PHYSIOGRAPHY OF SHAN-TUNG. 81 
part an effect of valley erosion following faulting, yet the process would 
probably not have obliterated large features of earlier relief. Hence we 
infer that before the present mountains originated in faulting, Shan-tung 
was a land of moderate relief; a hilly country possibly, but probably 
not mountainous; its relative altitudes measurable perhaps in hundreds 
of feet, but not in thousands. 
WARPING. 
Evidence of warping.*—-The peninsula of Shan-tung may be consid- 
ered as a whole, with reference to the surrounding regions, as an 
elevated area encompassed by the depressions which are occupied by the 
sea and by the alluvium of the Huang-ho delta. Thus viewed it is an 
irregular dome, having a greatest altitude of 5,000 feet above sea-level; 
or, if we strip off the alluvium and marine deposits from the surrounding 
areas, it is a dome rising somewhat more than 5,000 feet above the 
bottoms of the adjacent hollows. The natural profile of this dome is a 
very low arch, little more than 1 mile high and 120 miles across. 
The surface thus defined is that of the Pre-Tertiary rocks; in the 
absence of late Mesozoic sediments it is believed to have been a surface 
of erosion in Mesozoic time, and to have been a lowland or low hill land 
prior to the displacements which initiated the present relief. If this be 
so it can not have had its present form or relations to sea-level; the 
elevations must have been modified by faulting, or by warping, or by 
faulting and warping combined. 
Effects of faulting are obvious in the central part of the province. 
Marginal faults are not established. Von Richthofen describes one near 
Tsi-nan-fu, on the ground that hills of igneous rock occur on a level with 
supposedly nearly horizontal strata of Sinian limestone. Since the dis- 
tance between the outcrops is 4 miles, 6.5 kilometers, and the Sinian strata 
dip outward under the alluvial plain, the relative positions of the two rock 
masses may, with greater reason, be accounted for without dislocation; 
and the presenceof dikes in the Sinian, described in the section on stratig- 
raphy, shows that eruptives may be found anywhere in the system. 
Furthermore, large igneous masses are$known chieflyjin the higher horizon, 
above thecoal-bearing Po-shan formation. The northward dipof the Sinian 
near Tsi-nan-fu would lead one to anticipate the occurrence of the Po-shan 
and the associated igneous rocks beneath the plain, where these isolated 
hillocks occur. In this respect the occurrence of the igneous rocks is indica- 

* Warping is here used to designate the process of change of form and altitude of the surface due 
to vertical movements of the subjacent rock’ masses, It is often associated with normal faulting. 
