12 Anniversary Address of the 



several miles beneath the surface, have mineral masses been 

 injected by lava, or dissolved by thermal waters, or corroded 

 by acids, or permeated by steam, or impregnated with mag- 

 nesia, sulphuric acid, or other substances introduced in a 

 sraseous form ! What obliteration has there not been of 

 organic remains, and of the signs of stratification, in the 

 course of the tertiary ages which have elapsed since the 

 nummulitic strata and incumbent fucoid grits lay submerged 

 beneath the ocean ! 



Sir Roderick Murchison has given a graphic description of 

 the foldings, so sharp and so often repeated, of a grand suc- 

 cession of sedimentary strata in the Alps. Among other 

 examples, he has cited one case of extraordinary inversion 

 of large masses in the canton of Glarus, examined by him- 

 self and M. Escher, where a limestone of the Jurassic period 

 containing ammonites is, on the one hand, " overlaid by a 

 zone of talc and mica schist, having in parts quite the aspect 

 of a primary rock;" while in another direction it is continu- 

 ously superimposed for miles on beds of highly inclined flysch 

 of eocene age.* 



It seems that in the course of the stupendous movements 

 which have raised these modern beds to the height of 8000 

 feet above the sea, and caused portions of them to become 

 crystalline or metamorphic, large masses of the solid Juras- 

 sic limestones of the Oxfordian age have been pushed bodily 

 out of their place, and planted unconformably on the edges 

 of strata of the nummulitic series. Our indefatigable col- 

 league naturally shrinks from offering any explanation of so 

 marvellous and anomalous a state of things, extending as it 

 does over a considerable area. In attempting to estimate 

 such gigantic movements, the powers of imagination, he 

 says, are at fault ; and " surely," he adds, " it is not unphi- 

 losophical to believe that in those days the crust of the earth 

 was affected by forces of infinitely greater intensity than 

 those which now prevail.*" In particular, he regards the 

 apparent inversion of the tertiary molasse along the flanks 



* Quart. Journ. of Geol. Soc, vol. v. p. 246. 



