THE AGE OE THE EARTH AS AN ABODE 

 FITTED FOR LTFE. By the Right Hox. Lord 

 Kelvix, G.C.V.O. 



[Being the 1897 Annual Address of the Victoria Institute with the 

 author's additions written at different times from June to December, 1897.] 



§ 1. The age of the earth as an abode fitted for Life is cer- 

 tainly a subject wliich largely interests mankind in general. 

 For geology it is of vital and fundamental importance — as 

 important as the date of the battle of Hastings is for English 

 History — yet it was very little thought of by geologists of 

 thirty or forty years ago ; how little is illustrated by a state- 

 ment,* Avhich I will now read, given originally from the 

 })residential cliair of the Geological Society by Professor 

 Huxley in 18(3i>, when for a second time, after a seven 

 years' interval, he w^as president of the Society. 



" I do not suppose that at tlie present day any geologist would be found 

 . . . . to deny that the rapidity of the rotation of the earth may be 

 diunnishing, that the sun mat/ he waxing dim, or that the earth itself mai/ 

 be cooling. Most of us, I suspect, are Gallios, ' who care for none of 

 these things,' being of opinion that, true or lictitious, they have made no* 

 practical ditference to tlie earth, during the period of which a record is 

 preserved in stratified deposits." 



§ 2. I believe the explanation of how it was possible for 

 Professor Huxley to say that he and other geologists did not 

 care for things on whicli the age of life on the earth essen- 

 tially depends, is because he did not -know that there was 

 valid foundation for any estimates worth considering as to 

 absolute magnitudes. If science did not allow us to give any 

 estimate whatever as to whether 10,000,000 or 10,000,000,000 

 years is the age of this earth as an abode fitted for life, then 

 I think Professor Huxley Avould have been perfectly right in 

 saying that geologists should not trouble themselves about 

 it, and biologists should go on in their own way, not en- 

 quiring into things utterly beyond the power of human 



* In the printed quotations the italics are mine in every case, not so 

 the cajntals in the quotation from Page's Text-book. 



