WEST FLANK OF CHAIN. 
355 
but at Mayaskaya and Klinofskaya Gora, between that place and Klenofsk, the 
beds rise into rapidly undulating hills, the last-mentioned or culminating point 
being (according to Humboldt) about 1062 English feet above the sea. In these 
hills the same basis of gray calcareous psammite or grit with plants, is diversified 
by containing numerous pebbles from the size of nuts to that of fists, consisting 
of porphyry, quartz, felspar, Lydian-stone or altered slate, and occasionally wfith 
fragments of the palaeozoic limestones of the Ural, in which the fossils are still 
visible. These strata, sometimes horizontal and very thick-bedded, seem to fold 
gently over with the outline of the ground. From sections hereafter to be adduced 
from other parallels, there is, indeed, no doubt, that the carbonaceous beds with 
plants and pebbles are clearly separated in all the region of the Ural, from the in- 
ferior carboniferous limestone properly so called, to which they are in fact uncon- 
formable ; and if they are also to be considered of the carboniferous age, it must be 
admitted, that great elevations and dislocations of this chain took place during the 
formation of sediments which in other parts of Europe constitute the carboniferous 
system. 
The height of these hills increases as you advance from west to east ; for the hill 
of Berosovskaya Gora, between Klinofsk and Kirghishansk, is (according to Hum- 
boldt) 1230 feet above the sea. It is from that hill, west of Klinofsk, that the best 
view of the central or Ural ridge is obtained, and although of slight altitude in 
comparison with other mountain chains, the intermediate succession of wooded 
parallel valleys and lower hills, terminated by a long and slightly broken ridge of 
rocks, embodies a vista by no means unpicturesque. 
In the hills east of Kirghishansk the grits and conglomerates above described 
(which with the exception of the plants much resemble the tertiary nagelflue ot 
Switzerland) are succeeded by whitish, hard and brittle, highly ferriferous sand- 
stones, not unlike some varieties of the millstone grit of England (see Sectiou, 
PI II. fig. 1.). These beds dip rapidly both to the east and west, and, as we 
soon ascertained, are upon the outermost lines of eruption of the Ural in this 
latitude. Towards the station of Grobovo great accumulations of very finely 
shivered, crystalline limestone are accumulated in the valleys, and in the bed of the 
little rivulet, three versts west of that station, we found strata of compact, yellow 
limestone, alternating with others of dark indigo colour, which containing Pro- 
ductus gigas, Orthis arachnoides and Encrinites, left no doubt in our minds, that 
the rock is truly of the carboniferous age. 
