CONTINENTAL DEPOSITS. 97 



spread upon the flanks. The strata that form the Ts'in-ling-shan and the 

 Alps of western Tibet shared in the Kuen-lung movement, but they also 

 suffered a later intense disturbance, which gave rise to the erosion cycle 

 that is represented in the Jurassic sandstones. And the Himalayan zone, 

 which, until post-Eocene time had not been folded, then became the locus 

 of pronounced deformation and passed through the movements that are 

 evidenced by the unconformities and sediments of the Tertiaries. Loczy 

 noted that the Jurassic beds of Ssi'-ch'uan and the supra-Carboniferous of 

 central Asia* are similar products of vigorous erosion of mountain ranges 

 that were elevated at separate times; and we may add the Hundes and 

 Siwalik sandstones as a third group of formations of the same kind. 



With the epoch of mid-Tertiary folding the compression of Asia ceased 

 for a time at least. The flat Hundes sandstone has its equivalents in the 

 essentially flat Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits of central Asia and Siberia. 

 The record is one of erosion and wide-spread deposition in basins, either 

 lacustrine or arid, and on fluviatile plains. But diastrophic movements 

 have not ceased ; they have taken on the form of normal faulting, involved 

 in spreading of the continent, and the major features are accented by the 

 fractures. These phenomena, which are extreme effects of vertical warp- 

 ing, are chiefly of Pleistocene age. 



I proceed to consider the evidence of orogenic movements other than 

 folding; it is subordinately stratigraphic and predominantly physiographic. 



Before considering the Quaternary warping it is well to describe in 

 proper sequence the Tertiary dislocations of the same type. In north- 

 eastern China, in the provinces of Shan-tung and Chi-li, are two districts in 

 which normal faulting is the principal structural fact. They have been 

 mapped and described in volume I, so far as we saw them; and we have 

 there cited observations by von Richthofen, who noted the faults of Shan- 

 tung as the principal structural facts of that province. The district in 

 Chi'-li is that which we call the Ning-shan basin, west of Pau-ting-fu, and 

 has not been seen by any other geologists. 



The evidence of faulting in these cases is chiefly stratigraphic: Paleo- 

 zoic faulted down in contact with Archean, along throws which range up to 

 10,000 feet, 3,000 meters, or more; but in Shan-tung the relief due to dis- 

 placement still survives, though it is greatly dissected. Fault-scarps have 

 receded one or two miles; fault-blocks are cut into isolated sections by the 

 valleys of consequent streams that originated on the scarps; valleys have 

 widened and mountain masses have become skeletonized. The volume of 

 rock removed is very large, but since the districts have had open drainage 

 to areas now submerged or buried beneath recent alluvium, there are no 



* Reise des Grafen Szcdienyi, vol. I, p. 799. 



