M A U V A I S E S T E R II E S. 203 



principal uplift, which gave origin to the highest and most extensive range of 

 mountains in all Europe. 



Amongst the sedimentary strata forming part of the flanks of the Alps, there are 

 certain dark-coloured slates, marls, and sandstones, known in Switzerland by the 

 name of Flysch. These beds are implicated in the gigantic movements which 

 have convulsed the whole of Switzerland, and they have been carried on the crests 

 of the intruding masses, in their upward course, until they have actually been 

 raised more than ten thousand feet — nearly to the highest summits of the chain. 

 This effect was produced, not by one violent, tremendous eruption, but rather by a 

 long succession of oscillatory movements — by contractions and subsidence of the 

 rocks during periods of repose, and the extinguishment of volcanic fires ; and by 

 the expansion of the wedge-shaped nucleus, as well as by the ejection of incandes- 

 cent materials, during the rekindling of the irresistible chemical reactions called 

 into activity by interchanges of elective affinities going forward in the great labora- 

 tory of nature — the bowels of the earth. 



The question now arises : Can we determine the age of these disturbed Flysch 

 beds ? Can we refer them to any known group of sedimentary strata, the age of 

 which is well established ? If so, we have the clue — we have the data, the proof — 

 the quid erat demonstrari, by which the period of formation of the Alps is mathema- 

 tically demonstrated. The Flysch beds were long regarded as of great geological 

 antiquity, anterior even to the great coal formation ; but, in the language of a 

 French geologist, " the longer they were studied, the younger they grew ;" and 

 this, notwithstanding their great hardness, solidity, or even local crystalline structure. 

 Now, all the most experienced geologists of Europe admit that, so far from being 

 classed with the Pala?ozoic Rocks, their position above the nummidite limestone has 

 latterly proved that they really belong to the eocene or early tertiary, which sub- 

 division contains, in France, the celebrated gypsum quarries of Montmartre, hereto- 

 fore alluded to as containing the remains of Palceothermm, and other remarkable 

 extinct quadrupeds, and which are cotemporaneous with the Nebraska beds affording 

 a gigantic variety of the same genus, and the other coeval extinct races which form 

 so interesting a feature in the palaeontology of the Mauvaises Terres. 



Thus it is that the geologist is able to prove, as satisfactorily as can be demon- 

 strated a mathematical problem, that, at the time these fossil mammalia of Nebraska 

 lived, the ocean still ebbed and flowed over Switzerland, including the present site 

 of the Alps, whose highest summits then only reached above its surface, consti- 

 tuting a small archipelago of a few distant islands in the great expanse of the 

 tertiary sea. 



In corroboration of this opinion, I subjoin, in this connexion, a few extracts from 

 the able address of Sir Charles Lyell to the Geological Society of London, in 1850, 

 proving that these views are based on palceontological evidence, which has been 

 thoroughly scrutinized by the most proficient naturalists of the age : — 



" The researches of Sir Roderick Murchison in the Alps, in 1847, and the paloe- 

 ontological evidence of various eminent writers, brought together by him in illus- 

 tration of his views, have, I think, shown unequivocally, that, together with the 



