302 M. Elie de Beaumont o/t the Relative Age of Mountains. 



mountains of the Balearic Islands, and of a part of Spain, as 

 well as Atlas, Taurus, and the Himalayan mountains, may one 

 day be connected. 



" These first results, if they are correct, will form but a small 

 part of those which may be foreseen, when it is considered how 

 many other interruptions the series of sedimentary deposites pre- 

 sents, and how many other systems of mountains lise upon the 

 surface of the globe. 



" The ievf data which I have brought together, do not yet 

 shew the date of the dislocations of several systems of mountains, 

 very different as to their principal direction, such as those be- 

 tween which M. Leopold de Buch has shewn that the soil of 

 Germany is divided. 



" Several indications of interruptions in the series of sedimen- 

 tary deposites are not perhaps so marked in the known parts of 

 Europe, but because the systems of mountains to which they 

 correspond send out no ramification. 



" The appearance of a chain of mountains could have influen- 

 ced very distant countries only by the agitation which it caused 

 in the waters of the sea, and by a greater or less derangement 

 in their level ; — events of a nature similar to that of the sudden 

 and transient inundation, of which indications are found in the 

 archives and traditions of all nations. 



If this historical event were nothing else than the latest of the 

 revolutions of the earth's surface, one would naturally be led to 

 ask, What is the chain of mountains whose appearance ascends to 

 the same date .? and perhaps it might be remarked, that the 

 chain of the Andes, whose volcanic spiracles are still generally in 

 activity, forms the most extended, the sharpest, and the least 

 worn of any that the present exterior of the globe exhibits. 



