

50 THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH 



have placed them ? This is what I have tried to suggest 

 at the end of my note. Has geology anything to say 

 about it ? " 



To my mind geology has a good deal to say in the way 

 of welcome to this hypothesis. If we place a charted 

 globe in such a position that Africa lies in the middle of 

 the hemisphere facing us we discover an unexpected 

 symmetry. The greater part of the land occupies the 

 African hemisphere ; the largest ocean covers a great 

 part of the opposite hemisphere. This stands in con- 

 nection with the most primitive stage in the earth's 

 figure as imagined by Mr. Jeans, the most apparent 

 difference being the absence of a circular island in the 

 middle of the Pacific, to represent the stalked end of the 

 pear. There is, however, an increasing body of evidence 

 to show that such an island was once in existence ; the 

 coral atolls of the Pacific have some bearing on this 

 point (see p. 97), and the distribution of terrestrial 

 mollusca has more than once led observers to infer that 

 a great tract of land must at some past time have occupied 

 some part of the tropical region of this ocean. 



In Fig. 5 Mr. Jeans represents the probable state of 

 affairs after the earth had passed from the primitive form 

 to a later one. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans are there 

 indicated as subsidences in the original land hemisphere. 

 Some difference might then be expected to distinguish 

 them from the Pacific, and it is a remarkable fact that, 

 long before these suggestions were made, Suess, as a 

 direct result of observation, had been led to particularly 

 emphasise the contrast between a Pacific type as opposed 

 to an Atlantic type of coast.* 



The Pacific border is fronted by mountain chains ; it 

 is a zone of active movement in the earth's crust, move- 



* See E. Suess, " Face of the Earth," Oxford, 1904, vol. i., 

 Introduction. 



