ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixxiil 



However divided opinions may be as to the hj^potliesis advanced 

 by the Professors Rogers, in explanation of the order of the flexures 

 and dislocations observed by them in the Appalachian region, and 

 by Professor Henry Rogers on the Rhine, in the Jura and in the 

 Alps, they can scarcely differ as to the importance of the observations 

 themselves. By their multiplication we should eventually obtain a vast 

 body of evidence as to the directions whence the forces contorting 

 and crumpling beds of rock have been derived, and we have to recol- 

 lect that many of the effects of pressure on the earth's surface, whence 

 Ave may conclude that many elevated regions have resulted, have since, 

 by denuding action, been more or less planed down ; so that cubic miles 

 of the materials, in all probability once piled up in ridges and masses, 

 have been removed and used again as the component parts of more 

 recent deposits, often again to be partially removed and employed 

 anew for a similar purpose. Sections, therefore, carefully executed, 

 and upon a true scale, alike for height and distance, become as valu- 

 able in a contorted district, though not marked by any great range 

 of mountains, as amid the latter, where there are more direct evidences 

 of the piling up of mineral matter above ordinary levels from the 

 causes producing contortion and fracture of the component rocks. 



In his memoir " on the Geological Structure of the Alps, Apen- 

 nines and Carpathians," Sir Roderick Murchison presents us with a 

 notice of the ancient changes of surface in the Alps, in which he 

 points out the contortion and fracture of the deposits, the mode of 

 occurrence of which he has previously described. He observes that, 

 when we regard any one region of the Alps, whatever may be the 

 major axis of the crystalline mass in its centre (including under the 

 terms crystalline mass, gneiss, mica slate, marbles, &c., as well as 

 granite), that such is also the prevailing direction of the sedimentary 

 deposits on either side. Sir Roderick illustrates this in the eastern 

 Alps by referring to the various accimiulations, up to the tertiary 

 deposits inclusive, which surround two ellipsoidal masses of granite, 

 having a range from E.N.E. to W.S.W. Minor and parallel ellip- 

 soids of crystalline rocks are noticed in the Venetian Alps, and the 

 same range is shown to occur for the crystalline rocks of the central 

 part of the Tyrol, the chief part of the Lombardy Alps, the nuclei 

 of the Swiss Alps, and for the associated sedimentary deposits. The 

 change of direction to one more N. and S., westward of Berne, is no- 

 ticed, and it is inferred that in the Maritime xA-lps the uplifted masses 

 trend round so as to become confluent with the Apennines. 



Our colleague considers it clear that in parts of the Alps there has 

 been a continuous series of submarine deposits from the Jurassic rocks 

 to the flysch inclusive which have been thrown into various folds, so 

 that sometimes great inversions are produced, the various deposits 

 having had no more consolidation than many accumulations even of 

 old date now found in Russia, and hence that this folding took place 

 after the deposit of certain supracretaceous rocks. Details of good 

 examples are given, and the kind of folding above-mentioned as ob- 

 served by Professor Rogers is stated to be observable, instances being 

 adduced in illustration. A great fault is noticed at the Righi, bring- 



