J. S. Lee—An Outline of Chinese Geology. 413 
whole of northern China was still a continent being ereded to a pene- 
plain of aged type. A sea of moderate depth surrounded the western 
and the southern sides of the continent with the coastal line extending 
from the south of the Bardoun Valley,t in Mongolia, to the west of 
Kan-su, and then sweeping round along the northern side of the 
present Tsing-ling Range. Thence southward, the sea either spread 
over the whole area of the Great Red Basin of Su-chuan or only 
passed along its south-eastern border, and finally entered the 
province of Yun-nan. In this direction it could not have been very 
deep, for the sediment that it received was largely terrigenous. 
The Lower Carboniferous sea did not rest long in the position as 
outlined above. Towards the later part of the Dinantian or the 
eatly Muscovian epoch it advanced in the north-easterly direction, 
turning the whole of northern China that had stood as a continent 
since the Devonian period into a vast ocean. 
As the Muscovian epoch drew near its end, geo-dynamical forces 
made a grand display in the theatre of Central Asia. Folding and 
thrusting were accompanied by the eruption of andesitic, rhyolitic, 
and basaltic lava and intrusion of sills and dykes. The whole of 
western China, from the Nan-shan region to eastern Yun-nan, which 
had been under the Lower Carboniferous sea, was thereby lifted 
above the water. The north-eastern part of the country, however, 
does not appear to have been involved in this revolutionary disturb- 
ance. No sooner had the upheaval died out, than the Uralian or 
the Upper Carboniferous transgression took place; once more western 
China was submerged under deep water in which flourished a 
pelagic fauna. The transgression evidently progressed side by side 
with the formation of the Hercynian Chains, and the separation of 
the Indo-African Continent from the northern Eurasian Continent. 
Between these two continents lay the transgressive Uralian water. 
The fact that the Fusulina Limestone (= Fusulinidea Limestone) 
stretches across the Asiatic continent from western China to Egypt, 
i.e. in the equatorial direction, demonstrates with force such a 
parallel upheaval and depression. 
While land and water were undergoing rearrangement in the world 
at large in consequence of the Hercynian disturbance, the formation 
of the thick coal was well under its way in northern and central 
China. After a period of oscillatory movement of the sea-floor 
during the Permo-Carboniferous time, the sea again started to retreat 
southwards, carrying with it estuarine conditions and depositing once 
more coal seams in the south-eastern provinces. Then there followed 
another mighty movement of orogenic as well as epeirogenic nature. 
As the result of the last-mentioned movement, China proper was 
bodily elevated and secondarily folded probably in the Sinian 
direction, viz. north-east to south-west. Inland seas covered the 
north, while lagoons and salt lakes were formed in the south. In these 
} Wenjukoff, ‘‘ Calcaire carb. inférieure, etc.’’: Verh. Kais. russ. mineralog. 
Gesell., vol. xxv, 1888. 
