Continental drift theory

　　Sabine Island, near Greenland, was first discovered and mapped by the British geographer Sir Edward Sabine in 1823, but an 1869 map showed it was actually a quart er of a mile farther west than its discoverer had mappe d. This interested Alfred Wegener, a young geographer w orking in Greenland in 1910. He thought the error too g reat to be explained. Wegener himself took measurements and found that since 1869 the island had moved another five-eighths of a mile. After checking the position of other Arctic and masses, he concluded that all of them were drifting westward at different speeds. From this f inding, Wegener developed his floating continents theor y. He imagined an original supercontinent making up the infant earth, finally the mass broke up into several pi eces—the present continents, The continents do seem to fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and what's more, some of the mountain ranges of differnet continents lin e up rather well, as if the land massed were at one tim e connected. However, believable as Wegener's argument appeared, many geographers refused to accept it. Exactl y how the continents were formed is still a leading mys tery in geography, though today many geographers are re turning to the continental drift theory.