Mountain Walls Research Articles

Origin and assembly of the Tethyside orogenic collage at the expense of Gondwana Land

Abstract The Tethysides are a superorogenic complex flanking the Eurasian continent to the south and consisting of the Cimmerides and Alpides , products of Palaeo- and Neo-Tethys respectively. We here review their evolution, mainly on the basis of new maps showing the distribution of sutures, magmatic rocks, certain palaeobiogeographically and palaeoclimatologically significant taxa and facies, and fragments of Pan-African (900–450 Ma) orogenic system forming the basement of many Tethyside blocks. These are supplemented by palaeomagnetic data reported in the literature. A fundamental tenet of this paper is that major sutures which contain ophiolite fragments, represent tectonic sections between continental blocks where oceanic crust has been subducted. Palaeo-Tethys came into existence largely in late Carboniferous time. Coevally, it began to be consumed by both internal and peripheral subduction zones, which continued into the Permian; some of these had been inherited from pre-Tethyan times. In the later Permian, rifting subparallel with the northern margin of Gondwana Land began between the Zagros and Malaysia, separating a Cimmerian continent from N. Gondwana Land, and thus heralding the opening of Neo-Tethys and other smaller oceans that were back-arc basins of Palaeo-Tethys. This rifting possibly also extended farther west into Crete and mainland Greece. However, the North China block, Yangtze block, Huanan block, the eastern moity of the Qangtang block (North Tibet), and Annamia, all originally pieces of the end-Proterozoic-early Palaeozoic Gondwana Land, had already separated from it in pre-late Carboniferous times, possibly during the Devonian. All of these blocks, and the Cimmerian continent, were characterized by Cathaysian floral elements in late Palaeozoic time. Palaeomagnetic and palaeontological data showing the original Gondwana Land affinity of these continental blocks are supplemented by correlating late Proterozoic-early Palaeozoic Pan-African sutures, orogenic belts, and sedimentary basin fragments across Tethyside sutures. Late Permian foraminiferal provinces are related to this palaeogeographical interpretation. By Triassic times, most Cimmeride subduction zones were already in existence. The Cimmerian Continent accelerated its separation from Gondwana Land and—locally in the late Permian—began disintegrating internally along the Waser/Rushan-Pshart/Banggong Co-Nu Jiang/Mandalay ocean. By late Triassic time all of the Chinese blocks—except Lhasa-and Annamia had collided with each other and with Laurasia. The resulting enormous orogenic collage had a ‘soft cushion’ between itself and Laurasia, in the form of the enormous accretionary complex of the Songpan-Ganzi. This connection enabled Laurasian land vertebrates to reach south-east Asia by late Triassic time. In late Triassic to middle Jurassic times, most major Cimmeride collisions were completed. Widespread aridity in Central Asia occurred in late Jurassic time, probably in the rain shadow of the newly formed Cimmeride mountain wall. Neo-Tethyan subduction systems formed along the S. margin of the Cimmerides or within Neo-Tethyan oceanic lithosphere during the Jurassic. Most, if not all, were north- or east-dipping. They continued the northerly migration of the Tethyside blocks. Evolution of the Tethysides influenced the distribution of marine and terrestrial organisms, and affected sea-level changes and patterns of atmospheric circulation during much of the Mesozoic and Cainozoic. It is likely to have reflected the surface expression of a persistent trend in the large-scale convective circulation in the mantle, that continuously transported material northward into the Tethyan domain.

Fronts Near Orography in a One-Layer Model

A numerical model with one layer is used to study the dynamics of frontal motion near orography. First frontal propagation along a vertical wall of infinite height is examined and it is found that an orographic jet forms in the one-layer model which bears good resemblance to jets observed in the laboratory. The jet's speed of propagation is found to be fairly insensitive with respect to grid resolution. However the shape of the jet depends strongly on the structure of the grid. Next frontal propagation near mountains is studied. The formation of an orographic jet is strongly influenced by the representation of the orography in the grid. Jet formation is most pronounced for vertical mountain walls.

