NOTES. 



IVOTE A. 



In bringing forward the foregoing statement of facts, and what I regard as the 

 legitimate inferences therefrom, I have not thought it necessary to controvert the 

 prevailing opinions relative to the elevation of mountain chains. 



The grand theory, so beautifully and completely elaborated by E. de Beaumont, 

 and at the present time received by a large number of geologists, may still equally 

 apply to the exposition of the systems of mountain chains : nor indeed does it 

 appear necessary to do more than change the language of description regarding the 

 process of elevation. If my views of accumulation and the results therefrom be 

 correct, then the lines of mountain elevation of De Beaumont are simply lines of 

 original accumulation, and the consequences I have shown to follow. The mountain 

 systems remain the same as before : we simply offer a different explanation of their 

 origin. When we shall have learned, what I now fully believe, that the ancient 

 depositions along shore lines or current lines have produced accumulations which, 

 through subsequent influences, have become the mountain chains, it will be seen 

 that these chains may be as various in their direction as the ancient shore lines, or 

 as the currents traversing the ancient oceans. In one case the explanation of their 

 origin is from later action upon the earth's crust; in the other, the course of the 

 chain and the source of the materials were predetermined and in operation long 

 anterior to the existence of the mountains which they constitute, or the continents 

 of which they form a part. 



The original idea that the dislocations, fractures, or mountain elevations have 

 taken place along the weaker lines of the earth's crust, is shown to be fallacious, 

 from the accumulations known to exist, not only along the Appalachian chain, but 

 also in the Rocky mountains and in other mountain chains. So far, therefore, as 



