Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/32

8 under J. P. Koch of 1912/13 and later war-service hindered me from further elaboration of the theory. In 1915, however, I was able to use a long sick-leave to give a somewhat detailed description of the theory in the Vieweg series under the title of this book. As a second edition of this was necessary after the close of the war, the publishers generously consented to transfer the book from the Vieweg to the Wissenschaft series, whereby the possibility was given for a considerably enlarged work. The present edition is again virtually rewritten, as the process of the grouping of the data which affect the question according to the view-point of the new theory has meanwhile made further progress and an extensive recent literature about the subject has appeared.

During the above-mentioned work of examining the literature I several times chanced on views concordant with my own by older authors. Thus a rotation of the entire crust of the earth—but whose parts, however, did not alter their relative positions—had already been assumed by many authors, as Löffelholz von Colberg, Kreichgauer, Sir John Evans and others. H. Wettstein has written a remarkable book, in which, however, among many absurdities, a leaning towards great relative horizontal displacements of the continents is shown. The continents, (the submarine shelves of