192 F. B. TAYLOR ORIGIN OF THE EARTH's PLAN 



as though India had held back an advancing curtain in a very pronounced 

 way, as indeed it did, for the curtain was the crustal sheet of Asia. 



The occurrence of such an obstruction in the way of the southward 

 moving crustal sheet must necessarily have produced some very character- 

 istic effects, and some of these effects could be anticipated with much 

 confidence by the application of well-known principles. It would be ex- 

 pected, for example, that the folds would be most closely pressed together 

 at the most northerly point of the resisting obstacle, where the obstruct- 

 ing effect would be greatest, and that the folds would bend or lap around 

 on either side of the obstructing mass so as to inclose it within a re- 

 entrant angle of the general front. It would be expected also that the 

 vertical component of movement expressed by positive elevation of moun- 

 tain ranges and plateaus would be greatest against that same point. 



All these effects are conspicuously present in the Himalaya re-entrant. 

 The Pamir plateau, the highest on the earth, is close north of the ex- 

 treme northern point of India, and it is here that the great Hindu-Kush, 

 Kuen-Luen, Altai, and other ranges converge in the Pamir plateau, with 

 the northwest end of the IIimala3^a range abutting against its southern 

 side. The Himalaya is the most majestic mountain range on the earth 

 and some of its peaks are the highest. Who can doubt that the great 

 height of Gaurisanker and the Pamir are due chiefly to the intensified 

 elevation caused by the obstructing action of the Indian peninsula? 



A large area of Asia north of the Himalaya is a high plateau with 

 lofty mountain ranges. At the east the Himalaya range ends abruptly 

 on the Brahmaputra at the great bend, and several lesser mountain ranges 

 wrap themselves around the east end of the Himalaya, some of them 

 changing their trend from due east and west, north of the Himalaya, to 

 northeast and southwest south of the great bend. The simplicity of the 

 relations of all these features is such that the obstructing action of India 

 to the southward advance of the crustal sheet seems the only possible 

 explanation. 



From the eastern end of the Himalaya the trend of the peripheral 

 range runs far to the south, curving gradually to the east, and returning 

 northward through the Philippines to Formosa. This great excursion 

 of the peripheral ranges to a point seven hundred miles south of the 

 equator incloses an immense area, including the South China Sea, the 

 Java, Celebes and Sulu seas, the Gulf of Pegu, the islands of Sumatra, 

 Java, Borneo, Celebes, and Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, Burma, 

 Siam, Annam, and part of southern China. This immense area is far 

 too great to be classed as a mere arc along with the other mountain arcs ; 

 it is in truth a great earth-lobe, analogous to some of the great ice-lobes 



