I02 The American Geologist. February, i90i. 
These systems fell forever on the discovery of America, 
which could not be brought into conformity with the radial 
plan by even the ingenious devices of mediaeval cartographers. 
Later on came an even worse blow. Geologists showed that, 
instead of the land areas being fixed and immutable, they are 
really more fickle and less enduring than the sea. The distri- 
bution of land is therefore constantly changing, owing to local 
variations in its level. The discovery of this truth seemed to 
destroy the very basis of any possible Earth-plan. Indeed, 
Lyellism, with its essential doctrine of the alternate elevation 
and subsidence of the land under the agency of local causes, 
seemed inconsistent with the existence of any general cause 
governing the geographical evolution of the globe as a whole. 
But a truer appreciation of this later knowledge did not 
confirm these first deductions. America is now used as the 
typical or, to borrow a biological phrase, the schematic contin- 
ent. And when, remembering the probability of local varia- 
tions in land-level, allowance is made for them, new resem- 
blances are revealed, and exceptions that once were serious 
difficulties are removed. For instance, the oceans all end in 
triangles pointing to the north. This is the case with the Paci- 
fic, the two sections of the Indian ocean, and the basins of the 
Mediterranean. The Atlantic alone is broadly open at its 
northern end. But Scotland and Iceland are connected by a 
submerged ridge, which is said to be capped by a line of old 
moraine. If. this ridge were raised to sea-level, the Atlantic 
would conform to the general rule by tapering northward to a 
point between Iceland and Greenland. 
Similarly with the land-masses. There seems at first sight 
no resemblance in shape between the Old World and the New. 
But the Old World is divided into halves by a band of lowland, 
which extends southward from the Arctic ocean to the Cas- 
pian, and northward from the Arabian sea up the Persian gulf. 
There is evidence to show that the sea recently covered these 
northern lowlands and occupied the Persian depression ; while 
somewhat earlier, in the Miocene times, the intervening ridge 
was also submerged. Restore these conditions, and the conti- 
nents would occur as three meridional belts, each broken 
across by transverse Mediterranean seas, viz. North and 
South America separated by the Caribbean depression ; Europe 
