taken place when the foundations of the
great deep were broken up."

Although Professor Pickering's theory is to a certain degree anticipated
in the above words, still he has worked out the idea much more fully,
and given it an additional fascination by connecting it with the birth
of the moon. He points out, in fact, that there is a remarkable
similarity between the lunar volcanoes and those in the immediate
neighbourhood of the Pacific Ocean. He goes even further to suggest that
Australia is another portion of the primal crust which was detached out
of the region now occupied by the Indian Ocean, where it was originally
connected with the south of India or the east of Africa.

Certain objections to the theory have been put forward, one of which is
that the parallelism noticed between the opposite shores of the Atlantic
is almost too perfect to have remained through some sixty millions of
years down to our own day, in the face of all those geological movements
of upheaval and submergence, which are perpetually at work upon our
globe. Professor Pickering, however, replies to this objection by
stating that many geologists believe that the main divisions of land and
water on the earth are permanent, and that the geological alterations
which have taken place since these were formed have been merely of a
temporary and superficial nature.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE END OF THINGS

We have been trying to picture the beginning of things. We will now try
to picture the end.

In attempting this, we find that our theories must of necessity be
limited to the earth, or at most to the solar system. The time-honoured
expression "End of the World" really applies to very little beyond the
end of our own earth. To the people of past ages it, of course, meant
very much more. For them, as we have seen, the earth was the centre of
everything; and the heavens and all around were merely a kind of minor
accompaniment, created, as they no doubt thought, for their especial
benefit. In the ancient view, therefore, the beginning of the earth
meant the beginning of the universe, and the end of the earth the
extinction of all things. The belief, too, was general that this end
would be accomplished through fire. In the modern view, however, the
birth and death of the earth, or indeed of the solar system, might pass
as incidents almost unnoticed in space. They would be but mere links in
the chain of cosmic happenings.

A number of theories