354 ORIGIN OF SPURS FROM MOUNTAIN CHAINS. 



mountain spurs form peninsulas which point to the south, it is only 

 because the depression of the basin between Asia Minor and Spain, 

 is coupled with great uplifting of the complicated folded mass of the 

 Alps to the north, just as the north to south chains of Asia are spurs 

 formed in consequence of the elevation of the mountain axis of Asia. 

 North of the Alps other chains at right angles to the main chain, as 

 though they were spurs, slope towards the North Sea, though the 

 plain of North Germany is now raised too high for the water to divide 

 them into peninsulas. 



The Vosges and the Schwarzwald both run northward, and the 

 Bohmerwald may perhaps be regarded as another range placed as 

 though it were a northern spur of the Alps ; just as the Sudetic Alps 

 and Riesengebirge are parallel chains lying farther north and depen- 

 dent on the Carpathians, but more denuded, and of older origin. The 

 irregularities of direction of the chains and their deflections are 

 governed, it would seem, by the directions of more ancient mountains 

 which interfere with the flexures of newer date. And it would even 

 seem that mountain chains of ancient date parallel to each other may 

 come to play the part of spurs to a newer mountain range. 



It might be reasonably urged that, in the same way that lateral 

 spurs, running north and south, are given off by the Alps, so the 

 mountain systems of Europe and Asia are to be regarded as a grand 

 series of chains which are similarly dependent upon the more ancient 

 disturbances which originated the Ural chain and Caspian Sea. The 

 mountain system of Central Asia, however, presents this remarkable 

 difference from that of Europe, that whereas the western region is 

 broken by the predominant synclinal depression of the Mediterranean 

 valley, the eastern portion has the corresponding area entirely up- 

 heaved, so as to constitute the great tableland between Turkestan and 

 China, limited by the Himalayas and the Altai Mountains. The 

 distribution of mountains in Asia shows that the peninsulas which 

 run south are the effects of the formation of lateral chains, crumpled 

 up at right angles to the grand upheaval of the mountain axis to the 

 north, and in consequence of that upheaval. 



This predominant direction of so much of the land of the Old 

 World, in an east to west line, is no less remarkable than the cor- 

 responding direction of the remainder of the land of the world from 

 north to south ; but these different directions of land masses are to 

 be regarded as mutually dependent, in the same way as a mountain 

 chain and its spurs. If we crumple the surface of one side of a globe 

 into ridges running east and west, the material of the crust is so used 

 up by the contractions that no corresponding series of ridges having 

 the same direction could be developed on the opposite side of the 

 globe, for the reason that we have already indicated in explaining the 

 origin of lateral spurs. But since the ridges running east and west do 

 not use up on a large scale material of the earth's crust in an east and 

 west direction, it follows that the predominant contractions which are 

 formed on the opposite side of the globe must develop mountain 

 ridges running from north to south. Thus the Andes and Rocky 



