DYNAMICAL GEOLOGY. 299 



granitic and gneissose masses of rock in the highest chain of 

 the Alps as the chief "centres of elevation" during Alpine 

 upheaval, and applied to them the distinctive name of Central 

 Massives. 



Some remarks of Buch about the direction of the mountain- 

 systems in Germany were destined to bear greater fruits than 

 that thinker at the time realised. His paper On the 

 Geognostic Systems of Germany, published in 1824, noted that 

 four systems of strike had to be distinguished, the Netherlands 

 or North-West system, the North-East system, the Rhine or 

 North-South system, and the Alpine or East-West system. 

 This observation of Buch gave the impulse to the works of a 

 gifted French geologist. 



Elie de Beaumont 1 belonged to the most enthusiastic ad- 

 herents of the Volcanist doctrines. Many years of geological 

 surveying in the Vosges and Ardennes mountains, in the 

 mountains of Provence, in the Dauphine and at Mont Blanc, 

 had shaped in his mind new ideas about the origin of the 

 mountains, and in 1829 he made these known in the Annales 

 of the French Academy. Mountain-structure is discussed in 



1 Leonce Elie de Beaumont, born on the 25th September 1798, at 

 Canon (Dep. Calvados), belonged to a noble family of Normandy. His 

 preparatory studies were conducted in the Henri IV. Seminary in Paris, 

 and after a brilliant course in the Polytechnic School in Paris, he entered 

 the School of Mines in 1819, to devote himself to Mineralogy. Here he 

 attracted the attention of the Professor of Geology, Brochant de Villiers, and 

 together with his fellow-student Dufrenoy accompanied the Professor in 

 1822 to Great Britain, in order to become acquainted with the mines in 

 that country and to get insight into the British methods of geological sur- 

 veying. Elie de Beaumont and Dufrenoy then set to work in 1825 to 

 prepare a geological map of France. At first they worked under the 

 direction of Brochant de Villiers, afterwards they continued independently, 

 and in eighteen years the map was completed. Its publication exerted a 

 powerful influence on the whole development of geology in France, and 

 secured for the two authors a. distinguished place amongst their scientific 

 contemporaries. In 1827, Elie de Beaumont was elected Professor of 

 Geology in the School of Mines, and in 1835 he succeeded his patron, 

 Brochant de Villiers, as General Inspector of Mines. He held in addition 

 several high governmental offices, and used his influential position invariably 

 for the good, of his colleagues. After the conclusion of the general geo- 

 logical survey of France, Elie de Beaumont directed the special geological 

 survey until his death on the 2ist September 1874. The geological fame 

 of Elie de Beaumont rests on his admirable field-work and his writings con- 

 cerning the age and origin of mountain-systems. An account of his life and 

 his contributions to science was published by Sainte-Claire Deville at Paris 

 in 1878. 



