Western Asia and Eastern Europe, etc. 61 



glaciated rocl^s anywhere about the lake. The moraine is the only- 

 mark of glaciation that I could identify in the whole range while 



travelling from end to end From lat. 40° to 45° N. long, 50° 



to 35° E. I could not find one rounded hill or hollow, one scratched 

 rock or stone, one perched block, one lake-basin, certainly due to 

 glacial erosion, a glacier, or the trace of one. The highest hills are 

 jagged sierras, the lower hills pyramidal or scarped, the valleys of 

 all sizes are shaped liked a V " (Q.J.G.S. vol. xxx. pp. 460-466). 



Let us now turn to another mountain -range, namely, that of the 

 Lebanon in Northern Syria. Here Sir J. Hooker many years ago 

 (Nat. Hist. Eev. Journ. 1862, p. 11) described the Cedars as growing 

 on very considerable moraines, and this fact has been quoted in 

 almost every manual of geology as evidencing the former glaciation 

 of the Lebanon. The facts are, however, very doubtful indeed, and 

 it is clear that in view of recent explorations they will have to be 

 revised. 



In a paper by M. Louis Lartet published in the 22nd volume of 

 the Bulletin of the French Geological Society, embodying his re- 

 searches extending over several months in Syria and Arabia, he refers 

 to these supposed moraines, and urges that they are not really 

 moraines and do not belong to the so-called Ice age at all, in the 

 first place because he had never seen any scratched pebbles or other 

 traces of glacial action in the midst of these deposits, and secondly, 

 because they contain no basaltic pebbles or boulders showing that 

 they must be older than the outbreak of basalt, etc., which have 

 left such marks on the country, and he identifies them with the 

 calcareous conglomerates long ago described by Botta (Mem. de la 

 Soc. geol. de France, 158) to similar beds described by Eusseger in 

 the Orontes Valley, also composed of conglomerates cemented to- 

 gether by calcareous matter and which he treated as diluvian. 

 Damascus is built on a similar bed, and it also occurs at the foot of 

 Anti Libanus and on the eastern shores of the Lake of Tiberias 

 {pp. cit. p. 458). 



There is a similar difficulty about the supposed glacial beds in the 

 Atlas range. Ch. Grad, who explored the range, found no traces of 

 ice-action there (see Zeitschrift der ost Gesellschaft fur Meteorologie, 

 1873, p. 32). 



If we turn to Asia Minor, we shall naturally turn for geological 

 information to the detailed and masterly work loy Tchihatchef. He 

 explored the peninsula with great pains, and he says emphatically 

 that all the phenomena of the Glacial epoch are absent from Asia 

 Minor, and he adds that this is very curious, since the climate of 

 Asia Minor is even under present conditions considerably influenced 

 by the cold of Russia (Tchihatchef, Asia Mineure, 4th part, Geology, 

 part ii. p. 485). 



Crossing the Bosphorus, we have the same testimony. Boue, 

 in his great work on European Turkey, says distinctly that the 

 phenomenon of erratic blocks is foreign to the two Tui'keys, i.e. 

 Asia Minor and Turkey in Europe, as it is in all the south-east of 

 Europe (La Turquie d'Europe, vol. i. p. 395). 



