128 Reviews — Shan States, Burma. 



few roads, and those constructed at the least possible cost, and only 

 driven through rock when it is absolutely necessary, while the same 

 may be said of the only railway : while the mule tracks, the usual 

 means of communication, are little better than footpaths. There are 

 no quarries . . . for every house is built of timber or bamboo mats : 

 and there are very few natural cliff- sections that enable one actually 

 to see the superposition of the strata." 



Such are the words of Mr. La Touche in his introduction to this 

 most interesting memoir, and considering that he only spent some 

 three and a half years in the area with Messrs. Datta, Pilgrim, and 

 Coggin Brown he has certainly roughed into shape a large tract of 

 country the stratigraphy of which will be of great use in solving many 

 Asiatic problems in geology. 



The author points out tiiat this area is an ideal one for the traveller 

 as compared with the Himalaya, for whereas the latter is a thousand 

 miles from the sea-board and many days slow marches through the 

 outer hills, to say nothing of the difficulties of reaching fossiliferous 

 beds, in the Shan States the traveller can reach Maymyo in 428 miles 

 by rail and from Mandalay can reach some of the most interesting 

 localities in the day, and really study most of the important points in 

 the geology in comfort by the railway. "Open park-like savannahs 

 watered by clear rivers, whose waters afford fair sport to the angler, 

 and whose banks furnish the most pleasant camping grounds." 

 Peaceful, hospitable people, willing to help and harbour, affording 

 new ground for the ethnologist, zoologist, and botanist, and with 

 a climate superb for five months and even so superior to that of the 

 plains that the Local Government has established its headquarters at 

 Mavmyo. Such is La Touche's description of the delights awaiting 

 the explorer, and he does not fail also to specify particularly the 

 nature of the problems awaiting such an adventurer from the 

 geological point of view. 



The country is, generally speaking, a plateau, much broken up and 

 undulating, not unlike that of the ' downs ' of southern England, 

 the highest peak reaching 8,771 feet. It is mainly composed of 

 a dolomitic limestone of Palaeozoic age. This is assigned to Permo- 

 Carboniferous-Devonian times and requires more leisured examination 

 and collection before definite division. Lower beds include fossiliferous 

 rocks belonging to Upper Silurian, Llandovery, and Ordovician, and 

 unfossiliferous rocks are assigned to Cambrian and Archaean. Above 

 the ' Plateau Limestone ' come Rhaetic, Jurassic, Pleistocene, and 

 recent beds. The Tertiary, Cretaceous, and Triassic are, so far, 

 wanting. Large series of fossils have been collected and partly 

 described by Cowper Reed, Miss Healey, and C. Diener in Palaonto- 

 logica Indica, and their richness in forms shows, as usual, the 

 desirability of further collection in this area. 



Antimony, poor lignitic coal, poor copper, fine rubies (previously 

 well known through Barrington Brown and Judd), gold, iron, salt, and 

 silver-lead also occur, and building-stones in abundance. An excellent 

 geographical index and a subject index close the memoir. 



The volume is written in an interesting and unofficial manner ; full 

 credit is given to previous observers, and their views together with 



