194 F. B. TAYLOR ORIGIN OF THE EARTH^S PLAN 



latitude. In the following passage Sness describes an interesting rela- 

 tion between the Himalaya and Malay arcs : 



"We shall show later, with greater detail than we have yet done, that the 

 Himalaya actually terminates on the Brahmaputra. There are chains lying 

 behind the Himalaya joining the meridional chains of Yunnan which pass the 

 end of the Himalaya and are continued in the Malay arc. This arc we have 

 traced through the Banda Islands as far as the coast of New Guinea. But 

 although to the south it passes considerably beyond the equator, yet in a tec- 

 tonic sense it lies wholly behind the Himalaya, or if we were to number the 

 great folded ranges from the exterior inwards, the Himalaya would receive 

 the number 1 and the Malay arc the number 2" (II, 195). 



In the region of Borneo, Celebes, and eastward there are some singular 

 complexities of the trend-lines. These, however, do not belong to Asia 

 alone and will be considered under a separate head. 



On the map (figure 2) a broken line is drawn from the west end of 

 New Guinea toward the northeast to the Ladrone Islands, and thence 

 northward to the great fossa in Hondo, Japan. This line appears to 

 mark a submerged mountain range, as shown on bathymetric maps, and 

 probably represents a broadening or uncompleted enlargement of the 

 Malay lobe. This, however, is a matter for further investigation. 



Along the south or east front of some of the interior mountain ranges 

 of Asia, Suess, Eichthofen, and others have described what they call dis- 

 junctive lines or faults with great downthrow to the east, south, or 

 southeast. Along these lines great platforms broke from the high cen- 

 tral plateau and settled toward the Pacific. It may be that this move- 

 ment was secondary or reactionary, and was caused by a too great eleva- 

 tion of the lands of central Asia at the most active stage of folding. 



On the west side of India the crustal sheet pressed southward into the 

 gap between the resistant masses of India and Arabia, and formed an- 

 other distinct feature which we may call the Iranian earth-lobe. It is 

 much smaller than the Malay lobe, but is, nevertheless, distinctly accentu- 

 ated by the obstructing action of India. The front range of this lobe 

 has two small, sharp re-entrants which appear to correspond to saliences 

 of the obstructing mass. One is on the east side and incloses the plain 

 of Katschi in northeastern Beluchistan; the other is toward the west 

 side, and is marked by the northward bending of the Strait of Ormuz. 

 The Ahkdar Mountain range attains an altitude of more than 6,000 feet 

 back of Muscat, on the east coast of Arabia. This range runs northward 

 into the Strait of Ormuz with decreasing altitude, as though pitching 

 downward to the north under the Iranian earth-lobe. As the Persian 

 Gulf and the Tigris-Euphrates Valley appear to be a sunken fore-land, 



