Researches into fossil osteology, partially abridged and re-arranged. Part. I. / [Georges Cuvier].

  • Georges Cuvier
Date:
1826
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Researches into fossil osteology, partially abridged and re-arranged. Part. I. / [Georges Cuvier]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    time. At the foot of these declivities, round hills are formed by immense masses of their fallen ruins, the height of which is augmented by every thaw, and by every storm. Even these inclined strata, which constitute the ridges of secondary mountains, are not placed upon the horizontal strata of those hills which form their first commencement: they are, on the contrary, situated beneath them, and the hills themselves rest on their declivities. When we pierce through the hori- zontal strata, in the neighbourhood of mountains with inclined strata, the,inclined strata are again discovered in the depth below. Nay, sometimes when the inclined strata are not greatly elevated, we find their summits covered with the hori- zontal strata. The oblique then, or inclined strata, are of greater antiquity than the horizontal; and as at least the greater number of them must have been formed horizontally, it is evident that they must have been raised by some cause into their actual position, and that too previously to the horizontal strata having been formed above them *. Thus the sea, previously to the formation of the horizontal strata, must have formed others which have been broken, in- clined, and overturned in a variety of ways by some unknown causes ; and as several of these inclined strata, which were more anciently formed, are elevated above the horizontal strata which have succeeded, and which surround them, the causes which produced their inclination must also have propelled them above the level of the sea, so as to form islands, or at least rocks and inequalities, either from the strata being raised by * The idea maintained by some geologists, that certain strata have been originally formed in the oblique position in which they are at present found, is (sup- posing it to be true respecting some which would be crystallized, according to Mr. Greenough, like the depositions which incrust the whole interior of vessels in which gypsous waters have been boiled), quite inapplicable, at least to such as contain shells or smooth stones, which, suspended in such a manner, could never have attained to the formation of the cement necessary to agglutinate them.
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