102 J. LeConte—Structure and Origin of Mountains. 
might expect; for the squeezing out of the sub- mountain 
fused or semi-fused matter would naturally take place there, 
where both the fissuring and the squeezing are 
In conclusion there are two or three suggestions which seem 
eile pie here 
the Basin and Plateau regions there occur many paral- 
le] souk and south faults. In the Plateau region these form 
h 
it is a remarkable fact that in the southern part of these two 
regions just where the Plateau is highest, all the western 
faults of the Plateau region and all the faults of the Basin 
region drop on cone west side, so that the escarpments look 
westward. But the Sierra escarpment, as we have already 
seen, looks eastward. Now just between = two, 1. e., between 
the Sierra escarpment on the one side a the Plateau and 
Basin escarpments on the other and ae ase by both, lies 
the great a ea 5 area, occupied by the alkaline la es, 
ono and Owen. It robable that this great depression is 
correlated with the ees on each side—that the up-push- 
ing and over-pushing of the Sierra on one side and the eleva- 
the up-folding of the Sierra on the one side and the up-lifting 
of the Plateau on the other is greatest, there also the down-fold- 
ang of the intervening basin is also greatest. The wonderful 
Owen’s River valley, with the Sierra near 15,000 feet on one 
side and the Inyo Mountains 10,000 to 14,000 feet high on the 
other, with only se miles from crest to crest, is this down- 
folded troug nly forty miles from Mount ‘Whitney, the 
highest a on ne Sierra and in the United States except 
Mount St. Elias in Alaska, occurs Death-valley, which is seve- 
7 hundred feet below sea-level. 
6. According to M. Suess’s view (if I understand him aright), 
the typical form of mountain ranges described above, is the 
result of the fact that the yielding crust which by compression 
and upswelling forms the Range, is abutted against an mide se 
ing mass of a gee stiffened crust. Thus according to 
the Al as pushed over against the resistant crust of ie 
Black sce and Central France, and, therefore, its steep slope 
is toward the north, The A palachian was pushed over 
toward the alneady-suchet Silurian and Laurentian land- 
crust on the north and northwest. This is a necessary corol- 
lary to my view that mountain ranges are the up-pushed sedi- 
ments of marginal sea-bottoms. For observe: marginal sea- 