South Asian Regionalism: Problems and Prospects

The Setting The seven states in South Asia-Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives-comprise a region inhabited by almost a billion people. The base of mountain wall that extends north from the Kirthar Range of Baluchistan to the Khyber Pass and eastward along the foothills of the Himalayas until it turns sharply south at the Arakan Yoma, defines the northwestern, northern, and eastern boundaries of South Asia. The Bay of Bengal in the east, the main body of the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Arabian Sea in the west complete the demarcation of the region known as South Asia. Afghanistan, though not a formal member of South Asia,' occupies a significant place in any analysis of South Asian regionalism, especially after the Soviet invasion in December 1979.

Holistic Vision and Fictional Form in Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga

Holistic Vision and Fictional Form in Peter Matthiessen's Far Tortuga Richard F. Patteson Mississippi State University Since World War II, and increasingly during the past fifteen years, a significant alteration in human perspective has occurred, the effects of which are beginning to be felt in both politics and literature. This change in our way of perceiving the world has been variously defined. But all attempts at definition involve a recognition that man is part of, and dependent upon, an interconnected system greater than himself. Gregory Bateson, in his recent book Mind and Nature, sees this recognition as only the most recent manifestation of a deep-seated intuitive response to nature: "We are beginning to play with ideas of ecology, and although we immediately trivialize these ideas into commerce or politics, there is at least an impulse still in the human breast to unify and thereby sanctify the total natural world, of which we are."1 The relationship between man and nature, of course, has always been an object of human contemplation. But a "holistic and 'organic' view of nature" — forced upon us by quantum mechanics and relativity theory and expressed politically in the environmental movement — is a comparatively new development, and it has found its most striking literary articulation in the work of Peter Matthiessen.2 Matthiessen's position as both naturalist3 and novelist makes him an ideal exponent of the ecological awareness 1.Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), p. 18. 2.The quotation is from Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (Boulder: Shambhala, 1975), p. 54. Both Capra and Matthiessen, in The Snow Leopard (New York: Bantam, 1979), pp. 63-66, discuss the similarities between the world view of oriental religions and that being developed by modern physics. Matthiessen has long been interested in oriental thought, an interest that has found its fullest and most personal expression in The Snow Leopard. Subsequent page references to The Snow Leopard are to the Bantam edition. Where necessary for clarity, I have used the abbreviation SL. 3.Matthiessen's credentials as an environmentalist are unimpeachable. In addition to his five novels, his books include Wildlife in America (New York: Viking, 1959); Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in the Stone Age (New York: Viking, 1962); Oomingmak: The Expedition to the Musk Ox Island in the Richard F. Patteson71 that is gradually shaping our consciousness, and his novel Far Tortuga (1975) is his most ambitious attempt to cast the holistic vision in a fictional narrative. The casual reader opening Far Tortuga for the first time can readily see that the novel contains certain eccentricities: snatches of dialogue without the usual narrative transitions; brief, stark descriptive passages, again with a minimum degree of authorial presence; and white*spaces — many of them — lying between dialogue and description. These formal elements are crucial to the book's meaning and effect, but their function can be understood only in relation to deeper, less obvious structural patterns. The plot involves a series of dualities or oppositions grounded largely in conflict between a presumably idyllic past and an unacceptable present. The cast of characters — Caribbean turtlemen — divides along these lines; some long for "de back time," while others are content to dwell in the present or look forward to a more promising future. The turtlers' concerns are personal and political. They talk incessantly about days when turtle fishing was better, before tourism and American economic hegemony made turtling a vanishing way of life. But Matthiessen's own viewpoint is broader than this, and the novel is more than an indictment of human and environmental waste. Not until we look at the greater oppositions in the novel — those scarcely articulated by the characters themselves — do we see what Matthiessen is really about. The island of Far Tortuga, which may or may not have existed (tortuga in Spanish means "turtle"), comes to be identified with the Edenic past that figures so prominently in American literature. For Matthiessen, however, the significant event in the Eden story is not original sin so much as expulsion from the garden: man's separation from nature. The ultimate "back time" is the...

