258 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



A fault, however powerful, could scarcely have produced 

 an inversion to the extent of 60°. It seems probable that 

 the fault only tilted the beds on end, and pushing them 

 slightly over the vertical, left gravitation to finish the inver- 

 sion by causing them to sink backwards on themselves till 

 they came to rest at their present inclination. The inversion 

 is not always so regular as the accompanying sections indi- 

 cate. In an excavation to the W. of Goslar, where material 

 for a railway embankment was being excavated in Sept. 

 1882, the marls and limestone beds of the Kenper and 

 Muschelkalk were seen bent sharply over thus <, the beds 

 represented by the upper limb of the figure dipping in 

 towards the Harz at 40° to 60°, and those below dipping 

 away from the mountains at 50°. This sharp inversion may 

 have been produced by the falling back of the beds in the 

 way indicated. The inverted marls were at places much 

 crushed and contorted. 



Murchison was inclined to consider the granite as the 

 upheaving agent, but from what has been said it wiU be 

 evident that the granite and the upheaval can have had 

 no immediate connection. 



9. Denudation and Age of the Modern Harz. 



A. Demidation. — The fact that no traces of the Mesozoic 

 rocks are to be found on the Harz is no proof whatever that 

 they did not once completely cover that area. The upheaval 

 began before the end of the Cretaceous period, and from the 

 time of the Eocene period onwards the Harz has been under 

 the action of subaerial denudation. We have in Scotland 

 abundant evidence of vast denudation since the Miocene 

 period. The country has received its present configuration, 

 the valleys have been scooped out, and a thickness of at least 

 2000 feet must have been removed from many exposed dis- 

 tricts since the great basalt eruptions of the Hebrides ceased. 

 The rocks of the Highland area so removed are chiefly hard 

 quartzites, grits, slates, and schists of various kinds, as weU 

 as the massive basalt beds, all of which would offer a far 

 greater resistance to the eroding forces than the limestones, 

 marls, clays, and sands of the Mesozoic series. If, then, the 



