 
overlying red sandstone and magnesian limestone. 
