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logical changes, setting aside all rasli speculations, the 
stronger will become our convictions of the substantial truth 
and marvellous accuracy of the Holy Scriptures, in the account 
of the Creation in Genesis , and in other allusions to the facts 
of nature throughout the sacred text. 
The Chairman.— I need scarcely call upon you to return thanks for this 
valuable paper, the more valuable as it is bristling with facts, gathered from 
a very extensive survey of the globe. It is not a paper made up from 
researches in geological works. It bears the impress of actual investigation, 
and of such investigation as few men have opportunities of making. I cannot 
but conceive that the vast mass of facts brought before us must be of very 
great value in the records of this Institute, and that they will be quoted from 
those records by many with great satisfaction. 
Professor Oliver Byrne. — I have been viewing this subject from a 
different stand-point to that of Mr. Evan Hopkins ; but I think that the 
conclusions and calculations I have come to will establish without much 
doubt the truth of his observations, carried further down than he was able to 
see. Astronomers say that this earth has six motions — the annual, diurnal, 
precession of the equinoxes, solar nutation, lunar nutation (established by 
theory and not by observation), and the collapsing of the planes of the 
equator and ecliptic. I say there are only three— the annual, diurnal, 
and the right motion of the earth’s axis. I have travelled over the whole 
country Mr. Evan Hopkins has surveyed ; I have been in South America 
and up the Nile, and had an opportunity of seeing that he is perfectly 
correct in his statements, as far as I could investigate. But the mathematical 
reason of all this is simple indeed. The earth being an oblate spheroid, 
revolving on its axis, has a protuberance at the equator, making the diameter 
there twenty-six miles greater than the diameter through the poles. If this 
earth was a perfect globe, the action of the sun and moon upon it as a 
perfect globe — would have no influence to change the spinning position of the 
body. It is not a change of the whole body, axis and all, but a swinging 
of the body upon a consecutive axis, that changes the latitude of any place. 
There are twenty-six miles of a bulb always changing their position ; and the 
action of all the particles must be perpendicular to tangent planes and in the 
direction of the plumb-line, from this combined motion. The fact is, that 
sand being loose, it nearly obeys the same laws of motion as a fluid like water , 
but the hard rock of the earth changes altogether and all at once. This pro- 
tuberance progresses continually round the earth ; and twenty-six mms 
of a mountain moving on consecutively, causes all these changes. . And 
that this motion of the earth is in existence can be proved as easily as 
anything in the multiplication table. Then if we take and examine the 
changes that have taken place in sun-dials — the one dug up in Hercula 
neum for instance, — we find that the position of the dial at the time it was 
in use, would not tell the time correctly now. Take another instance— the 
city of Philadelphia, in our own time : — Market Street and Broad Street 
