The Portland daily press., 1865-11-28

Professor Cummings Third Lecture.

This lecture which was given last evening,
at Congress Hall, was even more interesting
than those which have preceded it. Below we
give brief synopsis of its chief points,
The history of the earth had been slSetched
" from the beginning" to the period when coal
was formed. We had found time when the
earth was molten. The rocks had told us of
another time when the world was watery
waste, islanded only here and there by a ridge
of granite. We had seen how North Ameri-
ca began in a ridge extending eastward and
westward, on the northern rim Of our great
continent had grown till now New York and
New England were out of the ocean. There
were commissions. The crust wrinkled, the
Alleghanies were born. The lecturer was not
concerned with the cause Of these commissions.
That would come within his scope on another
evening. He showed how determined the
fact, and how, in this wrinkling of the earth's
crust, almost every living thing was destroyed
In the rocks formed after these convulsionf !,
we open another volume of the earths history.
1hC iOWCoo IiChitJCiO VI UlliS STOup WCTC
cropping out along the Connecticut. They
were written over with strange foot prints i'm
pressed, at low tide, on soft sand and mud.
The sand of that old beach had hardened into
rock, and there are the tracks to dayl The
Professor showed how we could determine
these extinct animals by the track. They
We're huge beasts, bird-li1e, and kangaroo like,
and frog-like. The bird tracks were so large
we could hardly believe they ,cere bird tracks.
But recent discoveries confirm the testimony
of these rocks, and demonstrate that race of
birds has lived on the earth, compared with
which the ostrich is mere pigmy. An egg
had been found. in Madagascar, more than a
foot in diameter. An exact copy of that egg
lay on the table. i@
The successive chapters of that volume we
might read in rocks thrown up along the Jura,
in limestones of the far west, and in the marls
of New Jersey. These regions had been re-
claimed from the sea, but she had great pro-
civities for sinking. The Professor assured us
that she is going down at the rate OF four inch
es century, and that if this rate continues, in
"Dous eiAty eiAOtisduu years VIC Sleil pass over
her without paying toll to the Camden and
Amboy. ,,., ....,s ~. sr
In these rocks we read of the elimination of
two great families. A son of Portland had
done much to interpret God in one branch Of
the animal kingdom. The highest form of
this branch,-the Mnllusca,-reached its high
est Development in size and number of sre-
cies. .''-t
The reptile also reached its elimination and
was lord of the earth. We have not space to
follow the lecturer through the description of
these enormous saurians. He made us see
them as mere professional creations, the prom
ises of nobler creations yet to come.
The marles of New Jersey were the last
chapter The history of this New Jersey dirt,
as we heard it last evening, has all the glow of
romance. Almost every particle had passed
through the mill of life ! The lecturer point
ed out formation near Portland which had
similar origin. Long ago, when there was no
man to register the fact, and when the sea
stood over the site of Portland, myriads of liv-
ing beings were fabricating little charnbered
shells which rained down to the bottom and
formed the dust we build into our houses!