EAST FLANK OF THE URAL NEAR KANEVSK. 
423 
foliated, red and grey gypsum, subordinate to red sandy clay ; the whole dipping 
slightly to the south-east. In the bed of the adjacent stream we found fragments 
of a reddish-coloured brecciated limestone and of eruptive rocks, but could not 
connect them with the gypseous mount ; nor did we discover any organic remains 
by which we could satisfactorily determine its geological age. On the western 
flanks of the Ural, the Permian strata are, as we have shown, the great depositories 
of gypsum ; but could we, from the mere presence of that mineral in red earth 
infer, that this isolated patch, — the only one so characterized along the eastern 
side of the chain— is of the same age ? Certainly not, because there is no vestige 
of the Permian rocks on the Siberian side ot the Ural, and we, therefore, consider 
that this gypseous mount must either be a portion of the older palaeozoic rocks 
(Devonian for example) which abound in these territories, or an accumulation ot 
tertiary age, like that of Kaltchedansk, formed out of the detritus of pre-existing 
formations (p.366). At Bagariatsk, indeed, we met with a very instructive sec- 
tion, in which for nearly a mile, highly inclined beds of red and green schists (on 
the banks of an affluent of the Sinara) alternated with red and greenish coarse 
conglomerate and grit, the whole differing only from the Old Red Sandstone of 
Scotland, in containing a few courses of impure limestone. On the west, or up 
the stream, these rocks pass into highly altered amorphous cherty limestone ; and 
on the east or down the river, into black schists, grey grits and limestone contain- 
ing large carboniferous Producti and other fossils. Seeing, therefore, that the 
tract (as well as that of the adjacent Issetz) does contain rocks, which, rising from 
beneath the carboniferous limestone, must be considered of Devonian age, we are 
disposed to think, that just as at Starai-sol near Novogorod, such beds may con- 
tain the elements from whence the saline character of the Shablish lake has been 
derived, and that like the gypsiferous strata of similar age in Livonia, they may 
contain gypsum ; the hummock on the Sinara being either part of them, or having 
been derived from their destruction during the tertiary epoch. We had now com- 
pletely satisfied ourselves, both by following the Issetz to Kaltchedansk, and by 
examining the Sinera and its affluents, that palaeozoic rocks, pierced at intervals by 
Plutonic matter, constitute the subsoil of the low plateaux, which descend from the 
mountain slopes to the great Siberian plains. 
In approaching the Ural (at a few versts to the east of Ivanevsk), we observed 
that granite again usurps the surface. This is a southern prolongation of one ot 
the bands of similar rock near Ekaterinburg, like which it splits into flagstones, 
3 1 2 
