io6 The American Geologist. February, 1901. 
characteristically Darwinian frankness, he does not overpress 
the facts, admits that the resemblances are not so convincing 
as they might be, and that somd cases, e. g. the western coast 
of North America, are absolutely inconsistent with the scheme. 
Another theory that attributes the formation of the main 
geographical lines to pre-geological incidents is given in a pa- 
per by Prinz, "Sur les similitudes que presentent les cartes ter- 
restes et Planetaires," which elaborates and gives an astro- 
nomical basis to ideas previously suggested by Lowthian 
Green and Daubree. His theory is that the northern part of 
the earth had a lower angular velocity than the equatorial and 
southern regions. Therefore the land masses in the southern 
hemisphere were gradually pushed forward towards the east. 
The line between the northern retarded hemisphere and the 
southern swifter hemisphere is the great line of weakness and 
fracture that runs from the Caribbean along the Mediterrane- 
an, down the Persian gulf and across Malayasia. Prinz has 
drawn a map (Fig. 2) showing how the main geographical 
lines agree with his assumed hnes of torsion. 
This map is interesting, for these primitve torsion wrinkles 
must have been formed in the same period as Prof. Darwin's 
primitive tidal wrinkles. It is significant that the lines do not 
correspond. The chief geographical lines which Darwin 
claims as his primitive wrinkles are inexplicable on Prinz's 
theory, and the great lines which Prinz claims to support his 
wrinkling are opposed to those of Darwin. The geographical 
primitive lines of the two theories are often contradictory. 
A third theory assigning the geographical distribution to 
very ancient causes has been proposed by Prof. Lapworth. In 
an address to the geographical section of the British Associa- 
tion in 1892, and in a brilliant lecture on "The Face of the 
Earth," delivered to the Royal Geographical Society in 1894, 
Lapworth attributed the arrangement of oceans and continents 
to an intercrossing series of primitive earth-folds. The oceans, 
according to this theory, occupy ancient basins of depression; 
and the continental masses are domes of elevation. 
"The surface of the earth-crust at the present day," says 
Lapworth, "is most simply regarded as the surface of a con- 
tinuous sheet which has been warped up by two sets of undu- 
lations crossing each other at right angles. . . . The one set 
