Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/29

Rh oceans form the free surface of the next layer of the body of the earth which is also assumed to exist under the continental blocks. The existence of this involves the geophysical side of the displacement theory.

The detailed establishment of this new hypothesis will form the major part of the book. Some historical remarks, however, should be given beforehand.

The first notion of the displacement of continents came to me in 1910 when, on studying the map of the world, I was impressed by the congruency of both sides of the Atlantic coasts, but I disregarded it at the time because I did not consider it probable. In the autumn of 1911 I became acquainted (through a collection of references, which came into my hands by accident) with the palæontological evidence of the former land connection between Brazil and Africa, of which I had not previously known. This induced me to undertake a hasty analysis of the results of research in this direction in the spheres of geology and palæontology, whereby such important confirmations were yielded, that I was convinced of the fundamental correctness of my idea. I first brought forward the idea on January 6th, 1912, in a lecture to the Geological Association of Frankfort-on-Main entitled “Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage.” This lecture was followed on January 10th by a second on “Horizontalverschiebungen der Kontinente” to the Society for the Advancement of Science of Marburg. In the same year (1912), also, both of the first publications on the theory took place.

Afterwards the participation in the traverse of