as advocated by M. Elie de Beaumont. 149 



xu e. karte von ganzeii Gehirgssystem d. Himalaya, 1832, p. 

 10.) Dr Hardie gives it more accurately perhaps a direction 

 N. 25° W. to S. 25° E. If it were parallel to the chain of the 

 Alps, it would have a more easterly direction. The cretaceous 

 shelly deposits on its summits, and the gently inclined molasse 

 strata at its southern base, would lead us to suppose that its last 

 upheavings took place at the tertiary epoch, or perhaps after the 

 molasse. Excepting in the valleys, primary blocks have been 

 observed only on the sides of the Indau Kooh. 



The analogy of position and fertility in Lombardy and the 

 valley of the Ganges, pointed out by Professor Ritter and M. 

 de Beaumont, is acoidental, and is the consequence of the direc- 

 tion of the waters of the Po and the Ganges in longitudinal 

 valleys at the base of high ranges of hills. It has been sup- 

 posed that the valley of the Indus communicates with that of 

 the Ganges by a narrow and strait neck ; and yet Dr Hardie 

 found, to the south-west of Delhi, between the two valleys, a 

 considerable chain of hills, the Neilgerrhi, 60 miles in length, and 

 sometimes attaining a height of 5000 feet. 



M. de Beaumont now gives up his Deluge Historique men- 

 tioned in his first edition, and, like Mr Sedgwick, beheves that 

 it was only a local event (p. 661). He thinks with Mr Lyell, 

 and other geologists of the old and the modern schools, that " les 

 causes qui ont produit les phenomenes geologiques, subsistent 

 encore, et que la traflquillite dont nous jouissons aujourd'hui 

 est due k leur sommeil bien plutot qu' a leur aneantissement," 

 (p. QQ%^ He differs, in this respect, from Brongniart's opinion 

 (Tableau des Terrains) ; but, in the mean time, he returns to the 

 ideas of this last geologist, and to my own, in supposing that the 

 creating or modifying causes have formerly shewn an energy su- 

 perior to that with which they have been acting since the esta- 

 blishment of actual societies, and that there have been periods 

 of comparative tranquillity, (p. 663.) In this respect he is far 

 from agreeing with Mr Lyell. 



The elevation of mountain chains cannot be ascribed to the 

 continued operation of Plutonic action, but we must rather, with 

 Cordier, and other philosophers, seek for the cause in the " re- 

 froidissement seculaire," that is the gradual diffusion of the pri- 

 mordial heat to which our planet owes its spheroidal form, and 



