MAUVAISES TERRES. 203 
principal uplift, which gave origin to the highest and most extensive range of 
mountains in all Europe. 
Amongst the sedimentary strata forming part of the flanks of the Alps, there are 
certain dark-coloured slates, marls, and sandstones, known in Switzerland by the 
name of Flysch. These beds are implicated in the gigantic movements which 
have convulsed the whole of Switzerland, and they have been carried on the crests 
of the intruding masses, in their upward course, until they have actually been 
raised more than ten thousand feet—nearly to the highest summits of the chain. 
This effect was produced, not by one violent, tremendous eruption, but rather by a 
long succession of oscillatory movements—by contractions and subsidence of the 
rocks during periods of repose, and the extinguishment of volcanic fires; and by 
the expansion of the wedge-shaped nucleus, as well as by the ejection of incandes- 
cent materials, during the rekindling of the irresistible chemical reactions called 
into activity by interchanges of elective affinities going forward in the great labora- 
tory of nature—the bowels of the earth. 
The question now arises: Can we determine the age of these disturbed Flysch 
beds? Can we refer them to any known group of sedimentary strata, the age of 
which is well established? If so, we have the clue—we have the data, the proof— 
the quid erat demonstrari, by which the period of formation of the Alps is mathema- 
tically demonstrated. The Flysch beds were long regarded as of great geological 
antiquity, anterior even to the great coal formation; but, in the language of a 
French geologist, “the longer they were studied, the younger they grew;” and 
this, notwithstanding their great hardness, solidity, or even local crystalline structure. 
Now, all the most experienced geologists of Europe admit that, so far from being 
classed with the Paleozoic Rocks, their position above the nummulite limestone has 
latterly proved that they really belong to the eocene or early tertiary, which sub- 
division contains, in France, the celebrated gypsum quarries of Montmartre, hereto- 
fore alluded to as containing the remains of Paleotherium, and other remarkable 
extinct quadrupeds, and which are cotemporaneous with the Nebraska beds affording 
a gigantic variety of the same genus, and the other coeval extinct races which form 
so interesting a feature in the palwontology of the Mauvaises Terres. 
Thus it is that the geologist is able to prove, as satisfactorily as can be demon- 
strated a mathematical problem, that, at the time these fossil mammalia of Nebraska 
lived, the ocean still ebbed and flowed over Switzerland, including the present site 
of the Alps, whose highest summits then only reached above its surface, consti- 
tuting a small archipelago of a few distant islands in the great expanse of the 
tertiary sea. : 
In corroboration of this opinion, I subjoin, in this connexion, a few extracts from 
the able address of Sir Charles Lyell to the Geological Society of London, in 1850, 
proving that these views are based on palzontological evidence, which has been 
thoroughly scrutinized by the most proficient naturalists of the age :— 
“The researches of Sir Roderick Murchison in the Alps, in 1847, and the palee- 
~ ontological evidence of various eminent writers, brought together by him in illus- 
tration of his views, have, I think, shown unequivocally, that, together with the 
