M. de Saussure has given us an observation of this kind, in describing the mountains through which the Rhone has made its way out of the Alps, at the bottom of the Vallee.

“Sec.. 1061.  Plus loin le village de Juviana ou Envionne on voit des rochers qui ont une forme que je nomme moutonnee; car on est tente de donner des noms a des modifications qui n’en ont pas, et qui ont pourtant un caractere propre.  Les montagnes que je designe par cette expression sont composees d’un assemblage de tetes arrondies, couvertes quelquefois de bois, mais plus souvent d’herbes, ou tout au plus de brousailles.  Ces rondeurs contigues et repetees forment en grand l’effet d’une toison bien fournie, ou de ces perruques que l’on nomme aussi moutonnees.  Les montagnes qui se presentent sous cette forme, sont presque toujours de rochers primitives, ou au moins des steatites; car je n’ai jamais vu aucune montagne de pierre a chaux ou d’ardoise revetir cette apparence.  Les signes qui peuvent donner quelque indice de la nature des montagnes, a de grandes distances et au travers des plantes qui le couvrent, sont en petit nombre, et meritent d’etre etudies et consacres par des termes propres.”

When philosophers propose vague theories of the earth, theories which contain no principle for investigating either the general disorder of strata or the particular form of mountains, such theories can receive no confirmation from the examination of the earth, nor can they afford any rule by which the phenomena in question might be explained.  This is not the case when a theory presents both the efficient and final cause of those disorders in bodies which had been originally formed regular, and which shows the use as well as means for the formation of our mountains.  Here illustration and confirmation of the theory may be found in the examination of nature; and natural appearances may receive that explanation which the generalization of a proper theory affords.

The particular forms of mountains depend upon the compound operation of two very different causes.  One of these consists in those mineral operations by which the strata of the earth are consolidated and displaced, or disordered in the production of land above the sea; the other again consists in those meteorological operations by which this earth is rendered a habitable world.  In the one operation, loose materials are united, for the purpose of resisting the dissolving powers which act upon the surface of the earth; in the other, consolidated masses are again dissolved, for the purpose of serving vegetation and entertaining animal life.  But, in fulfilling those purposes of a habitable earth, or serving that great end, the land above the level of the sea is wasted, and the materials are transported to the bottom of the ocean from whence that consolidated land had come.  At present we only want to see the cause of those particular shapes which are found among the most elevated places of our earth, those places upon which the wasting powers of the surface act with greatest energy or force.