GEOLOGY. 



THERE has been for long, say for fifty years or so, a sort 

 of precise and yet reckless way of dealing with mundane 

 antiquity. Thirty thousand and five hundred thousand 

 years may have been allowed as sufficient time for the 

 formation of some special stratum ; and for another, upon 

 some basis of analogy, or something equally general or 

 equally precise, one million or five millions : a few odd 

 millions of difference in duration in such mighty changes 

 being unimportant matters, where time has to be calculated 

 by billions or trillions, rather than by the million or the 

 thousand. 



The general tenor of such teaching has rested for the 

 most part upon two hypotheses; the one being that of 

 Detritus, from slow and successive waste from granite, with 

 alternate stages of depression and elevation of this and 

 super layers of rock, by forces sufficient to raise the earth 

 bodily, if any one knew where to fix the fulcrum. 



