ESSAY-REVIEWS 



THE SHAPING OF THE EARTH : A Study in Geological Physics, 



by G. W. Bulman, M.A., B.Sc. : on Papers by M. Emile Belot, 

 Directeur des Manufactures de l'Etat, Paris : 

 (i) Le premier de tous les Deluges. Lois de repartition des mers et 

 des continents primitifs. Extrait du volume des Comptes Rendus 

 de V Association francaise pour V Avancement des Sciences, pp. 354-67, 

 1914; 

 (2) L'Origine cosmique des formes de la Terre. Revue scietitifique, 

 May 27 to June 3, 1916, pp. 327-34. 



WHEN the British Association has just appointed a Committee for the investigation 

 of geological physics — or, as they call it, geophysics — the time seems opportune 

 for calling attention to the work of a French savant, M. Emile Belot, on this 

 important subject. 



The future progress of geology imperatively demands an amalgamation with 

 the other sciences. Or rather, perhaps, a recognition of the fact that the study of 

 the Earth includes in itself all the sciences. For at the very beginning of geological 

 history we find ourselves in the great terra incognita of the chemistry and physics 

 of a mass of intensely heated vapours. It is to be feared that geologists in general 

 have ignored rather than attempted to solve the problem thus presented. Most of 

 them have been content, with Hutton, to see no trace of a beginning in the matter 

 of rock making. The past of the globe has been for them a lotus-land where " all 

 things always seemed the same." Or as M. Belot expresses it, they have given 

 themselves up to a " quietisme bien pen scientifique." Chemists and physicists 

 have also, on the whole, avoided this interesting region of thought, so that one 

 hardly knows where to turn to get any authoritative statements as to what probably 

 happened when the incandescent vapours first condensed to form the solid Earth. 



M. Belot, however, takes the view that the early making of rocks must have 

 been profoundly influenced by the chemistry and physics of an incandescent globe, 

 solidifying from a primitive nebula. He even traces the present position of the 

 continental areas, the relative proportion of land and water at different latitudes, 

 the tapering of land masses towards the south, etc., to forces acting at the time of 

 the Earth's solidification. As regards the general features of the Earth, M. Belot 

 rejects somewhat scornfully the re'seau pe?itagonal theory of his illustrious country- 

 man Elie de Beaumont, as well as the tetrahedro?i hypothesis of other writers. 

 He claims that all the interesting and puzzling features in the distribution of land 

 and sea, and the general geological structure of the Earth, can be explained on his 

 view of what happened in the very beginning of Earth history — in the chemistry 

 and physics of a cooling and condensing nebula. 



A good idea of M. Belot's position may be gathered from one of his papers, 

 "The First Deluge" {Le premier de tous les Deluges), read July 31, 1914, and 

 published in the Comptes Rendus of the French Academy, 



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