Geology. — ,,Cuba, The Antilles and the Southern .Moluccas." By 



L. RUTTEN. 



{Communicated at the meeting of May 27, 1922). 



In 1865 E. SuESS endeavoiued to show in which way North-, 

 and South-America are connected geologically ^). Basing upon the then 

 scant geological literature of the borderlands, he partly adopted the 

 conceptions of some few of the older explorers. He observed that 

 the mountain systems of Western North- America do not directly 

 merge into those of Western South-America, but that in South- 

 Mexico and in Guatemala tiie coastal ranges bend round, ramifying 

 there in different chains, which cross transversely the narrow Central 

 America, to proceed on their course in the Greater Antilles. All 

 along the row of the Antilles Suess imagined to observe the traces 

 of a large chain of folded-mountains, which he conceived to extend 

 along the North Coast of South America, as far as the boundary of 

 Venezuela and Columbia to merge there into the Andes. So he 

 considers the Andes of South- America as a continuation of the 

 mountains of Western North America, but looks upon the curving 

 chain of mountains via the Antilles as the connecting link. 



In the region of the Antilles Suess distinguished three zones: an 

 interior zone of small islands all composed of young volcanic rocks 

 with verj' young coastal limestones and allied formations, extending 

 from Grenada to Saba; a middle zone, in which in many places 

 older, folded rocks emerge, building up the Antillean-Cordillera 

 proper, extending from Trinidad via Barbados as far as Haiti, 

 branching out there in at least two chains, of which the southmost 

 proceeds via Jamaica to Honduras, while the most northern runs 

 via Cuba to Yucatan ; lastly an exterior zone, stretching from 

 Barbuda via the Bahama Islands and Florida to Yucatan and which 

 is supposed to be the remainder of the unfolded and disrupted 

 "Vorland" of the Antillean Cordillera. 



Already Suess had pointed to the striking analogy between the 

 row of the Antilles and the Southern Moluccas. A few years later 



1) E. Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde. I. 1885. 



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