NATURAL SCIENCE 



A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 



No. 81— Vol. XIII— NOVEMBER 1898 



NOTES AND COMMENTS 



Found — an Editor 



Our readers will be glad to learn that Natural Science will continue 

 to appear as heretofore during 1899 and, we hope, for many years to 

 come. Arrangements have been made for its transfer to an Editor 

 in whom we have every confidence, and who has undertaken to 

 continue the journal on the lines with which our readers are 

 familiar. Particulars as to the future editorial and publishing 

 offices will be given in our December number. 



Distribution of the Oceans and Continents 



In discussing the theories of the distribution of the Oceans and 

 Continents before the British Association, Dr J. W. Gregory re- 

 marked that the " main object of geomorphology is to explain the 

 existing distribution of land and water on the globe. A remarkable 

 series of coincidences in the form and arrangement of the laud masses 

 suggests that the distribution has been determined by some general 

 principle and not by local accidents. The three most striking fea- 

 tures that require explanation are the antipodal position of oceans 

 and continents, the triangular shape of the geographical units, and 

 the excess of water in the southern hemisphere. Attempts to ex- 

 plain this arrangement have been made deductively from general 

 physical considerations, as by Elie de Beaumont, Lowthian Green, 

 and G. H. Darwin ; and directly from the evidence of stratigraphical 

 geology as by Suess, Lapworth, and Michel-Levy. Thus Elie de Beau- 

 mont regarded the form of the continents as determined by the moun- 

 tain chains, which he correlated into a regular geometrical network ; 

 while Lapworth regarded the distribution of laud and water as due 

 to a series of great earth-folds, the arches forming the continents, 

 and the troughs forming the ocean basins. Suess has treated the 



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