Xlii PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



It seems that in the course of the stupendous moyements which 

 have raised these modern beds to the height of 8000 feet above the 

 sea, and caused portions of them to become crystaUine or metamor- 

 phic, large masses of the sohd Jurassic Umestones of the Oxfordian 

 age have been pushed bodily out of their place, and planted imcon- 

 forraably on the edges of strata of the nummulitic series. Our in- 

 defatigable colleague naturally shrinks from offering any explanation 

 of so marvellous and anomalous a state of things, extending as it does 

 over a considerable area. In attempting to estimate such gigantic 

 movements, the powers of imagination, he says, are at fault ; and 

 " surely," he adds, *'^ it is not unphilosophical to believe that in those 

 days the crust of the earth was aifected by forces of infinitely greater 

 intensity than those which now prevail." In particular, he regards 

 the apparent inversion of the tertiary molasse along the flanks of the 

 Alps, and its great elevation, as " a clear demonstration of a sudden 

 operation or catastrophe*." 



Now, I shall first venture to remark, in regard to these theoretical 

 views, that the Alps, when considered as a mountain-chain which has 

 originated entirely since the commencement of the tertiary period, 

 bear emphatic and irrefragable testimony to the fact, that the inten- 

 sity of the causes which have disturbed the crust of the globe has 

 not diminished in the tertiary as compared to the secondary or pri- 

 mary fossiliferous epochs. It may possibly be still contended, that 

 the energy and violence of the movements were more general in those 

 earlier epochs, supposed by some to have been close upon the con- 

 fines of " the reign of Chaos and Old Night ;" but it cannot be pre- 

 tended that there are any proofs of a more magnificent development 

 of the disturbing forces in any given region of equal extent, and ac- 

 comphshed in an equal lapse of time, at any period antecedent to the 

 upheaval of the Alps. If, however, any one should maintain, that in 

 the earlier ages the movements which upheave, depress and derange 

 the position of strata were more general, and that they agitated 

 simultaneously much wider horizontal areas, it will be easy to adduce 

 the most overpowering evidence to the contrary. The wide extent 

 in the United States of America, and in parts of Russia, of Carboni- 

 ferous, Devonian and Silurian strata, which although upraised above 

 the sea, continue almost as level as when the beds were first thrown 

 * Quai-t. Joiu-n. of Geol. Soc. vol. v. p. 258. 



