82 
PALAEONTOLOGY OF NEW-YORK. 
In what I have stated, and in the conclusions drawn, I believe I have 
controverted no established fact or principle, beyond that of denying 
the influence of local elevating forces, and the intrusion of ancient or 
plutonic formations beneath the lines of mountain chains, as ordinarily 
understood and advocated. In this I believe I am only going back to 
the views which were long since entertained by geologists relative to 
mountain elevation. In other respects, the views I have advanced are 
the legitimate results of observation, and an extension in the application 
of laws well established and acknowledged in science. 
The facts here adduced relative to the strata composing the Appala¬ 
chian range and their extension to the west and southwest, are all 
capable of verification; and the deductions hence drawn seem to me 
perfectly legitimate. I believe, moreover, that this mountain chain, in 
its component parts, and in its mode of accumulation, and the process 
by which it has assumed its present position, does not differ materially 
from other mountain ranges. 
The direction of any mountain chain, I would infer, corresponds with 
the original line of greatest accumulation, or that line along which the 
coarser and more abundant sediments were deposited. The changes 
consequent upon the accumulation of such a mass of sediments would, 
often at least, prevent the immediate deposition of another series of 
beds of consecutive age in the same direction. Neither is it probable 
that distinct ranges of mountains, though composed of sediments of the 
same age, would have a corresponding direction. The Rocky mountains, 
though perhaps fundamentally composed of deposits of the same age as 
the Appalachians, have had their materials derived from a different 
source, and distributed by a current having a different direction. More¬ 
over the greater height of the Rocky mountains appears to be due to 
later deposits than those constituting the Appalachian range; and if 
we may credit all the facts stated and their verification by collections 
of fossils, the strata of newer age than the Coal measures, with the 
