256 
SUPPRESSION OF THE INFERIOR OOLITE, LIAS AND TRIAS. 
and that those of Moscow, Jelatma, North Ural, Simbirsk and Orenburg, present 
the “ facies” of the Kelloway rock. 
The extension of this one member of the oolitic series from the plains of 
Prussia to the frontiers of Asia, is not less remarkable, as evidence of the wide 
operation of the same general causes in ancient epochs, than as demonstrating the 
great “hiatus” of formations which is shown to exist between the Paleozoic 
rocks and the Jurassic deposits ; there being in these countries an entire absence 
of the Trias, properly so called, and also of the Lias and inferior oolite. This 
omission ot formations, so important in Western Europe, and there indicating so 
long a lapse of time, might lead us to presume, that the bottoms of the ancient 
seas had, to a great extent, been raised above the influence of the waters, during 
the periods which passed whilst these deposits were forming in other parts of the 
world, and that they were not again submerged until the period of the middle 
oolite. We might perhaps explain the absence of so much inorganic matter and 
so many animal remains, by supposing, that the tracts thus distinguished had 
been submerged to vast depths, and placed beyond the reach of any sedimentary 
influence. But whatever theory we adopt, it is evident that such uprisings or 
depressions took place equably over a very wide area ; for in the region where 
they occur, no sort of eruptive agency has ever been in play. The operation, 
therefore, was probably one of general intumescence at one sera, and of subsidence 
at another, without the production of any of those great fissures and dislocations 
so common throughout countries affected by plutonic outbursts. 
But, putting aside speculation as to the cause of this suppression of the interme- 
diate deposits, and looking only to the actual geological succession, is our wonder 
to cease, we may ask, with the announcement, that these Oxfordian strata extend 
from the plains of Prussia to the Icy Sea of the Samoyedes, and to the Siberian or 
Asiatic flank of the Ural ? Certainly not, for we have ascertained that they are 
much more widely diffused. When we first saw the fossils of this grand Russian 
deposit, we were struck by their resemblance to forms collected by English 
travellers in the Himalaya chain, a series of which w r as presented to one of us 1 * * 
a few years ago by Lady Sarah Amherst 9 , and found by herself upon the spot. 
1 Mr. Murchison. The black Ammonites collected in the Himalaya are used as charms by the Hindoo 
Fakirs. 
9 Now Lady Sarah Williams. 
