Henry H. Koworth — Elevation of Eastern Asia. 101 



this great upland from India, or Kussia, or China, namelj"", iu 

 vouching for the ahsence of those most easily distinguished and 

 most palpable proofs of wide glaciation which we meet with in 

 Western Eui-ope and in Eastern America. 



The Russian traveller Severtzofif has described the existing glaciers 

 of the Thian Shan, some of them still of enormous size, some 

 shrinking and recently shrunk, in consequence doubtless of the 

 gradual desiccation of the surrounding lowlands and consequent 

 diminution of moisture. 



When he turns to a former development of glaciers, which ought 

 assuredly to have left enormous traces in this the very focus of 

 modern glacier action, at a time when Central Asia, instead of being 

 a dried-up waste, was occupied by a vast sheet of water, and when 

 the conditions for the growth of glaciers were so favourable, what 

 does Severtzoff say ? I will copy his account, as communicated by 

 Krapotkin to Eeclu's great geographical work. 



" Evidently the Thian Shan," he says, " has preserved its primi- 

 tive aspect better than the Alps. It has been less carved out by 

 rain, snow, and glaciers. While the neves and rivers of ice in the 

 Alps once covered the plains and lowlands surrounding that range 

 to a height of 200 metres, the glaciers of the Celestial mountains do 

 not appear to have descended into the lower valleys, and a vigorous 

 vegetation occupied the flanks of the mountains to a height of 750 

 metres above the level of the waters which bathed their feet. There 

 has, in consequence, resulted a very different law of vegetable distri- 

 bution. While the Alpine region has been itself colonized by species 

 of plants growing in the forest outside it during the intensity 

 of the ice, the zone of the Lower Thian Shan was the mother 

 country whence species spread in one direction towards the higher 

 summits, and in the other towards the dried-up plains." — 

 (Severtzoff quoted by Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, 

 vol. vi. pp. 359-360.) 



It would not be easy to adduce stronger evidence than this that 

 on the great ramparts of mountains which form the northern frontier 

 of the great x\siatic plateau thei'e is not only an absence of traces of 

 former great glacial development, but positive proof that no such 

 conditions could have then existed. 



If we turn to the other extremity of this great plateau girdled 

 with mountains, namely, to Corea, we find the same story. Dr. 

 Gottsche, in his memoir entitled Geologische Skizze von Korea, 

 published in the 36th volume of the Proceedings of the Berlin 

 Academy, says emphatically, " Glacial phenomena do not exist in 

 Corea," and he quotes Richthofen's China, vol. ii. p. Ill, as witnessing 

 to the absence of similar phenomena from Liautung. Both Corea and 

 Liautung are mountainous countries, and the former very much so. 



If we now turn to the great southern buttresses of the Asiatic 

 plateau, namely, the Himalayas, we shall find a repetition of what 

 Severtzoff reports in regard to the Thian Shan range, namely, a 

 large number of glaciers showing signs of shrinkage, of which Mr. 

 Lydekker has given a very interesting conspectus. No doubt there 



