Chap. XIY.]                   SILURIAN IN SCANDINAVIA.                                 345
 

CHAPTER XIY.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE SILURIAN, DEVONIAN, AND CARBONIFEROUS
ROCKS OF SCANDINAVIA AND RUSSIA.

Completing in the last Chapter a notice of the Palaeozoic rocks, in ascend¬
ing order, by a sketch of the Permian deposits, special references were
made to Russia, whence the name ' Permian' was taken, and to Germany,
where the difiPerent strata of the group had been so long studied. Let us
now endeavour to delineate in broad outline the Continental equivalents
of the SUurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous rocks of Britain.

Throughout large portions of "Western Europe (that is, Germany,
France, Spain, and Portugal) these Palaeozoic deposits have been, in some
tracts, so much metamorphosed and crystaUized, in others so penetrated
by igneous rocks, and even so dislocated, that, notwithstanding the re¬
searches of many good geologists and mineralogists, the task of reducing
them to a normal order of succession is far from being completed. Defer¬
ring, therefore, such explanation of these complicated regions as may be
practicable, let us first take a view of the succession of primeval hfe in
Scandinavia and Russia-in-Europe, where, on the contrary, the series of
the older fossU-bearing sediments is exhibited, over very wide areas, in
clear and symmetrical order, and for the most part uninterrupted by the
intrusion of igneous rocks *.

In Scandinavia and Lapland, ancient crystalline rocks occupying the chief
mass of that territory, and consisting to a great extent of granite and gneiss,
with many varieties of schistose and quartzose strata, often metalliferous, in

* The limits of this work do not permit any     labours of many of my cotemporaries.

attempt to delineate the mineral cjjjpnposition of        In the work * Eussia and the Ural Mountains,'

the Ural Mountains, except to indicate by the way     references are given to the authors, both anterior

how clearly they exhibit the metamorphism of the     and cotemjjorary, who have illustrated the older

Palseozoie deposits of Eussia-in-Europe.   An ac-     sedimentary deposits and their fossils in the Eus-

quaintance with many of their natural produc-     sian Empire.    Special allusion is there made to

tions must be sought in the works of other authors,     the first (and a very able) attempt at the construc-

from the time of Pallas to the days of the great     tion of a geological map of Eussia by the late

traveller Humboldt, who explored these regions     Hon. W. Fox Strangways (Earl of Ilchester), and

accompanied   by his friends  Gustaf Eose and     tohis original sketch of the environs of St. Peters-

Ehrenberg, and extended the lights of science to     burg, in Trans. Geol. Soc. Lond. 1st ser. vol. v. p.

the frontiers of China.    Besides the ' Eeise nach     392.   Eeferences are of course also made to the

dem Ural, dem Altai,' &c., of those authors, the     original work of Pander on the fossils of the same

reader will find a great body of information in     district, and to Eichwald's ' Bystfeme Silurien de

the ' Archiv fur wissenschaftliche   Kunde   von     I'Esthonie.'    Since the publication of our work,

Eussland,' conducted by M. Adolf Ermann, the ex-     my friends and self have been gratified by seeing

plorer of North-eastern Siberia and Kamtschatka.     it translated (1849) into the Eussian language by

Among the authors who have v(rritten on the mi-     Colonel Osersky, who has added some important

neral structure of Siberia, Helmersen and Hofi"-     data from his own observation and other sources,

mann also stand out conspicuously, as will be     including corrections of our general geological

seen by those who consult their publications in     map.    Several communications of value on the

the ' Annuaire des Mines de Eussie.'    The splen-     geology and fossils of Eussia, by Helmersen and

id work   also of M.  Pierre   de Tchihatchef,     others, are to be found in the Bulletin Soc. Imp.

on the Altai Mountains, and many others would     Naturalistes de Moscovi, and other serial works;

have to be noticed; but as this volume is chiefly     and M. Eichwald's ' Letheea Eossica' forms, as far

an outline of the nature and succession of the     as it has been published, a useful compendium of

older sediments, I cannot here expatiate upon the     Eussian Palaeontology.