J
A
11
horizontal, and which are most probably
limestone.
I have already noticed the thermal waters
of the Alps (Vol. I. 344 to 353), but I cannot
avoid repeating what appears to me
most extraordinary, that notwithstanding
the numerous hot springs which are gushing
out at the feet of the central Alps,
and on both sides of the southern range,
along a very extended line, yet these springs
have hitherto been regarded by geologists
as insulated phenomena, unconnected with
each other, or with the geology of the Alps.
They appear to me to afford no obscure
indications of the cause which has broken
the surface of the earth, and raised the colossal
masses of the Alps so many thousand
feet above the general level of the country.
In the Grecian and Pennine Alps, it is true,
that few rocks occur similar to modern lava,
but the proofs of subterranean heat which
the thermal waters afford, are abundant.
I have no knowledge of the thermal waters
in the Rhetian Alps, but rocks of an undoubted
volcanic character occur there, particularly
in the valley of Pass. On the
northern side of the Swiss Alps, if no
thermal waters are discovered, it may, I
conceive, be satisfactorily accounted for by
the immense alluvial deposition of sandstone
and coarse conglomerate, that covers
the declivities of these mountains to an
amazing depth, and extends to the feet of
Jura range.
It may perhaps be supposed, that in the
comparisons which I have occasionally
made between the geology of England and
that of the Alps, I have omitted to notice
the calcareous formation, denominated in
England the mountain-limestone, which
occurs so abundantly in Derbyshire, and
the western parts of Yorkshire, Northumberland,
and Durham, and also in Monmouthshire,
and some of the western counties.
When geology first began to excite
much attention in this country, the access
to the Continent being difficult, English
geologists were content to class the secondary
rocks after characters furnished by
Werner or his disciples : these characters
were very imperfect, as the classification of
strata from fossil remains was then scarcely
understood. Hence the mountain limestone
was for some time called floetz