3 1 Geological Society. 



the whole of these vast regions the principal inequalities range 

 nearly parallel to each other, and have a mean bearing about west- 

 north-west and east-south-east. So far again the statement is purely 

 geographical, and its truth is seen at once in glancing over any good 

 physical map of Europe; and will be still more clearly comprehend- 

 ed, by comparing some of the principal ranges of colour on Von 

 Buch's great geological map with the bearing of the Pyrenees. But 

 it is followed by a series of co-extensive geological phsenomena. 



Through all parts of this great system, formations of the age of the 

 green-sand and chalk have had an enormous development, and with- 

 out exception, their strata are ruptured and contorted, and often lifted 

 up to the very pinnacles of the mountains. But on the contrary, 

 wherever any tertiary formations approach the confines of this system, 

 they are stated to be either in a position almost as horizontal as the 

 surface of the waters in which they were deposited ; or if they have 

 been moved at all, it is by forces uninfluenced by the parallels of the 

 older chains. And the same three conclusions, with a mere difference 

 of dates, follow here as in the former case. All the great parallel 

 ridges and chains of this second system must have been suddenly and 

 violently elevated, and at a period of time between the deposition of 

 the chalk and the commencement of the tertiary groups ; and the cor- 

 responding change in organic types is, in this instance, still more 

 striking than in the former. 



3. The third system embraces a great number of parallel inequa- 

 lities, bearing about north-north-east and west-south-west, and in- 

 cludes the whole Western Alps, from the neighbourhood of Marseilles 

 to the volcanic ridges near the foot of the Lake of Constance. And 

 by an hypothetical, but I think probable extension, it also takes in the 

 whole of the great Scandinavian chain. 



I cannot enter on the elaborate and satisfactory details by which 

 it is proved that all these great parallel inequalities in the region of 

 the Western Alps had their origin after the tertiary molasse, a deposit 

 partaking of all the elevations and contortions of the older strata 

 that the elevatory movements were sudden and violent, and com- 

 menced at a time when tribes of mammalia (the remains of which 

 in England are hardly ever found except in the superficial gravel) 

 flourished in many parts of Europe that these movements were im- 

 mediately succeeded by great horizontal deposits of old diluvial gravel 

 at the base of the Western Alps j and probably also by that vast off- 

 shot of Scandinavian rocks which lie scattered over the northern 

 plains of Germany. 



4. The fourth system embraces many great parallel ridges having 

 a range about east-north-east and west-south west, and includes 

 several considerable chains in Provence, and nearly the whole chain 

 of the Eastern Alps from the great flexure in the region of Mont 

 Blanc to the Alps of the states of Austria. 



It would be impossible to follow the author through details occupy- 

 ing a large portion of his volume. I may however state, that he proves 

 the formations of the Eastern and Western Alps not to pass into each 

 other by any flexure of the strata coinciding with the bend of the 



whole 



