248 SEE— FURTHER RESEARCHES ON [April 24. 



He showed that the mountams are hundreds of times higher than 

 the cooHng of the earth will explain. On this point his labors mark 

 a distinct advance in geological science ; for next in importance to 

 establishing true theories is the overthrow of erroneous ones, which 

 clears the ground for a fresh start. But notwithstanding the un- 

 answerable character of Fisher's argument, the old theories have 

 been retained by geologists as the best they could devise. Fisher's 

 criticisms of geological theories are carefully thought out, and 

 worthy of attention. He has always denied the entire solidity of 

 the earth, holding that the movements noticed in mountains proved 

 the existence of a mobile substratum beneath a crust some twenty 

 miles thick. Here again he was certainly right, and it is difficult 

 to see how such an obvious proposition could be denied. 



We need not dwell on Fisher's views of mountain formation, 

 because they imply convection currents within the earth, and these 

 latter are certainly inadmissible, except just beneath the crust in 

 earthquake movements, as developed in the theory set forth in this 

 paper. 



§ 44. Views of Major C. E. Dutton. — Like the Rev. O. Fisher, 



Major Dutton was one of the earliest authorities to question the 



adequacy of secular cooling to account for the wrinklings noticed 



in the earth's crust. Using the results of Fourier's solution for the 



variation of temperature, as developed in the work of Lord Kelvin, 



Dutton found that 



" the greatest possible contraction due to secular cooling is insufficient in 

 amount to account for the phenomena attributed to it by the contraction 

 hypothesis. By far the larger portion of this contraction must have taken 

 place before the commencement of the Palseozoic age. By far the larger 

 portion of the residue must have occurred before the beginning of the Terti- 

 ary, and yet the whole of this contraction would not be sufficient to account 

 for the disturbances which have occurred since the close of the Cretaceous." 



Major Dutton concludes that " the determination of plications to 



particular localities presents difficulties in the way of the contrac- 



tional hypothesis which have been underrated.". He held that the 



localization of the plications could result only from a large amount 



of horizontal slipping of the crust over the nucleus, and the friction 



involved in this movement even over a liquid nucleus would be so 



great as to render the assumption a physical absurdity. 



