ox A PIECE OF TIMBER ENCEUSTED WITH LIME. 95 



of stalagmite in measuring the antiquity of deposits below it, is 

 comparatively little. The layers, for instance, in Kent's Hole, 

 which are generally believed to have demanded a considerable 

 lapse of time, may possibly have been formed at the rate of a quar- 

 ter of an inch per annum, and the human bones which lie buried 

 under the stalagmite in the cave of Bruniquel are not for that 

 reason to be taken to be of a vast antiquity. It may be fairly 

 concluded that the thickness of layers of stalagmite cannot be 

 used as an argument in support of the remote age of the strata 

 below. At the rate of a quarter of an inch per annum, twenty 

 feet of stalagmite might he formed in a thousand years.'''"^^ 



The calc-sinter encrusted board from the Gunnerton Colliery, 

 now before us, may be considered in this aspect, a small connect- 

 ing link between geology and archaeology. It may help us to 

 understand a little better that it is merely the interpreters of 

 science and of Scripture respectively who are or who seem to be 

 at variance in some respects in the present imperfect state of our 

 knowledge ; not that God's Word and His works can ever really 

 be so. It is well to take wide and unbiassed views of Truth 

 from every point of view. Whilst we acknowledge that the 

 Bible history does not necessarily restrict the age of man on the 

 earth to six thousand years, nor militate against any reasonable 

 estimate of his antiquity drawn fi'om scientific researches, in vari- 

 ous fields, bearing upon this most interesting problem ; yet at the 



* Compare the remark of Mr. Evans to the same effect. "Ancient Stone Implements," 

 Chap. XXII., p. 432. 



The late President of the Geological Society says, " The rate of deposit of stalagmitic 

 matter varies so much with different conditions, that its thickness affords no true crite- 

 rion of the length of time during w^hich it has been accumulated." After the reading of 

 the present paper the Rev. Dr. Bruce exhibited a portion of the well-known Walker Alma- 

 nac stone, which has recorded witli exact precision by means of its alternate light and 

 dark layers of stalagmitic deposit the Sundays and holidays, and the working days re- 

 spectively, of the coal-miners in that pit. It also illustrated tlic rapidity of the rate of 

 deposition of the carbonate of lime. Another friend, Mr. John Hancock, has sent me 

 two massive bosses, one of which is four inches and a half in height, and the same in 

 diameter, both having been formed in a few years in the workings of a disused colliery 

 on the Newcastle Town Moor. Mr. B. S. Proctor has also favoured me with a portion of 

 a similar deposition from the Lower Fall in Gordalc, and some stereoscopic views of the 

 picturesque effect of the great sheet of pendant calc-sinter; an instance of which occurs 

 on a smaller scale in a curious petrilied cascade in Warks Burn. Sec Xat. Hist. Trans., 

 Vol. v., New Series, y>. 240. 



