ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixix 



demonstrable that in this manner horizontal pressure may be called 

 into action, indefinitely greater than the vertical forces necessary to 

 raise the elevated mass. Hence it is that the subsided portion ap- 

 pears to be frequently more broken and confused than that which 

 retains its elevated position. But, according to this view, the elevated 

 ridge which might appear to form the physical boundary of the 

 disturbed district would, in fact, be its central axis, as I conceive it 

 to be in the example above quoted in our own country. In like 

 manner, 1 think it highly probable that the older beds subjacent to 

 the modern deposit of the great plain of India, immediately on the 

 south of the Himalayas, could they be examined, would be found 

 far more broken and disturbed than those which constitute the range 

 itself. And in fact indications of this kind have been incidentally 

 noticed in the nearly vertical position of some of the older slate- 

 rocks observed by Major Vicary in the Punjaub*. And thus, at 

 present, I regard the chain of the Himalayas as the axis of a disturb- 

 ance probably of 3000 miles in length, and of which the breadth, not 

 yet determined, is, in all probability, comparatively small. Such a 

 district, according to this theory, would necessarily be characterized 

 by longitudinal faults, valleys, anticlinal lines, &c., intersected by 

 transverse faults, valleys, river-gorges, &c., such as appear to exist in 

 this range so far as it is known. I must not be understood, how- 

 ever, as appealing to this district in confirmation of my theoretical 

 views ; our knowledge of it is far too imperfect to admit of such 

 appeal. I have here stated these views, not as confirmed in this 

 application of them by observations already made, but merely as 

 suggested by those observations, and as anticipatory of those which 

 will be made hereafter. 



In the consideration of the movements which have given to any 

 geological district its existing internal conformation, and its external 

 configuration, so far as it depends on the disturbed positions of its 

 component beds, it should be always borne in mind that those move- 

 ments may possibly have been long anterior to other movements 

 which may have been less disruptive, perhaps less paroxysmal, and 

 possibly of wider extent, but more effective, in the aggregate, in 

 giving elevation above the level of the sea. These two series of 

 movements, although probably intimately connected as to their phy- 

 sical causes, may have very distant relations to each other with refer- 

 ence to time. The existence of Tertiary beds at the enormous height 

 of those recognized by Captain Strachey in the Himalayas is itself 

 surprising ; the disturbed horizontality of the beds makes it much 

 more so ; and if their marine origin should be hereafter established, 

 it will be unquestionably one of the most curious and striking facts 

 that geology has revealed to us respecting the movements of the 

 crust of our globe. Its deposition after the surrounding mountains 

 had acquired their general external relief and internal conformation, 

 I presume to be fully proved by the want of conformability of strati- 

 fication ; but notwithstanding the possible independence, in time, of 

 the disruptive movements, and those which gave elevation to the 

 * Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. vii. p. 44. 



