GENERAL VIEWS AT NIJNY TAGILSK. 
375 
to the west, of the Ural, we know, indeed, that the chief formation of copper was 
coeval with the close of the palaeozoic tera, as proved by the similar structure of the 
Permian rocks, which, it has been shown, were themselves formed out of the de- 
tritus of a pre-existing Ural chain, and at a period when the surface of the earth 
and the bottom of the sea were affected by waters probably hot and charged with 
cupriferous matter 1 . At the same time it may be observed, that the geologist can 
occasionally as surely detect the relative ages of mineral masses by their mecha- 
nical condition, as if he were guided by superposition and a tabular order of or- 
ganic beings. Thus one of the earliest changes which has been accomplished, is 
the metamorphism of the palaeozoic strata, for at Lela Istostcliinsk in the imme- 
diate neighbourhood of Nijny Tagilsk, a fossiliferous limestone is seen to pass into 
white granular limestone and talc schist, and fragments of such rocks are found in 
the cupriferous agglomerate. Again, magnetic iron is proved to have been one of 
the first of the great metalliferous products of the mountains, since rolled lumps 
of it are found in the copper ground, whilst the accumulation of the latter, coeval 
as we believe with the impregnation of the great Permian deposits of Russia, must 
in its turn have been anterior to the process by which the malachite exuded from 
the surrounding matrix, and was arranged in its present stalagmitic form. 
These are the chief points to which we directed our attention at Nijny Tagilsk, 
to the country around which M. Anatole Demidoff is now applying so much scien- 
tific research, that we doubt not he will render it a school where some of the most 
curious metallurgical processes of nature can he best studied. 
By reference to the Map it will be observed, that Nijny Tagilsk, like Ekaterin- 
burg and Neviansk, as well as Kushvinsk, Turinsk, Bogoslofsk, and other places, 
to he hereafter described, is on the low but rich band of rocks which lies to the 
east of the culminating ridge and slope of the Ural. This north and south tract 
is, it will be observed, eminently calcareous, and at the same time the seat of some 
of the richest veins and masses of copper and magnetic iron ore ; facts which may 
lead geologists to speculate upon the probable influence exercised by the limestone 
as a flux in the great metallurgical processes which nature has here elaborated. 
The limestones which are now visible appear, in truth, as mere fragments which 
have been broken up, occasionally transmuted into crystalline maible, and isolated 
by the eruption of igneous rocks, mingled with much serpentine and left in detached 
strips parallel to the principal chain. Without visiting many adjacent locali- 
1 Ante, p. 168. 
