THE 
GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 
NEW SERIES. “DECADE Wi eV@Es Vv |. 
No. II— FEBRUARY, 1889. 
Crebreaepian, /Naenidese, 1S. 
a 
J.—On some Puysican Cuaneus In THE Harrn’s Crus. 
(Part I.) 
By Cuartzs Ricxerts, M.D., F.G.S. 
es always appears an objection to the agencies by which 
mountains and hills are formed being designated by such 
terms as “mountain architecture,” ‘mountain building,” etc., 
leading to the inference that to the deposition of the materials 
which enter into their composition these elevated regions owe their 
form and structure. There certainly are mountains which have 
been built, and some such are at the present time in process of 
building; but these instances refer only to elevated masses of 
volcanic origin: they have been constructed as the railway engineer 
builds his embankments, or, with greater preciseness, as the miner 
forms the bank at the pit’s mouth, by tipping over the rubbish 
brought from below. To hills and mountains forming volcanic 
cones the term mountain building is quite correct; the volcano in 
eruption pouring over its lava, and belching forth scoriz and ashes, 
which fall and accumulate around its vent. 
The term building may also be applied to the formation of the 
miniature mountain-ranges which, in certain localities, fringe our 
coast; sand-hills and -dunes being due to the accumulations which 
the wind has carried landward when the sandy shores are exposed 
and dry. The term is likewise applicable where receding glaciers 
have brought down, and discharged as moraines, their burden of 
stones and rubbish, forming not only small mounds but hills and 
ridges of considerable size. 
With respect to elevated masses such as these, whether great or 
small, the process of their formation may be correctly termed 
building ; otherwise the formation of mountains is due to sculpture, 
—to erosion, disintegration, denudation,—and may be compared to 
the work of the quarryman, rather than that of the builder; to the 
art of the sculptor and not of the architect. Playfair, in his 
‘Tllustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth,” considered 
that “ mountains as they now stand may not inaptly be compared to 
the pillars of earth which workmen leave behind them, to afford a 
measure of the whole quantity of earth which they have removed.”* 
1 § 113, p. 127. 
DECADE III.—VOL. VI.—NO. II. 4 
