218 Professor Hoffmann on the Geological hives tig ations 



Alps and its internal relations, his views were developed re- 

 garding the mode of formation of that vast display of mountains, 

 as well as of all the mountain-chains of the earth. Proceed- 

 ing from the idea of a connection of the whole great moun- 

 tains of the Alps, as an independently existing mass, the pa- 

 - rallel direction of all chains composing it had become an ob- 

 ject of his attention. This feature was first noticed by Saus- 

 sure, and was enthusiastically followed up by Ebel. 



Buch made the discovery, that the Eastern Alps, compared 

 with the Western, possess a remarkable peculiarity. After 

 the whole mountain mass, from the northern extremity of the 

 Mont-Blanc chain to Austria, has retained uninterruptedly the 

 direction from SW. to NE., it undergoes a sort of bifurcation 

 near the small town of Obdach, in the neighbourhood of 

 Gartz. One portion continues its old direction in the Wiener 

 Wald, then sinks towards the plain of Lower Hungary, in 

 which the Neusiedler See lies, but again rises in the form of 

 low ranges of hills, which confine the Danube near Presburg, 

 and, along with the primitive rocks which there present them- 

 selves, passes with a similar direction into the rapidly ascending 

 Carpathians. The southern portion, or the principal mass of 

 the mountains, directs its course from Gratz in a remarkable 

 manner, abruptly at right angles to its former direction ; and 

 it passes in a south-easterly direction into the high mass of 

 mountains w^hich extend through Carinthia and Carniola, by 

 Idria and Trieste, to the peninsula of Istria, the coasts of Dal- 

 matia, and the innumerable long islands forming fragments of 

 parallel chains. This line of direction is repeated in the 

 mountains of Bosnia, Servia, Bulgaria, and in the Balkan, and 

 the eastern termination of this vast mass of mountains is ge- 

 nerally considered to be at the prominent Cape Emineh, on the 

 coast of the Black Sea. 



It is particularly remarkable, and it is an observation which 

 we owe to the investigations of Von Buch, that precise- 

 ly at the point where the central stem of the Alps divides, 

 near Obdach, and in the opening between the two diverging 

 branches, there occur hills of volcanic origin, of Trachyte, a 

 feature which does not present itself previously in the whole 

 region of the Alps. He has described the discovery of these 

 volcanic hills, and the phenomena they present, in the Trans- 



