THE MOUNTAIN. 81 



number and something of the geological and mineralogical 

 character of the separate masses called formations.* 



Some American geologists who object to old names and 

 classes have attempted a new nomenclature of the pile. 

 These efforts are somewhat fanciful and far-fetched, but at 

 the same time contain suggestions founded in reason upon 

 which to base its terminology, f 



In this hasty enumeration of the rocks of the mountain, 

 it would not be desirable to dwell on points of purely theo- 

 retical or scientific import, as an elaborate treatise in this 

 department would require a volume or volumes, and then 

 leave the subject unexhausted. 



The simple statement of what is actually there, the far- 

 off hows, whys, and wherefores omitted, is all that can be 

 required or be of interest to the general observer. Some 

 account of the material fitting in and forming a certain part 

 of the rocky circle of the globe, that segment of the great 

 arch in the district called the Appalachian mountain-chain, 

 is all that would be expected or demanded in a general 

 schedule of the Mountain's effects. On far-reaching, world- 

 wide geological theories, or all-embracing formulae of the 

 organization of planets or primordial patterns of habitable 

 globes, there is no excuse for dwelling in this recitation. 

 The philosophy of the wrinkled and wonderfully-plicated, 

 the waved and folded condition of the earth's crust in the 

 region under consideration, whether from the result of "ac- 

 tual billows in the fluid mass upon which the crust floated, 

 excited by the sudden rupturing and instantaneous collaps- 

 ing of the crust, rent by the tension of highly elastic vapors, 

 etc.,"J or from the power of " earthquakes to raise perma- 

 nent anticlinals," or "from the contortions produced by sub- 

 sidence from the collapse of larger arcs upon smaller seg- 

 ments of the sphere of the earth," belongs to the student's 

 chapter of theories in geological dynamics. But a short 

 and hurried recitation of the formations may be necessary 



* See vertical section. 



f For an attempt of this kind, see the Messrs. Rogers's Classifica- 

 tion, page 101. J H. D. Rogers. 



