While engaged, in the deserts south of the Helmand River, in the delimitation of the boundary between Afghanistan and Baluchistan, I made a small collection of such rock-specimens and fossils as I thought were characteristic of the geology of the country. I regret to say that I am not myself a geologist, else my collection would have been perhaps a more methodical one, and would probably have been supplemented by notes on the positions and surroundings of the specimens collected, and on other points of geological interest. I say perhaps, because even if I had been the most learned of geologists I doubt whether political and other duties would have allowed me time to do more than I did. At any rate my collection would not have been a larger one, for the simple fact that, owing to long marches and want of water and food, our transport-camels were almost unfit for work, and the mortality among them rendered it a matter of difficulty for us to carry even the necessaries of life. Turning now to the physical geography of the country, one finds in it various natural phenomena on a gigantic scale, the study of which I venture to think may throw light on similar phenomena seen elsewhere on a smaller scale. I t is a country almost un-inhabited by man, where man has left nature to do as she pleases undisturbed. If you look at the map (P1. XVIII), you see high mountain-ranges fringing it on the