Lesley.] 188 [March. 



infinite series, beginning at the uplift and still in progress. An 

 intermediate view, held perhaps by some eclectics, supposes a succes- 

 sion of denuding actions of unknown force and indefinite number. 



As to the Appalachian region of the United States, I think that 

 the principal special objection to the theory of one cataclysm (apart 

 from general considerations) has not been mentioned, or at least 

 clearly stated. And yet it seems to me of great force. It is a de- 

 duction from the fact that the estuary bed of the New Red deposit, 

 taken as a grand whole, can hardly be regarded otherwise than as a 

 part of the Post Carboniferous denuded surface, and therefore subse- 

 quently formed to the great cataclysm supposed by that theory to 

 have produced that surface. For the surface of the New Red is 

 eroded exactly in the style, and in the direction of, and in entire 

 harmony with the erosion of the surface of the Coal ; which of course 

 would make the supposed cataclysm subsequent to both. Two cata- 

 clysms being therefore required, a new difficulty appears. 



Supposing the first cataclysm to have eroded the palaeozoic areas, 

 so that the deepest valleys of erosion nearest the Atlantic seaboard 

 could be filled in with New Red deposits, why were these deposits 

 restricted to the New Red estuaries, so well known as to need no 

 description here ? Every one is aware that New Red is nowhere 

 seen behind the range of the South Mountain or Blue Ridge. Yet 

 there are plenty of gaps wide and deep enough to let it through. If 

 it had ever been deposited in the great Lower Silurian Valley behind 

 that range, no cataclysm can be supposed to have acted with such 

 consummate skill and completeness, that not a hillock or corner bit 

 should have remained to tell the story of where its outspread masses 

 bad originally lain. 



If now, to meet this difficulty, the Cataclysmist brings down the 

 date of his first agency to Post Secondary days, and imagines the 

 New Red rocks to have been excluded from the Great Valley because 

 in fact, no such valley, and no gaps leading into it, had as yet been 

 formed, he not only encounters the old difficulty of providing its es- 

 tuary bed for the New Red, but in addition to that, the awkward 

 statement that the gigantic anticlinals of tha Palaeozoic age, once 

 made, remained, uplifting their more than Andean or Himalayan 

 masses in the sky, (with all the climatal consequences of such a 

 supposition), during all the ages through which the so-called Per- 

 mian of Kansas, and the New Red, and the so-called Oolite of the 

 Atlantic seaboard, were depositing their layers. 



And when he has settled all this properly, the discussion will re- 



