302 
MIXED DEPOSITS OF TAMAN, KAMIUSCH-BURUN, ETC. 
herbivorous Cetaceans than to the Dolphins. Its position in the geological series 
is most striking ; for the rock in which it occurs near Taman, contains casts of 
sea shells similar to those of miocene age, which extend from Volhynia and Podolia 
to near the shores of the Black Sea and to the Crimsea. It is also very remark- 
able, that along with this herbivorous cetacean, the other, and as we think overlying, 
organic remains (among which, however, banks of corals occur) have more the 
character of the inhabitants of a brackish sea than those of the subjacent rocks. 
These relations are, however, in accordance with modern conditions, and are, 
indeed, explained by an analogy in Scotland, for an acquaintance with which we 
are indebted to Professor E. Forbes. The lake of Stennis, in the Orkney Islands, 
celebrated in the writings of Sir Walter Scott, has actually been converted, within 
a very recent period, whether by elevation of the land or other cause, from a salt- 
water loch into a freshwater and marshy tract ; and with this great but gradual 
change, certain marine genera (Cardiacem and Mytili) have continued to live on amid 
their new associates of land and fresh water (Limnese, iNeritinse, &c..), whilst others 
have perished. That which is taught on a small scale in the Scottish lake must, there- 
fore, have formerly occurred on the edge of the great Aralo-Caspian Sea, which 
in consequence of separation from the ocean, was converted into a brackish state, and 
in which, as in Scotland, the same hardy and time-serving marine genera continued 
to exist with new associates in their altered abode ! In a word, the miocene 
deposit of Taman, with its herbivorous cetaceans and marine shells, intermixed 
with and succeeded by brackish water relics, is only an example, in an earlier 
period of the world, of a formation along the edge of a great Caspian, the creatures 
in which necessarily differed from those of the pure marine period which preceded 
them. 
In describing the geological succession of the Crimaea, M. Huot» has divided the 
tertiary series (supercretacd) into lower, middle and upper stages. The first of 
these is unquestionably of the same age as the calcaire grossier of Paris or Lon- 
don clay, with which, as before explained, it has several species in common. We 
do not, however, coincide with this author in his method of grouping fossils from 
several localities to form his second stage : so far as he places in it species w^hich 
are identical with or analogous to those of Bordeaux, Dax or Touraine, it is evident 
that such remains belong to the true miocene deposits to which we have already 
alluded, as being so widely spread over the continent ol Russia. Such shells (ob- 
> Voyage dans la Russie Mdridionale et la Crimee sous la direction de M. A. Demidoff, vol. ii. p. 4'25. 
