Abstract
IT has been represented to me that misconception with regard to this matter, so far as my own views are concerned, may arise in consequence of my passing, without comment, some remarks made by Prof. J. W. Gregory in his able review of Prof. Bailey Willis's book, “Living Africa”.1 Gregory quotes my early description of the local rift valleys correctly thus : “fracture valleys running along linear up-warps”.2 That was the view I put forward in 1921, but we have learnt a good deal since then, and Sikes pointed out to me, in 1925, that the faults I invoked to explain the Albertine rift are of a type difficult to accept, because of the immense depths from which they would have to emerge. I agreed ; but this in no way weakened my general thesis. Writing to my friend Prof. Arthur Holmes, I afterwards suggested that the rift fractures rose from nearly flat soles, after the manner of the highland thrusts ; but he at that time was unable to agree, and I delayed publishing this view until further evidence should be forthcoming ; and then, in 1928, Bailey Willis produced his ramp hypothesis to explain the Dead Sea Valley—an explanation more complete but essentially similar to that which I had suggested to Holmes to account for the Albertine depression and the high scarps bordering it. I adopted the ramp explanation, as I stated, in Pretoria in the following year.3
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NATURE, 128, 89, July 18, 1931.
Geog. J., 74, p.133.
Vol. 2, Compte rendu, XV. International Geological Congress, South Africa, 1929, pp. 323–353.
NATURE, 128, 977, Dec. 5, 1931.
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WAYLAND, E. The Tectonics of the Albertlne Rift. Nature 129, 762 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129762a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129762a0
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