b26 Reviews — Orography of Korea. 



view, with the Sinian System of South China .... The 

 broad belt of the Sinian System which obliquely crosses the 

 Korean peninsula, if extended beyond the Tung-hai, will join with 

 the mountains of South China, to which the name ' Sinian System ' 

 was originally given by Pumpelly." 



Eichthofen's ideal line runs from South Japan to Fuchou, and 

 then along the coast of Fokien and Kwang-tung, as seen in 

 H. Fischer's map of East Asia. (E. Dabes' Neuer Handatlas, 

 No. M.) 



The greater portion of the Sinian System of South China, of 

 which Ta-yii-ling forms the axis, enters the Tung-hai between 

 Fuchou and Shang-hai, and its further prolongation will correspond 

 well, both in its direction and its breadth, to those which I venture 

 to call the Sinian folds of Korea. If these Sinian folds of Korea be 

 prolonged to the north-east, a greater part of the folds will again 

 unite directly with the tectonic lines of the Sichota-alin, as they are 

 given in Ivanow's work.^ 



The Sinian represents an old system of crustal folds in the 

 peninsula, and contemporaneously with it, or a little later, there was 

 generated another system in the Liautung direction in the Kai-ma 

 Land, which was posthumously faulted in serial order towards the 

 south, producing three pai-allel ridges (Myo-hyang-san, Tyok-yu- 

 ryong, and Kal-eung-nyong). These trend from W.S.W. to E.N.E., 

 and form apparently the direct continuation of South Manchuria. 

 Another line (the well-known Chyang-paik-san) stretches east 

 and west, obliquely meeting the preceding in the basin of the 

 Tu-man-Gang. 



Professor Koto names the complex of uplifted edges and some- 

 times of folds, running in a north and south direction along the 

 axis of the peninsula, the ' Korean System.' It is so characteristia 

 of this region that even native geographers long ago recognised 

 its great importance in the surface features of the peninsula^ 

 This and many other minor groups are described and mapped in 

 detail by the author (on pi. iv), who also furnishes profile sections 

 in the text and nine process photographs (in three plates) giving 

 views of the most striking features of the country. 



Professor Koto writes remarkably good English, and bis oro- 

 graphical descriptions are interspersed with pieces of information 

 about the people and the scenery of Korea. Here is a sketch : — 

 "Diamond Mountain, Keum-gang-san (1,200 metres ^ 3,900 feet) ,^ 

 is a large granitic stock [or intrusion] penetrating paleozoic rocks. 

 It is excavated to its bottom by a crooked canyon-like gorge, 

 the precipitous walls of which overhang the bottom and rise in 

 a multitude of grotesque pinnacles ; hence the mountain is usually 

 called that of Twelve thousand peaks (Plate i, fig. 1). The valley and 

 its steep slopes are forested with pine {Finns pinen) and maples, 

 through which clear water rushes down in thousands of cataracts. 

 About 15 pagodas large and small have been here since the 



^ " La chaine du Sikhota- Aline," p. 112. Explorations geologiques et minieres le 

 long du Chemin de ferde Siberie, Livraisou xvi. St. Petersbourg, 1898. 



