266 = T. 8. Hunt on some points in Dynamical Geology. 
less complete fusion, in which voleanic phenomena have their 
seat. e reader cannot fail to see that these views are identi- 
eal with those which I have so long advocated. 
The views of Prof. James Hall as to the relation between 
great accumulations of strata and mountain-elevations, are cited 
with approval by LeConte, who, following him, asserts that 
“ mountain chains are masses of immensely thick sediments.” 
I venture, however, to remark, in this connection, that the 
views both of Mr. Hall and of myself, as his expounder, have 
as yet been but imperfectly understood either by LeConte or 
our other critics. Thus they have been defined as “a theory 
of mountains with the origin of mountains left out ;” while Le- 
Conte says, “ Hall and Hunt leave the sediments just after the 
whole preparation has been made, but before the actual moun- 
tain-formation has taken place.” Now, in fact, so far as | am 
aware, neither Hall nor yet myself in my exposition of his 
views, which will be found in this Journal for May, 1861 
, xxxi, 406-410], has proposed any theory to explain this 
latter part of the process, that is to say, the uplifting of the 
i sediments, which LeConte calls “the actual moun- 
remnants of eroded continental areas had already been taught 
by Lesley, and long before by Buffon and DeMontlosier. It was 
left for Hall, through a new way, to lead us back to these views; 
but the whole theory of the cause of continental elevations 
was left by him where he found it. In my exposition of his 
views, I have only endeavored, in addition, to show in what 
manner a contracting globe and a solid nucleus may be rela 
to the great facts of local subsidence and accumulation. 
I shall not attempt to follow LeConte in his objections to 
the views of Dana and Whitney with regard to the uplifting 
of mountains, but proceed to notice briefly his own, according 
to which the horizontal thrust resulting from the slow contrac- 
tion of the nucleus is brought, in the manner which I long 
since explained, to act upon the great accumulations 0 sedi- 
ment, so that they are ‘crushed ether horizontally and 
