Mat 28, 1909] 



SGIENGE 



859 



the inquisition during the middle ages. For 

 one, I am not at all prepared to admit the 

 justice of contemporary criticism, though in 

 the long run a moderate and just opinion will 

 prevail. This has been true in all ages and 

 professions, and therefore is not confined to 

 our own time or to any particular science. 



Now as to some of the points cited by Pro- 

 fessor Blackwelder as objectionable: 



1. He finds fault with Lowell for adhering 

 to Laplace's cosmogony; but let me point out 

 that this same cosmogony very slightly modi- 

 fied, to take account of tidal friction, has been 

 held by the most eminent mathematicians 

 abroad.' If such views have been held by 

 those who have spent many years on the sub- 

 ject, at such mathematical centers as Cam- 

 bridge, England, surely Lowell may be excused 

 for not accepting the inconsistent and purely 

 destructive criticisms recently put forth at 

 Chicago by Chamberlin and Moulton. It is 

 only fair to say that no constructive results of 

 consistent character had been reached on this 

 subject till my own investigation was com- 

 pleted last year, of which an account is given 

 in Astronomische Nachrichten, No. 4308 

 (February, 1909), but which appeared too late 

 to be used in Lowell's book. As I have worked 

 on this subject uninterruptedly for twenty-five 

 years, I am prepared to speak with some de- 

 gree of authority. If Professor Blackwelder 

 will study my last paper carefully, and the 

 work now in press, when it appears, he will 

 find that most of the recent speculations on 

 cosmogony are not worth the paper they are 

 written on; and yet some of them have been 

 published by the Astrophysical Journal and 

 the Carnegie Institution, just as other erro- 

 neous and misleading papers have often been 

 published by the Royal Society, the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences and other learned socie- 

 ties of standing. Every experienced investi- 

 gator recognizes the great amount of error 

 that creeps into scientific literature ' even of 

 the best type. How much more latitude, there- 

 fore, is to be expected in popular literature, 



^ Cf . paper by Mr. F. J. M. Stratton, on 

 " Planetary Inversion," in the Monthly Notices 

 of the Royal Astronomical Soeiety, April, 1906. 



which in the nature of the case must be enter- 

 taining rather than strictly exact and ultra- 

 conservative ! 



2. Great fault is found with Lowell's claim 

 that in general the terrestrial continents have' 

 been formed from the interior outwards,, 

 though he justly cites Dana, one of the great- 

 est geologists of any age, in support of this- 

 view. Now I venture to say that Professor 

 Blackwelder has not read carefully the four 

 memoirs recently published in the Proceedings 

 of the American Philosophical Society at 

 Philadelphia, in which I have examined this- 

 question and the related topics with great 

 care; otherwise he would see that, however- 

 deficient our knowledge may be as to details,, 

 in general his contentions are absolutely with- 

 out foundation. In the opinion of many emi- 

 nent men of science, including some of the- 

 foremost geologists and physicists, who have 

 done me the honor to read these papers, I have- 

 proved that mountains are formed by the sea, 

 and not at all by the shrinkage of the globe; 

 and as the younger mountains are generally- 

 nearest the oceans it follows that the oceans- 

 are gradually drying up and the land increas- 

 ing, as Lowell maintains. Therefore Lowell is. 

 right, and Blackwelder wrong ; and that too in 

 a subject which he represents as his own.. 

 Dana and Le Conte clearly understood that the 

 mountains are related to and have in some- 

 way risen from the sea, but on the old con- 

 traction theory, now happily abandoned, they 

 could form no correct conception of the eause- 

 of mountain formation. If Professor Black- 

 welder is prepared to contest my results, let 

 him answer my argument on mountain forma- 

 tion in the case of the Aleutian Islands, where 

 I have proved that they are a submarine- 

 mountain range now being pushed up by mat- 

 ter expelled from beneath the trench dug outr 

 in the sea bottom to the south of these islands ; 

 and that the whole movement is due to the- 

 secular leakage of the ocean and the resulting- 

 expulsion of lava beneath the crust, and noth- 

 ing else. On this point other geologists have 

 discreetly kept silent, but perhaps Professor 

 Blackwelder " will rush in where angels fear 

 to tread." 