Wenkchemna Glacier: ablation complex and rock glacier in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

The characteristics and behavior of the Wenkchemna Glacier in the Valley of the Ten Peaks of the Canadian Rocky Mountains are described. Early descriptions, old photographs, tree-rings, an annual sequence of photos since 1965, and field observations provide a data base. The Wenkchemna Glacier combines characteristics of ice-cored rock glaciers, ablation complexes, and glaciers, supporting the concept of a transition between these features. It is the product of a unique geomorphic–climatic system where a large mountain wall of northerly exposure produces a glacial micro–climate, a freeze–thaw weathering environment, a high rockfall frequency, and copious avalanche activity that led, in turn, to a thin, active mass of glacier ice that is preserved by a cover of rock debris. The behavior of the Wenkchemna Glacier has lagged behind that of surrounding glaciers by at least 70 years. Stagnation and differential ablation are the primary processes of glacier wastage. The landforms produced by the Wenkchemna Glacier include rock glacier features, such as arcuate ridges of debris, as well as hummocky ablation moraines typical of glacier stagnation.

Snowpatches: Their Influence on Mountain Wall Temperatures and the Geomorphic Implications

Temperature data from two snowpatches in the Canadian Rocky Mountains are presented and dis- cussed with respect to their geomorphological significance. While the data represent the summer period only, they show that the presence of snowpatches influences mountain wall temperature conditions to the extent that diurnal freezing and thawing occurs occasionally. Shatter- ed bedrock on the mountain walls indicates that active physical weathering has occurred. An under-cutting or notch at the break in slope between the mountain wall and a talus accumulation indicates that the weathering is most concentrated in this location. This break in slope is often the site of late-lying snowpatches. The shattered bedrock, the notch and the temperature data suggest that the presence of snowpatches is of considerable geomorphic significance in the high mountain environ- ment.

Journey into Svanetia

During august and september 1967 I accompanied my uncle, W. E. D. Allen, a Fellow of the Society for forty-eight years, to Georgia and the Caucasus. The principal object of the trip to Georgia was for my uncle to present to the State Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi a silver harness which had belonged to King Irakli II (1744-88), the penultimate King of independent Georgia. In addition, it was pro? posed on the same journey to visit the isolated region of Svanetia, north of Kutaisi in the Caucasian mountains, and to present to the museum in Mestia, the capital, the two volumes of Douglas Freshfield's Exploration of the Caucasus (1896) on behalf of the British Museum and the Royal Geographical Society. Svanetia, even today, is isolated and rarely visited by the urban dwellers of Georgia. It comprises the whole of the upper basin of the river Ingur, which finds its way out of the lowlands in the south through a great gorge near Sugdidi, some fifty miles to the west of Kutaisi. The valleys stretch over an area forty miles long by fifteen wide?about the size of the valley of Aosta. From the south-east Svanetia can be approached over the Mamison Pass, and this road is used as the route to the north as well, and was the road taken by Sir William Hayter in 1956 and described in his book The Kremlin and the Embassy. Except for this route and the road from Kutaisi to the south, a branch-off from the Ossetian Military Road running north-east to the Mamison Pass through Lechkhumi, the region is shut off to all but the hardiest foot-travellers. Even today the roads are frequently closed owing to snow and avalanches, while the foot-passes are restricted to the very few able to cut through the red tape of Soviet bureaucracy, without whose permission travel is impossible. Svanetia combines all the most characteristic splendours of the Caucasus. Douglas Freshfield wrote in 1896, in the work we presented to the Mestia Museuni, a fascinating account of the geography and of the means of access to the valleys of Svanetia as well as of the legends which attached to their wild inhabitants. He cites the Arabian geographer, El Masudi, who wrote in the tenth century about a lost valley which was 'enclosed by a wall raised from below upwards, twTo miles high and fifty miles in circumference. This barrier renders it impossible to go within the enclosure. By night many lights may be seen in it in different places and by day are discovered villages, men and cattle, but everything appears little on account of the height from which the spectator looks down. Nobody knows what nation the inhabitants belong to, for they are unable to climb up and no-one who ascends to the top can go down to them'. This mountain wall remained practically impenetrable: 'Among its inhabitants there is no tradition of hospitality . . . they not only turned the stranger from their doors, but they exacted payment for letting him pass them.' The Svans threw off their subjugation to the Georgian kings during the eighteenth century, years before the downfall of the Georgian monarchy. In theory, Upper Svanetia had become a Russian protectorate by 1840; and in 1856 it was annexed to the Viceroyalty of the Caucasus, after the Svan Prince Dadeshiliani, on his way

Snowpatches: Their Influence on Mountain Wall Temperatures and the Geomorphic Implications

