258 •** TH£ DECLIVITIES OF MOUNTAINS^ 



of this phecnomenon, as far as relates to the eaftern and weftern 

 fides of the mountains that extend from north to Couth, but he 

 is filent with refpect to the north and fouth fides of the moun- 

 tains that run from eaft to weft ; nay, he does not feem to have 

 had a juft compreheniion of this phenomenon, for he confiders 

 it conjointly with the general dip of the regions in which thefe 

 mountains exift. Thus he tells us, vol. 1ft, p. 185, that in all 

 continents the general declivity, taking it from the fummit of 

 mountains, is always more rapid on the weftern than on the 

 eaftern fide ; thus the fummit of the chain of the Cordelieres is 

 much nearer to the weftern fliores than to the eaftern ; the chain 

 which divides the whole length of Africa, from the Cape of 

 Good Hope to the mountains of the Moon, is nearer, he fays, 

 to the weftern than to the eaftern feas ; of this however he muft 

 have been ignorant, as that tract of country is ftill unknown. 



The mountains which run from Cape Comorin through the 

 peninfula of India are, he fays, much nearer to the fea on the 

 eaft than on the weft ; he probably meant the contrary, as the 

 fact is evidently fo, and fo he ftates it in the 2d vol. p. 295 ; 

 the fame he tells us may be obferved in iflands and peninfulas, 

 and in mountains. 



and other au- This remarkable circumftance of mountains was notwith- 



thors j ftanding fo little noticed, that in 1792 the author of an excel- 



lent account of the territory of Carltbad in Bohemia, tells us 

 he had made an obfervation, which he had never met with in 

 any phylical defcription of the earth, namely, that the fouthern 

 declivity of all mountains was much fteeper than the northern, 

 which he proves by inftancing the Erzgebirge of Saxony, the 

 Pyrenees, the mountains of Switzerland, Savoy, Carinthia, 

 Tyrole, Moravia, the Carpathian and Mount Hsemus in 

 Turkey, 2, Bergm. Jour. 1792, p. 385, in the note. 



Hermanj /Herman in his, Geology, publithed in 1787, p. 90, has at 



teaft partially mentioned this circumftance, for he fays that the 

 eaftern declivities of all mountains are much gentler and more 

 thickly covered with fecondary ftrata, and to a greater height, 

 than the weftern flanks, which he inftances in the Swedifh and 

 Norwegian mountains, the Alps, the Caucafian, the Appenine 

 and Ouralian mountains ; but the declivities bearing a fouthern 

 or northern afped he does not mention. 



La Methcrie* ^a Metherie, in the 4th vol. of his Theory of the Earth, of 



which the fecond edition appeared in 1797, a work which 



4 abounds 



