CHARLES B. WARRING. 267 
up and drifted away, and if this occurred after North 
America and Asia got into position, it is easy to see that 
the fragments would be more or less perfectly welded 
into them. The remarkable archipelago north of North 
America is very suggestive of such a result. 
At the southern pole, the case appears to have been 
different. ‘The disruptive, seismic force does not seem 
to have split the antarctic continent near its centre, but 
rather to have chipped off fragments of various sizes. 
These would naturally float off with the northwesterly 
currents till they, too, grounded at any place where 
they reached an elevated spot on the solid nucleus. If 
we turn toa polar projection of the southern hemisphere, 
and compare Australia with the antarctic continent, the 
parallelism of form readily suggests the belief that they 
were once united. and that Australia being broken off, 
was carried like a vast iceberg northwestwardly till, 
having left New Zealand fast on a ‘shoal, it came itself 
to rest, a thousand miles further on, from a similar 
cause. 
Such a mass, grounding directly in the stream, would 
cause the current to swerve, the upper part passing be- 
tween it and Asia. Now, with this in view, turn to the 
chart (fig. 1), the resemblance to floating cakes of ice 
grounded where the stream is shallow, is almost irresist- 
ably suggested, or perhaps it would be better to say 
that the stream by loss of heat had grown too viscid 
to permit the fragments to go further, and that they had 
chilled fast. Madagascar may have been another fragment 
which left Australia, and floated westward till it floated 
into the shallows near the coast of Africa, and thus we 
find a reason for the curious fact that the eastern shore 
of that island fits much better against the western shore 
of Australia than does the other shore against Africa. 
Papua, too, and Tasmania appear to be fragments broken 
off from the adjacent shores of Australia. 
151 
