170 
ORIGIN OF THE COPPER, NATIVE SULPHUR, ETC. 
viously consolidated. On the contrary, every portion of the ore being interlami- 
nated with the beds, or irregularly diffused, at intervals, throughout them, the most 
rational and satisfactory explanation of its deposit is afforded by the modern ana- 
logy ; the difference consisting in the Russian accumulations not having been 
formed under the atmosphere like that of the Welsh peat bog, but beneath an ad- 
jacent sea, into which the rivers and springs of the primaeval Ural poured their 
mineral contents. 
In adopting this hypothesis, we are, we confess, bound to admit, that a similar 
explanation may be applied to the origin of the native sulphur and also to the 
sulphureous and asphaltic springs which issue from the Permian rocks around 
Sergiefsk (p. 158) ; for as copper ores occur in the same horizon, so is it by no 
means unlikely, that whilst eruptions were in full activity in the Ural Mountains, 
some mineral sources, either connected with the igneous operations affecting that 
chain, or rising contemporaneously from fissures beneath the adjacent sea, may 
have deposited native sulphur and asphalt, whilst other springs and currents were 
impregnating with copper the surrounding sediments of the Permian epoch We 
shall return to the consideration of this theoretical point in treating of the Ural 
mountains (see Part II.), 
