1868.] KINGSMILL GEOLOGY OF CHINA. 137 



of the Royal Asiatic Society,' has published a memoir on those of 

 the Yangtse. Much information, however, still remains to be 

 gleaned. 



Wherever the opportunity offered, I have made careful search for 

 rehcs of glacial action in the south of China, but hitherto without 

 success. In fact, the general appearance of the country forbids the 

 hope of any such discovery, one of the most prominent features in 

 the landscape, as mentioned above, being the needle-like and fan- 

 tastic forms of those portions of the limestone rocks in the northern 

 provinces which have escaped the solvent power of water. Of the 

 appearance of the limestones in the central and eastern provinces 

 the same may be said ; they are everywhere pierced by holes pro- 

 duced by water action ; the surface is cut up by fantastic projections ; 

 and where chert nodules occur, these uniformly jut out far beyond 

 their former matrix. The Chinese are much skilled in making 

 rockeries of fantastic shapes ; but in these eroded limestone rocks 

 they find not only the materials but the pattern ready to hand. 

 Almost equally characteristic of the action of water is the denuda- 

 tion of the earlier grits. The mountain-sides are scored by deep 

 ravines with sharp intervening crests, and present none of the rounded 

 forms peculiar to glacial action. Except close to the flanks of the 

 mountains, as near Kiukiang, I have never met with boulders ; while 

 the parallel striae which are so conspicuous in the ice-worn rocks of 

 Europe seem to be entirely absent. Whether in the higher moun- 

 tain-ranges of the south and west remains of ancient glaciers are to 

 be found, I am not in a position to state ; in none visited by my- 

 self did I notice traces of their former existence. 



Reverting, then, to the topics discussed in the foregoing pages, 

 the following general conclusions may be arrived at. 



First and most important seems to be the enormous development, 

 both laterally and vertically, of the representatives in China of the 

 sub-Carboniferous rocks of Europe. 



Secondly, the enormous extent to which they had been altered, 

 contorted, and upheaved, with the accompanying intrusion of re- 

 peated outbursts of igneous rocks, after the close of this period, 

 and antecedent to the deposition of the newer coal-beds, classed, at 

 the latest, as Triassic, and which upheaval must have left the main 

 framework of the country almost in its present state. 



And, thirdly, the comparatively small importance, south of the 

 Yangtse, of the deposits of Secondary or Tertiary age. With the ex- 

 ception of a partial submergence during the deposition of the Pliocene 

 clays, the face of southern China has probably retained, in great 

 measure, a similar aspect since the upheaval of the later coal-beds — 

 a time sufficiently long to have allowed the action of water on the 

 limestones of the Tung-ting series to have slowly and gradually dis- 

 solved and carried away a series of rocks probably 6000 feet in thick- 

 ness, and extending laterally over a considerable portion of the pro- 

 vince of Kwang-tung, the gentle character of the erosion being suffi- 

 ciently shown by the fantastic shapes of those portions which, pro- 

 bably owing to a difference in their chemical composition, induced 



