MACKIE — BUSKIN ON THE SAVOY ALPS. 



325 



at the Boyal Institution lecture, at which we were present, and from 

 notes of which the present account of his views is given. It is but 

 right to make this statement, as Mr. Buskin is fully aware and feels 

 the difficulties which at present attend the verification of these 

 sections both of La Saleve and the Brezon. All the lower part of 

 the Saleve is Jura limestone, as determined by Favre, and that this 

 rises up in a nearly vertical sheet along the whole front, thrusting up 

 the Neocouiian and compressing it, Mr. Buskin admits ; " but there 

 is doubt," he contends, "respecting these frontal clefts." Neither 

 does he deny that there are raised beds of Neocomian on parts of the 

 mountain, as assigned by Favre ; but that at the Grande Gorge, where 

 the natural section is clearest, there are the beds all following the 

 curve of the summit, and that the vertical fissures are rather faults or 

 cleavages, or partly both, the business being so complicated that one 

 cannot tell which is which. Baffled by the simpler Saleve, Mr. 

 Buskin had little hope of resolving thoroughly the infinitely more 

 complex Brezon ; but on one or two points of it he gave very able 

 expositions. And here again we take the liberty of copying another 

 of his diagrams. " You see," he said in his lecture, " the group is 

 composed of an isolated pyramidal mass, of a flat mass behind it" (see 

 Plate XVII.), "which extends at both sides, and lastly, of a distant 

 range of snowy summits, in which Mont Vergi and the Aiguille de 

 Salouvre are conspicuous objects. Now these three masses are merely 

 three parallel ridges of limestone- wave, formed mainly of originally 

 horizontal beds of Budisten kalk, approaching you as you stand look- 

 ing from the Saleve. Probably, I think, approaching at this moment } 

 driven towards you by the force of the central Alps, the highest 

 ridge broken into jags as it advances, which form the separate sum- 

 mits of Alpine fury and foam ; the intermediate one joining both 

 with a long flat swing and trough of sea, and the last, the Brezon,- 

 literally and truly breaking over and throwing its summit forward as 

 if to fall upon the shore. There is the section of it" (Plate XVII.) ; 

 " the height from base to summit is 4000 English feet, — the main mass 

 of the facade, formed of vast sheets of Budisten kalk, 1000 feet thick, 

 — plunging at last, as you see, in a rounded sweep to the plain." 

 Nor is this instance an extraordinary one in anything but its simpli- 

 city and decision ; the Brezon and Vergi group are only a portion of 

 the longitudinal waves which flow parallel with the Alps through all 

 their length, and which are cut across by transverse valleys, in which 

 are the grandest scenes of Alpine precipice. 



