ITS OUTLINE WHEN THE PERMIAN STRATA WERE FORMED. 
which the plants and vegetables inclosed in the Permian conglomerates must have 
grown. Judging from its composition, — it is entirely made up of fragments 
of ancient Uralian rocks, — the great Permian deposit must have been accumu- 
lated, not only after the completion of the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous 
systems, but after their consolidation, and either after or during their mineraliza- 
tion with copper ores. This is a clear and undeniable conclusion, at which 
the field geologist who has examined this region arrives ; for in whatever parallel 
of latitude he may trace this ancient detritus, he invariably finds it to be more 
coarse and metalliferous as it approaches the mountains from which its materials 
have been derived, whilst in receding from them, such mineral matter (always 
in the form of deposit and never in the condition of veins) as regularly dies 
away and is lost in marine marls, sands and limestone. But if the Ural Moun- 
tains were, as we contend they must have been, the source whence all these cupri- 
ferous sediments, as well as detritus and fossil vegetables were supplied, very dif- 
ferent, indeed, must have been their former outline from that which now prevails ; 
for on the ivestern slope of the axis down which the waters now flow into Permia, 
there are no great veinstones and original sources from which such debris could 
have been derived. All the spots where the largest veins, masses and original 
centres of copper ore occur, whether at Bogoslofsk, Nijny Tagilsk, Gumeshefsk 
and Polofsk, south of Miask or other and intermediate places, are on the eastern 
side of the chief ridge. Supposing that these mines were in the process of forming, 
or having been formed, were undergoing destruction, during an sera in which the 
land had assumed its present outline, almost every cupriferous particle and drop 
of water impregnated with or transporting such mineral matter, must have de- 
scended into the adjacent low country of Siberia. By no natural agency could any 
considerable quantity of such coai’se materials be now carried to the low countries 
on the west, between which and all the great copper sources which are known, lies 
the ridge of the Ural, Now, as all the cupriferous detritus has been carried to the 
1 The case of Gumeshefsk is, indeed, not so demonstrative as those of Bogoslofsk, Nijny fagilsk, 
Polofsk ike • for the small river near the former place winds through the chain to the west. The line of 
heights’, however, is to the west of Gumeshefsk, and equally separates that tract from the low country on 
the west. We are now alluding, it will be recollected, to very ancient residuary detritus, which must 
have been derived from that which is now the east side of the line of greatest altitude, and we show, that 
as with the present configuration little or no such cupriferous detritus could be poured down to the 
west on account of a high intervening ridge, so we feel sure that such ridge (the present crest of the Ural) 
has been thrown or raised up after the accumulation of the Permian deposits. 
