Ch, XXIV.] 
OF MOUNTAIN- CHAINS. 
345 
A (p. 340) is older than B (p. 341), if he means that it was 
elevated at a different geological period, for both may have been 
upheaved during the same period, namely, that when the strata 
c were formed. 
Supposed parallelism of contemporaneous lines of elevation. — 
So, also, when he infers that two chains were simultaneously 
upraised, the proof fails, since the close of the period of the 
disturbed strata and the commencement of the era of the un- 
disturbed must be added to the lapse of time during which the 
two chains may have originated, and in separate parts of which 
each may have been produced. With the insufficiency of the 
above evidence the whole force of the argument in support 
of the parallelism of lines of contemporaneous movement is 
annihilated. 
This hypothesis, indeed, of parallelism appears, even as 
stated by the author, in some degree at variance with itself. 
When certain European chains had been assumed to have been 
raised at the same time on the data already impugned, it was 
found that several of these contemporaneous chains had a 
parallel direction. Hence it was presumed to be a general law 
in geological dynamics that the chains upheaved at the same 
time are parallel. For example, it was said that the Pyrenees 
and other coetaneous chains, such as the northern Apennines, 
have a direction about W. N. W. and E. S. E., and to this line 
the Alleghanies in North America conform, as also the ghauts 
of Malabar, and certain chains in Egypt, Syria, northern 
Africa, and other countries ; and from this mere conformity in 
direction it was presumed that all these mountain-ranges were 
thrown up simultaneously. 
To select another example, the principal chain of the Alps, 
differing in age and direction from the Pyrenees, is parallel to 
the Sierra Morena, the Balkan, the chain of Mount Atlas, the 
central chain of the Caucasus, and the Himalaya. All these 
ridges, therefore, were probably heaved up by the same paroxys- 
mal convulsion ! The western Alps, on the other hand, rose at 
a still earlier period, when the parallel chains of Kiol, in Scan- 
