URING the autumn and winter of I930, acting under the instructions of Dr. Sven Hedin,1 the writer was engaged in a preliminary reconnaissance in the foothills of the Kunlun. The object of the survey was a search for Quaternary deposits, which might be expected to occur there, and the determination of the rate of recession of the late Quaternary glaciers, especially because of the bearing of the question on the much debated "desiccation" of the Tarim basin during the last two millenniums. Whilst the fieldwork was not then completed and the results can only be stated in tentative form, the writer ventures to publish this preliminary statement in the hope that it may draw the attention of other travelers in eastern Turkestan to these problems and he may benefit from their criticisms. It is strange that no evidences of submontane moraines of Quaternary age have been recorded from the southern margin of the Tarim basin. The huge quantities of Quaternary sediments in the basin and the abundant evidences of former extensive glaciation in the southern Himalayas, where at places the glaciers reached the plains, induce us to expect similar conditions here also.