Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1870-06-10
OUR WORLD 1T THE D.ruy.y.
PrOE GHHniHg's Popular Lecfnrcs on
Geology at .NashHa, ~. ~.
THIRD LECTURE.


Friday evening with larger audience than
and yet there was room for more. He
spoke for an hour and a half, and was heard
to the close with intense interest. About
two hundred were present
From few experiments the speaker
reached the law of the crystal. 1t is this:
Nature, in building a fluid or vapor into
n solid, builds it into an ideal form which
and a snowflake is only cluster of starry
crystals. Ice is formed from fluid and it
is only mass of neede-like crystals close
ly pack ed together. The inference is plain.
These rocks were once fluid or vapor.
Then the whole world was vapor or fluid.
The earth began in fire-mist. 1t cooled
and its earliest crust was mere cndcr.
rhe elements of water were in the air.
When the surrounding space had cooled to
the dew-point, the oceans were gathered
from the air and poured around the granite
crust. Then another group Of rocks began
to FORM To understand this we must go
down by the ocean and see what is going
on there. Far away on the land, rain and
frost are grinding the hard rocks TO pow
der. Every streamlet that trickles down
the hillside carries with it dust ground
from the rock. The flowing water cuts for
itself channel and becomes a river. Frost
and rain and rills wear down the bank.
Time wears on, the river cuts its channel
deeper, rills and rain and frost still wear
down the banks and at last the erosion of
river, rain and frost forms a valley sloping
back ward to the hills. The river alone
would cut its channel down through the
rock and form not a valley, but a gorge.
Southwest of Mormon land is a dreary
plain threaded by rivers, fed by rain and
snow that fall far away on the slopes of the
Sierra. over that dismal land rain and
frost are hardly known. There is no ero-
sion but river erosion. Uureckoned ages
have past and the rivers have cut their
channels down through beds of lime and
granite nearly one mile. They flow not
through valleys but through deep and dis
NAL gorges. You stand on a brink and
look down along q wall of granite into a
dim lit gorge and see the gleam on the wa
ter four thousand feet below! All the rock
that filled these gorges has been borne
| down as atoms into the Gulf of California.
| And all the rock which once filled the val
| leys of New England has been poured as
mud into the Atlantic. 1t has settled on
| the sea bottom in successive layers or stra-
| ia. So nature is forming rocks now, max
| ing new rocks from the ruins of the old.
| The grains of sand are bound together and
become sandstone. The mud may be
| bak cd into slate. And while nature is
| forming these rocks she is dropping into
| them the remains Of animals and plants
| An animal dies and its body falls down
| through the sea into the mud on its bottom.
| Tho soft parts decay and the particles OF
mineral held in the water take their place
and we say tho animal is potrfed--turned
to stone. only the hard parts are petrified
tndstuno. lime, slate, all stratitied rocks
.Is a"it hardened mud from the bottom o.
dried-up seas or lakes. They hold the pet.
rifactions of by-gone creations. When We
study these rocks in the order in which
they were formed we find them to be vol.
umes Of the history of the creation.
The speaker said that we are Just begin.
ming to learn the significance of these
things. A short time ago German savar
found traces of petriiaction in a meteoriC
stone. Very recently Munier a French
savan, found meteorite which was iron
injected with sandstone. These waits tel
us great story. They tell us that the
world from which they came had oceans
that on their bottoms rocks were formed Il,
on the ocean bottoms of earth, that the
oceans were teeming with life as the oceans
of EARTH and that melted from below pierc
ed the crust, as from the fiery core of Tho
earth. In one sense there is no other world
The whole fact is here, the whole history
here. We get no good out of nature til
we learn TO see unity. One God every
where, and everywhere one law, one order
The whole fact is here. But the dullness o
the human eye was long in seeing it.
For many years petrifactons had beer
found but men could not interpret them
They were referred to the patriarchs. Th'
thigh bone of Saurian, a primeval lizarC
of emo rmous bulk, was found i'll the lime
stones of Germany. 1t fell into the hands
of Henron, a French priest, who said tha
it was undoubtedly the thigh bone of Ad
am. He found from that bone that Adam
was l25 feet high
This was the condition of science whel
Cuvier came. By the laws of anatomy III
reconstructed the primeval creations. Th
speaker would give just enough of hi
method to captivate our confidence. III
showed how from fragment of bone founC
in New Zealand Prof Owen builtup an ex
tinct bird and found it about is feet high
We are simplyto apply these methods t.
all petrifactions. We start from Florid
and travel northward. Florida is the new
est part of America. In its limestones W
find no petrifactions which take us back O
the living creations. We pass northwar'
into Alabama and find older rocks. 9Th
position of all these systems of rocks wer
pointed out on the canvass.) In these W
find bones of animals which have no plac
in the living world. The largest of then
were monstrous, serpent shaped whales
From Alabama we pass upward into Ney
Jersey and find still older rocks. The.
hold the ruins of enormous reptiles of tn
sea and the land We go northward still
and pass over systems Of limestone olde
still than the New Jersey marble. The.
have nothing higher upon the scale of lif
than the fish, and their fishes were unlik
anything living now. Northward still AM
we come to the Huronian mountains q
Canada. These rocks were supposed to b
older than life. 1t was thought that whei
these rocks wero spread out on the bottom
of the sea primeval there was no livini
thing. But Sir VIM. Logan had found
fossil in the Huronian Mountains. Lif
gan when these rocks were formed
How?
The lecturer said that he held to specia
epochs of creative activity, but he believe'
the creative energy is perennial and tina
life was created in those remote ages as it !
now. lie gave the method of some recon
experiments by Prof Wyman and argue
that they proved spontaneous generation
But he discarded the word, saying tina
| a., oes snpntanaitv Sci