Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/35

CHAPTER II

RELATION TO THE CONTRACTION THEORY, AND TO THE DOCTRINES OF LAND-BRIDGES AND OF THE PERMANENCE OF THE OCEANS

Geology has not yet completely freed itself from the idea of a shrinkage of the earth. This contraction theory was especially advocated by Dana, Albert Heim and Eduard Suess, but still prevails as one of the fundamentals in geological text-books, as for example in those of E. Kayser^[1] and Kober.^[2] Just as a drying apple becomes wrinkled by folds on its surface through the evaporation from its interior, so should the earth through cooling and the consequent shrinkage form folded mountain chains on its surface. Suess coined the short phrase: “Der Zusammenbruch des Erdballes ist es, dem wir beiwohnen” (“The breaking up of the earth, that is what we see”).^[3] The historical service of this theory cannot be denied; it formed for a considerable period a sufficient epitome of our geological knowledge. As a result of this long period, during which the contraction theory has yielded such logical results from a large amount of varied research work, the immense

1. E. Kayser, Lehrbuch der allgemeinen Geologie, Ed. 5. Stuttgart, 1918.
2. L. Kober, Der Bau der Erde, pp. 1–324. Berlin, 1921.
3. E. Suess, Das Antlitz der Erde, 1, p. 778, 1885. English Edition, 1, p. 604, 1904.

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