92 THE FLOOR OF THE OCEAN 



Vening Meinesz theory gives an unfavorable result. The Swiss 

 Alps not only include heaven-piercing Matterhorns and Jung- 

 fraus but, in average, stand about 4000 feet above sealevel. 

 Another dry-land range, the Himalaya, supreme in majesty, 

 has a mean elevation not far from three miles and has five-mile 

 pinnacles. Each of the famed mountain-structures was built 

 during a comparatively early part of the Tertiary Era, and, 

 after the crustal turmoil came practically to an end, each of the 

 deformed belts has been uplifted thousands of feet. If the East 

 Indian "strip" really covers a structure of the alpine type, we 

 might expect to find evidence of recent uplift of its visible 

 peaks, the islands within the "strip." In a measure this expecta- 

 tion is matched by fact. Several of the islands are veneered 

 with young coral reefs and other shore formations that are 

 now hundreds of feet above sealevel. It has thus been proved 

 that Timor Island has risen more than 2000 feet. But the aver- 

 age uplift along the "strip" is much smaller than the average 

 uplift of Alps or Himalaya; why? The contrast calls for expla- 

 nation, which in the present state of our knowledge has to be 

 largely speculative. 



Professor Vening Meinesz offered a partial explanation. He 

 attributes the negative character of the "strip" in part to the 

 enforced depression of the belt, whereby it had initially, and 

 still has, defect of mass beneath it. He assumes the intense de- 

 formation of the belt to have been so recent that the earth's 

 crust has not had time to regain equilibrium. He also thinks 

 that even now the deforming horizontal pressure is not fully 

 relaxed. 



But there is a second reason why here uplift has been much 

 less pronounced than that registered in Alps or Himalaya. The 

 reason is implicit in the root theory of Vening Meinesz, accord- 

 ing to which the root was made of superficial, comparatively 

 cool rocks. When these were downfolded and thickened by 



