54 
SCENERY OF SWITZERLAND. 
sunk less than the rest, remain as tabular mountain 
masses, more or less carved into secondary hills and 
valleys by the action of rain and rivers. Such, for 
instance, is the Table Mountain of the Cape of Good 
Hope; its relative height is not due to upheaval, but 
to the surrounding districts having sunk. 
As the crust of the Earth cooled and solidified, 
certain portions “set,” so to say, sooner than others; 
these form buttresses, as it were, against which the 
surrounding areas have been pressed by later move- 
ments. Such areas have been named by Suess 
“Horsts,” a term which it may be useful to adopt, 
as we have no English equivalent. In some cases 
where compressed rocks have encountered the resist- 
ance of such a “Horst,” as in the northwest of Scot- 
land and in Switzerland, they have been thrown into 
most extraordinary folds, and even thrust over one 
another for several miles. 
Murchison long ago expressed his surprise at the 
existence of great plains such as those of Russia 
and Siberia. L. v. Buch suggested as a possible ex- 
planation that they rested on solid masses which had 
cooled down early in the history of the planet, and 
thus had offered a successful resistance to the folds 
and fractures of later ages. 
