Not Really Threatened by Moving Sands: Analysis of the Desiccation Theory Dr. Vi K. Ting, the well-known Chin~ ese geologist, speaking last Wednesday before the Royal Asiatic Society fon "Climatic Records and the supposed Desiecation of Northwest China, [Eeterred to the hypothesis that Central Asia, during the past 2,000 years, gradually had been getting drier, and said that, despite the "widespread acceptance of this belief, the opposite was true. That the rivers coming down the northern slope of Kunin. fu Chinese Turkestan, must have had seater volume of water when the settlements there were in existence, nobody world deny, but that did Rot necessarily mean that there ad Been greater rainfall, On. the contrary, ancient documents found in {these very ruins, and protected by only a few fect or inches of gravel, were s0 perfectly preserved that they offered constnsive root that atmosoherle conditions were quite as ary 2000 years ago as they are now.
The only possible explanation. ace cording to Dr. Ting, is that all the vers coming down Kuntun depend almost exclusively upon the glaciers for their water supply and as both past and present day. snowfall not be anything like sume lent to account for the accumulation of such Yarge snow and ice folds, the glaciers. must be remnants of a much earlier and more extensive glaciation and the: water which has been flowing in these lader-fed streams is really fossil in origin.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.