Stratification 
and Structure. 
142 Professor Sepawick on the 
same direction, must necessarily agree in some of their charac- 
teristic features. Amidst many beauties and many objects of 
interest which are common to them all, each possesses some pecu- 
liarities of structure which would well deserve a separate illus- 
tration. They all agree in exhibiting the most obvious traces of 
powerful denuding forces. The vallies are all nearly perpendicular 
to the general bearing of the strata, and often exhibit, on their 
opposite sides, a succession of beds which tally with each other 
even in their minutest subdivisions. In not one of them is there 
an indication of dislocation, contortion, or subsidence, sufficient to 
account for the present inequalities of the surface. On the con- 
trary, the salient and re-entering angles which determine the 
present directions of the descending waters, and still more the 
various ramifications of the rivulets near the higher parts of the 
chain, plainly indicate the action of diluvian torrents. Any one 
who considers such a conclusion as doubtful or hypothetical, 
has only to examine the enormous beds of transported materials 
which are accumulated on the sides of the transverse vallies, 
and near the gorges where they first enter into the plains. He 
will there find the broken fragments of the rocks which once 
filled up the inequalities of the higher region, not only agree- 
ing, in every respect, with the strata from which they have 
been separated, but heaped up in those very places which first 
offered a lodgement for them, after being propelled by the de- 
scending currents. 
There are other phenomena, originating in the physical 
structure of the country, which are common to almost all the 
vallies before alluded to. For some distance above the places 
where the rivers first enter on the lower region, the waters 
descend down planes which are less inclined than the 
neighbouring strata. Hence, in ascending any of these trans- 
yerse vallies, we pass over the outgoings of a succession of 
