I38 MIDDLEMISS: PHYSICAL GEOLOGY OF SUB-HIMALAYA. 



antiquity, the oldest being highest and further away. They are a 

 series of steps formed in a measure like the gravels of a river-bed 

 which are left by the cutting of the channel, at heights proportional to 

 their ages, but, unlike them, depending for their different elevations 

 not on the sinking of the plains but on the further crushing up of the 

 Himalayan area. 



In Chapter V I have sufficiently disposed of the view that they can 

 ever have extended to any appreciable distance beyond their present 

 areas into the Higher Himalaya. 



The intermittent deposition, therefore, of i6,ooofeetof them at the 

 margin of the Himalaya was certainly not the cause of the upheaval 

 of the Himalaya. On the other hand, it was due to movements of the 

 mass of the Himalaya themselves that they owe their present elevated 

 and compressed state. They therefore were the sufferers by, and not 

 the originators of (except in an indirect sense to be presently men- 

 tioned), a continuing upheaval of those mountains; be that movement 

 due to whatever far-reaching cause it may. 1 



But I have already occupied too much space in this connection 

 and must take leave of Mr. Mellard Reade's book, which, with the 

 exception of the doctrine taught, is an admirable colligation of facts 

 from many lands about mountain structure. 



There is one other recent work of a theoretical nature, about 

 which I should like to say a few words, It is a 



The Rev. O. Fisher's J 



" Physics of the Earth's pleasure to turn to the Rev. O. Fisher's " Physics 



Crust " 



of the Earth's Crust," a treatise published in 

 1 88 1 ; for, as regards many of the subjects discussed in it, I feel myself 

 entirely on his side. Opinion may be divided concerning some of the 

 quantitive results that he has obtained by mathematical methods o 

 treatment; but everyone must admire his lucid and correct reasoning 

 on the facts which he takes for granted. He makes two geological 

 references to the Himalaya, which I may here quote, for it will be 



1 Since writing the above I find a somewhat similar position taken up by Dr. C. 

 Ricketts (Geol. Mag., April 1889), with reference to Mr. Mellard Reade's theory. In 

 addition, he concludes by expressing a belief in the permanence of the "core of the 

 mountains " of Britain through many oscillations of upheaval and depression. 



( 196 ) 