Snowpatches: Their Influence on Mountain Wall Temperatures and the Geomorphic Implications

Notes on Military Architecture in the Termessos Region

The modern road leading northwestward from Antalya forks almost immediately after ascending the rocky shelf some kilometers inland.' Beyond the fork the main highway continues north to Burdur; the road to Korkuteli turns off to the left, to enter the pass leading westward through the Pisidian and Lycian mountains. The ancient road followed the same course, for this pass is the only easily negotiable break in the mountain wall that forms the western border of the Pamphylian plain. The existence of an ancient city in this vicinity, as well as of scattered rural habitations along the gradual ascent toward the mouth of the pass, is attested by tombs and by the ruins of buildings visible beside the modern highway.2 The spurs projecting from the main mountains gradually close in on either side of the route, until in the narrows at the mouth of the pass the modern road crosses a low saddle commanded by steep slopes to the north and south. A few kilometers east of this saddle are the remains of two towerlike structures, one on either side of the road and about a mile apart; these may have been advanced lookouts guarding the entrance to the pass. They have been related to the ruins of two similar structures on the south side of the road, one to two kilometers west of the narrows.

The inscriptions at Shīmbār

The existence at Shīmbār in the Zagros Mountains of ancient sculptures and inscriptions was first reported by A. H. (later Sir Henry) Layard, in his classic study, ‘A description of the province of Khuzistan’. The research of succeeding years has made surprisingly few additions to this account of the archaeological sites of the province, which though nowadays less well known than some of Layard's other archaeological work, is none the less remarkably careful and complete. In a travel narrative published many years later, his Early adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia, Layard gives another short account of his journey to Shīmbār, which helps to fill in the details of his visit. Shīmbār is an enclosed valley with high mountain walls, situated about 35 miles north-east of the oilfields centre of Masjid-i Sulaimān, in the province of Khuzistan. The name is said by the Bakhtiāri to be the equivalent in their Luri dialect of the Persian Shῑrῑn Bahār ‘Sweet Spring’. The valley is celebrated amongst the tribes as a resting-place on their spring migration to the upland pastures. Its regular inhabitants are mostly members of the Mauri clan.

Prehistoric Laconia: Part I

This survey (Part II of which will be published shortly in the Annual) includes all Laconia, as far as the ancient borders with Messenia and Arcadia, the Thyreatis, and the islands of Kythera and Antikythera. Most of the results have been established by surface research alone, in 1936–8 and 1956–8. Little was previously known about the distribution of prehistoric sites in Laconia, and few settlements have been excavated.Much of Laconia is either mountain or hill country. The ranges of Taygetus and Parnon form the bones of the province, while between them the Eurotas flows through the fertile alluvial plains of Sparta and Helos down to the Laconian Gulf. The Spartan plain, the central Eurotas valley, is bounded to the north by broken hill country, to the west by the great mountain wall of Taygetus (Plates 15a and the map, Plate 24), spurs of which also enclose it on the south, and to the east by the great Parnon range. It is one of the most fertile plains in Greece, and must at all times have been able to support a considerable settled population.

