The Structure of the Atlantic : 23 



the west coast of Europe and Africa were moved west they would 

 meet and more or less mesh together like the parts of a jigsaw puzzle. 

 Labrador, Greenland and Iceland would fold against the Scandinavian 

 Peninsula and the British Isles. The Scandinavian Peninsula in turn 

 would fold into the Baltic area and the British Isles would fill up the 

 North Sea; Newfoundland-Nova Scotia would perhaps fit into the 

 Bay of Biscay; the westward bulge of Africa would nestle into the 

 Caribbean area and the eastward bulge of South America tuck into 

 the Gulf of Guinea. So there would be one big continent instead of 

 many continents separated by wide oceans. 



While this schoolboy fantasy is admittedly crude and superficial, 

 Wegener, looking at the same area and the same general conformities, 

 thought the idea merited serious study. He emerged with the theory 

 that at some time in the distant geological past all the continents 

 were together forming one solid land mass. Then rifts developed and 

 the eastern continents started moving eastward while the western 

 continents moved westward into their present positions. 



This, of course, sounds absurd for we tend to think of a continent 

 as a solid, rigid and uniform section of the earth's basic crust. And 

 we tend to be confined to a short time scale. Wegener pointed out 

 that rocks and soils composing the continents were lighter, more po- 

 rous and less rigid than the deep, dense, heavy, rigid layers of rock 

 which formed the basic shell of the earth underlying both continents 

 and oceans. In common with other geologists he showed that great 

 blocks of the earth's crust as seen in the continents are continually 

 subject to movement and do adjust themselves to pressures as though 

 they were afloat on some heavier medium. He pointed out that many 

 changes in substances that are impossible in a short space of time 

 become possible over a long time span. Thus glass and many metals 

 seem rigid in the instant that we look at them; if we hit them a smart 

 blow they break; but if we support them only at one end, under their 

 own weight over a very long period of time they will tend to bend 

 and even to flow. Wegener argued that in time even continents could 

 float and drift. The geological time scale is so vast that it seems to 

 provide time enough for even such movements. 



At one time precise measurements taken in Greenland and in 

 Europe seemed to show that Greenland was moving away from Eu- 

 rope at almost the exact pace predicted by the continental drift theory 

 and Wegener's stock went up, but there have not been any general 

 confirmations. At present Wegener seems neither to be accepted nor 



