Morning appeal. [volume] (Carson City, Nev.) 1877-1906, 1877-12-07
PROFESSOR CUMMINGS LECTURE.


Professor Cunning delivered the first of the
proposed series of Illustrated Lectures on
Geology. The audience, though not as nu-
merous as the interest of the lecture and the
ability of the speaker merited, was yet fair
as to numbers and appreciative of the sub
iect matter of the discourse and the manner
of its presentation The lecturer has Just
recovered from severe illness, and expert
enced some difficulty in the management of
his voice Exercise will doubtless restore it
to its former vigor and pleasing intonation.
He began by saying that the science he was
to unfold is the most fascinating of all the
physical sciences. Everything writes its
own history, and his was the science which
reads the history of creation written on the
rocks. We want first a general view of the
structure of the earth. The speaker carried
his audience down through the crust of the
earth, making chalk delineations and showing
the relations which the two rockgroups sus-
tain to each other. These groups are the
stratifed, represented in the sandstOnes un-
der Carson, and the massive, represented in
the crystalline rocks that rib the mountains
that begirt Carson. The massive were born
of fire, the stratifed of water. In general
the massive underlie the stratifed and are
oldest. They are the globes foundation
rocks The speaker would begin to unfold
the earth's history from the first of the STRAIT
flied rocks He showed that all rocks spread
nod
water and from the ruins of older rocks. A
few weeks ago he stood on Mount David
son and looked away over turreted ridges,
over rounded domes, through deep canyons,
and far away to alkaline planes-as jagged a
landscape as the hand of God ever spread
under the foot of man-and thought how all
these tumble rock waves of desolation had
been sculptured by pelting storms and erod
ing floods. Every where under the air the
world is wasting away. Every where under
went on to show how as rocks are forming
under the sea from the ruins of the land, ami
mails and plants drop into them and are pet
rifed If the bed of the Pacific were laid
dry we would find in it the petrifed ruins of
all the forms of life in the Ocean or on the |
neighboring land In Nevada we stand on
the dried bottom of an older Pacific In |
New England we stand on the dried bottom |
of an older Atlantic Wherever on the face
OF the globe We plant our feet |
on leaf of sand-rock or limerick we
stand on the dried bottom of sea. When
we study such rocks in the order
in which they were formed, we read from the
history of creation. Whatever lifts the
mind from the present moment and throws it
into the far future or far past, eleyates and
humanizes. We are to traverse past which
nc only less than infinite The lamp of law
we are to flash on the by-gone creations must
be lit from the flame of life burning to-day
We are to explore many an ancient sea-bed
and sea-beach. The speaker would invite
the audience to bear him company in stroll
along living sea-beach. He explained and
drew on the canvass representative of each
of the types of life, showing by the chalk the
creative thought involved Applying the
principles he had deduced, he took his audi
ence back in birds flight view, through the
history of creation as written in the rocks of
our own continent. 1t is impossible to give
even an abstract of this part of the lecture as
it was addressed SO largely to the eye by de-
lineations on the canvas. The speaker
turned back the rock systems leaf by leaf
and drew and described the animals repre-
sentative of each epoch. Quaint, gigantic
'eptiles, bird-like and kangaroo like, were
rawn and made to show that long ago the
reative thought was not clearly pronounced
5oing down through successive rock systems,
Measuring altogether seventeen miles in thick 7
less, the speaker came at last to the ruins
f the first created animal, called the 'FLife =
Dawn" The subject this evening will be one '
If deep popular interest, The Beginning of
Man, or Man in the Geologic Record. ,
DTTTT nJNCS IN CARSON