SECTION FROM VERCH-URALSK TO STERLITAMAK. 
461 
assured us, that the rocks immediately below them were truly of Devonian age, par- 
ticularly when coupled with the fact, that in the central ridges of the chain we had 
found true Silurian types. Other geologists who follow us, and who may have 
more time at their disposal, will, we feel confident, fill up the lacunae in the proofs 
of succession, by collecting fossils in the interjacent calcareous zones, where, for 
want of time, we could not detect them. 
The strike of the beds in the Akri-tau and adjacent ridges being from 10° east 
of north to 10° west of south, this geological direction is in perfect harmony 
with the geographical alinement of these sedimentary masses, which constitute the 
expanded flanks of the South-western Ural, and which are made up of a number 
of folds slightly divergent from the main ridge of eruptive matter, from which the 
further they recede, the more are they found to assume their ordinary sedimentary 
characters. 
The remainder of this important transverse section to the west, as expressed in 
PI. IV., shows, first, a trough of gypseous Permian rocks ; then the striking car- 
boniferous outlier of Tcheke-tau, close to the town of Sterlitamak, replete with 
carboniferous fossils (see p, 130) ; and, lastly, an ascending order into the full de- 
velopment of the Permian strata, as exposed in the environs of Bielebei, where they 
have been previously described, p. 151 l * 3 . 
Conclusion . — After the details in this and the preceding chapters, we now ask 
our readers to consider with us, for a moment, what have probably been the move- 
ments and mutations — what the original structure of these mountains. 
No geologist can have traversed the chain in the south-western parallel, which 
has just been described, and seen the ridges gradually open out with wider sweeps 
and broader valleys as they recede from the axis, without being led to think, that 
1 We had made ourselves thoroughly acquainted with all the details of the mountain limestone on the 
eastern flanks of the Ural near Sterlitamak, including the outlier of Tchke-tau, before we visited our hos- 
pitable friend Major Waugenheim von Qualen at the Zavod of Troitsk, near Bielebei. As we were thus 
the first to establish along this frontier a clear base-line for the Permian deposits, and thus to unravel 
their real age, at a time when others were wholly unacquainted with it, we were rather surprised to find 
that a year after we quitted the country, Major Wangenheim published a geological sketch (Verhandl. der 
Kais. Russ. Mineralog. Gesells. zu St. Petersburg, 1843, p. 1), in which he announced this emergence of 
the carboniferous rocks as a discovery of his own. Our work has, indeed, been a long time in preparation, 
but the chapter which describes the Tcheke-tau, p. 130, as well as memoirs read to the Geological Society , 
were printed long before Major Wangenlieim’s paper. He was, indeed, entirely ignorant of the relations 
in question when wc visited him, and begged us to explain the succession of the strata. 
3 o 
