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If they can only prove that he was not at A in the morning, and not at B in the afternoon, the evidence of his absence from both is 'nil', because he might have been at B in the morning and at A in the afternoon. Thus everything depends upon the validity of the second assumption. And we must proceed to inquire what is the real meaning of the word "contemporaneous" as employed by geologists.
The total absence of any trace of fossils has inclined many geologists to attribute the origin of the most ancient strata to an azoic period, or one antecedent to the existence of organic beings.
There are, however, many geologists who do not think this explanation adequate. It is pointed out, in the first place, that the glaciation seems to have come long after the elevation. The difficulty does not seem to be insurmountable. The reduction of the atmospheric vapour would be a gradual process, beginning with the later part of the elevation and culminating long afterwards.
Geologists say there should be diamonds along some of the old water-courses of the Moorilla ridges. Perhaps the white stone that the blacks talk about, which shows a light at night, and has, they say, a devil in it, is a diamond. Ruskin rather thought there was a devil in diamonds, making women do all sorts of evil to possess them.
It used to be urged, on astronomical grounds, that the Ice-Age began about 240,000 years ago, and ended about 60,000 years ago, but the astronomical theory is, as I said, generally abandoned. Geologists, on the other hand, find it difficult to give even approximate figures.
Dozens of geologists can now work out problems which would have puzzled Hutton or Werner; dozens of surgeons can perform operations from which John Hunter would have shrunk appalled; and dozens of women, were they allowed, would, I believe, fulfil in political and official posts the hopes which Miss Wedgwood and Mr. Boyd Kinnear entertain.
It was more than seven times as far as Sirius, nearly fourteen times as far as Alpha Centauri, three times as far as Vega, and twice as far as Arcturus. But some geologists demand two hundred, three hundred, even one thousand million years to enable them to account for the evolutionary development of the earth and its inhabitants.
It is scarcely necessary to state that the order of events thus assumed to occur, for the sake of illustration, should be in harmony with all the conclusions legitimately drawn by geologists from the structure of the earth, and must be equally in accordance with the changes observed by man to be now going on in the living as well as in the inorganic creation.
The circumstance of this enormous area being constituted of materials which most geologists believe to have been crystallized when heated under pressure, gives rise to many curious reflections. Was this effect produced beneath the depths of a profound ocean? or did a covering of strata formerly extend over it, which has since been removed?
That was the experience of all the workers in the west, and it brings plainly to view the great fact, of which not all, even of our best known geologists, are yet fully persuaded, that the geological record, though doubtless a unit, is not uniform over the whole country. These shackles thrown off, the geology of the west leaped up with a vigor which is astonishing.
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