Ch. XXIV.] OF MOUNTAIN- CHAINS. 345 



A (p. 340) is older than B (p. 341), if he means that it was 

 elevated at a different geological period, for both may have been 

 upheaved during the same period, namely, that when the strata 

 c were formed. 



Supposed parallelism of contemporaneous lines of elevation. 

 So, also, when he infers that two chains were simultaneously 

 upraised, the proof fails, since the close of the period of the 

 disturbed strata and the commencement of the era of the un- 

 disturbed must be added to the lapse of time during which the 

 two chains may have originated, and in separate parts of which 

 each may have been produced. With the insufficiency of the 

 above evidence the whole force of the argument in support 

 of the parallelism of lines of contemporaneous movement is 

 annihilated. 



This hypothesis, indeed, of parallelism appears, even as 

 stated by the author, in some degree at variance with itself. 

 When certain European chains had been assumed to have been 

 raised at the same time on the data already impugned, it was 

 found that several of these contemporaneous chains had a 

 parallel direction. Hence it was presumed to be a general law 

 in geological dynamics that the chains upheaved at the same 

 time are parallel. For example, it was said that the Pyrenees 

 and other coetaneous chains, such as the northern Apennines, 

 have a direction about W. N. W. and E. S. E., and to this line 

 the Alleghanies in North America conform, as also the ghauts 

 of Malabar, and certain chains in Egypt, Syria, northern 

 Africa, and other countries ; and from this mere conformity in 

 direction it was presumed that all these mountain-ranges were 

 thrown up simultaneously. 



To select another example, the principal chain of the Alps, 

 differing in age and direction from the Pyrenees, is parallel to 

 the Sierra Morena, the Balkan, the chain of Mount Atlas, the 

 central chain of the Caucasus, and the Himalaya. All these 

 ridges, therefore, were probably heaved up by the same paroxys- 

 mal convulsion ! The western Alps, on the other hand, rose at 

 a still earlier period, when the parallel chains of Kiol, in Scan- 



