DEG 10 1892 
NATURAL SCIENCE 
A Monthly Review of Scientific Progress 
No. 81—Vo.t. XITI—NOVEMBER 1898 
NOTES AND COMMENTS 
FouND—AN EDITOR 
Our readers will be glad to learn that Matwral Science will continue 
to appear as heretofore during 1899 and, we hope, for many years to 
come. -Arrangements have been made for its transfer to an Editor 
in whom we have every confidence, and who has undertaken to 
continue the journal on the lines with which our readers are 
familiar. Particulars as to the future editorial and publishing 
offices will be given in our December number. 
DISTRIBUTION OF THE OCEANS AND CONTINENTS 
In discussing the theories of the distribution of the Oceans and 
Continents before the British Association, Dr J. W. Gregory re- 
marked that the “main object of geomorphology is to explain the 
existing distribution of land and water on the globe. A remarkable 
series of coincidences in the form and arrangement of the land masses 
suggests that the distribution has been determined by some general 
principle and not by local accidents. The three most striking fea- 
tures that require explanation are the antipodal position of oceans 
and continents, the triangular shape of the geographical units, and 
the excess of water in the southern hemisphere. Attempts to ex- 
plain this arrangement have been made deductively from general 
physical considerations, as by Elie de Beaumont, Lowthian Green, 
and G. H. Darwin; and directly from the evidence of stratigraphical 
geology as by Suess, Lapworth, and Michel-Levy. Thus Elie de Beau- 
mont regarded the form of the continents as determined by the moun- 
tain chains, which he correlated into a regular geometrical network ; 
while Lapworth regarded the distribution of land and water as due 
to a series of great earth-folds, the arches forming the continents, 
and the troughs forming the ocean basins. Suess has treated the 
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