I 
MACKIE — ECSKIX ON TKE SATOT ALPS. 
325 
at the Eoyal Institution lecture, at which vre 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. Kuskin is fully aware and feels 
tlie difficulties which at present attend the verification of these 
sections both of La Saleve and the Brezou. 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 
jthe Neocomiau and compressing it, Mr. Kuskin admits; "but there 
is doubt," he contends, "respecting these frontal clefts." Neither 
does he deny that there are raised beds of Xeocomian on parts of the 
mountain, as assigned by Favre ; but that at the Grrande 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 wliich is which. Baffled by the simpler Saleve, Mr. 
Kuskin had little liope 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 XYIL), "which extends at both sides, and lastly, of a distant 
range of snowy summits, in which Mont Yergi and the Aiguille de 
Salouvre are conspicuous objects. Now these three masses are merely 
three parallel ridi^^es of limf-stone-wave, formed mainly of originally 
horizontal beds of Rudisten kalk, approaching you as you stand look- 
ing from the Saleve. Probably,! think, approaching at this moment^ 
driven towards you by the force of the central xllps, 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 XYII.) ; 
" the height from base to summit is 4000 English feet, — the main mass 
of the facade, formed of vast sheets of Rudisten 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 an\ thing but its simpli- 
city and decision ; the Brezon and Yergi 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. 
