WEGENER, Alfred. The Origin of Continents and Oceans. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd. 1924.
8vo. Original red cloth, gilt lettering to spine; pp. xx, 212, [8, publisher's catalogue], text illustrations throughout; spine a little sunned, dampstain to upper corner of rear board, very good.
First English language edition, translated from the third German edition. Publisher's presentation copy, with circular presentation stamp to foot of title page.
In this visionary work first published in 1915, Wegener proposed the existence of the ancient supercontinent of Pangaea, consisting of all the present-day continents that subsequently slowly separated over millennia through the process he called "continental drift". As evidence he presented the "jigsaw fit" of the present continents, and matching fossil and rock types being found in areas separated by vast oceans. For instance, fossils of the mesosaur, a one metre long freshwater reptile that could not possibly have swum the Atlantic, are only found in South Africa and South America. After the 1930s his theories sank into obscurity, largely because he suggested no mechanism for the drift. However, the discovery of plate tectonics in the 1960s proved him to be, in many regards, spectacularly correct.
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