284 



and wasteful, so that many of the richest mines have been 

 abandoned because they do not pay. Coffee is a consider- 

 able product of the country. The interior table lands are 

 exceedingly fertile and healthy, but the yellow fever occa- 

 sionally visits the cities on the gulf. 



Mr. Homes mentioned a discovery which was said to have 

 been made in Europe, of flints — wrought flints — in the 

 chalk formation, remarking that it had been creating some 

 discussion among the journals of Europe, to account for 

 these flints at a time previous to the acknowledged era of 

 man. 



Prof. Hall explained the actual position of flints in the 

 geological scale, and showed that it was absurd to suppose 

 that flints could be found in the locality indicated. 



Adjourned. 



April 3, 1860. 



In the absence of the president, the vice president, Mr. 

 DeWitt, occupied the chair. 



There being no other business, the communication for the 

 evening was presented by Prof. Hall. 



He stated in beginning, that the views here advanced 

 were first proposed by him ten years ago : and in his address 

 at Montreal in 1857, he proposed and discussed similar 

 doctrines. 



His view of the formation of mountain ranges was in 

 brief, that the mountain chains were the accumulations of 

 the sediment deposited along the principal oceanic currents 

 and shore lines while the present continents were sub- 

 merged ; and that the foldings of the strata, and the pro- 

 duction of the synclinal and anticlinal axes, have been 

 caused by the subsidence resulting from the vast accumu- 

 lation of matter in the line of these currents. 



These opinions Prof. Hall supported by a great number 

 of facts and illustrations drawn from well known geological 

 phenomena, especially from the phenomena presented by 

 the Appalachian chain of mountains. The deposits along 



