Abstract
THIS is not, as might be supposed, a popular sketch of the geology of the Isle of Man. It is a description of certain highly hypothetical changes in the relations of sea and land that are held to have taken place within historic times. Five successive lowerings of the sea are said to have left their traces in wave-worn terraces, and these records were all formed in the last 2000 years (p. 39). Seeing that the Mona of Tacitus (p. 2) is moved by the author from Anglesey to the Isle of Man, we may well have doubts as to his historic judgment. One of the withdrawals of the sea is placed in 1538, so as to coincide with the enlargement of the shore near Pozzuoli; and such changes are attributed to movements of the axis of rotation of the earth, or to movements of the shell of the earth over the axis of rotation. The author does not seem quite clear as to which of these he adopts; but his context usually conveys the latter impression. His style may be gauged from the following portion of a sentence, the whole being too long for quotation (p. 94):—“But, according to the wobbling state of the poles of our earth at present, as described by our scientists at the earthquake, that caused so much damage and loss of life at Messina, as described in the Daily Mail, our earth at any moment, with another great earthquake, may lose its centre of gravity at the Poles, and move again slightly in the same direction as it has already done. …”
Mona's Records of the Earth's Changes.
By Joseph Lewin. Pp. iv+100. (Douglas: Brown and Sons, Ltd., 1909.)
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C., G. Mona's Records of the Earth's Changes . Nature 83, 155 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/083155b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/083155b0