File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12733920315).jpg

492
T. BELT ON THE STEPPES OF SIBERIA.
Fig. 2. — Section of
Strata at Omsk.
Fig. 3. — Section of Strata at Pavlodav.
1. 1 foot surface-soil.
2. 20 feet stratified, red-
dish-brown sand, with
lines of small gravel.
3. 8 feet light - coloured
sandy silt.
4. 15 feet coarse clean
sand, with lines of
small pebbles, and
one line of coarser
pebbles at X •
5. 6 feet clayey unlami-
nated silt, with frag-
ments of bed-rock in
lower half.
6. Magnesian limestone,
much crashed and
broken at top.
strata exposed; but 20 miles south of Pavlodav I noticed that the
surface soil contained many small subangular pebbles

and having
already determined that the sand and pebbles had come from the
south, towards which I was travelling, I was on the look-out for.
larger stones. The country was now of a more undulating character,
and there were many shallow salt lakes. "When 60 miles from
Pavlodav, in the middle of the night, the wheel of the tarantass, for the
first time in a journey of nearly 1000 miles, jolted over a stone

and
on getting out I found there were many angular pieces of quartz
lying en the surface, from 3 to 4 inches in diameter.
After this the stones increased in number and size

and 20 miles
further south the surface-soil was full of large angular boulders of
quartz, some of which were 8 feet across. Many large tabular
masses of quartz rock looked as if in situ

but several of them bad
been quarried to build the enclosures of the government station, and
they were seen to have rested in and on a sandy clay containing
few other stones. There was nothing about these boulders or the
clay in which they rested to suggest that they were moraine accu-
mulations

they were distributed over a nearly level plain, as if they
had been dropped from floating ice.
Beyond this point, southwards, the bed-rock often comes to the
surface in ridges and low hills of highly metamorphosed crystalline
rocks, separated by level plains composed of a sandy clay, with
numerous small angular stones, invariably of the rocks seen in