586 
CONCLUSION. 
present condition of nature, we compare that vast internal brackish sea with the 
present Caspians within its area, and thus from fossil reliquiae, some at consider- 
able altitudes, and others very little above the present waters, we can safely affirm, 
that this ancient Mediterranean was for a long lapse of ages almost if not entirely 
shut out from the ocean, its bottom having subsequently undergone successive ele- 
vations en masse, like those of the central Russian deposits. 
If these are among the results of our investigations of the tranquilly-formed 
deposits of Russia, and if light has been thus thrown upon the land-marks of 
geological science ; the explorations of the Ural Mountains have, we trust, proved 
not less interesting, by exhibiting a picture of intense disturbance and minerali- 
zation in regions which teem with metalliferous wealth. And what a contrast to 
European Russia ! In vain do we there search for a single foot of subsoil of the 
palaeozoic age which has not undergone agitation, change or fracture caused by 
repeated emission of masses of eruptive matter commencing from very remote 
periods. 
By these operations the palaeozoic rocks of the Ural have been metamorphosed, 
in great part changed in their external characters, and were also thrown up to 
form land (probably at first of no great altitude), whence peculiar plants of a 
very ancient date were washed towards the west into the sea of that epoch, under 
which the cupriferous Permian deposits and their marine remains were accu- 
mulated. The dark-coloured, hard, veined and crystallized condition of the older 
palaeozoic strata in the Ural, where eruptive agency has been in activity from the 
remotest sera, when contrasted with the white, soft, muddy limestones and incohe- 
rent sandstones which were originally formed at the same time in the tranquil basin 
of European Russia, must, indeed, be received as a convincing proof, that such 
a rocky crystalline character has been caused by the action of internal heat, which 
in the Ural and Siberia made its way to the surface in the form of varied plutonic 
eruptions. 
In explaining the different elevations by which the present outline of the Ural 
chain was elaborated, we consider the principal movement — that which twisted 
the strata and often inverted them — to have taken place after the formation of the 
carboniferous limestone. We have further shown, that, after the Permian strata 
had been deposited in horizontal positions on the edges of the older rocks, they 
were affected by newer lines of upheaval of much less intensity and extent, but 
perfectly parallel to the chief meridian chain. Lastly, we have proved, that since 
