J. S. Lee—An Outline of Chinese Geology. 375 
character, the faunistic zones, which are no less than eighteen in 
number as established by Deprat,! persist throughout a wide area. 
The Devonian formation is separated at many localities in the 
region of eastern Yun-nan, Kwang-si, and Kwei-chou from the 
older rocks by an unconformity. The occurrence of Spirifer 
tonkinensis in the Nan-ti district, south of the provincial capital 
of Yun-nan, has, however, led Deprat to assert the presence of 
transitional beds from the Silurian to the Devonian. The Upper 
Devonian passes into the Lower Carboniferous in perfect conformity 
throughout the south-western provinces. 
Now let us examine the facts so far described from a historical 
point of view. In the latter part of the Sinian time, namely, the 
Bala or Llandovery epoch, the whole of northern China was still 
under the cover of a vast ocean. The Nan-shan and the Tsing-ling 
Ranges that stood out from the early Sinian water were by this time at 
least partially submerged. The early Silurian sea evidently extended 
from northern China to the south-west covering the present Yang-tze 
Valley, either the whole or the western part of Su-chuan, the greater 
part of Yun-nan, and farther spread itself out towards the direction 
of Indo-China, Burma, and beyond. This sea was undoubtedly 
but a part of the great Silurian ocean that extended over the present 
Kurasian Continent and North America, for Richthofen, in 
journeying from Ning-kiang to Tshau-tien, found in highly 
fossiliferous limestones a colony of widely distributed Silurian 
corals, together with a number of cosmopolitan Brachiopods, such 
as Favosites, Halysites, Heliolites, Amplexus, Orthis calligramma, 
Spirifer ratiatus, Leptena sericea, Strophomena corrugatella. The 
continent during the Silurian time lay in the south-east of the 
country. 
On the close of the Silurian period a general earth-movement took 
place in Asia involving at least the south-western provinces of 
China Proper. The nature of the movement was not intensive and 
temporary, but extensive and lasting. As southern China was under- 
going progressive subsidence, the Lower and the Middle Devonian 
sea gradually advanced towards the north-east. The pre-Devonian 
land in the provinces of Kwei-chou, Kwang-si, and probably Hu-nan 
was consequently submerged. 
What, then, had happened to northern China while the subsidence 
was going on in the south ?_ Richthofen is of the opinion that during 
the Devonian time northern China was under an abysmal ocean in 
which very little material was depvsited.2, We need not raise all 
the difficulties that such a hypothesis has to encounter. Tectonic 
consideration alone seems sufficient for the solution of this problem. 
In view of the fact that an anticline or an anticlinorium is generally 
accompanied by a syncline or a synclinorium, and vice versa, might 
we not expect a broad, slow upheaval of land in a region adjoining 
one where subsidence was continually taking place ? Might not the 
1 Deprat, op. cit., lre Partie, p. 69 et seq. 
2 China, vol. ii, p. 713. 
