The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1880-01-28
The Earth's Life and Death.

Lecturlng before the New York
Teachers association, on "Planetery
Life and DEATH" Professor Proctor said !:
We have to consider the various men,
bers of the solar system as representing
tor us youth, middle age, and 80 on to
old age. The earth on whic,. We live,
and the solar system. of whic-. i FOIL }
part, have arrived at their prt. =: e.:
dltion by processes analogous to t. . L.
the processes commonly called { -.
tion. These processes are still going IN,
as they have been during periods Of
time which seem to grow longer and
longer the more we study their evi.
dences. 1t is failing short Of the truth
to say that 100000, 300 years must have
elapsed during which the frame of the
earth must have been very much as it is
at present, and during which processes
bringing it to its present stage have
been going on. From the length of time
consumed in achieving certain definite
results upon the earth's crust by those
processes within the knowledge of man,
we can estimate what has been required
to effect other results which we See.
The further study of the earth's crust
shows us clearly that before she became
what she is now there was a time when
she was far too hot for the existence of
animal lie, and the period of her cool
ing, estimating it by her bulk. could not
have been less than 10000, 600 years.
Preceding that, there must have been a
period in which she was in vaporous
stage, and the evidence patent to science
allots loo, 100000 years as the time for
her changing from the vaporous to the
solid condition. This gives us in all
500, 900 years as the time in which
the earth was arriving at a condition fit
for the habitation of human beings.
Our moon will tell US most of the
earth's future, unless we are altogether
astray in reading the evidence that
seems to be offered u.s.. Venus shows
the possession of a watery atmosphere.
and is doubtless fit for habitation under
conditions similar to those upon the
earth. Mars shows not only divisions
into sea and land in about equal proper
tions, but accumulations of what seems
to be ice and snow at its poles. which
decreases and increases apparently in
the seasons of summer and winter. But
the moon has no water. She has no
clouds and can have no water. Herse
have disappeared. Did she ever have
water? Did she ever pass through such
stages as our earth has gone through?
Was this cold and dead world ever
warmed with life like our earth? We
cannot doubt it when we see in her vast
and numerous volcanic craters the evil
dences of the heat she once possessed.
She, too, must have passed through her
cooling stage. Her clouds were con-
densed into the oceans of which we see
the traces still in her dark depressions
of surface. 1t is believed that as planet
becomes old, its waters disappear from
the surface, are sucked in through
crevices made in the crust of the cooling
orb until they entirely disappear. That
is a German theory. Four times as much
water as is now upon the surface Of our
globe can be, it is estimated, contained
in its interior. One Of the views illus
trating this part of the lecture Was a
photograph of a portion of the moons
surface, dazzlingly brilliant, startlingly
sharp in its details, with a background
of black unclouded sky, dotted with
stars, the picture Of a lifeless world
without an atmosphere. This, the
lecturer said, would be the probable fate
of the earth; this what the earth might
he expected to be in twenty-five hum
dred millions ofyears.