Types of Pediments in the San Pedro Valley Region, Arizona

1954of Pacific Coast Geographers17 TYPES OF PEDIMENTS IN THE SAN PEDRO VALLEY REGION, ARIZONA Tuan Yi-fu University of California, Berkeley The word pediment, as first defined by McGee (1) and as used in this paper, refers to an exposed bedrock surface at the foot of the mountain front, or a rock surface covered by a layer of alluvium no thicker than the depth of the stream scour. In igneous rocks of coarse texture, the pediment may be covered only by its own regolith — i.e, the material weathered in place rather than transported alluvium. Under this definition, which excludes all postulates of an extension of the surface beneath the alluvium, the pediment is only a fragmentai feature of the arid landscape in the American Southwest in contrast to the ubiquity of alluvial fans, bahadas, and bevelled piedmont surfaces or "peripediments". There are at least two major types of pediments in the San Pedro Valley region of Arizona: 1. The narrow rock benches or embayments which fringe a broad mountain mass, and are separated from the alluvial deposits of the basin by a high-angle fault; 2. The extensively bevelled bedrock surfaces out of which the mountains appear to rise as mere residuals. The¦Santa Catalina and Huachuca pediments belong to the first type, whereas the south Dragoon and Johnny Lyon Hills pediment belong to the second. The Santa Catalina Pediments The northwest and south fronts of the Santa Catalina Mountains show narrow pediments because they have had little time to develop since the latest major uplift along the normal faults in late Tertiary or early Quaternary time (?). The morphology of these pediments can be described best in the context of their adjoining mountain fronts. (Figure 1) The south front of the Santa Catalina Mountains is composed of gneiss. It is much ravaged by erosion, and has a series of parallel canyons separated by bare, sharp-crested ridges. The northwest front is divisible into two morphologic units along the Romero and Montrose canyons. The belt occupied by these canyons marks the transitional zone between gneiss of the southern forerange and an intrusive igneous rock of distinctly granitic texture in the northern portion of the northwest front, where it is known as the Samaniego Ridge. Canyons and sharp crests are absent in the Samaniego Ridge which is rounded at the top and has long, smooth, concave slopes leading down to the foot of the mountain. It is along this granite ridge that amphitheatre-like, incipient pediments have formed. (2) Wide pediments generally do not occur along a deeply dissected mountain front, and the southern forerange off the Santa Catalina Mountains is no exception. Here, large alluvial fans appear to emerge directly from the mouths 18 Yearbook of The Association Vol. 16 Figure 1. Diagram of the northwest corner of the Santa Catalina mountains. SW SANTA CATALINJA PEDIMENT BENCH NE Pediment Bench Fan A (Mesa) Fan B Fan C Fan B Gneiss . Conglomerate beds (Tilted and deformed) Figure 2. Diagrammatic cross-section of the south front of the Santa Catalina mountains showing the relationship between the pediment benches and the alluvial fans. (Modified from Blissenbach ) 1954of Pacific Coast Geographers19 of the canyons, and the steep mountain wall seems to be in sharp contact with the aggradational slope of the fans. But this simple arrangement is deceptive and fades upon closer scrutiny. The fans have been much eroded. Blissenbach recognizes three fan levels, the highest and oldest remnants of which are isolated knolls or mesas. (3) The highest fan mesa, when projected toward the mountain front and across the fault that separates the gneiss from the alluvium, correspond in elevation to the narrow pediment benches developed on gneiss, whereas a more recent fan (fan B) still covers much of the lower gneissic surface. It is outside the scope and purpose of this paper to trace the history of the uplift of the mountain front along the fault, and the relation of the succesive fans to the pediment benches. Figure 2 summarizes a possible interpretation in diagrammatic form. The rock benches are at most only a few hundred feet wide. They have suffered much from erosion, and are best preserved in the intercanyon areas...

Notes on the geology of the St. Elias Range, Alaska-Yukon Territory, North America

The following notes are a preliminary record of geological results of work in the Yukon-Alaska boundary region by the writer with the expedition of the Arctic Institute of North America (project " Snow Cornice ") during the summer of 1949. Field-work was mainly along the northern border of the great inter-montane basin occupied by the Seward Glacier (or firn-field), which lies intrenched behind, and immediately north of, the main St. Elias Range, of which Mt. St. Elias itself, 18,008 feet, is the dominant peak. During flights from the coast at Yakutat to and from this basin, and on other occasions over neighbouring localities, visual observations of structure and morphology were also made. Chiefly, however, field-work was a matter of climbing (as in the case of a pioneer ascent of Mt. Vancouver, 15,800 feet), or of skiing over the immense spaces of the Seward firn-field (750 square miles in area) in order to visit scattered island outcrops or mountain cliffs flanking the firn-field. The region is underlain by a metamorphic series of sedimentary origin, mainly pelitic, with subordinate psammitic elements and marked calc beds. The pelitic series consists mostly of biotite-schists and gneisses, rarely garnetiferous; the calc beds are composed of fairly pure marbles, which occupy no regular stratigraphical position within the pelites, but occur in mountain walls as conspicuous elongated or irregular masses, having suffered severe deformation during orogenesis. The thickness of this whole series, whose dip is variable and locally vertical, was not determinable. Into the series has been

