372 SEE— THE NEW THEORY OF EARTHQUAKES [November 15, 



only I : (10)", where we may put ^ = 33. Thus the chances are 

 only one in a decillion that this geometric parallelism would occur 

 without a common underlying physical cause. The coincidence in 

 volume is even more improbable, so that the agreement in direction 

 and in volume, if depending wholly on accidental coincidence, would 

 have a chance of only i : (10)^^, or one in a decillion decillions. A 

 decillion decillions is practically an infinite number; and it therefore 

 follows that the coincidence in direction and in volume depends on a 

 true physical cause connecting the elevation of the range with the 

 adjacent depression in the sea bottom. 



Moreover, after great earthquakes in this region, new islands 

 are frequently raised from the sea, and several new volcanoes have 

 broken out within historical time. Seismic sea waves of the first 

 class frequently follow, the water first withdrawing from the range 

 of islands towards the trough to the south, and then returning later 

 as a great wave. This shows that the sea bottom to the south sinks 

 after the earthquakes by which the region is afflicted. As the 

 islands, and in fact the whole mass of submarine mountains are 

 uplifted by the disturbance, and the sea bottom afterwards sinks, 

 it is evident that lava is expelled from beneath the trough and 

 pushed under the adjacent range. The bed of the sea then gives 

 down to fill up the partial cavity from which the molten rock has 

 been expelled. It will be noticed, moreover, that the trough lies 

 between the ocean and the mountain range, and hence if the leakage 

 of the ocean were the cause of the expulsion of the lava, the sub- 

 terranean movement necessarily would be towards the mountain 

 range, in accordance with observation. 



From this remarkable series of concurrent phenomena, it follows 

 that the chances are literally infinit}^ to one that the trough and ridge 

 are physically connected. It thus becomes an absolute certainty 

 that the submarine mountain range is formed by the expulsion of 

 lava from beneath the trough, that the whole movement is due to 

 the leakage of the ocean, and that it is going on right now ; so that 

 the effects observed within historical time are seen to be but a part 

 of the secular process which has crumpled the earth's crust in this 

 complicated manner. 



