''Great Britain and other countries which are situated in the same parallel, will in very thousand years disappear from the surface of the globe, and other more southerly lands will take their place.'' (Evan Hopkins, 1844, p. 123)
Hopkins proposed for the first time in the history of geology the remarkable idea of moving continents. The mechanism which drives the continental drift explained by Hopkins is very curious. However, the theory is beautiful, holistic and visionary.
"Hopkins put forward a theory of large-scale continental motion in 1844 (Hopkins, 1844). He was a practical mining engineer… and had a special interest in the formation and location of gold deposits. He believed that his global theory would be of value in mining operations. It purported that the driving force of continental motion was the earth’s magnetism. There was a continuous circulation of magnetic fluid, toward the North Pole, down the polar axis to the South Pole then encircling the globe, being electrically conducted through the oceans and thence back to the North Pole. The oceans contained various substances in solution. At the South Pole these were crystallizes by the magneto-electrical flow, forming the continents which were swept to the north. The continents were flexible crystalline compounds floating on and moving through a denser fluid. To support his contention of a northerly movement of land he gave comparisons of ancient and modern latitude determinations, referred to myths and legends and noted the concentration of land in the northern hemisphere. He also discussed tropical remains found in the far North and glacial remains in landmasses now near the tropics. These, he claimed, could not be explained in terms of a general cooling of the earth but fitted with his scheme."
Drifting Continents and Shifting Theories, Homer Eugene LeGrand, 1988, pp. 28-29
''Evan Hopkins (1810-1867), was completely overlooked by geologic historians. He held the title Civil Engineer and Fellow of the Geological Society. Hopkins had traveled widely, especially in the southern hemisphere, having worked as ore geologist and director of gold and silver mines in Central and South America. With geological experience also in Mexico, Australia, and Europe, his background would surely have satisfied Lyell, who had stressed the need for geologists to travel...
Hopkins argued strongly that continents had moved across the surface of the globe, and the mechanism that he called upon to move them was very creative. His mechanism is revealed already in the title of his book: On the Connexion of Geology with Terrestrial Magnetism. He proposed that the Earth's magnetism was a second form of gravitation. For both of these mysterious forces, the strength is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. In his theory, gravity draws mass toward the center of the Earth, and magnetism draws the surface water and the crust of the Earth from the South Pole toward the North Pole...
On pages 68-69 of his 1844 book, Hopkins summarized his mechanism of moving continents across the globe. It is a global-scale process of electroplating, with the north-polar area acting as the anode and the south-polar area as the cathode; crustal material is added by crystallization in the south and removed by dissolution in the north. The seawater serves as the electrolyte that allows the dissolved ions from the north to move to the south for electro-deposition. The entire crust shifts as a unit...
Hopkins' hypothesis was ignored because the idea of global-scale translation of crust, by steady-state creation of new crust and destruction of old crust, was too extreme.''
Allan Krill, Not Getting the Drift. A Hard Look at the Early History of Plate-Tectonics Ideas, 2009
1st Edition, 1844, London, Richard & John Edward Taylor; 8vo
iv, 129 p., 24 plates with engravings; original brown cloth wrappers
Ex libr., spine rep., gilded title on spine; some foxing on the plates o/w clean text; extremely rare copy in good condition.
Price: USD 1,500,000.00