168 
EOLIAN GEOLOGY 
of responsibility, in marked contrast to Russian Bolshevik who 
ranks geologist before major general. They allowed to fall un¬ 
bidden into the lap of England properties sufficient to pay in full 
not only all reparations but all the cost of the war to all nations. 
Had France in 1884 but graciously adhered to the Berlin Con¬ 
ference treaty, when Dark Continent destinies were settled for all 
time by the nations of Earth, and a first League of Nations as 
composed by an American, John Adam Kasson, of Iowa, was 
agreed to, she might at this distant day have had no further trouble 
regarding full satisfaction from Germany. Whether or not the 
Congo Treaty is still a vital force regardless of the outcome of 
the European War, England has certainly secured her share of 
booty. Had the United States Senate not refused to become 
signatory to that treaty, America would not today have to demand 
payment of war debts from Europe. ^ 
K.KYES. 
Significance of Girdled Mountain. The startling abruptness 
with which many desert ranges, without intervention of foot-hills, 
rise out of the general plains-surface is one of the noteworthy 
relief expressions characterizing arid lands. These positive feat¬ 
ures of landscape, set in waterless waste, present physiographic 
aspects so youthful as to be to a visitor from humid lands puzzling 
beyond belief. So steep, so straight, so recently seemingly, are 
the precipitous faces of the mountains that they are commonly 
regarded as the actual fault-scarps that attended the upraising 
of the orographic blocks. On this main premise rests the Gilbertian 
hypothesis of Basin Range structure. 
Critical examination of the Desert ranges during a period of 
half a century appears not to have gotten the fault-block idea of 
origin beyond the state of a brilliant guess. The fact that many 
of the tilted mountain-blocks are steeply faced on more -than one 
side appears to have escaped notice entirely, at least it is not men¬ 
tioned in any of the descriptions. That many of these ranges 
are in reality completely girdled, as it were, makes little impres¬ 
sion on the minds of the advocates of the dissected fault-block 
conceit. Closely inspected concerning their actual tectonic make¬ 
up some of the most typical of the tilted mountains are found to 
be really inconsequential bosses on the shield of a much broader 
orographic block. The general plains-surface about constitutes a 
