THE PRIME RESULTANT 103 



tempts have been made from time to time to explain the 

 great preponderance of continents in our northern hemi- 

 sphere and their pronounced tendency to cluster around 

 the north pole. No one needs to be told that rock is 

 heavier than water, and where the contest is for the 

 lowest place, the weightier substance will sink and cause 

 the level of the lighter, liquid, to rise. Consider, also, 

 that the longer a cause continues, the more its effects 

 accumulate and thrust themselves into evidence. The 

 earth has demonstrably been suspended over the abyss of 

 space for millions of years, until, as in the case of a floral 

 hanging-basket, its crust has, so to speak, protruded 

 downward through the meshes. After this manner it is 

 that mountain ranges are formed on so huge a scale. Like 

 cakes of ice jamming against a pier, the hinder continents, 

 or, often, the ocean beds grown irresistibly ponderous by 

 the sedimentary accumulations of ages, press or lurch 

 heavily forward, not only relegating the oceans to the 

 rear (south), but crowding the land masses in front, 

 bending, jamming, wrecking and crumpling them until, 

 for the time being, further progress becomes stalled. 

 Thus the earth's crust moves in gigantic billows and 

 alternately rises above and sinks below the level of the 

 sea. Most certainly, then, the northern hemisphere is the 

 heavier, hence the under, and the earth is falling in the 

 line of its axis northwardly. Logically, therefore, our 

 school maps should be inverted, and it is my opinion that 

 had they been hitherto so printed, this discovery would 

 years ago have been anticipated. The Arctic regions are 

 not the roof of the world, as they are often called, but the 

 bottom of it. 



It has long been one of the primary puzzles of 

 geology as to why mountain ranges seemingly wait to be 

 lifted up until the sedimentary rocks, of which they are 

 mostly formed, attain their maximum thickness. Profes- 

 sor Joly, in his great work, Radioactivity and Geology 

 (p. 97), dwells wonderingly on this singular freak of Na- 

 ture's in seemingly waiting for her task to rise to maxi- 

 mum difficulty before exerting her powers, just as though 



