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CORDILLERAN MESOZOIC REVOLUTION.
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hundred miles. In the portion examined there are several masses or belts of schistose metamorphic rocks which have been sunk down into the granite, but they form a small proportion of the entire complex. The granite varies somewhat in mineralogical composition, texture, and structure, and is often distinctly gneissic locally. In places it is essentially hornblendic, in others it is micaceous. Notwithstanding these variations, which are common in most large granitic masses, the granite seems to be a unit throughout, and the mass is certainly a very important factor in the epeirogeny of the west coast of America. Even should it be discovered by the closer scrutiny which science will certainly demand, that there are portions of an older granite terrane to be discriminated from the general mass, the conclusion will not be invalidated, that in the interval between the deposition of Triassic strata and the deposition of lower Cretaceous, the earth's crust was in this region invaded by an immense batholitic magma, hundreds of miles in extent, which absorbed a large part of the pre-Triassic basement, as well as a portion of the Triassic rocks themselves. This invasion of the crust by the British Columbian batholite seems to have conditioned a general and pronounced elevation of the coast. For the erosion which intervened before the deposition of the Cretaceous was possessed of a vigor only born of lofty mountains, removing the upper crust and cutting down deep into the congealed granite. The Cretaceous rocks were littoral deposits at the base of these lofty mountains. Thus was a great revolution wrought in the geology and physiography of the west coast of British Columbia in the interval between the Triassic and Cretaceous times.

Little is definitely known of the geology of the Olympic Mountains, but it is probable that the conditions which prevail on Vancouver Island, which is the northern extension of the range, hold good here, the Cretaceous rocks of the coast reposing upon the lower flanks of mountains which consist of a complex of granite and metamorphic rocks. These mountains are probably the least known portion of the United States, and they are mentioned here simply to indicate that important evidence