420 On the Geological Age of the White Mountains. 
it affords of the excessively crystalline or metamorphic condition 
of the Apalachian deposits in the district supposed to have under- 
gone this ancient elevation. Upon this supposition these dis- 
tricts, embracing nearly all New England and the Atlantic slope 
‘of the Middle and Southern states, were the areas of chief 
movement, while the other portions of the Apalachian ‘sea were 
but slightly affected. Here therefore the crust underwent the 
maximum degree of dislocation and of heating, and the newly 
precipitated surface sediments were rent, brought into contact 
with the intensely heated veins and dykes of internal molten 
matter, and baked and probably partially crystallized, while those 
of the remoter and still submersed tracts were but slightly acted 
on. As these districts, the southeastern and northeastern parts of 
the Apalachian basin, were the first to be invaded by igneous ac- 
tion, so they continued, as it would seem, to be the quarter 
where this action was oftenest repeated, and where at each epoch 
of disturbance, especially that which witnessed the final drainage 
of the Apalachian sea, it was greatly the most energetic. The 
whole structure of the Apalachian chain supports this conclusion ; 
the truth of which is confirmed by the excessively folded and 
dislocated condition of the strata along this whole belt of country, 
and the gradation to features of less and less disturbance as we 
cross the strata westward still further, by the progressive flatten- 
ing of the anticlinal arches, by the decreasing amount of erystal- 
lization in the rocks, and even the increasing quantity of the vol- 
atile bitumen in the coal. When we advert to this repetition of 
igneous action along this chief belt of voleanie force, upon the 
early elevated Primal and Matinal deposits, we can no longer 
wonder at their highly metamorphic condition, nor hesitate to im- 
pute to such cause any extent of lithological alteration exhibited 
by portions of the strata, even to the aping of true granite and 
gneiss. 
The suggestion we have here made, that the Primal and Mati- 
nal rocks of the White Mountains emerged from the waters in 
the Levant period, and were elevated into anticlinal and synelinal 
flexures with a different strike from those of the more extensive 
crust undulations of the late carboniferous date, offers a natura 
cause, we think, for the superior elevation of their outcrops in 
this mountain chain, compared with their height in the Green 
Mountains and other districts where only one system of axes, Up- 
