Probably not. To work such changes in the distribution of land and water will be a thing not indeed beyond the power of the next century's engineers, but beyond their daring. The accomplishment of them might, if at all rapid, be attended by frightful disasters, some of which can be readily estimated, but of which the worst would probably remain unforeseen and unimagined until the irrevocable moment of fulfilment. To increase to this extent the area of the world's oceans, without increasing (as of course we could not increase) their mass, would perceptibly lower the level of the sea everywhere, and in accordance with the well-known hydrostatic law things would "right themselves" on a cataclysmal scale. Every narrow strait in the world, every oceanic canal would become, for the time being, a roaring cataract. The Mediterranean would rush tumultuously out through the Straits of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, and the overflow would flood the adjacent lands. The Straits of Dover would roar like Niagara, and all Kent, and the low-lying north-east corner of France, would be devastated. The isthmus of Panama might at the same time be swept away, for the narrow banks of the completed Panama Canal would certainly give way before the weight of the two oceans. All the rivers of the world would rush down in spate until they ran nearly dry from the increased outfall. The sea would recede from all the coasts. Along with this fall in the level of the sea would come tempests such as, since the appearance of man on the planet, the world has never known. For the sea-supported atmosphere would suck into its vacuum the whole weight of the over-lying air until pressure was equalised. And the climate of all the world would be reconstituted in new and probably inconvenient ways.