長文練習帖

英語篇

I-i
In the early 20th century a strange idea hit on Alfred Lothar Wegener, a German geologist. He was looking at the coast lines of Eastern South America and Western Africa, and was wondering. Wasn't there some reason for these lines that were quite similar as if they had been some pieces of what one big continent were divided into? Then he started searching for evidence of the separation.
After all his scrutiny, it was proved that ancient strata (layers of soil) in both coasts of the continents were surely correspondent, in point of fossils, ages etc. In addition, the continents were found to be still moving away from each other at some ten centimeters per year. Then he proposed a hypothesis to the world.At that time, however, an essential problem could not be solved. What force on (or in) earth was moving the big and immeasurably heavy continents? This problem made his hypothesis remain just a hypothesis for half a century. On a Japanese dictionary printed in 1943, too, this hypothesis was named 'the Wegener hypothesis'.