t>N THE ORIGIN uF MOUNTAINS. 



tains suggest a variety of thoughts. While some individuals may sit 

 quietly revelling in the glories of the scene, and moralising upon things 

 in general, others may be stirred up to enquire more particularly into 

 the structure of the mountain masses, desiring to know something of 

 the origin of their form and presence. Such a process, as Professor Geikie 

 has remarked, doubtless many a time disenchants a subject of the 

 mystery it may have worn before, yet it never fails to raise up, in our 

 meditative moments, feelings of far deeper wonder than it destroys.* 



Instead of chaos and violence we learn of slow and gradual growth, 

 of changing scenes and successive groups of animal life, intimately con- 

 nected yet differing; and all tell of law and adaptation. We obtain 

 glimpses of time so remote that we cannot fully realise it ; when the land- 

 scape, however different from what it now is, was yet visited by rains, 

 the impressions of whose drops are found on the hardened muds or 

 slates of the old hills, and the coast was battered about by the wild 

 sea- waves, as the old pebble-beds teach us. Then the forms of life, so 

 far as we can tell, were few and inappreciative of the scenes, for the 

 giant Trilobite ( Paradoxides) was. perhaps, the Lord of the Creation. 



We must, however, leave these fanciful scenes, and proceed more 

 seriously to the consideration of the subject we have in hand. And at 

 the outset of our enquiry it may not be undesirable to ask. What is a 

 mountain? Our thoughts, perhaps, return insensibly to the days of 

 our youth and schooling, when rigid definitions were learnt by heart. 

 Such definitions are useful until we begin to think for ourselves, and 

 then we see how unnatural they are. A bay or a gulf, a cape or a 

 headland — often we cannot say which is the more appropriate term to 

 use. And so in turning from the configuration of the land in plan, as 

 we see it on maps, to its configuration in profile or relief, as we see it 

 in section or in model, we cannot by actual admeasurement or by state- 

 ments of height alone distinguish a mountain from a hill. 



In a recently published primer of Geography, by Mr. George Grove, 

 the following passage show-s how variable is the application of the 

 terms: "Mountains (he says) are the largest eminences of a country, 

 and hills the smaller ones — as we say the ' Welsh Mountains,' and the 

 'Surrey Hills.' But this distinction is not always kept up. The 

 ' Mount of Olives ' is a moderate-sized hill, and the ' Neilgherrv 

 Hills' are mountains more than 8,000 feet high. In India, 

 again, the 'Hill States' are territories high up in the northern 

 mountains, and 'going to the hills' means migrating for the hot 

 ■n to Simla or Murree, which lie thousands of feet up on the 

 spurs of the Himalayas. Sometimes, too, a collection of mountains 

 is called a 'mount,' as Mount Lebanon, which is really a range of fifty 

 miles long, and in some places 12,000 feet high." 



If Wl general glance at our principal hills we find them to 



run in tolerably regular ranges or escarpments with gently flowing out- 



MuuLtaiu Archiiectuic. 1&77. 



