Sot Springs, and other Natural Features of the Pyrenees. 489 



to our national wealth, and we have no reason to conclude that 

 we have exhausted our discoveries. To the rapid advancement 

 of scientific investigation we owe nearly all that has been done 

 in the above direction during the last few years, and we may 

 therefore regard with confidence the researches which are still 

 in progress. The time is, doubtless, fast approaching when 

 the principles of natural science will be much more generally 

 appreciated than is now the case ; and if any illustration of the 

 great practical value of such knowledge were required, it 

 would surely be sufficient to point to the line of reasoning by 

 which the area of our future coal fields is being now mapped 

 out, and by which we may reasonably expect our national 

 prosperity will be immeasurably developed. 



HOT SPRINGS, AND OTHEE NATURAL FEATURES 



OF THE PYRENEES. 



BY A. S. HEESCHEL, B.A. 



Coveeed with a dense mass of snow, shaken with avalanches, 

 and torn by tempests in the winter, the mountain chain of the 

 Pyrenees no sooner recovers from its stupor, and clothes its 

 pastures with summer green, than tourists climb its heights, 

 ascend its plateaux, scale its lofty crags, and seek and find 

 health and recreation among its recesses. It is not, however, 

 to guide the reader in these scenes, but rather to describe 

 some of the natural features of the mountains, to be found in 

 a summer ramble among the Pyrenees, that the following few 

 short notes are written. 



Geologically speaking, the central range of the Pyrenees 

 is a ruined wall with peaks, chiefly granite, upheaved to a height 

 of ten or eleven thousand feet above the sea, between the low- 

 lying plains of Languedoc on the one hand — intersected here by 

 a canal from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean — and the 

 high table-lands of Castile and Aragon on the other. From 

 the spinal column of this chain, lateral spurs, like rib bones, 

 are thrown out on either side towards the plain, composed 

 of calcareous and other sedimentary rocks, coeval with our 

 Greensand series, horizontally deposited, and afterwards 

 broken up, distorted, and raised to their present elevation 

 by the force of internal pressure. The tertiary strata at the 

 foot of these rocks reach only to a height of a few hundred 

 feet, and are on all hands horizontal. Extensive lower valleys 

 between these -natural buttresses branch out at their heads 



