RESUME 95 



and the Americas. These causes have been antagonistic to the realiza- 

 tion of the tetraheclral form. 



Resume 



The law. of least action demands that the earth shall shrink into a 

 tetrahedral form, with three continents tapering south, three oceans 

 tapering north, a polar continent opposing a polar ocean— an earth 

 whereon land shall be antipodal to water. The northern continents, 

 raised into a circle of larger radius, may lag to west; the southern oceans, 

 sunk into a circle of lesser radius, tend to advance east. By this Green 

 explains the eastward shift of the southern continents. The foundering 

 of land on the east and its elevation on the west of the northern conti- 

 nents explains most of this apparent displacement. 



The strain dependent on internal tides has produced a zone of weak- 

 ness in an ecliptic plane passing through the Mediterraneans. The tor- 

 sion caused by the tetrahedral deformation has, according to Green, 

 used tli is plane of weakness as a plane of twinning rotation along which 

 the above shifts have taken place and along which the Mediterranean 

 depression, mountain-making, and vulcanism have occurred. 



An alternate speculation suggests that the ecliptic zone of fracture was, 

 when formed, the equatorial zone and more oblate than now, and that 

 by decreasing rotation and consequent sinking of the equatorial ring 

 the deep depressions of the intercontinental seas were formed, and the 

 mountain chains were made by sliding northward from the more resist- 

 ant central Archean masses of the ring, except in Asia, where the moun- 

 tain chains flowed in the southern direction because the equatorial ring 

 was deeply sunk along this oceanic portion and the tetrahedral protaxis 

 exceptionally raised in this great continent. As tidal friction caused 

 decrease of the equatorial ring, escape of heat caused increase of the tetra- 

 hedral elevations and brought the pole to its present position. 



It is of fanciful interest that in the magnificent pendulum swing rep- 

 resented by Crooke's spiral arrangement of the elements according to 

 Mendelejef 's law* — the ideal elemental section of the earth — the first cul- 

 mination of the oscillation is in the tetrahedral carbon atom, the foun- 

 dation of life ; the second culmination is in the tetrahedral silicon atom, 

 the center of the architecture of the crust of the earth — two models in 

 microcosm of the earth itself. Natura maxima in minimis. The diamond, 

 the perfect mineral coming out of the sky in the meteorite, presents 

 again the most perfect model in the rounded faced hexatetrahedron of 

 the form toward which the earth has imperfectly striven. 



* Chemical News, vol. lxxviii, July 15, 1898. 



