390 T. Mellard Reade—Oceans and Continents. 
must have occupied the place of what is now land, and we are thus 
reduced to the absurd conclusion that the continents which we are 
trying to account for could not exist until the subsidence had reached 
nearly its present limits, while the requirements of the theory de- 
mand the continuance of the subsidence to the present time. On 
the hypothesis of the interchangeability of land and sea, all this is 
readily explained. A movement of subsidence in the Pacific would 
be balanced by the upheaval of land elsewhere, so that the cubic 
capacity of the ocean-basins and cubic capacity of the land would 
remain nearly intact. The idea that the land has been upheaved 
by a continuous sinking of the ocean-basins (due to the shrinking of 
the earth or any other cause) can only be characterized as a geome- 
trical impossibility. 
There is still one aspect I must deal with, as it is a modified form 
of the same idea, which is rather prevalent. It is this, that the 
deeper parts of the ocean may always have been .ocean. ‘This state- 
ment possesses the misfortune to be, like most others on the subject, so 
intangible as to be difficult to deal with. What area does it take in? 
Were we to reduce it to dimensions, I think these “ deeper portions,” 
to make a joke, would no more “hold water” than the “con- 
tinuously subsiding” great oceans. At all events it is a great pity we 
cannot examine by a boring these “cesspits of the ages,” for should 
the idea prove true, the rejoicing geologist would find the records of 
marine life in unbroken sequence from the Laurentian to the present 
time. To conclude, there is still another general argument of great 
force against this notion of modified fixity of land and sea. It has 
already been pointed out by me in a paper on “ Limestone as an 
Index of Geological Time.”! The ‘Porcupine,’ ‘Challenger,’ ‘ Blake,’ 
and other dredgings have shown that an enormous area of the 
sea-bed is covered with a calcareous ooze. It is well known that 
the materials of sedimentary rocks have been used up again and 
again, and their breaking up is usually preceded by a removal of 
cementing calcareous matter in solution—limestone being removed 
nearly wholly in a state of solution in water as carbonate or 
sulphate of lime. It is also well known and insisted upon by those 
who hold the views I am now combating, that the mechanical 
matter is deposited near to land—not in the deep oceans. It there- 
fore follows as a corollary, that if the oceans have been fixtures, the 
carbonate and sulphate of lime has been continuously abstracted from 
the rocks and deposited in greater or less proportion in the ocean 
through incalculable ages, where it must remain to this day. It 
also would follow as a further consequence that the newer rocks 
would be less calcareous than the older ones. : 
The reverse of this is the case, as any one studying the valuable 
series of analyses made by Dr. Frankland, of water flowing from 
various formations in Great Britain, and published by the Rivers 
Pollution Commission in their sixth report, may find out for himself 
as regards England and Wales. The “Gnarled gneiss” of Norway, 
the old rocks of the Peninsular area of India, and the primary 
" “Chemical Denudation in Relation to Geological Time,”’ pp. 49-50. 
