78 B. K. EMERSON — TETRAHEDRAL EARTH : INTERCONTINENTAL SEAS 



terraneans that bisect them have had a common cause 1 ; and, conversely. 

 that if this cause had not acted the continents would have been left in 

 more continuous masses, thus filling out more perfectly the tetrahedral 

 pattern. 



There remains, then, for consideration, the fascinating question of 

 Green's twinning plane, the great mediterranean band of seas broadly 

 bisecting the three continents, of loftiest mountains and deepest depres- 

 sions, of torsion and vulcanism, which belts the earth parallel with the 

 ecliptic. 



GREEN'S EXPLANATION OF THE MEDITERRANEAN ZONE 



If we place a globe with its axis inclined 231 degrees from the vertical, so 

 the wooden circle will be the ecliptic, a«tl rotate it so Gibraltar is beneath 

 the pole and the brass meridian, the small circle 12 degrees (plate 14) 

 north of the horizon is the center of the most remarkable zone on the 

 earth. Beginning with the Mediterranean and all its mountain chains, 

 deep basins, and volcanoes, it continues past Asia Minor, the Caucasus, 

 Himalayas, East Indies, the volcanic band of the south Pacific, to the 

 Central American-Caribbean region, and by the Azores and Canaries to 

 Gibraltar again. It is cut at the East and West Indies by the equator 

 and the zone of fire bordering on the Pacific. The explanation whereby 

 Green connects the phenomena of these two circles with his hypothesis 

 is exceedingly ingenious and acute. He makes use of the polar circle 

 fractures of Richard Owen and Dana, and the ecliptic fracture zone of 

 Guyot and Hochstetter, caused, he believes, by tidal strains in the earth's 

 crust. 



If we refer again to the globe, placed as before (figure 6), with the 

 axis inclined 23s degrees and the sun and moon placed as indicated, the 

 sun will be in solstice and the moon in opposition, and it will be the time 

 of spring tides. There would then be a maximum tidal stress in the 

 crust along the great circle 90 degrees from the sun and tangent to the 

 polar circle, indicated by the line AB in the center of the figure. The 

 solstice is the solstice because the sun stands longest here where ecliptic 

 and equator are parallel, or nearly so, and this strain would be applied 

 daily for a much greater portion of the year beneath this circle AB than 

 beneath that due to any other position of the sun except the other sol- 

 stice, CD, where the effects would be identical with AB, and there would 

 therefore be more conjunctions and oppositions here. The relative dis- 

 tribution of this strain through the year is indicated by the increasing 

 depth of shading from the pole, NS, to the two lines AB and CD — that 

 is, from the equinoxes to the solstices. Now every portion of the earth 

 would feel this stretching equally as it passed beneath the line AB each 



