388 THE PLAN OF THE EARTH AND ITS CAUSES. 



big to take up without a chance of going into the matter beforehand, 

 and I decline to commit myself to details. 



It is uncomfortable to think that, instead of being on a comfortable 

 globe, as we had imagined, one is placed on a tetrahedron. 



Mr. Vaughan Cornish. The tetrahedral theory was described by 

 Mr. Lowthian Green. When it was first promulgated it attracted very 

 little attention, and no favorable attention; it was met almost with 

 ridicule, and I think that it is, perhaps, not the smallest part of our 

 indebtedness to Dr. Gregory that his great power of exposition has 

 brought this theory again before the world, and though he has not yet 

 secured for it a universal assent, he has at least secured a very careful 

 consideration of what must, at all events, be considered a most sub- 

 stantial hypothesis. I think those who have followed carefully the 

 able exposition of Dr. Gregory given to-night must admit that the 

 tetrahedral convention, at all events, represents the observed distribu- 

 tion of land and water upon the surface of the globe. That distribution 

 is essentially hemihedral, as they say in crystallography; the forms are 

 not whole forms, but two half-forms interpenetrating, as we see in the 

 oppositely directed wedges of the continents and oceans, and so far, I 

 think, we shall most of us be prepared to go with Dr. Gregory. With 

 regard to the physical causes which have produced such a deformation 

 of the assumed spheroid, I think most of us will wish to reserve our 

 judgment until mathematicians and physicists and followers of experi- 

 mental science have tested it quantitively, and have seen whether 

 these causes, which I suppose would go in the direction of producing 

 tetrahedral, or tetrahedroid, deformation, are sufficient to produce the 

 effects that Dr. Gregory has described. 



The President. I think we shall all be agreed that this difficult 

 subject, about which so few people seem inclined to give an opinion, 

 has been set before us in a very clear and graphic manner and with 

 great ability by our friend Dr. Gregory. I am sure you will all be 

 ready to pass a vote of thanks for his most interesting paper. Although 

 we are now almost for the first time realizing that the shape of the 

 earth is not what it is said to be in the text-books, we may remember 

 that the first person who supported the theory that the earth was the 

 shape of a pegtop or a pear was Christopher Columbus, although he 

 did not put the poiuted end of the pear at the south pole, but near the 

 region where the Venezuelan arbitration is going to take place. I now 

 wish to ask you to pass a cordial vote of thanks to Dr. Gregory for his 

 paper. 



