150 
SECTION FROM THE URAL MOUNTAINS TO THE VOLGA. 
terized by masses of rock-salt and salt springs, and are overlaid by peculiar lime- 
stones unknown in other parts of Russia. 
Sections from the Flanks of the Ural chain near Sterlitamak, to the Volga on the 
west. — In a traverse from Sterlitamak to Ufa we perceived nothing worthy of no- 
tice, except masses of gypsum and alabaster, subordinate to red sandstone, argil- 
laceous limestone and marl. In the environs of Sterlitamak, the lower gypseous 
beds, to which we have adverted as forming the base of the Permian system, are 
not seen on the banks of the Bielaya, which river there meanders in a plain, 
flanked on the east by the outlying hills of carboniferous limestone previously 
alluded to, and which evidently constitute the last echellon, or parallel, of the older 
rocks of the Ural. Between these outliers, however (Tchekatau, &c.), and the 
main body of carboniferous limestone on the east, there is a fine trough of red and 
green marls, with vast masses of gypsum and thin-bedded impure limestone, in 
which we could discover no fossils. The lowest beds consist of flaglike, brown- 
coloured gypsum ; in the middle strata occur large white concretionary masses ; 
and the upper consist of thinly foliated, reddish gypsum, inosculating with red 
marl and courses of white and red marlstone. Separated from the main region 
of the Permian deposits and pierced by the anticlinal ridge of carboniferous lime- 
stone above alluded to (see coloured section, PI. IP fig. ].), the ascending series 
above these gypseous masses is necessarily truncated ; though the strata we now 
describe are splendidly exhibited in the picturesque hills inhabited by the Bashkirs, 
on the right bank of the small stream Seleuk. To the west of the Bielaya, or on 
the left bank of that river, the beds are denuded or obscured for some distance ; 
but to the south and south-south-east of that town, the carboniferous limestone 
receding eastwards with a partial change of direction in the Ural chain, the Per- 
mian rocks are largely spread out in undulations, upon both banks of the Bielaya, 
so far as that river flows from south to north. 
After leaving the country of gypsum and flat-bedded limestone on the Seleuk, 
similar to that of the Sylva (p. 142), the first beds visible in the low plateaus to 
the west of Sterlitamak, are dull, red, earthy flagstones and sandstones, passing 
to purple and yellowish micaceous sandstone, from one inch to two feet thick, 
which are followed by others, composed of red or purple and grey sandstone 
and grit, undistinguishable from those near Perm, with occasional white conglo- 
merate ; the whole alternating, as seen in some ravines, with red and green 
marls or shale, in which courses of pebbly rock wedge out in one locality and ex- 
