316 REID— THE DISTRIBUTION OF LAND 



There are three main land masses in the water hemisphere: 

 Australia, with some of the large islands north of it ; the Antarctic 

 continent, and the southern end of South America ; to these may be 

 added the much smaller area of New Zealand. Fig. 3 shows that 

 Australia projects against the North Atlantic Ocean ; and some of 

 the adjacent islands against the northern part of South America; 

 the southern part of South America projects almost entirely against 

 China ; the Antarctic continent projects partly against the Arctic 

 Ocean and partly against the lands surrounding it. New Zealand 

 projects partly against Spain and partly against the adjacent sea. 

 The total area of the lands in the water hemisphere is about one 

 eleventh of the area of the hemisphere. A little less than one half 

 this land projects against water and a little more than one half 

 against land, and this is almost exactly the proportion we should 

 expect if the land in the water hemisphere were distributed without 

 any definite relation to the water in the land hemisphere. For in the 

 latter the ratio of the land to the water is 1:1.1; i.e., practically one 

 half the hemisphere is water and one half is land. So far then as the 

 antipodal relation of land and water is not explained by the exist- 

 ence of a land and a water hemisphere, it is purely accidental ; and 

 there is no necessity to look for a special explanation for it. 



3. The fact that the center of the land hemisphere is pretty 

 far north, being a little more than half way from the equator to the 

 north pole, places the arctic regions well within this hemisphere and 

 therefore naturally surrounds them with land. And similarly the 

 antarctic regions being well within the water hemisphere is nat- 

 urally surrounded by water. 



4. If you draw on a sheet of paper the outline of any fairly 

 compact area and then divide it up by deep indentations, you will 

 have left a figure with projections pointing roughly away from the 

 center. Now this is exactly the characteristic of the land area of 

 the world. The projections of South America, Africa, and Aus- 

 tralia are said to point towards the south. Our predilection for 

 referring everything to the earth's axis of rotation has blinded us 

 to the fact that these projections of the land area point equally well 

 towards the antipodes of the center of the land hemisphere, i.e., in 



