On the former Changes of the Alps. 245 



f 



I 



V 



4 



Art. XXYIL — On the former Changes of the Alps; by Sir 



Roderick Impey Murchison^ V.P.R.S.* 



^ The complicated structure of the Alps so baffled the penetra- 

 tion of De SaussurCj that after a life of toil the first great histo- 

 rian of those mountains declared "there was nothing constant in 

 them except their variety." In citing this opinion, Sir Roderick 

 explained how the obscurity had been gradually cleared away by 

 the application of modern geology, as based upon the succession 

 of organic remains, and then proceeded to indicate the accumu- 

 lations of which the Alps were composed, and the changes or 

 revolutions they had undergone, between the truly primeval days 

 when the earliest recognizable animals were created, and the first 

 glacial period in the history of the planet. 



The object being to convey in a popular manner clear ideas of 

 the physical condition of these mountains at different periods, 

 three long scene-paintings, prepared for the occasion, represented 

 a portion of the chain at three distinct epochs. The first of these 

 views of ancient nature exhibited the Alps as a long, low archi- 

 pelago of islands, formed in a great part out of the Silurian and 

 older sediments which had been raised above the sea, when the 

 lands bore the tropical vegetation of the carboniferous era. 



Stating that there were no relics in the Alps of the formations 

 to which he had assigned the name of Permian, as marking the 

 close of the primeval or pala5ozoic age, Sir Roderick rapidly re- 

 viewed the facts gathered together by many geologists from all 

 quarters of the globe, and maintained that they unequivocally 

 sustained the belief, that there had been a succession of creations 

 from lower to higher types of life, in ascending from inferior to 

 superior formations. He carefully, however, noted the clear dis- 

 tinction between such a creed, as founded on the true records of 

 creation, and the theory of the transmutation of species; a doc- 

 trine put forth in the popular work entitled the "Vestiges of 

 Creation," and from which he entirely dissented. 



In the second painting (an immense lapse of time haying oc- 

 curred) the Alps were represented as a mountainous ridge in which 

 all the submarine formations, from the mediaeval up to the older 

 tertiary or Eocene, had been lifted up upon the flank of the pri- 

 ^icval rocks. Each rock system being distinguished by a color 

 peculiar to it, the nature of the animals contained in each of 

 these deposits was succinctly touched upon. Between the young- 

 est of the primeval formations and the oldest of the mediaeval or 

 secondary rocks, it was stated, that there is not one species in 

 common to the two in any part of Europe ; the expression being 



4' 



* Proc. Roy. Soc, March 7, 1851, p. 31. 



