DRIFT AND ERRATICS NEAR LAKE LADOGA. 
513 
In the low country east of St. Petersburg, watered by the river Volkof and its 
tributaries, the northern crystalline erratic blocks are very scarce, the subjacent 
Silurian rocks being for the most part covered with a thick alluvium of clay con- 
taining very few boulders. The tract, indeed, where the Volkof empties itself into 
the Lake Ladoga, is entirely void of them, the surface being exclusively occupied 
by sands which often assume the character of dunes, like those at the estuary of 
the Dima. In travelling from Nova Ladoga to Ladenoie Pole, we were much 
struck with the almost total absence of the erratic phenomenon ; during the whole 
width, in fact, of the southern shore of the great Lake Ladoga. 
To the north we had a vast inland lake near 200 versts long, whose northern 
shores are exclusively composed of granitic and greenstone rocks, with some me- 
tamorphosed Silurian strata, and whose east and west shores are covered with their 
g p Q -j an( j y e t n0 { a fragment of them is visible at its southern termination ! Are 
we to presume that in this parallel such erratics are all buried in the bottom of this 
sheet of water ? Some doubtless may have been so disposed of, but this explana- 
tion is quite inadequate ; since the northern blocks have been transported, as we 
shall afterwards show, many hundred versts to the south of the lake, and in this 
very parallel of longitude. The fact is, that unlike the southern shores of the Gulf 
of Finland west of Narva (p. 512), the south shore of the Lake Ladoga is a dead 
fine layers of small pebbles. These beds, like the finely laminated sands in many parts of Russia, clearly 
indicate, that there were periods of repose as well as of powerful current, during the accumulation of the 
materials which we are now merging under the head of “ drift.” It is perhaps unnecessary- to state, that 
for these and many other reasons, we cannot agree with Mr. Strang ways in the theoretical view (prevalent 
at the period when he wrote), that all these deposits were the residue of a great flood which passed 
over the land before the lateral valleys were formed,— the latter having been fashioned out by the retiring 
wave The very fact which he cites, of large lumps of the intermediate or Unguhte sandstone having 
been transported from a lower level on the north to high plateaux on the south, is subversive, we in , 
of the then prevailing theory. We would also observe, that he does not draw sufficient distinction between 
IteX'e of l„g" northern block, on the plateau* and their rarity in the in.- plan,. The rarmedrat. 
of the metropolis it mm however, be admitted, ha, offered ,ome exception, to the «on..eou,,,„e. 
, a • the lovv grounds ; for though they have fast disappeared, several peculiar northern rolled frag- 
61 bv Stran-ways from the south of the Moscow gate. He further mentions, that the block 
ments are ci J Great stands (red uced two-thirds in size and chiselled into its present 
grotesque form by the artist!) was found in a hog between St Petersburg and Cesterbeek. Still we are 
grotesque X exceptions-, a fact, indeed, of winch any one may convince hunself by 
firm in our be e , ia tbe cap i ta l to Czarskoe-Celo, where the argillaceous surface for 
merely passing a ong t c rai ro northern foot of the escarpment of the low limestone hills) 
many miles (including t e race con . abundance on the plateaux further south, 
is entirely free from northern blocks, though they occui in 
