874 General Notes. [September, 
Turkistan, Attok and Akhal. Though the name signifies a sand 
desert it is not sandy throughout. The sands are of three kinds. 
The first is clayey, mixed with sand and covered with small hil- 
locks and brushwood ; the second kind consists of real sands 
which do not drift to any great extent, the drifting portion form- 
ing ridges or hillocks ; but the third kind, the true ġarkhans or 
shifting-sand deserts, are without so much as a visible grass blade. 
Beside these different kinds of sands there are, in the Kara-kum, 
kyrs or tracts of firm clayey surfaces (mixed with sand) consist- 
ing of valleys alternating with eminentes 140 to 210 feet high; 
takirs, or flat clayey areas surrounded by sands; and shors or 
tracts of hard ferruginous sand lying in the lowest parts of the 
desert. The /zvestia gives an account of M. Potanin’s journey 
from Peking to Lang-tcheou, in 1884. The country between the 
Yellow river and Boro-balgasun is covered with sand, rarely 
moving sand, but darkhans fortified by a growth of shiabyk,a 
species of Artemisia, with bushes of Cavagana in the cavities be- 
tween. Water is plentiful. The dry grounds between the sands 
are covered with steppe vegetation, and sarrazin, millet and hemp 
insurrection was put down. Lin-tcheou, on the Hoang-ho, is 
surrounded by fruit gardens, and for fifty miles south of it numer- 
ous villages extend along a canal which runs parallel to the Ho- 
ang-ho. This richness is of recent origin, for the whole region 
bears traces of the desolation wrought by the Chinese after the 
suppression of the insurrection, of which the town of Tsin-tsi- 
u was the center. South of this town M. Potanin left the 
Hoang-ho and crossed the series of flat ridges which rise from 
OO to 7000 feet above the sea, and are covered with loess to a 
thickness of 200 to 300 feet. The sandstone of these hills con- 
at the eastern foot of the coast range. About 100 miles from the 
Coast the Ballombo river is spanned in wet seasons by a native 
