Scandinavia broadcast over the lowlands around the Baltic. This, however, was not the only lost cause over which the French geologists were holding their shield. Lyell goes on to write, with a touch of quiet sarcasm: "As to the elevation crater business, Von Buch, de Beaumont, and Dufresnoy are to write and prove that Somma and Etna are elevation craters, and Von Buch himself has just gone to Auvergne to prove that Mont Dore is one also." Lyell's special intention in visiting the Alps was to obtain evidence as to the relation of the metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. Geologists of the Wernerian School, with sundry others who hardly went so far as the Freiberg professor, maintained that the crystalline schists, including gneiss, had been produced, often as precipitates, in a primæval ocean, the waters of which were far too hot to allow of the existence of life. At a later time, as the temperature fell, the great masses of slightly altered slates and grits were deposited--the region of "greywacke," the transitional rocks as they were commonly called. These for the most part were unfossiliferous, at any rate in their earliest stages. To this view, of course, the Huttonian dictum, which Lyell sought to establish, was diametrically opposed, viz. that the earth showed no signs of a beginning. Now he had been informed that in the Alps certain slaty rocks contained fossils which indicated an age corresponding generally with the chalk of England, and that in other parts of that chain even crystalline schists could be found interbedded with fossiliferous strata of Secondary age. To settle the former question he intended to visit the famous quarries of Glarus, but was ultimately compelled to leave this for another year, as he took the latter point first in order of time, and the investigation of it involved more work than he had anticipated. In regard to this, the most important sections were to be found on the precipitous northern slopes of the Jungfrau and in the upper part of the Urbach-thal, a lonely glen which descends into the main valley of the Aar at Imhof, above Meyringen. In both these localities gneiss appears to overlie "fossiliferous limestone," and Lyell, after visiting them, returned satisfied that he had seen "alternations of the gneiss with limestone of the lias or something newer in the highest regions of the Alps." That undoubtedly he saw, but he did not suspect that the appearance was illusory. This was not in the least surprising; the Alps were still almost a terra incognita; the processes of "mountain making" as yet were unknown; many statements in common currency as to the passage of sedimentary into crystalline rocks were erroneous and distinctly misleading. Only by degrees was it discovered that this superposition of gneiss or crystalline schist to Secondary rock was due to folding on a scale so gigantic that the older had been doubled over upon the younger rock and the apparent order of succession was the