MOUNTAINS AND THEIR ORIGIN. 1,19 
Alps. While others were chatting and laughing 
about him, he stood for a moment absorbed in 
silent contemplation of the grandeur of the scene, 
then lifted his hat and bowed reverently before 
the mountains. 
Next to Von Buch, no man has done more for 
modern geology than Elie de Beaumont, the great 
French geologist. Perhaps the most important 
of his generalizations is that by which he has 
given us the clew to the limitation of the differ- 
ent epochs in past times by connecting them with 
the great revolutions in the world’s history. He 
has shown us that the great changes in the aspect 
of the globe, as well as in its successive sets of 
animals, coincide with the mountain-upheavals. 
I might add a long list of names, American as 
well as European, which will be forever honored 
in the history of science for their contributions 
to geology in the last half-century. But I have 
intended only to close this chapter on mountains 
with a few words respecting the men who first in- 
vestigated their intimate structural organization, 
and established methods of study in reference to 
them now generally adopted throughout the sci- 
entific world. In my next article I shall proceed 
to give some account of special geological forma- 
tions in Europe, and the gradual growth of that 
continent. 
