3o6 THOMAS CHROWDER CHAMBERLIN 



we should regard the earth as essentially a solid spheroid and not a 

 liquid globe with a thin sensitive crust. I think we must soon come 

 to see that the great deformations are deep-seated body adjustments, 

 actuated by energies, and involving masses, compared to which the 

 elements of denudation and deposition are essentially trivial. Denu- 

 dation and deposition seem to me clearly incompetent to perpetuate 

 their own cycles. It seems clear that diastrophism is fundamental 

 to deposition, and is a condition prerequisite to epicontinental and 

 circum-continental stratigraphy. 



Diastrophism thus seems to me fundamental both to stratigraphic 

 development and life development. Diastrophic action seems to be 

 the forerunner of both these standard means of correlation. It there- 

 fore seems to be the ultimate basis of correlation. The criteria of 

 this correlation include at once its own specific criteria, the criteria 

 of stratigraphy as dependent on diastrophism, and the criteria of 

 paleontology as modified by the direct and indirect effects of diastro- 

 phism. 



