342 Fhilip Lake— 



mass fits the convexity of Somali-land, its north-eastern border 

 coraes very near the Western Ghats, while its northern portion, 

 where ignorance of the geology compels " a certain freedom ", 

 may fill the northern part of the Sea. Wegener, it is true, includes 

 New Guinea as part of the Australian mass in Carboniferous times, 

 but he has not considered its geology. 



Such coincidences have little value without other evidence to 

 support them, and in the case of the Atlantic Wegener produces 

 further evidence, which deserves examination in some detail. 



There are coal-bearing beds in Spitsbergen and similar beds of 

 the same age in north-eastern Greenland. Therefore he brings 

 Spitsbergen up to Greenland. There are Precarabrian intrusives 

 at Cape Farewell and Precambrian intrusives in Labrador, so he 

 closes up the space between. It should be remembered that he 

 closes gaps by bringing the two edges together and not by bridging. 



In the Hebrides and northern Scotland, he says, the strike of the 

 ancient gneiss is from north-east to south-west ; in Labrador it 

 is from east to west. When the two masses are brought together 

 the two directions fall into line and become continuous. Farther 

 south, the Caledonian folds of Scotland and North Ireland join the 

 supposed Caledonian folds of Newfoundland, and the Armorican 

 folds of South Ireland and Brittany unite with the folds of corre- 

 sponding age in Nova Scotia and are thus connected with the 

 Appalachians. 



Then comes the space to which reference has already been made. 

 What happens to the folds of the Spanish Peninsula, where they 

 now run out to sea, he does not say ; but it is against his principles 

 to imagine that they can be continued in a block which has sunk 

 beneath the ocean. He suggests, rather vaguely, that the northern 

 border of Spain may have been joined to the western border 

 of France — continental shelf to continental shelf, not coast to coast — 

 and that the Peninsula has since turned as on a hinge situated in 

 the neighbourhood of Biarritz. But this does not greatly help. 



Farther south, according to him, the entire African continent 

 consists of a very old folded mass of gneiss in which two different 

 strikes prevail. In the Sudan, and as far as the Cameroons, a north- 

 east strike predominates ; south of the Cameroons the direction is 

 from north to south. In South America, he says, there is a similar 

 change of strike. In eastern Guiana and as far as Cape St. Roque 

 the strike is from east to west ; south of Cape St. Roque it is parallel 

 to the eastern coast. As he represents them, when Africa and South 

 America are joined, these directions fall into line at the junction, 

 as if produced when the two masses were united. 



Finally, in South Africa the Zwartebergen is a Carboniferous 

 folded range running from east to west. It is true that near the 

 western coast an arm, the Cederbergen, turns up towards the north ; ' 

 but this is clearly, he says, a local branch. In South America, south 

 of Buenos Aires, there is a folded range of similar age and structure. 



