114 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



Address to the Geological Society of America (December 29, 

 1915), and we camiot do better than quote his own statement 

 of the matter here: 



"Admitting," he says, "that in the beginning the litho- 

 sphere bulged up in places, so as to form continents, and 

 sagged in other places, so as to form ocean beds, there are 

 interesting problems presented as to the permanence of land 

 and seas. All will admit marginal changes affecting large 

 areas, but these encroachments of the sea on the continents 

 and the later retreats may be of quite a subordinate kind, 

 not implying an interchange of deep-sea bottoms and land sur- 

 faces. The essential permanence of continents and oceans has 

 been firmly held by many geologists, notably Dana among 

 the older ones, and seems reasonable; but there are geologists, 

 especially palaeontologists, who display great recklessness in 

 rearranging land and sea. The trend of a mountain range, or 

 the convenience of a running bird, or a marsupial afraid to 

 wet his feet seems sufficient warrant for hoisting up any sea 

 bottom to connect continent with continent. A Gondwana 

 Land arises in place of an Indian Ocean and sweeps across to 

 South America, so that a spore-bearing plant can follow up 

 an ice age; or an Atlantis ties New England to Old England 

 to help out the migrations of a shallow-water fauna; or a 

 'Lost Land of Agulhas' joins South Africa and India. 



"It is curious to find these revolutionary suggestions made 

 at a time when geodesists are demonstrating that the earth's 

 crust over large areas, and perhaps everywhere, approaches a 

 state of isostatic equilibrium, and that isostatic compensation 

 is probably complete at a depth of only 76 miles" . . . and 

 (having noted the difference of density that must exist be- 

 tween the continental, and submarine, earth columns) Cole- 

 man would have us bear in mind "that to transform great 

 areas of sea bottom into land it would be necessary either to 

 expand the rock beneath by several per cent or to replace 

 heavy rock, such as basalt, by lighter materials, such as gran- 

 ite. There is no obvious way in which the rock beneath a 



