William Lowtliian Gree?i. — Hitchcock. 7 
lines of Richard Owen, would not stand the test of a rigorous 
analysis; and hence had no patience to listen to the overtures of 
Mr. Green with his tetrahedral symmetry. 
Upon examining a terrestrial globe it is easy to block out 
the tetrahedron with the apex at the south pole and the an- 
gles proceeding northerly by the way of South America, Afri- 
ca and Australia; with basal angles in North America, Scan- 
dinavia and northeastern Asia, and a north polar ocean rest- 
ing upon the base of the figure. In a measure these salient 
points have existed as projections ever since the Archean 
period, for the figure must have been fashioned prior to the 
beginning of sedimentation. The following features of the 
earth's topography may be mentioned as explicable by this 
theory and not by any other: 
1. Most of the land is in the northern hemisphere, strech- 
ing eastwards and westwards along parallels of latitude. 
2. There are practically three double continents north of 
the equator: America, Africa-Europe, Asia-Australia, with 
pyramidal projections pointing into the southern ocean. The 
northern portions are broader than the southern. 
3. At the north pole the land is depressed, supporting the 
Arctic ocean. 
4. The continents and oceans are antipodal to each other., 
land being always opposite to water. 
5. The southern hemisphere is mainly ocean, with a cen- 
tral mass of land at the pole and terrestrial projections radiat- 
ing from it. 
In the further study of details the hextetrahedron is em- 
ployed, and the twenty-four triangles of that figure are seen 
to be spherical, not plane. Hence the earth's figure as thus 
conceived departs very little from the sphericity usually 
ascribed to it. Oblateness is a feature added to the contrac- 
tional shape by the earth's rotation, and modifies the figure 
somewhat — more particularly by the movement of the water 
which must assume its level. Mr. Green has carried out the 
details of the network of fissures at angles of sixty degrees 
with each other only for the Hawaiian islands. 
There are two facts requiring further explanation: first, 
the separation of all the continents by a mediterranean line 
of depression, and second, the eastward projection of the 
