30 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1887. 



architectiu'e to meet the perils arising from close neighborhood 

 to their kidnapping enemies. 



Notes on the Geology of China. Prof. Heilprin read from Miss 

 Adele M. Fielde the following notes on the geology of south- 

 eastern China, which are of interest, inasmuch as nothing on the 

 physical features of that section of the empire has as yet been 

 published. 



" I have been on a trip up the Han River, 130 miles, to the 

 Pass between the Kwangtung and Fokien Provinces. The moun- 

 tains slope steeply down into the river on both its sides for eighty 

 miles, and a narrow path runs on each slope parallel with the 

 river at varying distances above it. Some of the mountains are 

 probably three thousand feet high, and the ridges at a distance 

 appear so narrow that a man might stride and sit on them as on 

 a saddle. The river keeps a general trend southward, its bends 

 being short ones. Its delta covers several square miles. In all 

 the lower part of its course it is kept in its channel by dikes, as 

 its sandy bed is higher than the adjoining rice fields. Just above 

 the city of Chow-chow-fu, thirty-two miles to the north of Swatow, 

 the mountains begin to rise, and they are, like those near Swatow, 

 almost wholly of granite. This rock extends up to Liu Ng, a 

 town twenty-four miles further up the river. Stone No. 1, in the 

 box sent herewith, is a specimen of this outcrop near the river. 

 Ten miles further up the granite becomes very coarse, as in No. 

 2. Ten miles still further, or twenty-six miles from the mouth, 

 the outcrops are, for a short distance, of whitish sandstone, like 

 No. 3, and these are immediately followed by red sandstones, 

 Nos. 4 and 5, which continue in mountain after mountain, gorge 

 after gorge, precipice after precipice, for some sixty miles. These 

 are magnificent exposures, the stratification showing very plainly, 

 with lines of cleavage nearly at right-angles to the lines of deposit. 

 The inclination is at all angles, some being level, some vertical 

 and some showing splendid curves. Here and there are to be 

 found apparent injections of another stone, which, I fancy, may 

 be trap No. 6. I also found some streaks of landscape-sandstone, 

 No. 7. In one place I found a huge mass of the speckled stone, 

 pink, with brown spots, marked No. 8, in the box. This, like all 

 the other specimens, is a portion of the great outcrop from a 

 mountain side. 



" Red sandstone, in some places, almost like dark shale, in 

 others very hard and of a light color, extends to within ten miles 

 of the pass. Towards its upper boundary I noticed much inter- 

 mixture with light sandstone, and w^ith a greenish stone. No. 9. 

 The stratification of the latter was very plain, and in places the 

 mountain path leads over the edges of the strata as they stand 

 perpendicularly. Near the pass and also through the pass (which 

 is four miles long, and is a wdld gorge through which the x'iver 

 flows in a white torrent), the outcrops and boulders are again 



