Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1872-05-17
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leave to better antiquaries than nyselCr
said the old Essex county parson 23O years
ago, but since his Time we have raised nm
antiquaries good enough to settle that aues-
ton for us, with their nebular hypotheses,
their Vestiges of creation, and other appa-
ratus for photographing the invisible. The
present paleontologists and ethnoloeists do
not go back quite so far in their researches,
though they have already got far enough
behind any ordinary or extraordinary chro-
nology of the scripture history. Bunsen,
the most moderate of them, claims for tbe
human race an antiquity of at least q, 900
years, while those who believe that man OK
listed before the present geological era, in
the pliocene or even in the miocene ages.
must allow, according TO Sir Charles Lowell.
period of at least 200, 900 years since he be-
gan 10 play his flntastc tricks before high
heaven, and make the angels weep, rs we'll
as his wives and children. And geologists
endeavor to explain to us how the planet
was prepared for the dear creatures a.
bode on it, how many times the ice at
the south pole has frozen and thawed as
the earths axis shifted its inclination,
and how many feet, inconsequence, the
waters of the Atlantic have risen or fall
en, alternately by dipping and drying the
northern continent. When North Amer-
CA went under, according to an English
theorizer named Hopkins, the Gulf stream,
instead of running around Robin Hoods
barn, as 1t now does, on its way from the
equator to the north pole, pushed up the
Mississippi valley in a bee-line, and re-
turned in food of ice-water between the
coasts of Norway and Greenland. In this
way he supposes that western Europe was
refrigerated to the proper temperature to
allow the reindeer and the musk-ox 20 live
in France and Germany, as they once did.
The notion that the obliquity ofthe earth's
axis has had something to do with the Sec
ular changes of the earths climate, is by
no means a new one, for we find it stated,
with ludicrous eloquence, in the notes "to
Shelley's Queen Nab" sixty years ago.
That poet anticipated a millennium in
some future Jge:-
"when man, with changeless nature coalescing,
VIII undertake regeneration's work,
When Earth's ungenial poles no longer point
To the red and baeful sum-
That family wrinkles there"
That is to say, 10 the north star, as he ex-
plains in a note, 'to which the axis of the
earth, in its present state of obiquity,
points" This obliquity, which Shelley
treats as if it were a personal grievance, he
thinks will gradually diminish, until the
equator coincides with the ecliptc, and he
adds -
There is no greater extravaganza in pre-
suming that the progress of the perpendc-
uarity of The poles may be as rapid as the
progress of intellect. 1t is certain that
wisdom is not compatible with disease,
and that, in the present state of the climate
of the North, health in the true and com
prehensive sense of the word, is out of the
reach of civilized man. Astronomy teaches
us that the earth is now in its progress,
and that the polesnre every year becoming
more and more perpendicular to the eclp-
tic. The strong evidence afforded by the
history of mythology and geological re-
searches that some event of this nature has
taken place already, affords a strong pre-
sumption that this progress is not merely
an oscillation, as has been surmised by
some late astronomers. Bones Of animals
peculiar TO the torrid zone have been found
in the north of Siberia, and on the banks of
the river Ohio. We find from the testimo-
ny of ancient writers that Britain, Germany
and France were much colder than at pres
ent, and that their great riy ers were annu-
ally frozen over. Astronomy teaches us
also that since that period the obiquity of
the earth's position has been considerably
diminished.
Thus far Shelley in lsl3,-since when the
glacial theory with all its accessories has
been invented and adopted in geology. In
order TO account for the extreme cold In
the glacial epoch, when so much of Europe
and North America, and, If Agassiz is cor
| rect, of South America, wal under cold
| poultce of ice, French savant named
Adhemor has suggested an hypothesis,
based upon this same vile obliquity, which
Shelley was so hot to get rid of. NJ. Adhe-
NOR insists that the southern hemisphere
now has seven days more of autumn and
winter than of spring and summer; while
in our hemisphere the reverse takes place
in consequence of this, he says, a much
greater accumulation of ice hos been form
ed about the south pole than about the
north. But formerly 1t was the northern
hemisphere that had this great cupola ol
ice formed about its pole, and at that time
| IL, ,l2I years ago, or something more than
5000 years before Christ, the preponderanct
of water and of glacial ice would have been
in the northern hemisphere instead of in
the southern, as now. According 10 this
theory, the year 1913 was that of greatest
heat at the north and cold at the south
while, 10000 years hence, this will be re.
versed, and the northern hemisphere will
again be partially submerged and frozer
up. According TO this theory, which nei
ther Sir John Herschel nor Sir Charles
Lyell has accepted, we at the north arr
"taking on an arctic climate, "a supposi
ton certainly favored by our experience
this winter. According TO Lyells theory
the glacial epoch was about 100000 year
ago, and lasted about 22i 200 years. TIL
mind IL lost in such vast calculations
which, again, are nothing to some of 81
John Lubbock's, who supposes that tn
denudation of the Wealden valley in Eng
land may have been going on for NOR
than l50,000,000
All such computations are quite as likel.
to make us incredulous as to secure our be
lief in the great antiquity Of man. But 81
John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times, latel.
republished by Appleton, and from whicl
we have taken some of the statements
boye given, does really furnish goo'
summary of all that had been found out o
reasonably conjectured by men of science
as to the men who existed In Europe AM
America before the dawn of history. As
America, history does not run back many
centuries, and in western Europe but lit
tie more than 1000 years, these "prehstori
times" are not, of necessity, very remote
ones, and some writer's, Mr.. James Fergu
...il nllna.. ihaI Il,I