Ds. - | Le V2. var eo 
268 DR. THOMAS STERRY HUNT ON THE 
§ 134, The White Mountains, the Green Mountains, the Taconic Hills, the Highland 
range, and in fact all the crystalline stratified rocks of the Atlantic region, are parts of 
the great eozoic land, which bounded, to the south and east, the Cambrian sea of eastern 
North America. The same groups of rocks then, as now, moreover, stretched along the 
northern and western borders of the same vast sea, which deposited its sediments alike 
over them all. 
§ 135. The successive movements of the earth’s crust, with foldings, often with inversions 
and with dislocations, which have at intervals affected the paleozoic rocks in the eastern 
portion of this great basin, in proximity to the Atlantic belt, throughout its entire length, 
have, it is true, been attended with uplifts of the strata on the eastern side of the disloca- 
tions ; which have, to some extent, compensated for the loss of substance from these ancient 
crystalline rocks by sub-aérial decay and erosion.. These movements, as we have had 
occasion to show in the preceeding pages, have in many cases involved in their folds the 
superincumbent paleozoic strata, thus giving rise to a deceptive appearance of infra- 
position of these newer rocks. The fractures, which often accompany these folds, still afford 
passage, in some cases, to thermal waters ; and such waters, in past times, by their action 
upon the strata along their course, have produced local changes, by the development of 
crystalline minerals ; a pheuomenon which has been invoked as an evidence of the paleo- 
' goic age of the crystalline schists. The discussion of the evidences of this, and of various 
questions which arise in this connection, as well as that of the different hypotheses which 
have been put forth with regard to the age of the Taconian rocks, will be taken up in 
succeeding chapters. 

