different European Chains q/' Mountains. 303 



made known, I have seen that people were surpiised at the cir- 

 cumstance that the chains of the same date were simply parallel 

 to a great circle of the sphere, and did not occur as prolongations 

 of each other. But all that can be inferred from this kind of 

 direction, is merely that the cause, of whatever nature it may be, 

 which has elevated the different mountain chains, while it pro- 

 pagated its action in the plane of a great circle, embraced a zone 

 of a certain breadth, and that the points of less resistance upon 

 the solidified crust do not occur in the direction of a mathemati- 

 cal line, which, indeed, would have been very strange if they 

 had. 



A lady of my acquaintance, to whom I had given a brief 

 verbal account of M. de Beaumont's memoir, wished to dissuade 

 me from publishing an account of it, from a dread^ that the 

 public might be induced by so apparently strange a theory, to 

 infer, that our present geologists bear a strong resemblance to 

 their predecessors. All my efforts to shew her that the raising 

 up of ihe mountains is no longer a gratuitous idea, that it re- 

 sults as a consequence from facts, and that it affords the only 

 explanation hitherto made of the inclination of the strata of the 

 sedimentary formations and of many other phenomena, were ab- 

 solutely fruitless. I then thought of adducing the small raisino-s 

 which have taken place in our own days. The effect produced 

 by this kind of argument, has suggested to me the idea of em- 

 ploying it here. 



No one can deny, that volcanic ejections ultimately form hills, 

 or even mountains of considerable height, upon the surface of 

 the globe. It has been shewn, for example, that the lavas which 

 have issued from Etna, would form a much greater volume 

 than that of the mountain, and the Monte Nuovo, near Naples, 

 was produced by the scorias ejected in the space of forty-eight 

 hours only ; but this is not the kind of phenomenon of which I 

 intend to speak ; the question to be examined is this : Have 

 there been, since the commencement of historical records, por- 

 tions already consolidated of the crust of the earth, which have 

 been raised up in masses by internal causes ? Are these de- 

 posites, which a revolution of the globe posterior to their forma- 



