THE HYPOTHESIS OF CONTINENTAL DISPLACEMENT ^ 



By Charles Schuchert 



Professor Emeritus of Paleontology and Historical Geologi/, Yale University, 



New Haven, Conn. 



[With four plates] 



"God has delivered the icorld to the disputes of men" 



Wegener's hypothesis first appeared in 1912 in Petermann's Mitteil- 

 ungen and in the Geologische Rundschau. In 1915 came his book, 

 Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane, with a second edition 

 in 1920, a third in 1922, and a translation into English in 1924. The 

 hypothesis did not receive much consideration from English-speaking 

 geologists until 1922, when Lake reviewed the book at length in the 

 Geological Magazine of London, and the next year lectured on the 

 hypothesis before the Royal Geographical Society. In the same 

 year, Reid reviewed the book in the Geographical Review of New 

 York. The theory was likewise discussed before the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science in 1922, and the discussion 

 reported in Nature by W. B. Wright, while a similar discussion 

 by geologists, zoologists, and botanists before the Royal Society of 

 South Africa appeared in the same periodical. Since then the hy- 

 pothesis has been dealt with further in Nature and elsewhere. For 

 the benefit of Americans, the more important discussions in English 

 are enumerated below.^ 



1 Reprinted, with slight alterations and additions, from Theory of Continental Drift, 

 1928, by permission of the author and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 

 Tulsa, Okla. 



' F. B. Taylor, Bearing of the Tertiary Mountain Belt on the Origin of the Earth's 

 Plan, Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., vol. 21 (1010), pp. 179-226; Movement of Continental 

 Masses Under Action of Tidal Forces, Pan-Amer. Creol., vol. 43 (1925), pp. 15-50; Salient 

 Points in Tertiary Epeirogeny, Bull. Geol. Sue. Amer., vol. 88 (1927), pp. 107-109. 



A. Wegener, The Origin of Continents and Oceans. Translated by J. G. A. Skerl, and 

 with an introduction by J. W. Evans, Button, 1924. 



Philip Lake, Wegener's Displacement Theory, Geol. Mag., vol. 59 (1922), pp. 338-346; 

 Wegener's Hypothesis of Continental Drift, Nature, Feb. 17, 1923, pp. 226-228. 



W. B. Wright, The Wegener Hypothesis, Nature, Jan. 6, 1923, pp. 30-31. This discus- 

 sion, before the British As.sociation, was " lively but inconclusive," but all were agreed 

 that the Atlantic Ocean was much older than Pleistocene time. It led to other papers in 

 Nature for Jan. 27, 1923, p. 131 ; Feb. 24, 1923, pp. 255-256 ; Mar. 24, 1923, pp. 393-394 ; 

 Apr. 25, 1925, p. 602 ; May 30, 1925, pp. 834-835 ; Sept. 26, 1925, p. 481. 



J. W. Gregory, Continental Drift, a review of Wegener's book in Nature, Feb. 21, 1925, 

 pp. 255-257. 



W. K. Pickering, The Separation of the Continents by Fission, Geol. Mag., vol. 61 

 (1924), pp. 31-34. 



Arthur Holmes, Continental Drift, a review of Theory of Continental Drift, Nature, 

 Sept. 22, 1928, pp. 431-4:53. 



Philip Lake, review of the same book, Geol. Mag., Sept., 1928, pp. 422-424. 



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