* Unpublished manuscript.


If any one doubts the importance of the tetrahedral form, let him
consider how evolution would have been hampered if the land of
the globe were arranged as isolated masses in low latitudes,
while oceans took the place of the present northern continents.
The backwardness of the indigenous life of Africa shows how an
equatorial position retards evolution. The still more marked
backwardness of Australia with its kangaroos and duck-billed
platypuses shows how much greater is the retardation when a
continent is also small and isolated. Today, no less than in the
past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of the
tetrahedron to the poles and to the equator preserve the
conditions that favor rapid evolution. They are the dominant
factors in determining that America shall be one of the two great
centers of civilization.

If North and South America be counted as one major land mass, and
Europe, Asia, and Africa as another, the two present the same
general features. Yet their mountains, plains, and coastal
indentations are so arranged that what is on the east in one is
on the west in the other. Their similarity is somewhat like that
of a man's two hands placed palms down on a table.

On a map of the world place a finger of one hand on the western
end of Alaska and a finger of the other on the northeastern tip
of Asia and follow the main bones of the two continents. See how
the chief mountain systems, the Pacific "cordilleras," trend away