HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 153 



never sdught caresses. He was always serious, never in the least 

 playful or sentimental. Any new proposition he always takes 

 seriously. He expects the worst, and scowls and shows his teeth 

 until the matter is thoroughly understood, when he usually be- 

 comes indifferent. 



One day the children vexed him overmuch, and breaking his 

 chain he came out among them. They fled in consternation, all 

 but the younger one, who was a brave little knight and who 

 stood his ground, though at the cost of a serious biting. 



And thus it came that after two years of freedom Bob has 

 returned to the curiosity shop in Kearny Street not the one on 

 the right as you go up Pine Street, but the other one, where the 

 red-tailed parrots scold and swear, and among whose oaths you 

 may hear all the varied languages of the south sea islands. 

 And there in a little iron cage he remains cramped and unhappy. 

 All day long he rolls back his sneering lips, shakes the cage by 

 pulling against the bars, and swings himself to and fro, trying 

 to overturn the cage and cast it on the floor. And here he waits 

 till his ransom is paid again. Fifteen dollars, I believe, is the 

 sum at which it is fixed. Whoever does this will open for him 

 the door to another series of adventures. 



HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 



By Prof. WAEREN UPHAM. 



WITHIN the memory of men now living, and especially dur- 

 ing the last thirty years, the processes of the creation of 

 the earth and its inhabitants, of the solar system, and of the 

 starry heavens, have come to be understood in a very different 

 way from that in which they were thought of by our fathers and 

 forefathers. Instead of the former belief that divine fiats at suc- 

 cessive times suddenly spoke into existence the forms of animal 

 and plant life now occupying the earth, the earlier faunas and 

 floras found fossil in the rocks, and at still earlier dates the earth 

 itself, the sun, and the entire astronomic universe, it is now recog- 

 nized and confidently accepted on all sides that all animals and 

 plants,. the globe which we inhabit, and the sun and stars, have 

 been created through slow processes of development, which are 

 well denominated evolution that is, an unrolling or unfolding. 

 These changes have been in progress during unnumbered and in- 

 conceivably long ages ; they are still going forward ; and they will 

 probably continue as far into the unfathomable future as they 

 have come to us through the dimly and in part somewhat clearly 

 discerned past. To us who are borne upon its bosom this current 



VOL. XLIV. 13 



