FOSSIL PEDIGREES 109 



was not disturbed by the huge rock masses which slid over 

 it for such great distances. Speaking of the Bow River Gap, 

 he says: "The fault plane here is nearly horizontal, and the 

 two formations, viewed from the valley appear to succeed one 

 another conformably," and then having noted that the under- 

 lying Cretaceous shales are "very soft," he adds that they 

 "have suffered little by the sliding of the limestones over 

 them." (An. Rpt. 1886, part D., pp. 33, 34, 84.) Credat 

 ludaeus Apella, non ego! 



Schuchert describes the Alpine overthrust as follows: "The 

 movement was both vertical and thrusting from the south 

 and southeast, from the southern portion of Tethys, elevat- 

 ing and folding the Tertiary and older strata of the northern 

 areas of this mediterranean into overturned, recumbent, and 

 nearly horizontal folds, and pushing the southern or Lepontine 

 Alps about 60 miles to the northward into the Helvetic region. 

 Erosion has since carved up these overthrust sheets, leaving 

 remnants lying on foundations which belong to a more north- 

 ern portion of the ancient sea. Most noted of these residuals 

 of overthrust masses is the Matterhorn, a mighty mountain 

 without roots, a stranger in a foreign geologic environment," 

 (Pirsson & Schuchert's "Textbook of Geology," 1920, II, 

 p. 924.) 



With such a convenient device as the "overthrust" at his 

 disposal, it is hard to see how any possible concrete sequence 

 of fossiliferous strata could contradict the preconceptions of 

 an evolutionary geologist. The hypotheses and assumptions 

 involved, however, are so tortuous and incredible, that nothing 

 short of fanatical devotion to the theory of transformism 

 can render them acceptable. "Examples," says Price, "of 

 strata in the 'wrong' order were first reported from the Alps 

 nearly half a century ago. Since that time, whole armfuls of 

 learned treatises in German, in French, and in English have 

 been written to explain the wonderful conditions there found. 

 The diagrams that have been drawn to account for the strange 

 order of the strata are worthy to rank with the similar ones 



