114 



DISCOVERY 



In \-ears to come one of the names most honoured in 

 connection with the reconstruction of post-war Europe 

 will be that of Fridtjof Nansen. Dr. Rene Sand,' in a 

 lecture on the Russian famine delivered at Brussels 

 under the auspices of the Belgian Red Cross last 

 February, said that " to look at Nansen is to look on 

 the personification of goodness, energy, uprightness 

 and generosity." Before he was thirty Nansen was 

 appointed Professor of Zoolog}' at Christiania Univer- 

 sity, and had been the first to cross Greenland, at a 

 temperature of 58° F., dragging his own sledge. In 

 the 'nineties he made the nearest approach to the 

 North Pole that had till then been recorded. 



Since the war he has worked with tireless energy, 

 first as High Commissioner to the League of Nations 

 for repatriation of the prisoners of war left in Russia 

 and Siberia, rescuing 380,000 men ; later, and after the 

 evacuation of Russia by the armies of Denikin and 

 Wrangel in 1919 and 1920, as the League's High Com- 

 missioner for Russian refugees ; and is now acting as 

 High Commissioner to the International Committee 

 for Russian Relief. During the last few months he 

 has been risking his life in the most plague-ridden por- 

 tions of Russia. A century ago nations would have 

 been inclined, under the circumstances, to leave Russia 

 to make her own recovery. The efforts to help Russia 

 that have been made by various nations in Europe and 

 by the United States surely constitute a remarkable 

 development in international consciousness and 

 morality. With that development Nansen's name 

 will always be associated. 



That Sir Eric Geddes had a worthy predecessor in a 

 high Roman official, Servasus Africanus, is evident from 

 a letter in the Oxyrhynchns Papyri in the British 

 Museum, to which a correspondent has called our 

 attention. The Museum authorities describe it as 

 follows : 



Letter from Servseus Africanus, a high official . . . 

 complaining of the useless multiplication of officials 

 in the administration of the estates of the Treasury, 

 in which many people " have devised for themselves 

 various titles, such as administrators, secretaries, or 

 superintendents, by which means they secure no 

 advantage to the Treasury, but swallow up its surplus, ' ' 

 and ordering that only one superintendent shall be 

 appointed to each estate," with power to choose two, 

 or at most three, other persons to assist him in his 

 duties." (Dated 13th September, a.d. 288.) 



1 The lecture is published in The Worla's Health (the Monthly 

 Review of the League of Red Cross Societies) for February 1922. 



The Origin of 

 Continents and Oceans 



By Professor Alfred Wegener 



Director oj tlie German Oceanograijliical Siiroeij 



Anyone who compares, on a globe, the opposite coasts 



of South America and Africa, cannot fail to be struck 



by the similar configuration of the two coast-lines. 



Not only does the great right-angled shoulder of the 



Brazilian coast find its exact counterpart in the 



African coast in the neighbourhood of the Cameroons, 



but the minor curves to the south of these great angles 



also correspond to one another, every protuberance on 



the one side fitting into a corresponding depression on 



the other. This observation has led to a new view of 



the nature of the earth's crust, according to which the 



continents in past ages have drifted horizontally over 



the surface of the earth, and are still in motion at the 



present time. According to this theory, known as the 



displacement theory, North and South America were, 



in Mesozoic ^ times, continuous with Europe and Africa. 



They then broke away and moved westwards in 



Tertiary times, the Andes being forced up by pressure 



on the forward edge of the drifting continent. Again, 



Antarctica, Australia, and India were formerly in 



immediate contact with South Africa, India then being 



the southern end of a long projection from the Asiatic 



Continent, which is now almost entirely crumpled up 



and forms the Himalayas. The theory asserts that the 



outermos trocky crust of the earth no longer envelops 



the whole globe, as it once may have done, but has 



shrunk up, in consequence of successive compressions 



into mountain folds. It is now represented by the 



continental shelves which are covered only by shallow 



seas. The bed of the deep seas is regarded as composed 



of the material of the underlying deeper layers of the 



earth, upon which the continental masses float. Fig. i 



shows the way in which the continents were formerly 



joined together, and gradualh^ separated at successive 



epochs, according to this theory. 



It will be evident that this theory conflicts with the 

 former fundamental views of several sciences, and 

 especially those of geology. For a proper judgment 

 upon it an enormous mass of facts must be collected 

 together from such sciences as geophysics, geology, 

 pateontology, palfeoclimatology, animal and plant 

 geography, and geodesy. In the decade since the first 

 publication of the theory, much progress has been 

 made towards a wide review of the facts. The theory 

 offers solutions for so many apparent insoluble 

 problems, and so simplifies our views, that the interest 

 of many kindred sciences has been aroused, as is 

 - For footnote see opposite page. 



