Correspondence — Mr. Alfred Ely Day. 91 



FUNNEL-HOLES ON LEBANON. 



Sir, — The nmerous funnel-lioles upon the tops of the Lebanon and 

 Anti-Lebanon Mountains afford striking examples of the power of 

 solution and chemical disintegration unsupplemented by the action of 

 torrents. My attention was directed to these holes last spring by 

 Dr. Wm. T. Van Dyck, of Beirut, who also suggested a theory for 

 their formation. A summer journey, which took me to the tops of 

 nearly all the mountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon as well 

 as to Mount Hermon and the Anseireh Mountains, gave me an un- 

 usually good opportunity to observe these phenomena and enabled 

 me to verify and somewhat amplify the idea suggested by Dr. Van 

 Dyck. 



The higher portions of the mountains visited were from 6000 to 

 10,500 feet above the sea-level. Below the level of 6000 feet their 

 sides are worn by running water into very rough and precipitous 

 gorges. Our attention was quite forcibly called to this feature by 

 the great difficulty of climbing among the lower slopes. Above 

 6000 feet however the slopes become more rounded and the surface 

 of the ground more smooth, until on the broad summits of some of 

 the highest mountains carriages might safely be driven. This is 

 markedly true of the summit plateau of the most lofty of all, the 

 Duhr-il-Kadib, sometimes called the Fem-il-Mezab. The lower 

 slopes of the mountains in the winter and early spring abound with 

 rushing torrents, but in the long summer these portions are perfectly 

 dry, except in those rare and precious spots where there are springs. 

 Here, consequently, the forces of disintegration are active during the 

 winter and spring, and most of the detritus is washed away at once, 

 leaving the rocks rugged and bare. 



Different conditions are found in the upper regions. The thawing 

 of the snow is gradual, so that probably the larger portion of the 

 water, instead of running off, sinks into the ground, which on the 

 heights is composed of a thick layer of more or less finely com- 

 minuted chips of stone over the solid rocks in situ. Even late in the 

 summer we found on the eastern side of every favourably situated 

 ridge or peak a large mass of snow sheltered from the prevailing 

 warm west wind, and melting a little every day from about noon 

 until sunset. At the foot of every such mass of snow was a funnel- 

 shaped hole into which trickled every afternoon a tiny stream of 

 water. We observed also many other such holes from which the 

 snow had gone. The diameters of these across the top ranged from 

 a few feet to one hundred yards, and the sides usually sloped at 

 angles of from 15° to 40° straight to a point at the bottom, making 

 inverted and irregular, but yet complete rather than truncated cones. 

 The western side was usually the steeper. I may add that most of 

 these holes occur in a compact limestone generally considered to 

 belong to the Middle Cretaceous period, and further, that the strata 

 can be traced as almost perfectly level for miles along the sides of 

 these summits. 



It follows then that the principal agency in the formation of each 



