173 
tion,” so that it might he reduced to one or two million years, 
and the vast thickness of calcareous rocks, which are only the 
record of othws from which they were partly formed, shows 
how many times such areas must have been transported 
from land to sea. 
The sinking of an area equal to the continent of Asia to 
the mean depth of the ocean would bring a weight of water 
sufficient, if the antipodes were a suboceanic rising area, 
to displace the position of the axis 40 — 60 miles by the 
same manner of calculation. It may he thus seen that 
these may he disturbing or starting forces, but do not give 
a large amount of change directly, and that the one to three 
degrees which Mr. George Darwin, M.A., aUows is aU that 
we should expect in recent geological times unless there is 
some cumulative effect. 
Mr. Waters maintained that if the change was caused by 
1 ion of weight, then the earth in readjustment would 
cause phenomena equivalent to an elevation in those semi- 
hemispheres from which the maximum bulge has been 
removed, displacing, if it should be an oceanic area, an 
amount of water to be placed in another region; the maxi- 
rnum effect of each degree of change is of the weight of 
the bulge, and the possibility of a redistribution of land and 
sea preventing a change in an opposite direction of the mo- 
tion ol the poles was pointed out. 
The astronomical objections are that any such movement 
ot the axis would be discoverable from the earth’s and moon’s 
motions, that is, by precession and mutation of the equinoxes 
which are caused by the attraction of the sun and moon on 
le equatorial bulge. It is from no sufficient chanae in 
these motions that we have been told the figure of rotation 
Sr Th f Irl 
on), but this has been based upon a preternatural rigidity of 
the earth which is not now maintained by all physicists.* 
* Sir William Thomson says in his Glasgow addi-ess • “ A a- t 
tion of the earth as a whole would never rn-om . 
— 
o 
