2>j7 
period, when God began to adapt earth for the habitation of 
man. But we learn from the Mosaic record that the earth did 
not exist in its present condition until the third of these Yoms, — 
“ God called the dry land Earth, and there was evening and 
there was morning, a third Yom.” Supposing, then, seven 
thousand years to be the duration of each of these Yoms, 
including that wherein God is now said to be resting, this 
would give, after deducting two of these Yoms, or 14,000 years 
before the earth appeared in its present condition, from the 
forty-nine thousand years, the sum total of the whole, a period 
of thirty-five thousand years as the duration of the period, 
reckoning from the third Yom until the present time. 
97. Many tests have been suggested bv geologists in order 
to measure the age of the post-tertiary period, the favourite one 
being dependent on the time required to fill up the deltas of 
the largest rivers known on earth ; but for various reasons such 
data are too uncertain to allow any dependence to be placed 
upon them, through the impossibility of making a correct esti- 
mate of the annual rate of these subaqueous deposits. There 
is one test, however, which seems to afford some grounds for 
arriving at something like a sounder conclusion, and that is the 
computed age of the falls of Niagara. Sir Charles Lyell,* after 
the most careful inquiries which he was enabled to make on 
the spot in 1841, came to the conclusion that the average of 
one foot per year was the rate at which the waterfall has been 
cutting through its stony bed ; and he considers that it would 
have required 35,000 years for the retreat of the Falls, from 
the escarpment at Queenstown (a distance of seven miles) to 
their present site. If this be a correct estimate, we may fairly 
infer that wc have some clue to the approximate duration of 
the Yoms or “days” mentioned in the Mosaic cosmogony. 
98. With regard to the formation of man, and the teaching 
of the human race having sprung from one pair, as stated in 
the Mosaic record, my space prevents me from entering upon 
and therefore, in his opinion, a break must have occurred previously to the 
human period, since it is through species alone that an hereditary suc- 
cession is kept up. This conclusion has, however, been denied by other 
geologists. 
* Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. i. eh. x. In reference to the Falls of 
Niagara, which are situated between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the level 
of the former being 330 feet above the latter, Sir Charles Lyell utters a very 
solemn prediction concerning a future catastrophe which he considers will 
inevitably happen in that region of the earth. He says, “The existence of 
enormous seas of fresh-water, such as the North American lakes, is alone 
sufficient to assure us that the time will come, however distant, when a 
deluge will lay waste a considerable part of the American Continent ! ” eh. v.) 
VOL. X. Y 
