376 THE PLAN OF THE EARTH AND ITS CAUSES. 



areas would show where the water would collect if the earth were a 

 stationary tetrahedron. On the upper face there is a large central col- 

 ored area in the position of the Arctic Ocean. It is surrounded by a 

 land belt, from which three projections run southward down the three 

 lateral edges. These three land areas taper southward to a point, 

 below which is a complete belt of sea. South of that, again is our 

 fourth projecting corner, which is above the water level, and is the 

 Antarctic Continent. So that on the model the general plan of the 

 arrangement of land and water is identical with its actual distribution 

 on the globe. For the land occurs as three triangular equidistant con- 

 tinents, united above into a ring and tapering southward; there is a 

 great excess of water in the Southern and of land in the Northern 

 Hemisphere; and land and water are antipodal, since in a tetrahedron 

 a corner is always opposite a fiat face. 



But of course in the earth the faces are not flat, but are convex. If 

 the flat faces be replaced by projecting pyramids with curved faces, so 

 that the form is globular, the arrangement of land and water remains 

 the same, but the shore lines are more complex. Green has shown 

 what the shapes of the land and water areas would be in such a tetra- 

 hedron. The resemblance between his diagrammatic continent and 

 Africa and South America, and between his ocean and either the 

 Pacific, Indian Ocean, and South Atlantic, is very striking. 



THE TETRAHEDRAL COURSE OF G-EOGRAPHICAL LINES. 



The agreement between the facts of geography and the tetrahedral 

 theory goes further. The four faces of a tetrahedron meet along six 

 edges, which should be lines of elevation on a globe. The trace of the 

 edges of a tetrahedron on a surrounding sphere form a circle in the 

 Northern Hemisphere, and three vertical or meridional edges meeting at 

 the South Pole. In the earth the major watersheds have exactly this 

 arrrangement. The great watershed of Eurasia, dividing the northern 

 and southern drainages, runs, not along the main mountain axis, but 

 far to the north of it, between the parallels of 50° and 60°. The 

 northern and southern slopes of North America are separated by a 

 divde along the same latitude. The southern watersheds, instead of 

 following the lines of highest mountains, or the middle line of the 

 continents, run close to the coast lines; the three watersheds mark 

 the three vertical tetrahedral edges, and they occur at almost the the- 

 oretical distances, 120° apart. 



Similarly with the mountain chains. As Sir John Lubbock has 

 X>ointed out, "In the Northern Hemisphere we have chains of mountains 

 running east and west — the Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, Himalayas, 

 etc. — while in the Southern Hemisphere the great chains run north and 

 south — the Andes, the African ridge, and the grand boss which forms 

 Australia and Tasmania." That is to say, the northern mountains are 

 parallel to the upper edges and the southern mountains parallel to the 

 meridional edges of the tetrahedron. 



