Grundzüge der Geologie und physikalischen Geographie von Nord-Syrien

Abstract

IN this excellent treatise the author presents the reader with a synoptical view of the results of his observations over a region but little known; referring to his previous essays on the geology, palæontology, and petrology of North Syria for fuller details. The region described extends from the northern slopes of the Lebanon to those of the Taurus Mountains, and from the Mediterranean coast to the banks of the Euphrates and the ruins of Palmyra, embracing an area of about 45,000 square miles. It also includes the whole of the Orontes Valley and the Kurdish Mountains. The mountainous tracts immediately to the south have already been ably described, as regards their physical structure, by Carl Diener, in an essay which was favourably reviewed in NATURE at the time of its publication in 1886, and these observations on the geology of the Lebanon and Hermon have been taken up and extended by Dr. Blanckenhorn to the borders of Asia Minor. Still further south, we have the geology of Palestine illustrated and described by Fraas, Lartet, Tristram, and the officers of the Palestine Exploration Fund, extending into Edom and Moab and the Sinaitic peninsula; so that, as far as it is possible for travellers to carry out such a work as that of the geological portraiture of the region, we have now the whole tract from the shores of the Red Sea to the Taurus Mountains very fully described and illustrated. Two maps on a large scale, one showing the topography, the other the geology, accompany the present work. That there should be uncoloured spaces at intervals in the latter was inevitable, and is a proof of the caution exercised by the author in its preparation. The text itself also contains numerous geological sections and illustrations.

Grundzüge der Geologie und physikalischen Geographie von Nord-Syrien.

Von Dr. Max Blanckenhorn. Mit Zwei Karten, &c. (Berlin: Friedländer, 1891.)