Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1819 edition. Excerpt: ...am indebted to the same gentleman for the term Ocrynian, as denoting the high granitic tracts of Devonshire and Cornwall. It is used in this sense by Richard of Cirencester, and I have thought it better to revive an obsolete name than to construct a new one. M place its level below high-water mark, whatever is dry land must form a part of the Chain, and consequently the Chain cannot be followed across a continent. Buffon made the principal Chain in the Western Hemisphere run from north to south; in the Eastern from east to west; but corrected himself in the supplement to his work, where he states, that in both Hemispheres the principal Chains run north and south, and that those which run east and west are only subordinate. Gatterer supposes different Chains, Tuning in different latitudes, to cross at intervals forming a kind of net-work. According to Pallas, they radiate from a common centre. His anonymous critic takes two principal Chains parallel with the equator, the one about 50 north latitude, the other about 25 south latitude, and supposes branches to be sent off from each of these towards the equator, and towards the poles. Our knowledge upon this subject, confined and inaccurate as it is, enables us to pronounce that all these systems are erroneous. Some modern writers have been disposed to confound chains of mountains with waterheads, and imagine that a line connecting the sources of rivers all over the globe must faithfully represent the line of greatest elevation. If the banks of rivers were in all places equally raised above their channel, it would do so; but the reverse happens continually. The environs of Prague, I believe, are" at a lower level than those at Toplitz, where the Elbe effects its passage between the Erz...
