Page "Continental drift" Paragraph 4

In his Manual of Geology, 1863, Dana says " The continents and oceans had their general outline or form defined in earliest time.

This has been proved with respect to North America from the position and distribution of the first beds of the Silurian-those of the Potsdam epoch-and this will probably prove to the case in Primordial time with the other continents also ".

Dana was enormously influential in America-his Manual of Mineralogy is still in print in revised form-and the theory became known as Permanence theory.