i88i.j the Distribution of Land and Sea. 15 
would in all probability have been accumulated from sedi- 
ment derived from their wear and tear ; and these would 
have been at least partially upheaved by the oscillations of 
level which must have intervened during these enormously 
long periods.” 
Mr. Reade, on the other hand, “ is not prepared to admit 
that the rocks of the earth are all of littoral or shallow-water 
formation. He mentions that Professor A. Agassiz describes 
dredging up from over 1000 fathoms in the Gulf of Mexico 
masses of leaves, pieces of bamboo, of sugar-cane, dead 
land-shells, and other land-debris which would, if found 
fossil in rocks, be taken by geologists to indicate a shallow 
estuary surrounded by forests. It must be remembered, how- 
ever, that these dredgings took place only fifteen miles from 
the shore. 
Referring to the general flatness of the ocean-bed as 
another argument used against its ever having been 
land, he asks “ what would Europe or any other continent 
look like if its configuration were traced only by soundings 
taken in, say, 3000 fathoms of water ? Very probably the 
same argument would be used to prove that it had never been 
a continent.” He considers it highly probable that on the 
mid-Atlantic ridge there exist submerged peaks of which we 
know nothing. 
There is a consideration which seems at least to show that 
the main mass of water must for indefinitely long ages have 
existed in the southern, and the bulk of the dry land in the 
northern hemisphere ; this is, that the now arCtic regions 
appear to have been the original seat of terrestrial life, 
whilst the great southern ocean seems, according to the 
naturalists of the Challenger , to have been the first starting 
point of aquatic forms. Now if the bulk of the water had 
ever been transferred, according to the theory of Adhemar, 
from the southern to the northern hemisphere, either the 
proportion of dry land must have been very much reduced 
or great stretches of land must have existed in parts now 
covered with deep water. 
On closer inspection of the two contending theories it will 
be found, we think, that a compromise may be effected in 
perfect harmony with the faCts produced on both sides. It 
is on all hands conceded that every foot of the dry land 
now existing has been repeatedly submerged, whilst the vast 
excess of area of the ocean renders the counter-proposition 
unnecessary and improbable.* But the upholders of the 
general theory of the permanence of oceans and continents 
* Mr. Reade merely argues that almost every part of the ocean-bed has been 
dry land. 
