Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-09-01
How the Mountains Grew.

The interesting question of the origin
and rise of mountain chains has been
made the subject of more special inves-
tigation by French and by American
than by English biologists. Nearly
half q century ago the late Ellie de Beau
mont gave to the world the result of his
researches, in his ''Systeme DIES Mon
tagnes," in which he propounded an
hypothesis that still receives very gen
eral acceptance on the Continent, but
which, except in a modified view, has
found few supporters in this country.
Assuming for our globe an outer SOLID
crust with a central liquid mass, this
distinguished geologist showed that the
earth is necessarily losing some portion
of its heat by radiation from the sur
face, and that this process of cooling,
which has been going on at a slow rate
from the earliest geologicaltimes causes
the central mass to contract and lessen
in volume. This lessening Of the heated
nucleus has led the crust to comfort
itself in order to fit or adapt itselfto the
diminished volume of the central MI
cleus, causing the crust to wrinkle or
fold in great corrugations. or to frac-
ture, and the fractured edges to squeeze
up in lines of mountain chains.
He showed that mountain chains have
been formed at all geological periods,
and that their relative age could be as
certained by determining the age of the
tilted mountain strata, and the age of
those strata which abut horizontally
against their base. For it is evident
that the mountain range must have been
elevated before the deposition of the
strata which lie horizontally at their
base, and which are unaffected by the
disturbance that the mountains.
1t follows, therefore, that the mount
ain chain is older than the horizontal
strata and newer than the upheaved
strata. Thus the age Of any mountain
range is easily determined, relatively to
the successive groups of strata forming
the sedimentary series.
Ellie de Beaumont further argued that,
as the crust Of the earth must have be-
come thicker by secular refrigeration,
it follows that the crust was thinner
and less strong at the earlier period of
The earth's history than at the later per-
iods, and, consequently. that the crump-
lings and mountain chains. although
more frequent, We're not on so large a
scale in early geological times as when
the crust had become thicker and more
rigid.
But although there is no doubt that
some of the Oldest mountains are very
insignificant in height, we have no
means of knowing what their original
altitude was, or how much of their mass
has been removed by wear and denuda-
ton. Some of the hills in the neigh
,borhood of St. David's, in South Wales.
are neither majestic nor lofty. vet they
are among the earliest of our mountain
ranges.
Or look, again, at a range of hills of
much later date, yet still very old, as,
for example, at the Mendips in our own
country, and the Ardennes in Belgium,
both portions of the same mountain
chain, raised before the formation of
our Oolitic hills of Bath and Chelten-
ham, or Of the Las cliffs of Lyme Re-
gis. 1t is possible that this range,
which is now Of comparative insignif-
,cance-in no case attaining a height OF
1900 feet in either England or Belgium
formed at one time a lofty mountain
chain. For, Judging from the portions
that are wanting and have been removed
from the Mendips, it has been estimated
that those hills may at one time have
had an elevation of not less than 5000
to 5000 feet above the plains of Somer-
,setshire, while the Belgian biologists
have shown that the Ardendes mi ght
have scared from $4,000 to $4,000 feet
above the plains of Belgium. This
ichain, now S o unimportant, may at ONT
time have We'd with the later-formed
Alps and Apennines in height and gran
'deur. How strange and striking a pic
'ture our corner Of Western Europe
must have presented in that early age,
when the English Channel was not,
and when a great chain Of mountains,
possibly snow-capped, ranged from the
Mendips to Westphalia! The portions
which remain are, as it were, the Worn
down stumps of this great mountain
chain, the whole of the vast superin-
cumbent mass having been removed by
wear and d%enudation continued through
long geological times. And such has
been the case in many other mountain
regions of II globe; on the one hand
reformation being produced by subter-
ranean forces, and on the other planning
down and leveling by meteorological
agencies .-Good Words.