A. Modern Scientific Speculations About The Ages Of The Globe, Animal Evolution, And Man.
May we not be permitted to throw a glance at the works of specialists? The work on World-Life: Comparative Geology, by Prof. A. Winchell, furnishes us with curious data. Here we find an opponent of the nebular theory smiting with all the force of the hammer of his odium theologicum on the rather contradictory hypotheses of the great stars of Science, in the matter of sidereal and cosmic phenomena based on their respective relations to terrestrial durations. The “too imaginative physicists and naturalists” do not fare very easily under this shower of their own speculative computations placed side by side, and cut rather a sorry figure. Thus he writes:
Sir William Thompson, on the basis of the observed principles of cooling, concludes that no more than 10 million years [elsewhere he makes it 100,000,000] can have elapsed since the temperature of the earth was sufficiently reduced to sustain vegetable life.[1636] Helmholz calculates that 20 million years would suffice for the [pg 734]original nebula to condense to the present dimensions of the sun. Prof. S. Newcomb requires only 10 millions to attain a temperature of 212° Fahr.[1637] Croll estimates 70 million years for the diffusion of the heat....[1638] Bischof calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Centigrade. Reade, basing his estimate on observed rates of denudation, demands 500 million years since sedimentation began in Europe.[1639] Lyell ventured a rough guess of 240 million years; Darwin thought 300 million years demanded by the organic transformations which his theory contemplates, and Huxley is disposed to demand 1,000 millions [!!].... Some biologists ... seem to close their eyes tight and leap at one bound into the abyss of millions of years, of which they have no more adequate estimate than of infinity.[1640]
Then he proceeds to give what he takes to be more correct geological figures: a few will suffice.
According to Sir William Thompson “the whole incrusted age of the world is 80,000,000 years”; and agreeably with Prof. Houghton's calculations of a minimum limit for the time since the elevation of Europe and Asia, three hypothetical ages for three possible and different modes of upheaval are given, varying from the modest figure of 640,730 years, through 4,170,000 years to the tremendous figure of 27,491,000 years!!
This is enough, as one can see, to cover our claims for the four Continents and even the figures of the Brâhmans.
Further calculations, the details of which the reader may find in Prof. Winchell's work,[1641] bring Houghton to an approximation of the sedimentary age of the globe—11,700,000 years. These figures are found too small by the author, who forthwith extends them to 37,000,000 years.
Again, according to Croll,[1642] 2,500,000 years “represents the time since the beginning of the Tertiary age” in one work; and according to another modification of his view, 15,000,000 only have elapsed since the beginning of the Eocene period,[1643] this, being the first of the three Tertiary periods, leaves the student suspended between two-and-a-half and fifteen millions. But if one has to hold to the former moderate figures, then the whole incrusted age of the world would be 131,600,000 years.[1644]
As the last Glacial period extended from 240,000 to 80,000 years ago (Prof. Croll's view), therefore, man must have appeared on Earth from 100,000 to 120,000 years ago. But, as says Prof. Winchell with reference to the antiquity of the Mediterranean race: