Groundwork for Study of MegadiastropJvism. 257 



import of the new concept of matter and to make use of 

 that as a guide in the study of this and other phases of 

 megadias trophism, as indicated in my last serial article. 3 

 Under the new dynamics of matter, it seems clear that the 

 greater diastrophisms must affect the whole globe in due 

 proportions, but these proportions are far from being 

 equal at all depths. The question of special degrees of 

 diastrophism in particular zones remains. I have been 

 trying to balance the considerations that favor special 

 diastrophism in the zone of magma tic generation against 

 the considerations that favor special diastrophism in the 

 zones of least resistance near the surface, but I have not 

 closed the study and have not furnished any matter on 

 this particular topic for the reviewer to review. 



The reviewer's intimation of sharp antagonism seems 

 to do Dr. Barrell even more injustice than us. In a letter 

 (Dec. 3, 1913) transmitting to me, as Editor of The Jour- 

 nal of Geology, the first part of his manuscript on "The 

 Strength of the Earth's Crust,"— in the Vlth, Vllth, and 

 Vlllth articles of which he makes his initial statement of 

 the doctrine of an anesthenosphere — he says : 



"I am sending you the first four parts before the fifth is 

 completed because I just read this past week the series of papers 

 on Diastrophism and the Formative Processes which you are 

 beginning to publish. My paper falls so much in line with that 

 subject that I think it might be considered as a part of the 



Nor, in suspending my series and giving precedence to 

 Barrell's — because the two could not well run simul- 

 taneously, in fairness to other contributors and to readers 

 more interested in other subjects — did I feel that there 

 was anything antithetical in the doctrines we were advo- 

 cating, though they might differ in sub-features. I think 

 the reader will not find in the three original articles on 

 the asthenosphere any intimation that a planetesimal con- 

 stitution of the zone of weakness was in any respect what- 

 ever inhibitory of an asthenosphere. Our critic does the 

 doctrine of asthenosphere poor service when he ties it up 

 with the theory of a molten stage. Nor is the service 



3 Diastrophism and the Formative Processes: XV. The Self -Compression 

 of the Earth as a Problem of Energy, Jour. Geol., 29, pp. 679,700, Nov.- 

 Dec, 1921. 



