WESTERN FLANK OF THE SOUTH URAL. 
145 
ascending order, of grey and dark-coloured shale with plants and coal, grey grit 
and ribboned shale, red and greenish grey grits, and argillaceous marl. 
The whole country is, indeed, of a red colour, and the surface is usually 
covered with fine gravel arising from the decomposition of a conglomerate in situ. 
Such decomposed conglomerate is made up of various crystalline rocks derived 
from the adjacent Ural chain, among which quartz rock and quartz prevail, with 
syenite, greenstone, &c., and some fragments of the palaeozoic limestones. Masses 
of this age, that have been decomposed in situ, are, in fact, very common over wide 
spaces in the governments of Perm and Orenburg, and though in general the im- 
bedded fragments are small, we have met with examples (one in particular at 
Eralskaya-gora, between Ust Kataf and Simsk) where they were large, and which, 
the cementing detritus having been washed away, might almost have been mis- 
taken for erratic blocks of a more modern period. 
On this eastern frontier of the Permian system we did not extend our researches 
further to the north than Solikamsk, a country composed of grey-coloured, flag- 
hke limestone, marls and gypsum, surmounted, here and there, by red sandstone 
and conglomerate, occasionally cupriferous. These rocks are rich in salt-sources, 
which have been followed down to such great depths beneath the surface, that we 
are constrained to believe, either that they issue from the very base of the Per- 
mian system, or even from the carboniferous rocks. The analogy of a great mass 
of rock-salt at Illetzkaya Zastcliita, south of Orenburg, and which will be described 
in the next chapter, might indeed lead to the belief, that these saline sources have 
their origin in the body of the Permian rocks. When, however, we remember 
that at Starai-Russa, salt-springs, equally copious, rise through the Lower Devo- 
nian strata, and possibly even from the Silurian rocks (p. 45), we are compelled to 
desist from attaching any value to the presence of salt as a geological constant. 
It occurs, in fact, in beds of all ages, and of the truth of this remark Russia offers 
excellent examples (see further observations on salt in the next chapter). 
Western Flank of the South Ural. — Ascending Series near Orenburg. — Rocks of 
similar composition to those we have described near Perm, and having the same pre- 
vailing red colour, succeed to the carboniferous beds all along the western edges of 
the Ural chain. Wherever the nature of the country and the limited time at our 
disposal enabled us to make researches, we found the lowest strata of this system 
to consist of calcareous flags with large masses of gypsum, similar to those upon 
