17 JANUARY 1846, Page 17

RUSSIAN GEOLOGY.

IN 1839 Mr. Murchison published his "Silurian System." In that work the first step was taken to establish by evidence a natural descending order from the carboniferous formations, which had been previously well illustrated, down to a group of deposits essentially differing from all above them in the forms of animal life preserved in them. The term Silu- rian was given to this class of rocks, older and placed below the carboni- ferous rocks, on account of its having been studied in the district of England formerly occupied by the Silures. In the same work it was shown, that rocks long known in Scotland by the name of Old Red Sand- stone, interposed between the carboniferous and the Silurian strata, were characterized by remains of organic life entirely distinct from what were found in either of the other two. To these the term Devonian was applied

in 1839, immediately after the publication of the Silurian System. The new designation was adopted in preference to old red sandstone, which desig-

nated a distinctly characterized rock, because the same remains being found in rocks of a totally different lithological structure, the latter was not comprehensive enough, and apt to mislead. A beginning was thus made in arranging strata into groups, not according to their mere lithological characteristics, which are repeated in formations of different ages, but ac- cording to the remains of animal life found imbedded in them; a less fallacious indication of their having been deposited contemporaneously.

The publication of this system has formed an epoch in geological re- search. The geologists of France, Germany, and Belgium, tried in suc- cession the applicability of the new classification to the rocks of their respective countries, and with success. The geologists of the United States found in it an explanation of much that had previously seemed anomalous in the structure of their continent. Mr. Darwin and M. Alcide D'Orbigny extended its application to the Southern continent of America. Detached passages in the works of scientific travellers led to the inference that the system would be found equally available in Asia and Australia. In short, it was apparent that Mr. Murchison had at least developed the first broad outlines of a new system of classification, capable of effecting for geology what the natural system of Jussien had effected for botany.

A large collection of Russian fossils having been sent to M. von Bach,

that distinguished naturalist communicated to Mr. Murchison his con- viction that Russia, when properly worked out, would be found to contain the same succession of palaeozoic deposits as had been described in the Silurian region of England and Wales. From the moment he received this intimation, Mr. Murchison informs us, he resolved to visit Russia, and fairly to test whether the British palaeozoic classification would be found equally true over a vast area, in which, since few or no igneous rocks were known, the history of succession might, he hoped, " be read of in a very perfect and unbroken manner." Accompanied by M. de Verneuil, and recommended to the protection of the Emperor, Mr. Murchison proceeded to St. Petersburg, in the early summer of 1840. It was .there he secured the cooperation of the third naturalist whose name appears on the titlepage of the Geology of Russia. The three associates; accompanied at times by other collaborateurs, traversed Russia in various directions; alternately separating and rejoining each other, in order to take a wider range, during the summers of 1840 and 1841. In 1842 the plan of the present work was finally resolved upon, during al visit Count Keyserling and M. de Verneuil paid to England. In 1843 Count Keyserling explored the previously unknown North-eastern region of Russia in Europe, while Mr. Murchison visited Poland ; and the publication of the work was deferred, in order that the results of these expeditions might be incorporated into it. Still, Mr. Murchison felt that without a survey of the Scandinavian rocks which form the North-western girdle of Russia, the book would be incomplete; and the summer of 1844 was devoted to that purpose.

The book which is the fruit of these extensive and protracted investi- gations has a twofold interest, derived on the one hand from its scientific results, on the other from the new information respecting Russia which it supplies.

The labours of Mr. Murchison and his numerous coadjutors—for they

appear to have awakened the interest and secured the assistance of almost every distinguished prosecutor of science in Europe—have done much to generalize and rectify the Silurian system of classification. They have added an entire new group of rocks intermediate between the Carboniferous and the Jurassic rocks ; and have more precisely adjusted the limits of the previously-established orders. The labours of geologists since 1831, when Mr. Murchison first began to " puzzle out the scent " of his new system' appear to have resulted in the following arrangement. The rocks which form the crust of the globe arc either sedimentary—deposited under the influence of mechanical and chemical laws still in active opera- tion; or eruptive—such as under the influence of igneous action have burst through the sedimentary strata from below ; or metamorphic—the sedimentary rocks transformed by the action of these eruptions. The sedimentary rocks are divided into "azoic (containing no remains of earlier organic life) and palaeozoic (containing remains of extinct species). The only azoic sedimentary deposit appears to be gneiss, which is penetrated granite and other eruptive rocks. The various palaeozoic strata are grouped, according to the characteristic remains found in them, (in an ascending series,) into Silurian—containing quartzose sandstones, hard slaty Wrists, &c.; Devonian—of which the old red sandstone is a type ; Carboniferous—too well known in this country to require elucidation ;

Permian—containing the Zechstein and Bupfer-Schiefer of German mine- ralogists; Jurassic—the Oxford clays and associated rocks ; the Creta- ceous—marls, white chalk, &c.; and several tertiary groups. Our limits forbid any attempt at an exposition of this system in detail. It may suffice to remark, that it is recommended, first, by its applicability to the lithological and fossil pluenomena of all countries that have yet been explored ; second, by the more natural and satisfactory views it suggests of the processes by which the surface of the globe has assumed its present appearance ; third, by its supplying a surer guide (because on wider and more cautious induction than any previous system) to those who institute mining experiments in new and untried regions.

