﻿Modern Attainments in Geology. 277 



this mountain system has the longer axis of its ellipse 

 running north-north-west ; it consists, however, of folds 

 which strike north-north-east, directly across the relief. 

 If the relief only were considered, the Hartz, with the 

 contour above mentioned, appears as an independent 

 mountain system, and thus it is considered by geographers ; 

 the geologist, however, who follows the strike of the 

 strata, sees in it only a continuation of the Rhenish 

 mountains lying to the west, in which the same direction 

 of folding predominates. 



The same thing is observed in the Vogesen (Vosges 

 Mountains) and the Black Forest ; the direction of the 

 strata is north-north-east, straight across the general 

 direction of the ranges, and finds its continuation on one 

 side in the central plateau of France, and on the other in 

 the Fichtel Mountains. In this way a correct picture of 

 the actual relations of things is obtained, and one is 

 thereby easily convinced that these pieces of mountain 

 ranges, now disconnected, are in reality the remnants of a 

 uniform system of folds, of which large parts have 

 subsided and disappeared. Between the portions which 

 have thus been depressed, the remaining parts stand up, 

 as the Black Forest and the Vogesen, and these elevated 

 parts we call Horsts. 



As has already been stated, there was a time when 

 it was thought that the mountain chains of the earth 

 were arranged according to certain geometrical systems, 

 and it was believed that in them the edges of certain 

 crystal forms inscribed in the sphere were to be seen. 

 But the further our knowledge reaches, the further away 

 this idea of any supposed geometrical regularity retreats, 

 and, as is so often the case in nature, we arrive at some- 

 thing entirely unexpected. 



If the main lines of the great folded areas, known to us 

 in their entirety or divided up by subsidences into horsts, 

 be laid down on a map, immense wavy curves are 