High-Country "Run" the Geography of Extensive Pastoralism in New Zealand

-N & EW ZEALAND has a wide reputation for the quality and quantity of its dairy products, but the Dominion is not by any means a land only of intensive dairy farms. Dairy farming is areally restricted. It is located only in a few regions small in size, low in elevation. Here exotic pasture grasses and clovers have been made to support an intensive economy on holdings of 25 to 200 acres. Dairying is a most specialized practice and butterfat almost a monocultural product. It is other kinds of agricultural occupance that occupy large areas in New Zealand. In practically all these sheep-not cattle-play the most important part. Such is the case in the deeply dissected, Tertiary hill areas of the North Island. There Romneys are reared on hand-sown pastures where forest stood indigenously under conditions of heavy rainfall. Such is also the case on the arable plains of the South Island, where in rain-shadow areas of periodically deficient precipitation-the farm economy is essentially mixed, and cross-bred sheep and lambs are fattened on rotational pasture grasses, cruciferous crops, and other cultivated fodder. The extensive pastoralism of the South Island tussock high country occupies the greatest area. Its economy and practices extend further back into the history of European occupance than those of any other type of agriculture in New Zealand; and they do so with least change and modification. The runholders were operating over the greater part of the mountain grasslands of the South Island eighty years ago. The dairying areas of the North Island persisted as swamps and forested Maori strongholds for another thirty or forty years. This extensive grazing economy is based almost exclusively on sheep, predominantly of merino blood. The scene of it is the leeward flank of the Southern Alps extending in a relatively narrow belt from Marlborough to Southland (Figure 1). It is a country of steep, broken slopes, sparsely covered with a carpet of yellow-brown steppe grasses and topped by massive, grey slides of talus and frost-bitten rocky pinnacles. Its relief is intense. Flat-floored, shingle strewn valleys penetrate deeply between mountain masses eight, nine, and ten thousand feet high. At such elevations glaciation is still active. Here and there wide, gravel-floored basins occur. Their smooth and shallow terraces of glacial and fluviatile debris contrast sharply with the deep and angular dissection of the rocky mountain walls which abruptly enclose them. This expansive area of mountain range is held mainly by the Crown and in part by educational institutions. It is a huge national asset which, despite very considerable deterioration, still carries almost 2,000,000 sheep on its 7,700,000 acres. It is leased to graziers

THE ECONOMIC DANGER IN THE INTRODUCTION OF SOME FOREIGN ANIMALS AND PLANTS

It is well known that, due to the action and reaction of various factors in nature, there is maintained what is called 'a balance of life' in this world. One of the most potent inflü ences which helps to upset this even equilibrium, and bring about abnormal conditions in nature, is the part played by human agency. And, among the many such human activities, one has been the indis- criminate transportation of plants and animals from one country to another, without in the least realising or forseeing the disadvantages and the often disastrous results of many such introductions. We have some examples of how man, without any evil intention, has been responsible for bringing about a very undesirable state of affairs in different regions of the world, by thoughtless introductions of differ- ent forms of life from one region into another. Though the geogra phical position of India is more or less isolated, situated as she is. clearly separated by natural boundaries of mountain walls or seas from other regions, in these days of quick and easy transport facilities for all sorts of animal and vegetable products not only by land and sea but even by air, there is every likelihood of undesirable and harmful exotic forms, gaining admission into the country without our knowledge. This is the case particularly with insect pests and plants of different kinds. In this paper an attempt is made to survey the present position with regard to some of the important exotic plants and insect pests which are already with us or are likely to be intro- duced, pointing out the evil effects resulting thereby, and to offer some suggestions in the way of preventing such introductions as far as possible in the future.

The Hispar Glacier 1

DR. AND MRS. BULLOCK WORKMAN, the well-known explorers of the higher Himalayas, have read before the Royal Geographical Society a most interesting account of the Hispar Glacier. This is one of a group of four of the world's greatest mountain-glaciers, which, together with two others of them—the Biafo and the Chogo Lungma—and some of their tributaries, have been explored from end to end by these indomitable climbers. The Hispar Glacier, one of the many feeders of the Indus, occupies a long and nearly straight valley, running roughly parallel with the crest of the Karakoram—one of the watersheds of Asia. Here that is gashed by rather short and steep transverse valleys, altogether nine in number, and attains an elevation often exceeding 20,000 feet above sea-level. On the southern side is another mountain wall, not quite so lofty, though even its lowest point is quite a thousand feet above the summit of Mont Blanc. From its western part—rather more than fifteen miles in extent—six tributary glaciers—three of them large—descend to the Hispar, but its eastern and upper portion—fully twenty-one miles in length—is practically unbroken. A rather long and flat snow saddle, 17,500 feet above sea-level, parts the Hispar from the Biafo Glacier, which descends towards the south-east, and the total length of the former, from its termination near Hispar village, at a height of about 11,000 feet above sea-level, is, according to Dr. Workman's measurement, a little less than thirty-seven miles, or a mile and a half greater than that assigned to it by Drs. Calciati and Koncza.

