The Continent Puzzle

To the Editors:

I write to correct a small factual point in Verlyn Klinkenborg’s generally admirable review of two books about the ocean [“What the Ocean Holds,” NYR, October 17]. In a footnote Klinkenborg repeats the common misconception that Alfred Wegener was first to propose the theory of continental drift. However, as I demonstrated in a 1994 article in Nature, the theory had already been proposed in the seventeenth century by the Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius. Thank you for helping ensure that Ortelius gets proper credit for being first with the startling insight that the continents originally fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

James Romm
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York