582 
RESUME AND CONCLUSION. 
a lower and more uniform outline of the surface, and consequently a climate infi- 
nitely more equable and universal, if not more warm, than at the present day 1 . 
When thoroughly examined, the rocks of each new country ai’e found to fill up 
lacunae or present new zoological evidences ; and thus in Russia we have first learnt, 
that the minute foraminifera occur in strata of such high antiquity as the carboni- 
ferous. 
The exploration of the enormous basin of red sands, marls, limestones and cu- 
priferous deposits covering a vast region, of which the ancient Permia is the centre, 
and a comparison of the same with synchronous deposits in Germany and England, 
have led us to propose a common name for a group, which we have shown is natu- 
rally and indissolubly connected with the three underlying or palaeozoic systems, 
and entirely distinct in all its contents, whether animal or vegetable, from the over- 
lying secondary formations. This point is, we consider, of great importance in 
geological classification, particularly with reference to other countries where such 
deposits have been generally, though erroneously, connected with the New Red 
Sandstone, whilst, in truth, they are intimately related to the coal strata beneath 
them. In this deposit the earliest-formed Saurians appear, — animals, however, 
very distinct in generic character and structure from those of the subsequent 
epoch. 
On the doubtful and partial occurrence of the trias of continental geologists we 
have little to say, as it is nowhere clearly apparent in Russia proper ; though we 
have expressed our belief that the fossils of Mount Bogdo, in the steppe of Astra- 
khan, seem to be of the age of the Muschelkalk. 
In the Oolitic or Jurassic series, which is so fully developed in England, France 
and Germany, the lias and lower oolites of those countries are entirely wanting. 
The Oxford clay and its associated rocks, including the calcareous grit and coral 
rag, alone appear on the surface, and contain, besides analogous groups of shells, 
the same species of Saurians as in England ; another decisive proof, derived from 
a comparatively high order of animals, of the continuation of much more widely 
1 The presence of the true carboniferous limestone in Spitzbergen is well known, both as recently 
observed by Professor Lbven, and also through fossils brought to England by the polar voyagers and to 
Paris by the naturalists of the French “Expedition du Nord.” (See Bullet. Soc. Gfol. de France, vol. 
xiii. p. 24.) Indeed, both there and in Nova Zemlia, as proved by M. Baer, coal exists in considerable 
quantities, though the fossil vegetation, of tropical character, from which it is formed, is for the most 
part now buried under eternal snows. 
