GEOLOGY. 291 



the strata meet the meridians (when, for example, they are for great distances 

 directed north forty-five degrees east) like the elements of a loxodromic line 

 without being parallel in space. The direction of the ancient strata (prim- 

 itive and transition) is not a small local phenomenon; it is, on the contrary, 

 a phenomenon independent of the direction of the secondary chains, their 

 branchings, and the sinuosities of their valleys, a phenomenon the cause 

 of which has acted uniformly for prodigious distances; as, for example, in 

 the ancient continent between the parallels of forty-three and fifty-seven 

 degrees north latitude, from the north of Scotland as far as the confines of 

 Asia." 



In the movements of the equatorial protuberance we have the only force 

 adequate to produce such wide-spread effects as these, or the " slaty cleavage" 

 in the same direction as the lines of the corrugations, or the great sj'stems 

 of "faults" which cross them, or those great systems of "joints" by which 

 all the rocks composing the crust of the earth are divided into rhomboids, 

 which, to repeat my former simile, are like the interstices between the lines 

 on a watch. The great changes in climate and in organic life which occurred 

 at periods corresponding to periods of great disturbance in the strata of the 

 earth, and the several systems of lines into which the undulations of the 

 strata are thrown, are all co-related phenomena, and no theory will be satis- 

 factory that does not embrace them all as resulting from one and the same 

 cause. 



4th. We have now to consider whether the study of geology, which has 

 brought to us the knowledge of these so remarkably co-related effects, does 

 not also furnish us with data to enable us to trace the cause of them. I have 

 already stated that we Jiave in the . mountain masses, which have been 

 upheaved at different periods and in different parts of the earth, a sufficient 

 cause for producing that evagation of the poles which Newton, before any 

 of these geological facts were known, has said would necessarily result from 

 their upheaval, and the evagation of the poles would produce the observed 

 phenomena to which I have referred. 



Since the commencement of my investigations on this subject, I have 

 requested Captain Clarke, R. E., to be kind enough to undertake the mathe- 

 matical investigation of this difficult problem, and the result he obtained 

 leaves no doubt on my mind but that the evagation of the poles is the true 

 cause of the change of climate, the corrugation of the surface of the earth, 

 and the other phenomena adverted to. 



To these powerful opponents, Colonel James finally replies, stating in the 

 commencement his position anew, as follows : I have said that the eleva- 

 tion of mountain masses has produced an "evagation of the poles," which, 

 as a consequence, has produced a change in the form of the earth, and cor- 

 rugated and split up the strata composing its crust; and, further, that the 

 extent of the evagation may have been such, that at one time the north 

 pole may have been in such a position that the axis of the earth was per- 

 pendicular to the plane of her orbit (which it would be if the pole was nearly 

 in the same position as the magnetic pole); and that at successive epochs 

 it has occupied other positions, till it reached its present position, and caused 

 the change of climate which distinguishes each epoch. 



Putting the case in the most favorable form for producing the largest 

 effect, and assuming that a mountain mass was equal to the -njW^ 1 P art ^ 

 the mass of the equatorial protuberance, the result would be the shift of the 

 poles of the earth to the extent of one or two miles ; and in the case I Imve 



