THE PLAN OF THE EARTH AND ITS CAUSES. 



367 



the main structural lines of the continents. These wrinkles ran at hrst 

 north and south from the equator. But, owing- to the moon's strong 

 pull on the equatorial girdle, this part of the earth would tend to revolve 

 more slowly than the polar regions. Hence the primitive wrinkles were 

 deformed; instead of being meridional in direction, they would trend 

 northeasterly in the northern hemisphere, and southeasterly in the 

 southern hemisphere. Professor Darwin points out that some of the 

 most striking geographical lines on the earth run in accordance with this 

 plan. He instances the eastern coast of North America, the western 

 coast of Europe, part of the coast of China, and the southern part of 

 South America. But, with characteristically Darwinian frankness, he 

 does not overpress the facts, admits that the resemblances are not so 

 convincing as they might be, and that some cases — e. g., the western 

 coast of North America — are absolutely inconsistent with the scheme. 



Fig. 2. 

 THE OBLIQUE COURSE OF THE MAIN GEOGRAPHICAL LINES. (AFTER PRINZ.) 



Another theory that attributes the formation of the main geographical 

 lines to pregeological incidents is given in a paper by Prinz, "Sur les 

 similitudes que presenteut les cartes terrestes et Plauetaires," which 

 elaborates and gives an astronomical basis to ideas previously suggested 

 by Lowthian Green and Daubree. His theory is that the northern 

 part of the earth had a lower angular velocity thau the equatorial and 

 southern regions. Therefore the land masses in the southern hemi- 

 sphere were gradually pushed forward toward the east. The line 

 between the northern retarded hemisphere and the southern swifter 

 hemisphere is the great line of weakness and fracture that runs from 

 the Caribbean along the Mediterranean, down the Persian Gulf and 

 across Malaysia. Prinz has drawn a map (fig. 2) showing how the 

 main geographical lines agree with his assumed lines of torsion. 



