256 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



quaternary beds containing remains of Elephas primigenius, yields nu- 

 merous bones of Elephas meridionalis and other of the great kinds of mam- 

 malia characteristic of the Pliocene beds. 



From these facts, then, it is possible to conclude with a strong appearance 

 of probability, that man inhabited the soil of France before the great and 

 first glacial era, contemporaneously with the Elephas meridionalis and the 

 other species of fossil mammals of the Vald'Arno, in Tuscany, which 

 are identical with those of Chartres, and which species are Tertiary, and 

 more ancient than the Elephas primigenius found with the relics of man 

 in the diluvial beds of valleys and caverns. 



The Saint-Prest bed offers the most ancient example yet given in Europe 

 of the vestiges of man with the extinct beasts. It diminishes in no way 

 the interest and importance of the Abbeville and Amiens discoveries, but, 

 on the contrary, confirms their reality by a new argument, and by totally 

 independent observations the evidence recently obtained by M. Boucher 

 de Perthes and verified with so much care by the naturalists of England 

 and France. 



PROCEEDINGS OF GEOLOGICAL SOCIETIES. 



Royal Institution or Great Britatn. — June 5th. — " On the Forms 

 of the Stratified Alps of Savoy." By John Ruskin, Esq., F.G.S. The 

 purpose of the discourse was to trace some of the influences which have 

 produced the present external forms of the stratified mountains of Savoy, 

 and the probable extent and results of the future operation of such in- 

 fluences. 



The subject was arranged under three heads : — I. The Materials of the 

 Savoy Alps. II. The Mode of their Formation. III. The Mode of their 

 subsequent Sculpture. 



I. Their Materials. — The investigation was limited to those Alps which 

 consist, in whole or in part, either of Jura limestone, of Neocomian beds, 

 or of the Hippurite limestone, and include no important masses of other 

 formations. All these rocks are marine deposits ; and the first question to 

 be considered with respect to the development of mountains out of them, 

 is the kind of change they must undergo in being dried. Whether pro- 

 longed through vast periods of time, or hastened by heat and pressure, the 

 drying and solidification of such rocks involved their contraction, and 

 usually, in consequence, their being traversed throughout by minute fis- 

 sures. Under certain conditions of pressure, these fissures take the aspect 

 of slaty cleavage : under others, they become irregular cracks, dividing all 

 the substance of the stone. If these are not filled, the rock would become 

 a mere heap of debris, and be incapable of establishing itself in any bold 

 form. This is provided against by a metamorphic action, which either ar- 

 ranges the particles of the rock, throughout, in new and more crystalline 

 conditions, or else causes some of them to separate from the rest, to tra- 

 verse the body of the rock, and arrange themselves in its fissures ; thus 

 forming a cement, usually of finer and purer substance than the rest of the 

 stone. In either case the action tends continually to the purification and 

 segregation of the elements of the stone. The energy of such action de- 

 pends on accidental circumstances. First, on the attractions of the com- 

 ponent elements among themselves ; secondly, on every change of external 

 temperature and relation. So that mountains are at different periods in 

 different stages of health (so to call it) or disease. We have mountains 