The light thrown by The Geology of Russia on the external appear- ance and actual condition of that empire is incidental, and thinly scat- tered. Mr. Murchison nowhere describes the condition of the empire ;

but many passages in his work suggest what that condition is. He has in this respect not so much communicated new information, as

explained the meaning of many isolated and seemingly unimportant facts we knew before. He has abstained as far as he could from con- veying any information that did not bear on his immediate object; but occasional notices of scenery, of the modes of travelling, and so forth, are highly suggestive. It is curious how little we do know of Russia. The embouchure of the Dwina where Archangel now stands was discovered by Chandler in the reign of Elizabeth. The formation of the Muscovy Company pre- ceded any attempts to colonize America. Yet the valley of the Pechtora ,

—only three hundred miles North-west of Archangel—appears laid down for the first time from actual survey in the map which illustrates Mr.

Murchison's volumes. This publication, too, presents us for the first time with anything worthy of the name of a detailed map of the colonized portion of the Ural. Of the social condition of Russia we know still less

than of its geography. Scientific publications show that natural science, both in foreigners and natives, is carefully patronized by the Govern- ment. At times reports of court changes pass the frontiers of Russia. Some scandalous memoirs—containing as historically faithful accounts . of the Government of St. Petersburg as Gil Bias and The Devil on Two Sticks do of the old Court and Government of Madrid—are .

occasionally published. Post-haste travellers now and then tell us a little of what they have seen, and much of what they have heard,—co-

loured, it may be, by spleen, as in the case of Clark, or by garrulous flattered vanity, as in the case of some who shall be nameless. But Russian society—the society of the Russian peoples—is a sealed book.

After perusing The Geology of Russia, (suggestive, as we have said above, of interpretations of what we have read elsewhere,) Russia appears before us in the light of a thinly-peopled land, rarely intersected by

practicable roads, where huge masses of primeval forest alternate with

enormous tracts of treeless steppes. Excepting the Ural—which only in a few places presents to the eye a more imposing spectacle than the

placid uplands of Southern England—the immense space between the Western frontier of Poland and the remote Siberian mountains is one undulating plain. It is reticulated by huge rivers and their affluents, which cut deep channels in the soft superficies of the earth. The violent alternations from an almost Arctic winter to the intense heat of summer, yearly produce extensive changes in the face of the country, rendering dr;

maintenance of roads difficult and expensive, and sweeping away the fertile surface mould to choke up the mouths of the rivers. The mono- tonous plain of Russia opposes greater real difficulties to all attempts to

reclaim it from the waste than most mountain regions. And the numbers of the inhabitants are so scanty compared with the extent of territory,

that great part of the country is a solitude. The eligible available spots for settlement are not indeed very thickly scattered. In the districts covered by the inexhaustibly fertile Tchornozem, (or black

earth,) there are inducements for agricultural settlers ; in the cupriferous and auriferous regions of the Altai and Ural, for miners ; in the comparatively limited region near the sea of Azof, where practicable coal deposits are found, for manufacturers. These three classes of districts are beginning to be occupied by intelligent and comfortable labourers. The thin straggling population of the rest of the country has scarcely attained to the Bedouin type of civi- lization.

The inroads of the nomade hordes which surround the empire on the East and South are kept back by military cordons. The oases of civilization in the interior are connected by moveable military columns. Except at St. Petersburg, the German provinces on the Baltic, Moscow, and perhaps Odessa, the population of Russia consists of nomades, agri- cultural peasants, artisans, overseers, and military. There is a mechani- cal class and a class of Government employes. There is no inferior pro- prietary nobility ; and the great nobles (whether of the aboriginal stocks or the descendants of intelligent economists and artificers ennobled by Peter the Great and his successors) are to a man absentees. They spend their lives in the camp, or at the capital immersed in intrigues. Russia with its court nobility, its country drudges, and its quasi middle class of civil and mili- tary employes, seems ripening—though the day must be yet far distant— for something like a French revolution. There is on the other hand s, considerable parallelism between its history and that of America. The commencement of the modern organization of Russia by Peter the Great was nearly contemporaneous with England's acquisition of New York and the Jerseys, which gave coherence to Anglo-America. The history of both countries since that time has been mainly a succession of colo- nizations. In Russia it has been the Government, in America the people, that colonized ; and see the difference. This, however, must be said for the Russian Government, that it had inferior races to work with. And this too must be remembered in all judgments passed upon the Russian Go- vernment—it works with lights derived from Europe of the nineteenth

century, by, with, and upon peoples inferior in native energies and acquired condition to the European of the darkest middle ages.

From what has been said of The Geology of Russia, it must be ob- vious that its contents are valuable. To the book as a work of art we perceive some critical objections. The first volume, composed apparently by Mr. Murchison himself, is English ; the second, composed in great part by M. de Yernenil, is in French; and, as it commonly happens, the French author appears to have bestowed more pains on neatness of finish than the English. The special memoirs of M. de Yerneuil on fossil mol- luscs', and of Mr. Lonsdale on fossil corals, are highly finished in an artistieal point of view, as well as novel and instructive in their matter. The communications from M. Agassiz and other men of science, though more sketchy and fragmentary, are full of interest. But the comprehen- sive account of Russian geology, which occupies the first volume, drags in the reading. Each chapter resembles a paper read before a geological society, in the diffuse conversational tone in which it is expressed, and in the repetitions which the author allows himself to make. This may be partly the effect of custom; for zealous members of scientific societies are apt to contract a habit of composition, by the simple process of aggre- gation ; and partly the consequence of additional information having been obtained after the work was in the press. Whatever the cause, it has occasioned obscurity in more than one passage of a work which must neceseorily become a standard for geologists. The engraved illustrations are beautiful.