Geological Growth.
Geologists who are familiar with the idea of Geological phenomena worked out through periods of inconceivable duration will, perhaps, be able to appreciate Mr. E. B. Hunt’s argument on the growth and chronology of the great Florida reef. After stating the dimensions of the reef, Mr. Hunt proceeds: “Taking the rate at twenty-four years to the foot, we shall have for the total time 24 × 250 × 900, on the data, as stated; or we find the total period of 5,400,000 years as that required for the growth of the entire coral limestone formation of Florida.”
“Implements in the Drift.”
We have already, [at page 59], referred to these important evidences, in connexion with the mode of life of the present inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego. The geological inference must, however, be drawn with extreme caution, which induces us to return to the subject.
The period of time long before history was, for convenience we designate the “Stone Age.” We gather from manifold evidence that during this period metals were unknown. Wherever their use was introduced, there the “Stone Age” virtually ended. The recent discovery of the flint instruments of the drift seems to carry the “Stone Age” back to a period of which, till very lately, we had no idea. The interval between the time when men fashioned these thousands of implements already found in the drift, and the earliest examples of the second “Stone Age” so to speak, as the Danish “kjökkenmödding,” or the oldest Swiss “pfahlbau,” must be long indeed.
It by no means follows that all the men who have used stone weapons must necessarily have been savages. At least, a consideration of the every-day life of the Swiss “pfahlbauten” would refute such a proposition. There was progress even in the “Stone Age,” and the iron swords of the Gauls of Brennus probably differed less from the finest-tempered Damascus blade than do the flint implements of the drift from those of Denmark; or, to come nearer home, from the stone relics of our Channel Islands. There may have been an all-pervading “Stone Age,” but universality is not implied in the term. The people of the lands now Hungary and Transylvania seem to have used copper implements, preceding those of bronze, when the men of the West were fashioning their flints.
The present state of the tribes of Tierra del Fuego is their “Stone Age,” and, if ever they become a nation hereafter, they will probably collect in their museums the humble implements of their earliest culture.
The above observations were communicated to the Times, April 30, 1863: it is but a glimpse of a great subject, but is so suggestive as to be entitled to attention.
The Earth and Man compared.
If it were possible for man to construct a globe 800 feet, or twice the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral, in diameter, and to place upon any one point of its surface an atom 1/4380th of an inch in diameter, and 1/720th part of an inch in height, it would correctly denote the proportion man bears to the earth upon which he stands.