178 
MAJOR EARTH FEATURES 
homogeneous and unbroken sequence of Mesozoic shelf deposits 
on the shore of Tethys from anterior India to Australia. The 
former close union between Europe and America, postulated by 
Wegener, because of the general harmony prevailing between the 
Armorican chains of Belgium and the Appalachians, and through 
the breaking up of which the Atlantic Ocean originated, need not 
be thought of as the welding together along a wide front of Fen- 
noscandia and Laurentia and their southern marginal mountain 
arcs. Such great horizontal movements, furthermore, demand 
a former wide separation of eastern Asia from Alaska, which 
is entirely inadmissible because of the connected zone of coastal 
features around the Pacific Ocean. Just as little can we bring 
the folding of the Andes into a casual relation with the separation 
of America from Europe and Africa, since, for example. Central 
America does not have at all an Andean structure. 
Finally, the Permian Ice Age cannot be explained simply by 
the horizontal pushing about of the continents, since we should 
then have a (North Pole in the vicinity of the present Florida, 
in which region all glacial evidence is lacking. Thus all the 
weightiest arguments are against the Wegenerian hypothesis, which 
is, however, understandable as a reaction against certain paleo- 
geographic speculations. As examples maps of the Triassic con¬ 
tinents drawn by Haug, with their great spread of lands, and 
shown on a map of the same time drawn by the author indicate 
how the continental masses across the North Atlantic and the 
South Atlantic and Indian Oceans accepted by Haug and others 
can be justified paleogeographically. To explain the former con¬ 
nection between Europe and North America, a land-bridge is 
entirely sufficient in the region of the present Wyville Thomson 
ridge; the union of South America and Africa, which was as¬ 
sumed because of the spread of the Early Cretacic Uitenhage 
fauna could have been brought about across an archipelago and 
Antarctica. And lastly, the character of the Permian and Triassic 
land forms in Brazil and South Africa testifies against a conti¬ 
nental [desert] climate such as would necessarily be demanded by 
a southern continent of such magnitude. On the other hand, a 
union of anterior India with South Africa over Madagascar must 
be accepted on account of the common reptilian fauna of Triassic 
times. However, the great Pacific continent of Mesozoic time, 
