CONTINENTAL. DISPLACEMENT — SCHUCHERT 277 



methods is, as we have said, that he generalizes too easily from other 

 generalizations, and that he paj\s little or no attention to historical 

 geology or to the time of tlie making of the structural and biologic 

 phenomena discussed. It is not, as he says, that the detailed worker 

 can not see the forest because of the many different trees, or that 

 the paleontologists need a geophysicist to show them the road on 

 which they should travel. Facts are facts, and it is from facts that 

 we make our generalizations, from the little to the great, and it is 

 wrong for a stranger to the facts he handles to generalize from 

 them to other generalizations. 



It will be interesting to see what other critics of the displacement 

 hypothesis have concluded. Carl Diener,-^ the learned paleontolo- 

 gist of Vienna, says that at first sight the hypothesis appears to have 

 much of value in it, but on close analysis it turns out to be 



but a playing with actual possibilities. * * * it fails in fundamental facts 

 of a positive nature, and a whole series of paleogeographic facts can not be 

 brought into harmony with it. 



Reid comments : " The elasticity of the Wegener hypothesis is 

 evident." And Lake,-" who has gone into it at length, states: 



Whatever Wegener's own attitude may have been originally, in his book he 

 is not seeking truth; he is advocating a cause, and is blind to every fact and 

 argument that tells against it. Much of his evidence is superficial. Neverthe- 

 less, he is a skillful advocate and presents an interesting case. 



What is valuable in the hypothesis is this : 



He has performed a valuable service by drawing attention to 'the fact that 

 land masses may have moved relatively to one another. He has not proved 

 that they actually have moved, and still less has he shown that they have 

 moved in the way he imagines. He has suggested much, he has proved nothing. 



Berry -" says in 1922 : 



I can see no record of such a former union [of South America and Africa] 

 in anything that we know of the stratigraphy, structure, faunas, or floras. 

 * * * I much prefer the older hypothesis of land bridges and subsidence. 



In regard to the geological climates, as set forth by Koppen and 

 Wegener, Berry says:^^ 



Neither has the slightest idea of the bearing of fossil faunas or floras on 

 the problems which they set out to explain, and therefore wherever their con- 

 clusions lead they explain something which never existed. 



Arthur Keith in his presidential address, entitled " Structural 

 Symmetry in North America,"-'' find^ that the mountains in North 



2* Op. cit., p. 342. 



»Geol. Mag., vol. 59 (1922), pp. S.SS, .340, 346. 



'"E. W. Berry, 0utlin;'s of South American Geology, Pan-Anier. Geol., vol. "7 (1922), 

 pp. 187-216. 



=8E. W. Berry, The Term Oligocene, Amor. .Toiirn. Sci. (5), vol. 13 (1027), p. 2.56. 

 »Bull. Geo!. Soc. Amer., vol. 39 (1928), pp. 321-386. 



24034—29—19 



