02 B. K. EMERSON — TETRAIIEDRAL EARTH! INTERCONTINENTAL SEAS 



the Pacific slope that the forces which have produced the mountains there 

 came from the sea. There; seems lo he substantial agreement among 

 those who have studied the Asiatic shore that the mountain-making 



force came from the land. There is little resemblance between the con- 

 tinuous Cordillera and the series of imbricated curves which adorn the 

 Asian coast. It was an added wonder of this wonderful Miocene period 

 that the Pacific was girdled with mountain chains and volcanoes at the 

 same time with the equatorial belt we have studied and bisecting it at 

 right angles, and it was an advantage of Green's explanation that it 

 brought these under a common cause. 



The primary force raising the chains about the Pacific would be the 

 wedging from the sinking of great areas of the Pacific sea-bottom, pre- 

 ceding more or less truly, according to the norm of the tetrahedral 

 deformation. 



The second force would be that derived from the inertia of the moved 

 blocks as defined above (see page 76), which if ever effective would, both 

 as embodied in the sinking sea and rising land (and thus doubled) tend 

 to increase the efficiency of the mountain-making force along the Amer- 

 ican shore. Along the Asiatic shore the effect might be, in any time of 

 most rapid sinking (and evidences of very rapid change of level come 

 from many parts of the Pacific shore, as in California, South America, 

 and New Zealand), to introduce an inertia component acting eastwardly, 

 which might at some period wholly or partly countervail the westward 

 thrust and permit a maximum sinking of the sea-bottom. As continued 

 cooling and renewed sinking reintroduced the thrust toward the land, it 

 would be a thrust at maximum depth, and it might be kept steadily 

 below the mountain-making intensity, and so act continuously as an 

 epeirogenic force tending toward the increased elevation of the tetrahe- 

 dral continent. Now, the tidal stresses, although small forces, would, 

 operating year in and year out, like earthquake vibrations, acting irreg- 

 ularly, conspire with and to some extent give direction to the mountain- 

 making forces along the American shore. On the other hand, they 

 might on the Asiatic side aid in the transmission of the deeper seated 

 forces, enormously great, but enormousty slow, through wholly unex- 

 pected distances, and promote their efficiency as epeirogenic forces to 

 dome up slightly the mass of Asia. 



And this doming up in conjunction with the deep, offshore sea-bottom 

 may have permitted the flow of the land-masses eastward to form the 

 festoons of the Asiatic coast which have certainly flowed outw r ard, coin- 

 ciding with the southern sinking in the equatorial belt and the south- 

 ward How of the main Asiatic chains already described. This may avoid 



