ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 1/ 
The creation of a language to express ideas and the 
acquisition of a knowledge of how to make implements 
and use fire, no doubt required many ages. Although 
the study of archaeology is comparatively new, it has 
already done much to dissipate certain doubts and 
supply links in the evidence of man's condition in the 
world in prehistoric times. 
You are aware that one of the most embarrassing 
obstacles to the proper investigation of the age of the 
world and the antiquity of man has been the traditional 
scriptural account of the creation of the world in six 
terrestrial days, together with a chronology of about 
six thousand years. This dogmatic, though I believe 
unauthorized, interpretation has greatly hampered the 
student, for every conscientious man hesitates to adopt 
or maintain views, though based on facts, which have 
even the semblance of a conflict with settled religious 
beliefs. Many able scientists, by giving a liberal in- 
terpretation to the Scriptures, understand the periods 
of time commonly designated ''days" to be really eons 
of indefinite duration. 
The Christian Church, which has established so 
many dogmas, has not decided that the day men- 
tioned in Genesis meant twenty-four hours, nor has it 
fixed a date when man was created and placed upon 
the earth, I might readily cite the names of many 
learned clergymen, of different denominations, who are 
greatly interested in the investigation of cosmical laws 
"^Mgr. Mignon, Bishop of Chalons-sur-Marne, is one of the best in- 
formed ethnologists and most enthusiasiic cultivators of the sciences of 
ethnology and archaeology in France, and hence it may readily be in- 
ferred that such studies do not trench upon orthodox doctrines. 
(Figuier, p. 2.) 
