The Origin of Continents and Oceans.

introducing continental drift

First English language edition, first impression, of the first book to present the theory of continental drift. An unusually attractive copy with the red cloth still bright. The Origin of Continents and Oceans was originally published in German in 1915 with the title Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane. This English translation is based on the third, extensively revised, German edition of 1922.

'Wegener is remembered today as the originator and one of the chief proponents of the theory of continental drift, which he conceived after being struck by the apparent correspondence in the shapes of the coastlines on the west and east sides of the Atlantic, and supported with extensive research on the geological and paleontological correspondences between the two sides. He postulated that 200 million years ago there existed a supercontinent ("Pangea"), which began to break up during the Mesozoic Era due to the cumulative effects of the "Eötvös force", which drives continents towards the equator, and the tidal attraction of the sun and moon, which drags the earth's crust westward with respect to its interior. Wegner's drift mechanism was later shown to be untenable; it has been replaced by the idea of convection currents in the earth's upper mantle' (Hook & Norman, The Norman Library of Science and Medicine 2192). The theory was first published in an academic paper in 1912, but attracted little interest until the second edition of the book appeared. 'Between 1919 and 1928 continental drift was the focus of much controversy and debate, but the theory afterwards fell into obscurity, not to be revived until the discovery of new paleomagnetic evidence in the 1950s' (Hook & Norman).

First English language edition, first impression; 8vo; 1 plate, illustrations throughout the text; contents very faintly toned; original red cloth, titles to spine gilt and to upper board in blind, faint stain on the lower board, lower corners bumped, tiny worn spots at the extremities, an excellent copy; 212pp.