180 A, Guyot on the Appalachian Mountain System. 
will, in time, become that which geography ought to accept. 
When I have myself given names to mountains, | have almost 
always preferred a descriptive name to any other; but I ac 
knowledge that the invention of names is a thankless and dif 
ficult task. I have, therefore, frequently had recourse to the 
names of neighboring rivers, or to a fortuitous circumstance, or 
to some little adventure, connected in my memory with this or 
that point to designate it, without any other object than that of 
distinguishing it from every other, since here as elsewhere it is 
better to accept almost any name rather than to leave it all in 
confusion. 
‘he map which accompanies this paper was first published in 
Petermann’s Mittheilungen, No. vii, 1860: it was drawn, in Gotha 
with all the data at his command, by my friend and assistant 
Mr. E. Sandoz under the kind and skillful direction of Dr. A. 
vations, in the Smithsonian Contributi i must 
= — details. ee 
he accompanying list of heights which I have measured is 
classified according to physical regions. The measurements are 
of two kinds: those which are marked B are the heights reg 
larly measured by the barometer; those marked P L are heights 
measured at a distance with a pocket level in the following 
manner. Wishing to measure a mountain in sight, at a mode 
rate distance, and not exceeding in elevation the one on which 
I stand, I seek, with the instrument in hand, a point on a levé 
with the summit of the mountain to be ‘attokieed.” Taking thet 
at that point a barometric observation, I consider the result, col 
rected for the curvature of the earth and for refraction, as the — 
height of the mountain. With an accurate level, a signal upo 
ee 
the mountain, and the knowledge of the exact distance a meas 
