II.—On the Possibility of Changes in the Latitudes of Places on the Earth's Surface; being an Appeal to Physicists

Extract

Mr. Hill's paper in the June Number of the Magazine has incited me to recur to the great question possibility of changes in the earth's axis of rotation within itself. Mr. Hill is well known to be an accomplished geologist; but he writes as if he were simply a physicist, without sympathies for the difficulties of his brethren of the hammer. Yet we feel certain that such is not the case. We know that he has studied in the field the tremendous movements which the strata have undergone, being often compressed into a small part of their original length: that he has appreciated the almost ubiquitous presence, either in past or present time, of volcanic activity: that he must feel how unsatisfactory all explanations short of a change in latitude are to account for the flora of a warm climate within the arctic circle. We therefore appeal to him, and to others similarly qualified, to look at this subject from both sides.