166 On the Crystalline Form of the Globe. 



chains, going to the south of Lake Baikel, the Altai, Hima- 

 laya, the mountains of Bombay in Hindostan, a point in the 

 north-east of Madagascar (where the summits are 12,000 

 feet high), the mountains of Nieuvvedfeld, 10,000 feet high, 

 Cape Caffres, to Brazil, the rapids of La Plata, Paraguay, 

 Panama, the elevated basin of Titicaca, the Andes, Illimani, 

 and the defile of Maranova. The third circle cuts the two 

 preceding at right angles, and passes by the Alps, the islands 

 of Corsica and Sardinia, along the basin of the Mediter- 

 ranean, the mountains of Fezzan, Lake Tchad, the Caffre 

 mountains of Nieuwedfeld, the Southern Ocean, near Ker- 

 guelen's Land, the eastern or Blue Mountains of New 

 Holland, Straits of Behring, Spitsbergen, Scandinavia, Jut- 

 land, &c. 



These three great circles point out the limits of the faces 

 of the great hypothetical octahedron. Each of the faces may 

 be divided into eight others by means of line of accidents of 

 minor importance, so as to make in all forty-eight irregular 

 triangles, a form of the diamond. At the intersections, M. 

 de Hauslab observes that there are nodes of dikes, and 

 along the lines, or near them, all the mountains of the globe 

 occur. The author gives an extended illustration of his sub- 

 ject, and afterwards considers the particular history of the 

 configuration of the earth's surface in accordance with his 

 hypothesis. 



M. Boue, who adopts similar views, adds as a note, that 

 we should remember in this connection that the metals crys- 

 tallise either in the tesseral or rhombohedral system, and 

 that native iron, the most common constituent of meteorites, 

 is octahedral in its crystals. 



