|
and this is the result:—
Palæozoic strata (not including igneous beds) ..
57,154
Secondary strata ..
→OMIT 13,190
Tertiary strata ..
→OMIT 2,240 — making altogether 72,584 feet; that is, very nearly thirteen and three-quarters British miles. Some of
formations, which are represented in England by thin beds, are thousands of feet in thickness on the Continent. Moreover, between each successive formation, we have, in the opinion of most geologists,
blank
→periods of enormous length. So that the lofty pile of sedimentary rocks in
gives but an inadequate idea of the time which has elapsed during their
↑ →The consideration of these various facts impresses the mind almost in the same manner as does the vain endeavour to grapple with the idea of eternity. |
| Nevertheless this impression is partly false. Mr. Croll, in
interesting paper, remarks that we do not err "in forming too great a conception of the length of geological periods," but in estimating them by years. When geologists look at large and complicated phenomena, and then at the figures representing several million years, the two produce a totally different effect on the mind, and the figures are at once pronounced
too small.
regard to
Mr. Croll shows, by calculating the known amount of sediment annually brought down by certain rivers, relatively to
areas of drainage, that 1000 feet of
→solid rock, as it became gradually disintegrated,
would thus be removed from the mean level of the whole area in the course of six million years. This seems an astonishing result, and some considerations lead to the suspicion that it may be
too large, but even if halved or quartered it is still very surprising. Few of us, however, know what a million really means: Mr. Croll gives the following illustration:
a narrow strip of paper, 83 feet 4 inches in length, and stretch it along the wall of a large hall; then mark off at one end the tenth of an inch. This tenth of an inch will represent one hundred years, and the entire strip a million years. But let it be borne in mind, in relation to the subject of this work, what a hundred years implies, represented as it is by a measure utterly insignificant in a hall of the above dimensions. Several eminent breeders, during a single lifetime, have so largely modified some of the higher animals, which propagate their kind much more slowly than most of the lower animals, that they have formed what well
to be called
Few men have attended with due care to any one strain for more than half a century, so that a hundred years represents the work of two breeders in succession. It is not to be
|
