Revieios — G. Mevzhacher — On the Caucasus. 373 



besides aa unsuccessful attempt on Uscliba, tlie Matterhorn of 

 the Caucasus — sixteen peaks in all, ranging in height from 

 13,000 to over 18,000 feet — together with other excursions during 

 a journey along the greater part of the chain from west to east. 

 After giving some account of his expeditions in the publications 

 of the German-Austrian Alpine Club for 1892, Herr Merzbacher 

 has worked up the material into two bulky volumes. His book 

 must be the outcome of great and assiduous labour, for he has 

 apparently made himself master of the literature of the Caucasus, 

 or at any rate of all that is accessible. He describes the physical 

 characters, geology, glaciers and glaciation, the meteorology, and the 

 ethnology of this great mountain chain, which, unlike the Alps, is 

 more of a bridge than a barrier between the east and the west. He 

 might apply to the Caucasus the well-known epigram " what there 

 is to know I know it," and he places this at the disposal of his 

 reader. The present work differs mainly from the two handsome 

 volumes published by Mr. Douglas Freshfield in 1896 in that it is 

 written more definitely from the scientific point of view, and thus 

 is practically a monograph on the Caucasus. Both works contain 

 good maps and are enriched with numerous illustrations, but those 

 in the one before us, though in many cases excellent, hardly succeed 

 in reaching tbe level of the best in Mr. Freshfield's book. 



To do justice to Herr Merzbacher's work would require an essay, 

 so that it must suffice to notice a few points of special interest to 

 geologists. In the main the author accepts the conclusions in regard 

 to the structure, orography, and geology of the Caucasian chain which 

 I expressed in an appendix contributed to Mr. Freshfield's book. 

 As a mountain system the Caucasus is more elevated, but less complex 

 in structure than the Alps. The author has drawn up a list of 

 the principal peaks in each, which demonstrates that those in 

 the Caucasus tower above their bases (like Mont Blanc above 

 Charaonix) fully a thousand feet, and sometimes considerably 

 more, than those in the Alps ; the crest of the chain also 

 is more elevated, and conspicuous gaps, at any rate in the 

 western half, are fewer. The average height of the snow-line 

 in the Caucasus is 7,690 feet on the north side, and 7,950 feet 

 on the south, though on the former a glacier comes down to 

 5,791 feet and on the latter to 5,325 feet, but on taking an 

 average of nearly twenty in each case, those on the north side, as 

 might be expected, descend lower by about 2-10 feet. On two points 

 Herr Merzbacher inclines to differ from me. The mention of some 

 important conglomerates in beds of Miocene age led me to infer 

 that the Caucasus, like the Alps, had been produced by two sets 

 of earth-movements, the mountain chain being due mainly to the 

 former, the eruptions to the latter. He refers the whole to a single 

 set of movements corresponding with the later or Pliocene age. 

 Again, I thought it more probable that the mountain-making thrusts 

 had come from the north ; he gives them an opposite direction. Much 

 may be said on both sides, but so far as I can see, instead of bringing 

 forward any new evidence he contents himself with calling my 



