BARBOUR, MATTHEW'S "CLIMATE AND EVOLllTlOy" 3 



Then, on page 309 : "A rise of 100 fathoms wonld unite all the continents 

 and continental islands, except perhaps Australia, into a single mass, but 

 would leave Antarctica, New Zealand, Madagascar, Cuba and many 

 smaller islands separate." These four areas Matthew believes to have 

 been always isolated islands, and if we can show a probability that any 

 one of them was continental, we can at least make more reasonable a 

 proposition that they all Avere once united to some other continental land. 

 This point will be returned to later on. 



Now a word regarding isostasy. There is hardly a principle in geology 

 concerning which there is greater uncertainty among geologists than the 

 matter of isostatic balance. Only one thing is sure, isostasy must meet 

 and conform to known or presumably known facts, and the fact that 

 fundamental changes have taken place in the form of 'the earth's surface 

 in recent geologic time is not to be denied. Such features as the Great 

 Eift Valley of Africa and its continuation, the Eed Sea and the Dead 

 Sea, the Black Sea, the Basin of the Mediterranean, are held now by 

 geologists to be the results of nothing but gigantic and not at all ancient 

 down-thrown fault-blocks. For other examples of changes of land and 

 sea level with relation to each other, the Valley of the Po and the Central 

 Valley of California are good evidence. The argument of isostatic bal- 

 ance may probably be held to control the conditions in the Pacific Basin 

 as a whole, but isostasy cannot be used effectively as an argument in a 

 relatively small area an3'where. Professor E. A. Daly tells me that there 

 is clear evidence of the fragmentation of a great land mass, including the 

 Fiji Islands and New Caledonia, but that there is no evidence known at 

 present of such a condition outside of a line joining Yap, in the Caroline 

 Islands, the Fijis, Kermadecs and New Zealand. Besides this radiolarian 

 ooze has long been known from Barbadoes, Trinidad, Aruba, Buen Ayre 

 and Curagoa, supposedly only to be derived from the deep sea, but the 

 origin of this series of deposits has been somewhat in dispute. Two re- 

 cent papers by Dr. G, A. F. Molengraff, however, describe deposits of 

 which there can hardly be any question whatever; one is '^On Oceanic 

 Deep Sea Deposits in Central Borneo,'' ^ while the other is entitled "Over 

 mangaan Knollen in mesozoischen diepzeeafzettingen van Borneo, Timor 

 en Eotti, hun beteekenis en hun wijzer van Opstaan." * These papers 

 show that on the islands of Borneo, Timor and Eotti, at an elevation of 

 about 4000 feet, very extensive deposits occur which a microscopical ex- 

 amination shows to be composed of radiolaria, together with the manga- 

 nese nodules so characteristic of the deep sea. In other words, Molengrai? 



3 Kon. Ak. Wet. Amsterdam, Reprint from Proc. of meeting June 26, 1909, pp. 141- 

 147. [Reprint, pp. 1-7.] 



*Kon. Ak. Wet. Amsterdam, vol. 23, pp. 1058-1073. [Reprint, pp. 1-16.] 



