( .'<! B. K. EMERSON — TKTJIAHEDRAL EARTH: INTERCONTINENTAL SEAS 



Celebes-Philippine volcanic band to the north. The line then passes 

 the Marquesas, where gneiss is said to be found, and reaches the Gala- 

 pagOS islands. 



Finally, the Antillean system and the mountains of Venezuela seem 

 to have slid in great curves northward from the ancient land nucleus of 

 Guiana toward the deeper part of the Altantic. 



The remarkable demonstration suggested by Von Seebach* and com- 

 pleted by Ilillf, that the Antillean system is continued westward across 

 Central America, truncating the Cordillera south of the plateau of Mexico 

 and separated from it by a line of volcanoes, and independent of the 

 Andes and separated therefrom by aline of volcanoes, and completes 

 the evidence that this is a continuous band around the globe of mountain- 

 making, blockwise-sinking, and vulcanism, repeating a common Medi- 

 terranean type as it intersects the three continents, and continuing across 

 the oceans in submerged ranges and lines of volcanic fissures. 



Homologies of the Mediterraneans. — We may finally allude to another 

 series of homologies which attest the common origin of the features of 

 this remarkable line. 



The Mediterranean depression, located at the solstitial point, from the 

 western basin to the Black sea lies parallel to the zone in the solstitial 

 position, and only the sea of Azof breaks through the mountain curve 

 on the north. The East and West Indies, placed at the equinoctial points, 

 where equator, the intercontinental zone, and the Pacific line of fire inter- 

 sect, make the same large angle with the zone. The curved Banda group 

 is exactly homologous with the curved volcanic group of the Lesser An- 

 tilles. The Banda sea is the homologue of the Caribbean. Celebes pro- 

 jects north like Honduras. The Celebes sea is like the Bartlett deep, 

 and Borneo stretches north to the Philippines, as does Yucatan to the 

 Greater Antilles ; and the China sea lies outside the curve of mountains, 

 as does the gulf of Mexico. Cuba and the Philippines are then quite 

 close homologues, and we have assumed political control of the two nodal 

 points on the earth where all natural phenomena are at their maximum — 

 the land of the Royal palm and the Spice islands, of the tornado and the 

 hurricane. We are assured an abundance of atmospheric, seismic, and 

 volcanic violence for all time. 



Diversity of eruptives. — In the text connected with the map cited above, 

 Michel-Levy, in classifying the larger mountains and fracture systems, 

 separates the zone we have just followed as a distinct type, marked by 

 rounded depressions (effondrements en ovales mediterraneans), charac- 



* K. von Seebach : Ueber vulkane Central Amerikas. Ab. Ges. der Wiss., Gottingen, vol. 38. 

 fR. T. Hill : Nat. Geo. Mag., vol. vii, p. 175. 



