naccounted for.
The suggestion of compression is on the contrary consistent with the
main features of Swiss geography. The principal axis follows a curved
line from the Maritime Alps towards the north-east by Mont Blanc and
Monte Rosa and St. Gotthard to the mountains overlooking the Engadine.
The geological strata follow the same direction. North of a line running
through Chambery, Yverdun, Neuchatel, Solothurn, and Olten to Waldshut
on the Rhine are Jurassic strata; between that line and a second nearly
parallel and running through Annecy, Vevey, Lucerne, Wesen, Appenzell,
and Bregenz on the Lake of Constance, is the lowland occupied by later
Tertiary strata; between this second line and another passing through
Albertville, St. Maurice, Lenk, Meiringen, and Altdorf lies a more or
less broken band of older Tertiary strata; south of which are a
Cretaceous zone, one of Jurassic age, then a band of crystalline rocks,
while the central core, so to say, of the Alps, as for instance at St.
Gotthard, consists mainly of gneiss or granite. The sedimentary deposits
reappear south of the Alps, and in the opinion of some high authorities,
as, for instance, of Bonney and Heim, passed continuously over the
intervening regions. The last great upheaval commenced after the Miocene
period, and continued through the Pliocene. Miocene strata attain in the
Righi a height of 6000 feet.

For neither the hills nor the mountains are everlasting, or of the same
age.

The Welsh mountains are older than the Vosges, the Vosges than the
Pyrenees, the Pyrenees than the Alps, and the Alps than the Andes, which
indeed are still rising; so that if our English mountains are less
imposing so far as mere height is concerned, they are most venerable
from their great antiquity.

But though the existing Alps are in one sense, and speaking
geologically, very recent, there is strong reason for believing that
there was a chain of lofty mountains there long previously. "The first
indication," says Judd, "of the existence of a line of weakness in this
portion of the earth's crust is found towards the close of the Permian
period, when a series of volcanic outbursts on the very grandest scale
took place" along a line nearly following that of the present Alps, and
led to the formation of a range of mountains, which, in his opinion,
must have been at least 8000 to 9000 feet high. Ramsay and Bonney have
also given strong reasons for believing that the present line