THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 137 
Drummond (of Lowell lecture fame), Glasgow University, 
died. In his lifetime this original scientific man was hounded 
down as one whose infidelity was such that it admitted of no 
dispute. How comes it, in the very city where he was so 
fiercely assailed for his heretical writings the public recently 
erected.a bronze fountain in his honor, and that such a states- 
man as Lord Aberdeen and his noble English wife (whose 
name we Irishmen hold in reverence) could be found to elo- 
quently express their admiration for the work of one who a few 
brief years previous was denounced as an agnostic and infidel. 
Yet in that public procession were to be seen numbers of the 
pious clergy who so bitterly denounced in life the dead scientist. 
“One point became perfectly plain to me,’ remarks Hux- 
ley, “‘ that Moses is not responsible for nine-tenths, of the Penta- 
teuch. Certainly not, for the legends which have been made 
the bugbears of science. Thirty years ago criticism of Moses 
was held by respectable people to be a deadly sin. Now itisa 
mere peccadillo if it stops short at the history of Abraham.” 
More liberal views seem to have advanced in England of late, 
but the writer entertains grave doubts that such is the case in 
some Ontario towns. —The influence of “a Talmage” is yet 
perceptible there. A few years ago I called the attention of 
the Geological Section to some remarkable discovery made by 
Archeologists, English, French, German and American, in the 
ruins of cities unearthed in the ancient Chaldea (or Babylon), 
as well as in Egypt, in proof that the Biblical chronology of 
Archbishop Usher, incorporated in the authorized version of 
the olden Hebrew sacred writings (which had been first trans- 
lated by Pagan Greeks) was absolutely unreliable. Doubtless 
the same conclusion was reached by others also. Knowing the 
little interest taken in antiquarian matters bv narrow sectarian 
creeds, I ventured some years ago to point out that the 
leading Geologists in. all: countries agreed with Huxley that 
the Jewish legends he referred to (the deluge included) were 
simply Chaldean myths. For expressing concurrence in this 
view I was accused of warring against religion itself recently. 
I was chiefly indebted to the Rev. Professor Sayce, of Oxford, 
