The international geography . hese glaciers finally melted. The Central Highlands, extending north of the Danube from the Carpathians to the Rhine, exhibit the greatest variety in the direction of their heights and the arrangement of their rocks. One extensive low plain, that of the upper Rhine, is embedded amongst these heights. The structure of the mountains exhibits no recent upridging hke the Alps ; they scarcely anywhere exceed 5,000 feet in height, Schneekoppe, in the Riesengebirge, alone reaching 5,266 feet. All geological formations are represented like mosaic work, although the Mesozo
The international geography . hese glaciers finally melted. The Central Highlands, extending north of the Danube from the Carpathians to the Rhine, exhibit the greatest variety in the direction of their heights and the arrangement of their rocks. One extensive low plain, that of the upper Rhine, is embedded amongst these heights. The structure of the mountains exhibits no recent upridging hke the Alps ; they scarcely anywhere exceed 5,000 feet in height, Schneekoppe, in the Riesengebirge, alone reaching 5,266 feet. All geological formations are represented like mosaic work, although the Mesozoic, and particularly the Triassic, preponderate in the South-West German basin, Hesse, and Thuringia. The strata of the Central Highlands are for the most part ancient marine deposits. The most extensive mountain group of the region is that of the North German Rhine Highlands, composed of Devonian schists, but it is much loo ^small to have been formed on the floor of an independent division of the sea. Hence it follows that19. Fig. 136.—Natural Divisions of Germany. 2^8 The International Geography the scattered portions of the same ancient marine formations, , theCoal Measures appearing on the edge of the Rhine Highlands, inSaxony and in Silesia, are connected by continuous strata underground,or that the once continuous strata have been worn away by denuda-tion. In fact, the variegated mosaic of this tesselated region can onlybe understood when one recognises it as a land where the Earths crust hasbeen dislocated and broken up into blocks—a Schollenland. The isolatedPalaeozoic masses show clearly how the Devonian strata of the Rhine, theHartz, the Frankenwald, and the Sudetes have undergone violent dis-turbance, being wrinkled into ridges and domes, although the primitivefoldings do not figure prominently in the scenery of to-day. The action ofthe encroaching and receding sea and the continual influence of atmo-spheric erosion have worn the crests away, until only the e
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectgeography, bookyear19
