Geology of part of Asia Minor. 59S 



feet high, and for the greater part perfectly isolated from the sloping sides of 

 the valley, but generally connected with each other at the base. Many of 

 them have been excavated, and have served either as tombs to the ancient 

 Greeks, or as chapels to the Greeks of the Byzantine empire. They are now 

 used for dove-cotes by the Turks and Greeks. 



In some places these cones occur on the sides of the hills, and present every 

 variety of size, gradually increasing in height, from the first embryo near the 

 summit, until, in the valley below, they stand out by themselves in full per- 

 fection and independence. At Utch-hissar the beds incline very slightly to- 

 wards the north-east, and consequently the cones, which generally occur in 

 the same beds, have a much lower level in that direction than at Utch-hissar 

 itself. Looking down upon them from near the village, or at the distance of 

 two or three miles, they appear so slender, and are packed so close together, 

 that they resemble rather a forest of lofty cypresses than what they really are. 



At Urgub, I observed a peculiarity in some of the cones, which I had not no- 

 ticed at Utch-hissar. At that place many of them are capped by a large mass 

 of a much harder stone, projecting like the head of a mushroom, the protecting 

 influence of which has no doubt preserved the subjacent conical mass from the 

 action of the weather. Although the mode of formation is not so apparent 

 amongst the cones of Utch-hissar, there can be no doubt that they are also owing 

 to some similar cause; and that the existence of a hard mass of pumice, or other 

 extraneous substance in the tuff, resisted the wearing influence of running 

 water or of rain, when the surrounding matter was washed away. 



About thirty miles S.S.E. from Urgub, where the same tufaceous formation 

 occurs, I observed, on the sloping side of a hill, numerous large blocks of 

 peperite, which had fallen down from a much harder bed forming the capping 

 of the hills. Wherever these blocks had rested upon the softer beds, they had 

 protected the ground beneath them from the gradual wasting away to which 

 the rest of the hill-side was constantly exposed ; and under each of them might 

 be seen the embryo commencement of a similar cone, varying from one to 

 ten feet in height. They almost covered the face of the hill. 



The beds near Urgub differ in hardness and tenacity, and in colour from 

 pale yellow to white and very pale pink ; but in one bed, the lapilli imbedded 

 in it, were mostly coated by a black substance. In other places, the surfaces of 

 the separate laminae of the beds were covered with the same black substance. 

 The extent of this pumiceous deposit from north to south is very consider- 

 able, particularly towards the south, in which direction, from the heights near 

 Urgub, I observed it extending in regular plateaux or table-lands to a great 

 distance, 



A few miles to the eastward of Urgub, a considerable mass of trap or basalt 



