472 



NA TURE 



[September 13, 1894 



Sayans. One of them, situated further west and named 

 Peak MiddendortT, gives origin to mighty glaciers, 

 visited by M. Vachevsky. The same expedition has fully 

 confirmed the fact which was much contested five-and- 

 twentv years ago, namely, that the highlands lying in the 

 south of the Sayans are a plateau, 3003 to 4000 feet high, 

 belonging to the great plateau of East Asia. 



However, much remains to be done to explore the 

 border-wall of this plateau, for, apart from the exploration 

 of the Munku Sardyk and the plateau in the south of it, by 

 Captain Bobyr, little has been added to what was known 

 thirty years ago from the rapid excursions of Radde, 

 Polyakoff, and the writer of these lines. The ridge offers, 

 however, a good deal of interest in more than one 

 aspect. It gave rise, probably, in the early Quatenary 

 period, to mighty flows of lava, which spread down the 

 valleys of its northern slope, reaching the valley of the 

 Irkut ; and, in the valley of one of the tributaries of the 

 Upper Oka, the Junbulak, two small craters of ejection, 

 403 feet high, were described in 1S64. Unhappily, 

 these formations, so interesting in the very heart of Asia, 

 at an altitude of about 6200 feet, have not been revisited 

 since, and all we know about them is what could be 

 gathered during a rapid excursion. 



The beautiful valley of the Irkut, between the Sayans 

 in the south, and the wild stony wall of the Tunka .Alps 

 in the north, is described next, and a masterly perusal of 

 the available documents gives a very lively picture of that 

 broad valley, covered with lacustrine deposits, and, about 

 the Tunki village, with sheets of lava. But with the 

 mountains in the north of this valley one enters again in 

 a field nearly quite unbroken by the explorer. Happily 

 enough, Chersky has crossed it in at least one direction, 

 and some of the most interesting parts of the present 

 volume are those given to the description of these 

 mountains, among which the Munku Sagan Khardyk — 

 snow-clad, as its very name shows — reaches to the un- 

 suspected height of nearly 10,000 feet. The description 

 is the more interesting, as it is based upon Chersky' s 

 unpublished .MS. notes, and it is sufficiently detailed to 

 give a good idea of that part of the immense .\lpine 

 region stretching in the north of the Irkut. Further 

 west, the footpath which leads to the long since aban- 

 doned graphite mines of .Mount .Mibert, and which has 

 been followed by several geographers, as also further 

 east, this grand mountain region, rising to 7000 and 

 up to 9000 feet above the sea-level, continues to remain 

 totally unknown. Even the river valleys of the Kitoi and 

 the Byelaya are only mapped in their lower courses. 



The 1 500 to 2000 feet high plains which lie in the north 

 of this Alpine region, and which will soon be intersected 

 by the great .Siberian railway, come next. These fertile 

 plains are well explored by this time, and their climate, 

 soil, and flora are fully described ; especially the flora, 

 for which we have the excellent works of MM. Agapitoft", 

 I'rein, and J. Kreyn (plants gathered by Ferd. Karo), so 

 that we not only possess lists of plants, but know their 

 distribution and subdivision into vegetable " formations," 

 the whole making a capital addition to the classical 

 work of Turchaninoff. 



And, finally, the volume contains a full geographical 

 and statistical description of the regions occupied by both 

 the Russian and the IJuryate settlements on the high 

 NO. I 298, VOL. 50] 



plains along and on both sides of the present Siberian 

 highway. 



In the appendix the description of the Nizhneudinsk 

 caves, explored by Chersky, is especially interesting for 

 the naturalist ; the more so as Chersky's report had only 

 been published in Russian, in the little-known publica- 

 tions of the East Siberian Geographical Society, and his 

 collection of bones was destroyed during the great Irkutsk 

 conflagration. These caves, situated in limestones 700 

 feet above the level of the Uda River, and attaining a 

 total length of 1525 feet, contain immense quantities of 

 relics of all sorts of mamruals, 17 feet thick at certain 

 places. Moreover, in consequence of the low temperature 

 which prevails in the caves, the bones of the animals are 

 sometimes found with perfectly well-preserved pieces of 

 cartilages, muscles, and skin attached to them. The 

 species discovered by Chersky were: — Vcspcrtitio 

 borealis and another still living species of bat ; Sorex 

 vulgaris ; Cam's Nischncutiiiunsis, a species of wild dog, 

 analogous to, but separate from, the Cam's alpinus, which 

 may still exist in the mountains of the above .Alpine 

 region ; the Arctic fox {Cam's lat^opus) and the common 

 fox (C vulpes) ; the common bear, the Gulo ion-a/t's, and 

 the sable ; a species of Sperinophitus, different from 

 both the 5. E'i'crsminii and the i'. Perry: which exist 

 in north-east Siberia (its samples have perished during 

 the Irkutsk conflagration) ; several Ari'uohc ; the lem- 

 ming, probably MyoJi-s olicnsi's, various soft parts of the 

 head and fore-feet being well preserved with the bones ; 

 Lepus variabilis, Lagoiiiys hyperboreus, Cerz'us taran.ius, 

 and Antilope saiga (named Anlilope borealis by Chersky) ; 

 an undetermined species of Capra, the horse, and, what 

 was most striking, a piece of the skin of a rhinoceros. 

 This find was so extraordinary that Chersky hesitated to 

 consider it as a rhinoceros skin, and mentioned it in his 

 report as .S/ci' .' And so it appears also in Count Uvaroff's 

 " .Anthropology." But this piece had happily been sent 

 to St. Petersburg before the conflagration took place, and 

 on nearer examination it at once was recognised as havin,:; 

 belonged to a rhinoceros, on account of its characteristic 

 oval pits filled with clusters of seven to ten, and even 

 thirty-three hairs in each cluster. The mixed fauna of 

 the caves proves that they have been filled with animal 

 remains since the Glacial period, and possibly it also points 

 out (through the Saiga remains) to a rel.itively warm 

 post-Glacial period. It is evident, at any rate, that a new 

 exploration of the Niihneudinsk caves would prove of 

 great utility for post-Glacial paKcontology. 



The foregoing rapid sketch gives an idea of the inter- 

 esting contents of this volume. The very name of 

 P. P. Semenot'f is itself a guarantee for a thoroughly 

 scientific and good all-round use having been made of a 1 

 the avail.ible materials, without falling into the len;;th!. 

 and repetitions which one would readily excuse in a work 

 of this kind, if they existed. The whole is a lively de- 

 scription of the region, with a view to the grand lines of 

 structure, combined with minutest accuracy in even 

 small details. It would certainly be a great regret if 

 this volume, like the preceding ones of the Russian 

 addenda to Rittcr's "Asia" (Amur, East Turkestan, 

 West Sayans) were to remain accessible to Russian 

 geographers only. 



P K. 



