140 Dr Boue on the Elevation of Mountain Charn.s, 



Upon this point 1 must again urge my objections in regard 

 to the Erzgebirge, although I cannot now bring forward for this 

 purpose the position of the coal measures upon the older up- 

 heaved strata of that chain, because M. de Beaumont now ad- 

 mits these traces of his first system. As the direction of N.E. 

 to S.W. is frequent in the Erzgebirge, I do not see why this 

 chain should be regarded as belonging to the seventh rather than 

 to the first system. But I must still add, that the celebrated 

 Professor Naumann of Freyberg has given, as the mean direc- 

 tion of the slaty rocks of that district, h. 7.4, or from W. N.W. 

 to E. S.E. 



After the primary slaty rocks were raised up in various di- 

 rections from N.E. to S. W., and from W. N.W. to E. S.E. 

 in the Erzgebirge ; from N.W. to S.E., from N. N.W. to 

 S. S.E., from N. N.E. to S. S.W., and from W. N.W. to 

 E. S.E. in the Reisengebirge ; and from E. N.E. to W\ S.W. 

 in the other chains of Southern Bohemia ; that last country 

 must, at a very early period, have formed a great cavity or Cas- 

 pian Sea, in which were deposited the old coal formation, red 

 secondary sandstone, chalky rocks, and some tertiary argillace- 

 ous beds, with lignite. Of all these formations, the greensand 

 and inferior chalk are the only ones which extend beyond the 

 basin to the flat country surrounding the circular mass of hills. 

 These peculiar circumstances of position prove as completely the 

 antiquity of the annular mass of mountains, as does the circum- 

 stance of its not having been anywhere cut through before the 

 deposition of the chalk ; so that none of the formations between 

 the secondary sandstone and greensand could have been de- 

 posited there. The only other supposition which suggests itself, 

 is to imagine that the Bohemian cavity which received the 

 chalk strata was formed by a sinking down before the cretaceous 

 period, and that it had previously been an undulating table- 

 land, — an hypothesis which would lead us to consider the coal 

 measures and the secondary red sandstone as fluviatilc and ter- 

 restrial deposits. But the presence of a trilobite limestone 

 would render an additional hypothesis necessary, viz. tile repeti- 

 tion of a sinking down, during which process an upheaving en 

 masse must have happened, and this is certainly a very compli- 

 cated explanation. (See my Mem. Geolog. vol. i. p. 71) 



