Mr. Binn, well known for his lithological studies, and the possession of a good style, in the scientific sense, was a short man, evincing, under control, however, the peptic influences of years, with a face of decided legibility, in which sense and penetration seemed equally indicated.
He had provided himself with charts, which had been distended in an irregular line above his head, and to these he occasionally referred. His reading of the important pages before him was clear and audible, but totally neglectful, of the informing appliances in elocution, of melody of voice, accent and deliberation. The lecture was brilliant and distinguished, and quite comparable in its qualities to the serious people who had gathered in great intellectual force to receive its instructions.
CHAPTER II.
THE LECTURE.
Note.—If the reader is too much interested in getting to the upshot of this tale, let him skip the Lecture. But it is a mistake. This Lecture was delivered by Mr. Binn on the Ninth of April, 1909, and is well worth while.
“Mr. President, Dr. Smith and Ladies and Gentlemen,” began the speaker; “The area of the Panama Isthmus and the West Indies has been an area of successional changes very considerable in their amount, very persistent in their frequency. It embraces a tropical area contiguous on its Pacific side to a meridional section of the earth which is very unstable, and which almost monopolizes the contemporaneous volcanic energy of the earth. It adjoins, or is limited itself on the east, in the Atlantic, by the Antillean islets, the emergent crests of submerged volcanic vents. It could be presumptively held, on these grounds, that the Isthmus itself partook of these characters of inequilibrated crustal motions. It might be affirmed, with a fair amount of precision, that its future history would continue this impression.
“The West Indies, as defined by Hill, embracing the islands that with Cuba form a long convexity terminating in Trinidad, on the coast of S. America, represent to-day a disintegrated continent. They are supposed to have embodied a former geographical unity. It had terrestrial magnitude, and lay Atlantis-like between South America and North America, at a time when the present narrow neck of land upon which our eyes are now, as a nation, fixed with anxious preoccupation, was itself swept over by the confluent waters of the two oceans, and when at that point which now forms an attenuated avenue of intercourse between North and South America, the tides of a broad water way alternated in their allegiance to the East or West coasts of the separated continents; and possibly a precarious and fluctuating contribution from the warm Gulf Stream found its way into the Pacific.
“The discussion of this question opens up for our consideration the examination of the geological structure of these oscillating terranes, as to what these are made up of, and it is evident that we must reach some general conclusion as to the succession of the strata composing them, and their relative positions to each other, as whether they are, in the language of stratigraphy, conformable or unconformable. The inference and argument are simple. If we find that the rocks composing these sections are crystalline, ancient, and deeply bedded formations, presumably coexistent, so to speak, with the original or very early formative beds of the world, and referable to its beginnings, we are permitted, by all the analogies of induction and deduction, to assume that these rocks have at least a relative stability. On the other hand if our examination reveals the fact that they are recent deposits, more or less unconsolidated, easily disturbed in their positions, easily readjusted in their molecular or physical structure, then by the most unexceptional and matter-of-fact observation, we shall regard them as questionably permanent, indeed as unmistakably non-resistant to the subterranean forces of terrestrial mutation.
“Again it is clear that a pile of bricks, or of any other superimposed building blocks is the more secure, in its equilibrium, if the component parts overlie each other, along the broadest surfaces, and come in contact, or fit, as we say, in parallel position. If these bricks succeed each other in lines of brick that are flat, and then in lines that are vertical, or placed on their thinnest and narrowest edges, and these two contrasted positions alternate, or are irregularly disposed with reference to each other in the same wall, such a construction implies, involves, elements of weakness, and under the shock of any incident force would succumb in ruin more quickly, and more irretrievably than the former. If further, the latter building style had suffered ruptures and dislocations and the gaps or openings and broken surfaces of contact between its parts had been invaded or replaced by an irregular or incongruous assortment of ‘filling,’ differing from the original bricks in substance, texture and hardness, then we have a third pattern of composition that again is weaker than either of its predecessors. But further. If this least massive and most vulnerable type of structure has been subjected to repeated and considerable strains of elevation and depression, and strains recurrent at short intervals, then, without inspection, we know that its interior coherence has been much shattered, and that it has undergone a progressive dilapidation.
“But I am constrained to go one step farther in this hypothetical picture of structural defectiveness. To return to our wall of brick. It can be made up of bricks laid upon each other in consecutive tiers; it can be made up of tilted tiers of bricks, bricks laid on each other, but inclined to a horizontal plane, and finally it is conceivable that the bricks may be so arranged as to be inverted in their relations to the horizontal plane. The diagrams make clear these contrasted positions.