154 THE COMING [CH. 



ideas had always been the prejudice against the admis- 

 sion of vast duration of past geological time. It was 

 unfortunate that, even when rational historical criti- 

 cism had to a great extent neutralised the effect of 

 Archbishop Usher's chronology, the mathematicians 

 and physicists, assuming certain sources of heat in 

 the earth and sun could have been the only possible 

 ones, tried to set a limit to the time at the disposal 

 of the geologist and biologist. Happily the discovery 

 of radio-activity and the new sources of heat opened 

 up by that discovery, have removed those objections, 

 which were like a nightmare to both Geology and 

 Biology. 



Lyell used to relate the story of a man, who, from 

 a condition of dire poverty, suddenly became the 

 possessor of vast wealth, and when remonstrated 

 with by friends on the inadequacy of a subscription 

 he had offered, the poor fellow exclaimed sadly, 'Ah ! 

 you don't know how hard it is to get the chill of 

 poverty out of one's bones.' 



Geologists and biologists alike have long been the 

 victims of this l chill of poverty,' with respect to past 

 time. So long as physicists insisted that one hundred 

 millions, or forty millions, or even ten millions of 

 years, must be the limit of geological time, it was not 

 possible to avoid the conclusion stated by Lord 

 Salisbury in 1894, 'Of course, if the mathematicians 

 are right the biologists cannot have what they de- 



