HINTS AND CONJECTURES. 319 



This we may presume to have been the case with the mountains of 

 Armenia, where the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, mentioned in the de- 

 scription of paradise, have their sources ; and where the ark took the 

 ground. Yet, it is likely, that these mountains, and many of our 

 present mountains, acquired by the deluge an elevation which no 

 mountains had attained before; owing principally to the way in which 

 masses of the earth's crust were then raised on their edges. The 

 peaks of the Himalay mountains, the most lofty in the world, are 

 huge fragments of primary strata, elevated at a high angle; as appears 

 from Mr. Eraser's paper in the Geological Transactions, Vol. V. 

 Other lofty peaks, such as those of the Andes, are craters of volca- 

 noes ; of which there were probably none before the deluge. 



While the new strata were rising, they would unavoidably be 

 bent, cracked, and broken, in various places ; especially as the ex- 

 pansive power that heaved them up, could not be expected to act on 

 every part with equal force; and wherever that power was suddenly 

 suspended or withdrawn, a subsidence would take place, which would 

 greatly increase the dislocations and bends. As the rise of the strata, 

 corresponding with the subsiding of the waters, took place in succes- 

 sive stages, this would occasion breaks and veins of different dates^ 

 as well as upfillings, unconformable strata, and other irregularities. 

 Hence, we find veins and masses of trap, and other unstratitied rocks, 

 of different ages. Such veins, as already intimated (§20), we con- 

 ceive to have been forced upwards in a state of fusion ; and the flat 

 masses might originate in the overflowing of the veins ; and where 

 this overflowing matter became covered with new depositions, such 

 rocks would appear stratified. We need not doubt, that the interior 

 of the globe, which supplies matter for so many volcanoes, could be 

 made to yield abundance of materials for trap dykes, metalliferous 

 veins, and unstratified rocks. Whether granite belongs to this class 

 of rocks, or not, we do not stop to inquire. 



