295 
MIOCENE LIMESTONE OF TAGANROG. 
contorted tubular forms ; others are finely laminated.” Like the tertiary oolites 
of Styria and Hungary, -which from a profusion of fossils we then showed to be- 
long to the upper tertiary group of Austria, so are those of Bessarabia and Southern 
Russia, simply an eastern prolongation of deposits formed at the very same 
period, and in a sea which must then have had a very wide diffusion. In Styria 
and Hungary these oolites inosculate with calcareous sands, clays and marls through 
thicknesses of several hundred feet ; but there volcanic action has been rife, and 
the strata have been heaved up and clearly exposed, whilst in the undisturbed 
plains of Russia we can scarcely surmise what their vertical thickness may be, 
judging from a few partial sections only on the banks of the chief rivers. 
M. Hommaire de Hell, a French engineer, has shown us specimens from Kichenef 
in Bessarabia, which are identical with those of Yampol in Podolia, or of Poppendorf 
and Radkersberg in Lower Styria, and we know that similar tertiary rocks extend to 
Taganrog and even into other tracts beyond the region of our own researches. We 
do not pretend to say that this peculiar rock occupies a well-defined place in the 
tertiary series. Indeed we are disposed to think, that like the oolitic masses m 
the secondary rocks, which in some places are of great vertical dimensions, and in 
others disappear, this oolite occurs in concretions only, expanding and contract- 
ing within certain horizontal distances; but we are convinced, that wherever it 
has been observed, whether in Austria, Hungary, or Russia, it is included m de- 
posits which belong to the miocene group, sometimes the upper part. 
On the Dniester in Podolia the tertiary strata in question repose at once (ac- 
cording to M. Hommaire) upon the older or paleozoic rocks, and are covered by 
gypsum. Major Blode, as we understood him, seems, on the contrary, to connec 
the gypsum of those regions with the chalk rather than with the teitiary -p 
and this also is the view of M. Pusch. Not having visited P< rioUa our opinion 
must go for little ; but having satisfied ourselves that the salt o ie 1 ‘ 
as recent an age as the great gypsiferous masses of Sicily, we confess that we lean 
to the opinion, that the gypsum of the Dniester belongs also to that epoc • 
Limestone of Taganrog .- Allusion has already been made to the diffic y 
neatly defining upon the Map, the line of separation between he beds of which 
we are now speaking, and certain younger shelly beds and limestones o 
steppes. In the enormous space of Southern Russia as yet -examined, numerous 
junctions may be detected, between these inferior and often oolitic members of a 
sandy calcareous group, and the beds we are about to describe. Such an order 
J 2 q 2 
