452 
PLATEAU OF THE SAKMARA.— PEAKS OF THE IRENDYK. 
and thin, grass-like fossil plants 1 . Where the road (Starai-tract) ascends from these 
pastoral valleys, the external features entirely change. Instead of the copious 
vegetation which usually accompanies well-watered calcareous soils, we had now 
reached a monotonous plateau void of all limestone, with a poor and stunted 
herbage, through which we could occasionally detect the ends of the strata only. 
These are composed of a greenish, earthy, thinly foliated psammite, which alter- 
nated repeatedly in highly inclined positions, with siliceous flagstone and thinly 
laminated schists, no fossils being discoverable in the strata, save a tew wretched 
casts of what might be either the terrestrial plants (grasses ?) or marine fucoids. 
To the east of the station of Berdek these schists are exposed in a ravine, but still 
they told no tale, except that, being highly inclined, they were traversed by an 
oblique and nearly horizontal rude cleavage. 
At the Zavod of Preobrajensk the river Urmanzelair, a tributary of the Sakmara, 
runs in a gorge of contorted, green, psammitic grauwacke with schist, in which no 
calcareous matter and no fossils were observed 2 . To what age then can we refer 
the great mass of rocks between the Bashkir village of .Tchematzine and Pieobia- 
jensk? Though in the absence of fossils we cannot satisfactorily reply, we know 
that all these schistose strata underlie the carboniferous limestone ; and here, there- 
fore, as in many parts of the continent of Europe where limestones and tossils are 
wanting, we can do no more than consider them all as lower Palseozoic. Good 
reasons, indeed, exist for supposing, that the oldest of these grauwacke beds must 
be of Silurian age, for in a subsequent section it will appear, that in following 
these same masses to the north, they become calcareous and contain characteristic 
fossils. 
From Preobrajensk to the point where we crossed the Sakmara river, scarcely 
any feature worth recording presented itself, for we were, in fact, travelling upon 
the strike of the same schistose strata. On the river Silayefskaya, and ranging 
thence to Zuluck, quartzose and micaceous schists strike north-north-east and 
south-south-west, dipping 40° to the west ; and at the spot where we traversed 
the Sakmara, chlorite schist appears in contact with a boss of serpentine. So far 
' The chief Bashkir village in this tract of black calcareous schist is called Tchematzine, and is sur- 
rounded by magnificent trees, including Birches of extraordinary size. 
* This Zavod is established here on account of the water-power, the copper which is smelted at it being 
brought from the rich mines in the Permian rocks of the government of Oienburg, on the west. 
