124 ONTOLOGY. 



sages. These transverse fissures are the transverse valleys, 

 which are consequently less long and deep. 



560. The mountains originate of themselves. They 

 do not properly originate, but valleys only originate, and 

 the ridges of the crystal laminae afford the mountains. 

 The mountains have not been originally upheaved above 

 the surface of the earth, nor the valleys depressed. A val- 

 ley, which is several miles broad, must originally have been 

 several miles deep, and the mountain wall consequently 

 several miles high. The earth at its origin was a cloven 

 and jagged polyhedron, a polyhedric star, such as the 

 moon is still. 



561. The mountains are not therefore large crystals, 

 which crystallized above the surface of the earth. They 

 are only crystal laminae, and may be as irregular as pos- 

 sible in form ; for they are ruptured crystals. 



562. The water, which from the beginning had covered 

 the polyhedron, now sunk into the primary valleys. 

 From the water resulted the recent and final crystal- 

 lizations, and these deposited themselves in the valleys, 

 upon the level ground and the flanks of the mountains ; 

 and thus the fathomless primary valleys have been in part 

 filled up. There are no longer any primary valleys upon 

 the earth. 



563. After the water was once confined in narrow 

 canals, it must begin to flow, and by the force of its cur- 

 rent many a steep primary wall must have fallen in, been 

 crumbled into ruins, and either been left upon the spot 

 or washed away Diluvial drift rocks (Triimmersteine), 

 Nagelfluhe, Stratified rocks. 



564. The principal direction of the water was formerly, 

 as it is even now, determined by the rotation of the 

 earth ; it flowed therefore from east to west under the 

 equator, from north-east to south-west in our temperate 

 zones, and pretty well from the north or from the poles 

 toward the equator in the frigid zones. 



565. The primary valleys, which had originated in 

 these directions, were more excavated by aqueous agency 

 than those which ran in other directions, new valleys 



