260 
HUGHES : ADAM SEDGWICK. 
ed in this note be produced by the accumulation of alluvial matter 
in course of a few hundred years, we may be well assured that the 
whole form of the neighbouring coast must have been greatly modi- 
fied by the same causes acting without interruption, and without any 
modifications from works of art, for 3,000 or 4,000 years.” 
The structure of the Cumbrian Mountains and their surrounding 
carboniferous margin, formed the subjects of more than one able 
paper. But in those early days he inclined more than he would have 
done in later years to the opinion of Elie de Beaumont, that the 
mountain chains were the result of somewhat rapid upheaval, and 
points out the application of the theory of the parallelism of contem- 
poraneous mountain chains to the districts he was describing. A 
view pushed too far by its author, but undoubtedly having a 
foundation on facts. He soon extended his examination of the 
carboniferous rocks far over the Yorkshire moorlands. 
A list of fiis works shows how varied the range of his enquiries 
was, for about this time he had read papers on the Strata of the 
Yorkshire Coast, on the Secondary Rocks of Scotland, and of the 
Isle of Arran ; and, in conjunction with Murchison, published many 
sketches of the Geology of the Eastern Alps. At one time we find 
him describing the raised beaches of Devon, at another, somewhat 
puzzled by the newer deposits along the cliffs of Sheppey. 
But among all these various notes and observations, which are 
of a very bright order for half-a- century ago, there are some great 
papers which will be always standard w^orks. First, I would name 
his splendid Monographs on the Magnesian Limestone and New Red 
Series, written between the years 1826 and 1832. There is nothing 
else like them belonging to that period of Geological history. He 
points out the enormous unconformity at the base of the series. “After 
the production of the rocks of the Carboniferous order, the earth’s 
surface appears to have been acted upon by powerful disturbing 
forces, which, not only in the British Isles, but throughout the 
greater part of the European basis, produced a series of formations 
of very great extent and complexity of structure. These deposits 
(known in our country by the name of New Red Sandstone and Red 
Marl, and when considered on an extensive scale comprising all the 
