414 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



making the observed compressional and diastrophic records must be 

 considered more in detail, as follows : 



1. If the earth remained fluid until all its rock-substance was con- 

 densed into a globe, all energy lost in the assembling was unavailable 

 for making the observed deformative record, for this record could 

 begin only after solidification began. If the earth was built up of solid 

 accretions, these must have begun to suffer distortion as soon as one 

 layer was laid upon another, and the distortional process must have 

 run on through the whole history of growth. The factors of time and 

 of rate of increase of stress, which in a very important way, condition 

 reorganization, metamorphism, diastrophism and other forms of ad- 

 justment to stress, v/ere thus radically different in the two cases. 

 A gaseous assemblage is a collapsing body; an orbital organization is 

 precisely the opposite. 



2. If the earth was assembled in a fluid state, its interior suffered 

 its main compression while still in this fluidal state, and this pre- 

 vented it from leaving a full diastrophic record of its compression. 

 If the material was added slowly, in a loose solid state, the main com- 

 pression took place while in a solid state and entered into the making 

 of the diastrophic record. 



3. If the earth remained fluid and convective until fully assembled, 

 almost ideal opportunities for chemical combination and physical 

 adjustment, as well as chemico-physical reorganization, would have 

 been offered before diastrophism began, except in so far as the heat 

 itself may have restrained such action. If the matter was clastic 

 and mixed by the conditions of infall, it would offer almost ideal condi- 

 tions for recombination, readjustment, and reorganization, and this 

 would be contemporaneous with the diastrophism. 



4. If the earth was fluid until fully assembled, there should have 

 been the best of facilities for the arrangement of the matter in concen- 

 tric layers according to specific gravity. This would have been an 

 added factor in reducing the potential energy available for diastro- 

 phism after solidification began. If the matter remained a hetero- 

 geneous mixture, so far as intrinsic heaviness was concerned, a corre- 

 sponding measure of its potential energy remained available for the 

 diastrophic record. In so far as segregation by specific gravity took 

 place during the compressive process, it involved a distortional factor 

 which played its part in making the diastrophic record. 



5. If the earth remained fluid and convective until fully assembled, 

 its gaseous constituents should have had favorable conditions for 

 escape, and only the quantities required for equilibrium with the par- 

 tial pressures of the constituents of the atmosphere should have been 

 retained to take part in vulcanism. If the earth was built up by solid 

 particles added at the surface and subject to weathering and mixture 

 with air and water, as it was gradually buried, there should have arisen 



