Western Palestine is a limestone country that is, geologically speaking, new. Faulting, erosion and earthquake as well have been hard at work in comparatively recent geological times to make a most diversified surface in a land of short distances. Its rocks are peppered with nodules of flint. The weather wear on the country rocks of some districts allows the flint nodules to drop out, thus leaving a peculiar worm-eaten look in the stones and cliffs. In other localities the cherty material runs in ribbon-like bands within the limestone. The lime rock is often beautified by geode-like recesses of lime crystal, and the slabs of lamellar stone so much used for flooring, window-seats and roofing are frequently penciled with exquisite dendritic markings. Often the face of cleavage between blocks of building material is glazed with a native pink. There are a few houses in the villages whose external walls are constructed of regular blocks so arranged as to alternate in a manner resembling checkerwork of pink and white squares. One thought that may occur to an American or European as he looks at the numerous hills and mountains up and down the middle and back of Western Palestine is that never before has he had such a fine opportunity to see the shapes of hills and valleys. For at home he seldom sees the whole, real shape of a hill or a mountain, so covered is it with trees or smaller growth. But here there is very little clothing on the hills. Their knobs and shoulders, cliffs and ribs, are almost as naked of trees as the blue skies above them. The rock layers stand out at the worn edges very plainly. Some hills are banded round and round horizontally with successive layers of rock. Others are made up of layers slightly inclined, and some look like giant clam-shells set down on the land. In yet other hills the twistings and heavings have given the sedimentary layers a vertical position up and down over the mountains, as if they had been tipped over. These bands of rock are usually of limestone interspersed with chunks of chert. Ordinarily the tops of the hills assume a long, sloping, rounded shape because of the soft nature of the rock and the wearing power of the deluging rains.