AEQUINOCTIA, AN OLD PALEOZOIC CONTINENT 567 



As a result of the investigation made in Central Celebes, this 

 last point is now elucidated, for the east- west strike is repeated in 

 a very remarkable way in the schists and gneiss formations of this 

 territory, although the older ranges of Central Celebes and Ceram 

 have a northwest to southeast direction, owing to the post-Lutecian 

 folding, whereas younger horsts of Central Celebes have a north- 

 south direction, the result of more recent tectonic events. More- 

 over, the old massifs of Central Celebes are separated from those 

 of the islands situated to the east of Celebes by a massif of peri- 

 dotite. This latter rock has great importance in these islands. 



Until the contrary is proved, the answer which one may give 

 to the second question indicates thus that the gneiss and schists 

 massifs, from Central Celebes to the island of Roon, are parts or 

 horsts of an old massif which stretched formerly throughout this 

 whole extent. Without being able to assert it dogmatically, one 

 may say that this old massif, folded in an east-west direction, is 

 prolonged to the west, and that it reaches the middle of Borneo, 

 where Molengraaff and other explorers have also found tectonic 

 entities striking almost east and west.^ 



The answers given to the first two questions are not sufficient 

 to define precisely the age of the mica schists. This leads me to 

 look outside the archipelago and to ask the following questions: 

 What is the distribution of the oldest formations outside the limits 

 of the archipelago ? In what places do they reveal their age with 

 certainty by the presence of fossils? What geo-metamorphic 

 processes have the formations in those places undergone, and what 

 is the relation of these processes to those which have predominated 

 in the archipelago ? 



If the metamorphosing processes in other places have not been 



more favorable than in the archipelago for the preservation of 



fossils of Paleozoic, and especially of early Paleozoic age,^ we have 



, one reason less for presuming that fossils once existed in the schists 



of the archipelago. 



' The same direction is repeated in the northern peninsula of Celebes, in the isle 

 of Java, and in the chain of the small Sunda Islands. 



^ Neo-Carboniferous and Permian fossils have been found in the archipelago; 

 this is a well-known fact. 



