591 



The extent of country of which I state 

 the geological constitution, is distinguished 

 by the prodigious regularity observed in the 

 direction of the strata of which the rocks 

 of different ages are composed. In my per- 

 sonal narrative, and my Essay on the position 

 of soils, I have already often fixed the attention 

 of my readers on a geognostic law, which is 

 one of the small number that can be verified by 

 precise admeasurements. Occupied, since the 

 year 1792, by the parallelism or rather the lox~ 

 odromism of the strata, examining the direction 

 and inclination of the primitive and transition- 

 beds, from the coast of Genoa across the chain 

 of the Bochetta, the plains of Lorn bar dy, the 

 Alps of Saint Gothard, the table-land of Swa- 

 bia, the mountains of Bareuth, and the plains 

 of northern Germany > I was struck with the 

 extreme frequency, if not the constancy of the 

 hor. directions 3 and 4 of the compass of Frei- 

 berg (direction from south-west to north-east). 

 This research, which I thought might lead to 

 important discoveries on the structure of the 

 globe, had then such an attraction for me that 

 it was one of the most powerful motives of my 

 voyage to the equator. In joining my own ob- 

 servations with those of a great number of able 

 geognosts, we perceive that there exists in no 

 hemisphere a general and absolute uniformity of 

 direction, but that in regions of very considerable 



