This hasty sketch of the mountain chains in and around China needs to be further illustrated by Pumpelly’s outlines of their general course and elevation in what he suitably terms the _Sinian System_, applied “to that extensive northeast-southwest system of upheaval which is traceable through nearly all Eastern Asia, and to which this portion of the continent owes its most salient features.” He has developed this system in the _Researches in China, Mongolia and Japan_, issued by the Smithsonian Institution in 1866. The mountains of China correspond in many respects to the Appalachian system in America, and its revolution probably terminated soon after the deposition of the Chinese coal measures. Mr. Pumpelly describes the principal anticlinal axes of elevation in China Proper, beginning with the Barrier Range, extending through the northern part of Chihlí and Shansí, where it trends W.S.W., prolonging across the Yellow River at Pao-teh, and hence S.W. through Shansí and Kansuh, coinciding with the watershed between the bend of that river, which traverses it through an immense gorge. The next axis east begins at the Tushih Gate, and goes S.W. to the Nankau Pass, both of them in the Great Wall, and thence across Shansí to the elbow of the Yellow River, and onward to Western Sz’chuen, forming the watershed within the bend of the Yangtsz’. In the regions between these two axes are found coal deposits. A central axis succeeds this in Shansí, crossing the Yangtsz’ near Íchang, and passing on S.W. through Kweichau to the Nan ling; going N.E., it runs through Honan and subsides as it gets over the Yellow River, till in Shantung and the Regent’s Sword it rises higher and higher as it stretches on to the Chang-peh shan in Manchuria, and the ridge between the Songari and Usuri rivers. Between the last two ranges lie the great coal, iron, and salt deposits in the provinces, and each side of the central axis huge troughs and basins occur, such as the valley of the Yangtsz’ in Yunnan, the Great Plain in Nganhwui and Chihlí, the Gulf of Pechele, and the basins of the Liao and Songari rivers. The coast axis of elevation is indicated by ranges of granitic mountains between Kiangsí and Kiangsu on the north, and Chehkiang and Fuhkien on the south, extending S.W. through Kwangtung into the Yun ling, and N.E. into the Chusan Archipelago, thence across to Corea and the Sihota Mountains east of the Usuri River. An outlying granitic range, reaching from Hongkong north-easterly to Wănchau, and S.W. to Hainan Island, marks a fifth axis of elevation.