144 Dr Bone on the Elevation of Mountain Chains, 



tions (p. 643.) ; but with regard to the pretty sinuous line from 

 London to the mouth of the Danube, the southern border of an 

 immense sea, M. de Beaumont does well to remark that the line 

 is undulating, for I think it is so much so, that, leaving the 

 gulfs out of consideration, and supposing it parallel to his Py- 

 reneo-apennine direction, I do not see the conclusion he can 

 draw from it, unless he supposes that the configuration of the 

 whole of Europe was modelled at that period according to that 

 system, a proposition which has still to be proved. And M. de 

 Beaumont himself tells us, that " ce grand espace presentait 

 aussi des irregularites resultant de dislocations plus anciennes 

 et dirigees autrement," (p. 644). 



The tenth system of elevation, is that of the islands of Corsica 

 and Sardinia, and its period of formation that between the de- 

 position of the inferior tertiary strata of Paris and the second 

 tertiary formation, commencing with the Fontainebleau sand- 

 stone. The valleys of the Loire, of the Allier, and the Rhone, 

 are supposed to have owed their origin to this system of disloca- 

 tions. Like Sickler (Idien zu e. Vulcanischen Erdglobus, Wei- 

 mar, 1812, 8vo.) M. de Beaumont connects with it some basal- 

 tic cones of Northern Germany ; while Keferstein arranges the 

 basalts of the same country in parallel zones, running east and 

 west (Die Basalte von Nord Deutschland 1820). 



The tenth system seems to have been established on grounds 

 too unsatisfactory ; for the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia have 

 been too little examined to allow of their being taken as its tvpe. 

 ( Journ. de Geol. v. 3. 355, and Resume for 1832, p. cvi.) 



The direction N.S. is found also in the beds of a part of Scan- 

 dinavia (Wermeland, Dalecarlia) ; in the Oural ; the Aldan 

 hills in Siberia ; in the S.W. Hartz ; in the upper part of the 

 Leine valley in Hanover ; on the borders of the Weser and 

 Fulda; in some hills near Paderborn, &c. Now, the epoch 

 of all those upheavings does not accord with that at which M. de 

 Beaumont supposes that Corsica and Sardinia assumed their 

 present configuration. 



In speaking of the eleventh system, or that of the Western 

 Alps, M. de Beaumont agrees with the geologists who preceded 

 him, in believing that this chain has been formed by a certain 

 numb,er of elevations, repeated at long intervals of time, and 



