THE DRIFTING OF THE CONTINENTS TERMIER 229 



almost like water; on the spherical liquid envelope are placed the 

 oceans, separated from the molten bath by a very thin pellicle of 

 basalt, just sufficient to assure the separation and not to be broken at 

 any moment under the action of the tides; in the remainder of the 

 bath are submerged the continents, composed of solid sal^ immersed 

 as much as 96 kilometers deeper than the suboceanic pellicle. Rising 

 above this pellicle there are only some kilometers of hard rocks 

 which dominate for some hundreds of meters the level of the seas. 



And here is that wdiich shakes and displaces all. A continent 

 advances, like an enormous ship. The simique pellicle which makes 

 the bottom of the oceans giA^es way before it, powerless to imprison 

 it. As the steam in the polar seas breaks victoriously in the morning 

 under its beam the young ice formed during the night, which tries 

 to make it captive, the continent advances, under the power of one 

 knows not what, an irresistible force. But the reaction of the sur- 

 rounding sima restrains it ; restrains it so much that it folds margin- 

 ally this margin which descends a hundred kilometers below the sur- 

 face, and this folding of the profound depths, extends as far as the 

 upper limit of the vast mass, and causes there an assemblage of 

 folds, a chain of mountains. Again, in the couse of the drifting, 

 the mass breaks by a narrow fissure, the underlying sima gushes 

 forth, some basaltic A^olcanoes open and flame; then the fissure 

 enlarges, the sea penetrates it; this will form later, perhaps, a new 

 ocean; or else it may only be a momentary breaking of the two 

 borders which will be brought together again and join themselves 

 anew. In the meantime, behind the advancing continent, some 

 islands originate from the crumbling of its long and fragile stern : 

 they will be retarded in the simique pellicle continually reformin;^' 

 around it; the flotillas of islands, which will follow from afar, with 

 the gentle midulations of a scarf agitated by the wind, or the biiisque 

 unexpected arrival of another immense vessel, of another continent 

 advancing, will throw it in confusion and cause it to whirl tu- 

 multuously. Confess that the vision is magnificent. I see it often 

 before my eyes and never without inward enjoyment, as if I were 

 seeing a very beautiful work of art. 



If it is true that the shna forms the very bottom of the oceans, 

 while under the continents it is held at a much greater depth, one 

 should find that gravity is greater in the oceanic domain than in 

 the continental ; in this latter domain it should be less in proportion 

 as the country is more mountainous for the Archimedian equilibrium, 

 the isostasy, as they saj^ demands that the more elevated the surface 

 of the continent is the more deeply it descends in the sima. This is 

 in fact what one ascertains from the laws of gravity. The adherents 

 of the theory argue from that; but they would be wrong to believe 

 that the argument is decisive. One can, indeed, explain the diminu- 



