84 POPULAR LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 



" I believe that tlic time during luhick organic life 

 "has existed on the earth is practically infinite, 

 " because it can be shown to be so great as to be 

 " inconceivable by beings of our limited intelligence" 



9. " The * only agent to which we can reasonably 

 ''attribute the destruction and removal of masses 

 "of rock, notwithstanding that they were many 

 " thousands of feet in thickness, and many hundred 

 " thousand square miles in extent, is the slow and 

 " gradual gnawing of the sea breakers upon coasts, 

 " an action always tending to plane down land to a 

 " little below the level of the upper surface of the 

 " ocean." 



" The time required for such a slow process to 

 " effect such enormous results must of course 

 "be taken to be inconceivably great. The word 

 ' ' inconceivably ' is not here used in a vague, but 

 " in a literal sense, to indicate that the lapse 

 " of time required for the denudation that has 

 " produced the present surfaces of some of the 

 "older rocks, is vast beyond any idea of time 



'Stink-ills' Manual of Ceolo^y. I'.y |.]>. Jukes, IM. A., F. K.S., 

 1862. 



