CONTINENTAL DISPLACEMENT — SCHUCHERT 263 



his orthodox view,s lie sees the <2;ap as )!:iviii<5 been never less than 

 it is to-day. 



Mediteiranean-Antillean connection.^. — Now let us take up the 

 postulated connections between Spain and the Atlas Mountains of 

 northwestern Africa and Antillia. AVe<2:ener says (pp. 5-12) that 

 the Atlas Mountains were folded "chiefly in the Oligocene, but had 

 already commenced in the Cretaceous," but that these folds can not 

 be found on the American side. It is true, nevertheless, that the 

 Greater Antilles were also folded late in the Cretaceous and that they 

 have been elevated epeirogenically at different times during the 

 Cenozoic, and faulted on a most tremendous scale during the Pliocene. 

 Accordingly it is curious to see that Wegener does not know these 

 facts or is not Avilling to stretch them into his scheme. However, he 

 easily gets around his difficulties by saying that the Americas were 

 once closely adjacent to Euro- Africa, but that they have rifted and 

 drifted apart before the Carboniferous. This, then, must have taken 

 place in the Devonian or even earlier, and his most recent map for 

 Upper Carboniferous time shows a north-south mediterranean some 

 hundreds of miles in width, extending from South America north to 

 about Long Island. The Avriter's reconstruction by the plasteline 

 method, however, produces a good-sized North Atlantic Ocean (Po- 

 seidon) about 1,500 miles across either way (Pis. 2, 3). This con- 

 jectured mediterranean is, for Wegener, a saving stroke, and is, in 

 any event, a feature that paleontologists have long been postulating 

 to explain the origin of many south European Tethyan marine ele- 

 ments not only in the post-Ordovician faunas of the southern United 

 States but also for the Silurian and Devonian of Brazil. These con- 

 nections are seen again in the Permian and throughout Mesozoic time. 

 But this mediterranean, the vv^riter's Poseidon, in order to have been 

 a normal sea for an abundance of life, and for migration jDOssibilities, 

 must have had a deep and wide oceanic connection with the Pacific 

 across Central America, and this Wegener's map does not show. 

 Now, however, that his attention has been directed to it, there will be 

 no further difficulty about this, since w^ith his pen he will draw in a 

 Caribbean seaway uniting Poseidon and Tethys with the Pacific, 

 solving this and other problems by the following strategy: 



But it is impossible to talie up any strong view on this question so long as 

 the size and outline of the Spanish block in the Devonian period are not known. 

 * * * But as long as the displacement theory declares itself for these 

 reasons unable to carry out the reconstruction of this region for the Devonian 

 period, no one can tell whether the American Devonian will afford refutation 

 or conlirmatioii. 



Cdledonides. — Wegener is correct in connecting the Caledonian 

 crustal trends of northwestern Europe with those of northern New- 

 foundland, but wrong in connecting them directly. At present it is 

 less than 2,000 miles in a straight line from Ireland to Newfoundland, 



