ALTERATION IN POSITION OF STRATIFIED ROCKS. 45 



were forced from beneath, not in the mass as they 

 are seen by us on the surface of the globe, but in a 

 state of fusion through clefts or fissures in the crust 

 of the earth, and which are represented to us in 

 geological sections as not of great width, is it so 

 that the formation of those clefts or fissures is a suf- 

 ficient cause for the bendings or inflections of strata 

 throughout entire districts, and at distances from 

 those fissures often very remote ? 



66. If a displacement of the strata in the crust of 

 the earth from their original horizontal position to a 

 position more or less inclined to the horizon, has 

 been effected by the upheaving of igneous matter 

 from beneath, how comes it that entire districts of 

 country do occur in which this alteration in the posi- 

 tion of the strata has taken place, but in which 

 geologists have not discovered throughout the whole 

 extent of those districts any trace whatever of 

 igneous rocks or igneous action ? 



67- Which is the cause or which the effect? 

 Was it by the eruption of igneous matter from be- 

 neath that the strata were made to shift from a 

 horizontal position to a position more or less inclined 

 to the horizon ? or was it under the pressure and 

 friction of enormous masses of strata while shifting 

 from a horizontal to an inclined position, that the 



