Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 2.djvu/309

 CHAP. X. eastern shore of the United States, and, as De Beaumont collected from the statements of transatlantic geologists, were probably uplifted between the age of the chalk and the latest of the stratified rocks.

Such remarkable accordances of epoch and linear direction, over so enormous a length upon the surface of the globe, cannot, says De Beaumont, be the result of chance, but of a regularly acting internal cause.

M. de Beaumont has entered into a minute examination of dislocations affecting the molasse, one of the most recent of the tertiary deposits. He has connected the line of these disturbances in the south of France with those which may be observed in the western Alps from the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble to the Salève near Geneva, and in the primary chain from the mountain of Taillefer to Mont Blanc, in the direction north, 26° east. Numerous observations in the valley of the Durance, though full of discordances, are reduced by the author to the same general line north, 26° east, which agrees with the opposite escarpments of Mont Blanc and Mont Rosa, and nearly with the line of a remarkable dislocation parallel to the Jura from Molezon to Aarburg, and with the depressed region occupied by the Lungern See, Sarner See, Alpnach, Kussnacht, and the lower parts of the lakes of Zug, Zurich, and Constance. The volcanic cone of Hohentwiel, beyond Schaffhausen, being upon the same line, gives occasion for the remark, that a system of disruption of the same age has thus been traced in one direction for above 100 leagues.

In the prolongation of this line to Nova Zembla, no instance is mentioned of corresponding disruptions; but the long Scandinavian Alps, and particularly the Dovrefeld Mountains, are parallel to it; and it was in consequence of their elevation that so large a quantity of Norwegian rocks have been scattered over northern Europe: the late date of this dispersion of blocks proves the late date of the elevation of these mountains.

Some traces are supposed to be found in Africa of the same line of disturbance, and even the chain of the