14 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
Others are the resemblances of all sedimentary rocks on the two 
sides from the Cambrian to the Ordovician, and from the Devonian 
to the Trias ; the links between the structures of the land, as, for 
instance, between Ireland and Newfoundland; and the instance 
given by Professor Bailey in his address to Section C in 1928. As 
Bailey then pointed out, the great Caledonian range which crosses 
Scotland, northern England and Wales from north-east to south- 
west on its course from Scandinavia is affected and displaced by the 
east to west Armorican (Hercynian) chain extending across from 
Brittany to South Wales. ‘The crossing of the chains, begun in 
the British Isles, is completed in New England ’ ; and from here the 
Armorican structure continues its westerly course. This is where it 
should cross if the continent of North America were brought back 
across the Atlantic and placed in the position which, according to 
Wegener, it would fit into in the European coast! Can the Pilgrim 
Fathers have ever dreamed of such a link between the Old England 
and the New ? 
The hypothesis of continental drift gave rich promise of solving 
so many difficult problems that it was hailed by many classes of 
investigators almost as a panacea. Geographers have seen in it 
an explanation of the forms of continents and the position of 
peninsulas, islands and mountains ; meteorologists have found it 
the solution of some of the problems of past climates and their 
anomalies of distribution over the world; biologists hope to get 
help with the intense complexities in the distribution of forms of 
lite and many strange facts in migration, and paleontologists with 
similar difficulties among the ancient faunas and floras as revealed 
by their fossil remains ; geodesists have welcomed escape from the 
rising and sinking of the crust, so difficult to reconcile with the 
demands of isostatic equilibrium ; and it has been already stated 
that drift forms a vital factor in Joly’s thermal cycles. 
But there has been no lack of criticism in all these directions. It 
has been assailed on the one hand for the detail attempted in its geo- 
graphical restorations, and on the other hand for its vagueness. — Prof. 
Schuchert quotes Termier as saying that it is ‘a beautiful dream, 
the dream of a great poet. One tries to embrace it, and finds that 
he has in his arms but a little vapour or smoke : it is at the same time 
alluring and intangible.’ It has been objected that ‘no plausible 
explanation of the mechanics involved has been offered’; that the 
continental connexions postulated present by no means so close 
a match, when fitted together, as has been claimed, in the structure 
or the nature of either igneous or sedimentary rocks ; that there is 
good evidence of extensive vertical movements in recent earthquakes, 
in the accumulation of tremendous thicknesses of sediment indicative 
of shallow-water from base to summit, and in the growth of coral 
