394 B. A. Wray— 



Karst Phenomena in other Districts. 



In Britain such, features find perhaps their closest parallel in the 

 Craven district of Yorkshire, where the floor of the Carboniferous 

 Limestone to the north of Settle is cut up by irregular widened joints 

 knoAvn as " grikes ", the fretted limestone surface being locally 

 described as " clints ". " Kelds " or springs where streams emerge 

 from an underground course are a distinctive feature of the landscape; 

 while the numerous vertical chasms locally known as " gills " or 

 " pots " form an exact counterpart to the Illyrian ponors. The 

 intricate underground drainage of this region has been closely 

 studied by the Yorkshire Geological Society/ whose general results 

 appear to be in close accord with those obtaining on the more 

 extensive Illyrian karstlands. On the Continent similar features have 

 been observed in the Devonian limestones around Eochefort and 

 Han-sur-Lesse in Belgium, though it is in the south of France where 

 the karst attains its greatest development in Western Europe. 

 Here, to the north-west of Montpellier, in the wind-swept uplands 

 known as the Causses, very pure and thick Jurassic limestones ha,ve 

 a wide development. The only fertile and habitable regions on these 

 barren plateaus are the " sotches " or hollows, where the red earth 

 formed by the denudation of the limestone is preserved in large 

 funnel-shaped hollows, which correspond in every way to the dolinas 

 of Western Yugoslavia. The physiography of the Causses has been 

 exhaustively studied and described by the eminent French 

 speleologist, Martel (4).2 



Karst phenomena are not infrequent in the Alpine limestone 

 districts ; here the irregular limestone surfaces are termed lapies, 

 while the weathering process is described as lapiesation. In Switzer- 

 land, notably in the canton Glarus, these bare surfaces known as 

 Karreiifelder have been the subject of detailed studies by Heim (I). 

 Karst features are also specially notable at high altitudes in the 

 Jura mountains, where the deep, irregular grooves and trenches which 

 intersect the bare limestone pavements are called lezinnes. 



Many limestone districts in the Iberian peninsula form typical 

 karst landscapes ; they are especially noticeable in Andalusia, 

 and also on the Mesozoic limestone plateau to the north of the 

 river Tagus in Portugal ; the latter area has been described in 

 much detail by Fleury (12), who records the occurrence of all the 

 distinctive features of a typical karstland. Karst phenomena are 

 also admirably displayed in many places in the Central and Southern 

 Apennines, notably in the Abruzzi ; while in the Southern Balkans 

 the barren limestone wastes of the Peloponnesus exhibit similar 

 features. 



Finally, on the American continent, these features appear to have 

 a very widespread development on the limestone areas in the basin 



^ Proc. Yorks. Geol. Soc, vol. xv, 1905, p. 248. 



2 Numbers in brackets refer to the Bibliography given at the end. 



