I 0 T E S. 
NOTE A. 
In bringing forward the foregoing statement of facts, and what I regard as the 
legitimate inferences therefrom, I have not thought it necessary to controvert the 
prevailing opinions relative to the elevation of mountain chains. 
The grand theory, so beautifully and completely elaborated by E. de Beaumont, 
and at the present time received by a large number of geologists, may still equally 
apply to the exposition of the systems of mountain chains : nor indeed does it 
appear necessary to do more than change the language of description regarding the 
process of elevation. If my views of accumulation and the results therefrom be 
correct, then the lines of mountain elevation of De Beaumont are simply lines of 
original accumulation, and the consequences I have shown to follow. The mountain 
systems remain the same as before : we simply offer a different explanation of their 
origin. When we shall have learned, what I now fully believe, that the ancient 
depositions along shore lines or current lines have produced accumulations which, 
through subsequent influences, have become the mountain chains, it will be seen 
that these chains may be as various in their direction as the ancient shore lines, or 
as the currents traversing the ancient oceans. In one case the explanation of their 
origin is from later action upon the earth’s crust; in the other, the course of the 
chain and the source of the materials were predetermined and in operation long 
anterior to the existence of the mountains which the}’ constitute, or the continents 
of which they form a part. 
The original idea that the dislocations, fractures, or mountain elevations have 
taken place along the weaker lines of the earth’s crust, is shown to be fallacious, 
from the accumulations known to exist, not only along the Appalachian chain, but 
also in the Rocky mountains and in other mountain chains. So far, therefore, as 
