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III.—On the Formation of Mountains, with a Critique on Captain Hutton's Lecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Extract

The subject of Captain Hutton's lecture, on the Formation of Mountains, delivered at Wellington, New Zealand, is one which has engaged a good deal of my attention, and was discussed by me in a paper read before the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and printed in their Transactions. In that paper I attributed the elevating force, which has raised mountain ranges, to the contraction of the heated interior of the earth, and subsequent wrinkling of the crust so as to accommodate itself to the diminished nucleus. This was an old hypothesis, but I believe the amount of horizontal pressure produced in that manner had not been estimated before. Mr. Mallet, the eminent seismologist, read a paper on the same subject before the Royal Society in May, 1872, in ignorance of what I had written, and came to the same conclusion as myself as to the amount of the horizontal pressure.

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Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1873

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References

Page 249 note 1 Geol. Mag., Vol. X., p. 166.

Page 249 note 2 Vol. xi, part iii. See also Geol. Mag., Vol. V., p. 493.

Page 249 note 3 Figure of the Earth, fourth edition, p. 203, note.

page 249 note 1 It might be thought, on a cursory view, that I have taken this view myself which I now condemn in my paper on the Elevation of Mountains, p. 4, but a little consideration will show that it is not so.

page 251 note 1 Mr. Babbage, Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. iii., p. 204, entirely neglects the horizontal expansion, and takes account only of the vertical part, so that the elevation I have given in the text is three times as great as he would have reckoned it. As a homely instance ef the effect I suppose, may be taken the case of a loaf of light bread baked in a “tin.”

page 257 note 1 Geological Sketch of the Shillong Plateau, Geological Survey of India, p. 40.

page 259 note 1 loc. cit., p. 45.

page 260 note 1 Cam. Phil. Trans., loc. cit.; and Geol. Mag., Vol. VII. p. 58.

page 260 note 2 See Maxwell's Theory of Heat, p. 247.

page 260 note 3 See a paper on “The Physical Geography of the Medeterranean during the Pleistocene Age,” by W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., F.R.S., in the “Popular Science Review,” for April, 1873, p. 159.

page 260 note 4 American Journal of Science, vol. xxii., p. 138.

page 261 note 1 Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xiii., p. 370.

page 261 note 2 See Mallet's Palmieri's Vesuvius, Introductory Sketch, p. 65, note.