The Recent Cretan Discoveries and their Bearing on the Early Culture and Ethnography of the East Mediterranean Basin

WHILE recently excavating the prehistoric Palace of Knossos, which lies in the great central gap between the higher ranges of Crete, mid-way between the Deaks of Ida and Dicta, I was much struck by the Imost continuous dualistic style of the elements. But in this case the “eternal struggle” was not between East and West. It was North and South that here fought out. The boreal blasts which have collected from the steppes of Eastern Europe sweep almost unopposed across the ægean, and find their first obstacle in the long mountain wall of Crete. They pour through the central gap. Not unopposed, however; they are beaten Dack, and their place triumphantly taken for weeks at a time, by the parching South wind—the Notios of the Cretan natives—which is really the Khamsîn of the Libyan Desert. Owing to the fact that the shoot and dumping-ground of the excavations was, perforce, at the southern end, the works were interrupted for days at a time by an overwhelming dust-cloud due to this cause, for the Khamsîn seems to have an affinity for dust out of proportion to its actual strength. Disagreeable, however, as were these hindrances to the work of the spade, one had at least leisure to reflect on the historic lessons supplied by these natural phenomena. Crete certainly stands geographically in closer relation to Asia Minor than it does to Africa. Carpathos and Rhodes, not to speak of minor islands, afford natural stepping-stones of intercourse. The actual relations between Crete and Anatolia, ethnic and other, must not be underrated. Yet in a broad historic point of view Crete stands apart from it. It was not like Cyprus, which, although at different times it has become an outpost of Egypt and of Europe, has always remained essentially a part of Western Asia. But the main currents of Cretan history, like those of its two prevalent winds, have been Northern and Southern—European and African. Of its two direct geographical connections, that with Greece and that with Anatolia, it has consistently held to the former. On the other hand, its intercourse with the opposite Libyan coast—the Cyrenaica—and with Egypt has been singularly continuous from a very remote period. And in this lies the high importance of the part played by the island in the early history of European culture. Germs received here from the Nile Valley and its borderlands at a time when the greater part of Europe was still in its Stone Age, were propagated northwards and westwards, and seedlings hence derived spread in prehistoric times and by more than one channel, as far as the British islands.

The Yoredale and Millstone Grit Rocks of the Upper Calder Valley, and their Fossils

The Millstone Grits occupy the extensive range of hills, moorlands, and dales forming the head waters of the river Calder, from the anticlinal down to Halifax and Elland. The great mountain wall of Kinder Grit, which ranges from Blackstone Edge on the south to Black Hambledon on the north, with an average height above the level of the sea of nearly 1,500 feet, is broken through at Todmorden by a valley about two miles in width. Here the river Calder from the Burnley valley is joined by the stream from Dean Head on the south, and the combined streams then flow in an easterly direction, by Hebden and Sowerby Bridges, to Elland. The valley of the Calder divides the whole area into two halves, and, being the lowest part, it drains the whole district, receiving from the north its tributary streams, the Calder at Mytholm, the Hebden and its affluent from Horse Bridge Clough at Hebden Bridge, the stream from Luddenden valley at Luddendenfoot, and the Hebble from Halifax, while the streams from St. John’s Valley, the Ryburn, and the Blackwater join it from the south. The Millstone Grit rocks form three natural groups, named after the three principal rocks, viz., (I.) Kinder Grits, (II.) the Third Grits, and (III.) the Rough Rock. I. and III. have the greatest range and most uniform thickness, while the Third or middle grits are the most variable, both in thickness and range. In fact, according to the Geological Surveyors, the Third Grits from …