184 prof. w. j. sollas on [May 1903,. 



circle will be found to lie near Kufra in the Libyan Desert, the 

 other in the Pacific, south of the Society Islands, in lat. 35° S.,. 

 long. 152° W. 



If a globe be turned towards the observer so that the African 

 pole is in the centre facing him, he can scarcely fail to discover an 

 unexpected symmetry. The African continent has the appearance 

 of a vast dome, surrounded by seas, and separated from the Pacific* 

 which is spread over the greater part of the opposite hemisphere, 

 by an irregular and interrupted belt of land which runs round 

 the entire world almost midway between the African and Pacific 

 poles. The course of two great circles joining these poles, one 

 passing through the East Indian centre and the other at right angles 

 to the first, may be remarked upon in passing. The first passes with 

 close parallelism off the south-eastern guide-line of Luzon, farther 

 on it agrees in trend with the Solomon Isles, passes through Vanua 

 Levu of Fiji, is on the whole concordant with the general run 

 of the Austral Isles and the Low Archipelago, strikes South 

 America in the middle of the great inflection of the Andes of Peru, 

 crosses this continent and enters Northern Africa, which it traverses 

 obliquely from west to east with a general parallelism to the 

 North African foldings, and passes very near to the West African 

 centre ; it crosses the northern ends of the Red Sea and Persian 

 Gulf, extends along the depression just south of the Himalayas,, 

 which is of great importance as the site of a buried axis of 

 disturbance affecting the Indian geodetical observations ; passes out 

 to sea through the Gulf of Tongking, having on either side of it the 

 symmetrically-placed curves of Cochin China and the Hongkong 

 coast, and so back to the East Indian centre. 



The second great circle, drawn at right angles to this, crosses the 

 Antarctic continent from the south of Victoria Land to the north 

 of Enderby Land, coincides with the South African coast from Cape 

 Coriantes to Sofala, then enters the continent and runs north-north- 

 westward between Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, cuts the Equator in 

 long. 30° E., pursues a course parallel with the shores of the Eed Sea, 

 but remote from them, leaves the continent along the coast of the 

 Desert of Barka, and enters Italy by the Gulf of Taranto, crosses the 

 Adriatic, Bavaria, and the North Sea, passes not far north of the 

 Icelandic centre, and enters Greenland by its eastern salient angle 

 near Scoresby's Sound. It then intersects the great Pacific circle 

 in North America somewhat west of long. 120° W. and north of 

 lat. 00° N., crosses the Pacific, runs parallel with the north-north- 

 easterly trend of New Zealand, but as much as 14° away from the 

 coast, and so returns to the Antarctic continent. 



The symmetry of the terrestrial figure, which we have just 

 glimpsed, has been reached in total disregard of the great 

 Eurasian flexures ; but these can by no means be left out of 

 account, for they are only second in importance to those of the 

 Pacific belt. Lake Baikal may be regarded as the arc of a small 

 circle, which circumscribes a region determined by Suess as the 



