On the Physical Geography of the Himálaya

Since transmitting his Paper “On the deflection of the Plumb-line in India caused by the attraction of the Himalaya Mountains," the author has had the advantage of seeing the pages of Major R. Strachey’s work on the physical geography of the Himalayas, now passing through the press ; and being permitted to make use of them, he availed himself of the important information therein contained to add a postscript to his former communication. Major Strachey thinks that none of the numerous ranges commonly marked on maps of Thibet, have any special definite existence as mountain chains, apart from the general mass of the table-land; and that this country should not be considered to be as if in the interval between the two so-called chains of the Himalaya and Kouenlun, but that it is in reality the summit of a great protuberance, above the general level of the earth’s surface, of which the supposed Kouenlun and Himalaya are nothing more than the north and south faces, while the other ranges are but corrugations of the table-land more or less marked. The plains of India which skirt the foot of the table-land, to an extent of 1500 miles, nowhere have an elevation exceeding 1200 feet above the sea, the average being much less; and there is reason to think that the northern plateau of Yarkend and Khotan, like the country about Bukhara, lies at a very small elevation, probably not more than 1000 or 2000 feet above the sea, while on the borders of the Caspian the surface descends below the sea-level.

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IV.—Notes on the Cephalopoda Belonging to the Strachey Collection from the Himalaya. Part I: Jurassic

Geological Magazine ◽

10.1017/s0016756800119375 ◽

1904 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

pp. 61-70

Author(s):

G. C. Crick

Keyword(s):

Physical Geography ◽

Title Page ◽

Geological Society ◽

The Himalaya ◽

Himalaya Mountains

In 1851 Captain (now Sir) Richard Strachey communicated to the Geological Society of London a paper ”On the Geology of Part of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet,” based upon the observations which he had made during the years 1848 and 1849. The Palæozoic and Secondary fossils therein mentioned were described in 1865 by J. W. Salter and H. F. Blanford respectively in a work of which the title-page reads as follows: “Palæontology of Niti in the Northern Himalaya: being descriptions and figures of the Palæozoic and Secondary Fossils collected by Colonel Richard Strachey, R.E. Descriptions by J. W. Salter, F.G.S., A.L.S., and H. F. Blanford, A.R.S.M., F.G.S. Reprinted with slight corrections for private circulation from Colonel Strachey's forthcoming work on the Physical Geography of the Northern Himalaya. Calcutta: O. T. Cutter, Military Orphan Press. March, 1865.”

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V. The geology and physical geography of Chinese Tibet, and its relations to the mountain system of south-eastern Asia, from observations made during the Percy Sladen expedition, 1922

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B Containing Papers of a Biological Character (1896-1934) ◽

10.1098/rstb.1925.0005 ◽

1925 ◽

Vol 213 (402-410) ◽

pp. 171-298 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Keyword(s):

Eastern China ◽

Physical Geography ◽

Central China ◽

Western China ◽

Eastern Asia ◽

Eastern Front ◽

The Pacific ◽

Mountain System ◽

History Of ◽

The Himalaya

1. The mountainous highlands of south-western China, Chinese Tibet and north-eastern Burma, consist of a high platform which projects southward from the Tibetan tableland. That platform lies along the foundations of the ancient Indo-Malayan mountains and athwart the eastern end of the Himalaya. It appears, on examination of a map, to have caused the eastern continuation of the Alpine-Himalayan Systems to have been diverted southward as the Burma and Malay Arcs. Further to the north east the tableland of east central Asia ends abruptly above the lowlands of eastern China. Its eastern front forms the Great Khingan Mountains, which have been regarded by the late Prince Kropotkin (1904, p. 333) as the continuation of the Himalaya. This view of the eastern prolongation of the Himalaya into central China has been also adopted by Archibald Little (1905, map opposite p. 19, and p. 209). The whole geography of south-western China and the adjacent lands is dominated by the inter action of mountain movements belonging to two far-distant periods. The older mountains, the Indo-Malayan, belong to the Hercynian group of earth movements, which happened toward the end of the Paleozoic Era. The younger mountain system, the Himalayan, is Kainozoic, and though its uplifts happened at intervals from Upper Eocene to Pliocene, its movements culminated in the Middle .Kainozoic, and were probably most important in the Oligocene and Miocene. The mountain plan of south eastern Asia has been considered as a combination of the mountain lines of Eurasia, which trend from W. and E., with the border chains of the Pacific, which cross at high angles the eastern end of the Asiatic mountains. The history of the Indian Ocean is incomplete, until it be known what was happening on its north-eastern side synchronous with the movements which made the rift-valleys of East Africa. Chinese Tibet is one of the critical areas for the solution of these problems, for it is opposite the eastern end of the Himalaya. This country has also attracted attention from the parallelism of the three great rivers which cross it.

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