Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1882-07-25
philadelphia Press, 90. |

in this city and studied law under Mr.. Brew
ster, the present attorney general of the
United States, is paying brief visit to this
city, having come East for the purpose OF
placing the manuscript of new book in the
hands of his publishers, Harper Bros, OF
New York. Mr.. Donnelly graduated at the
Philadelphia High school, and after being ad-
United to the bar moved to Minnesota, and
subsequently represented that state in con-
gress. He is the author of Atlantis"
book which has created much comment
among scientific readers.
Mr.. Donnel]y said yesterday: ~ feel that
any statement of the purpose of my book be
fore its publication would scarcely do 1t JUS
tice. 1t is an argument which attacks many
preconceived opinions. Upon the first blush
the public will say that its theory is impossi-
BILE, if not absurd. l hope that those who
read the book through will lay it down with
the feeling that if I have not proved my case,
/ have at least made plausible argument.
The work is not continuation of Atlantis,
although it has some connection with the
theory contained in that book.
"RAGNARoK.
at is entitled 'Ragnarok The name is
taken from the Scandinavian SGgaS or legends,
and means ''the darkness of the gods" 1t
paints time when great catastrophe of fire
and Hood and snow and ice fell on the earth
and destroyed all the inhabitants of the globe
except a man and woman, Lii and Ltfthra-
ser, who saved themselves from the conflagra-
tion by hiding in cavern, from which they
afterwards emerged and repeopled the world.
/ attempt to show that the so-called drift de-
posts, or diluvium, those vast deposits of sand,
gravel, and clay, which are found all over a
great part of the earth, and which are hun
dreds OF feet in thickness, were not, as taught
in our school-books, the product of ice ac-
INIT hat he Of he
tact of the earth with comet.
at is generally understood that comets
are intangible bodies, and that if one struck
the earth its inhabitants would not know oft;
but the revelations OF the spectroscope, dur
ing the last few years, show that comet
consists of q head, self-luminous from the
combustion of gases, that is of matter on fire,
and a tail made up of ponderable matter which
shines by the reflection of sunlight, and this
pondersble matter is probably stones and
clay-dust, such as the drift is composed Of
Schiapparelli shows that certain showers OF
meteoric stones are fragments of comets
tails; and this would go to prove that the pom
derable matter of the comets tail which re-
fleets the sunlight is more or less composed
of stones.
"The whole world supposes that great ice
sheet once covered the land, and that it create
the drift; but how could that be when the
drift is found on the equator in South Amer
lea, where an ice sheet could not have been,
unless the whole globe was completely
wrapped in ice? And in that event all life,
animal and vegetable, must have persisted;
while We know on the contrary,
that all our present life-formS
draw their descent from pre.glacial
forms. Even the tropical plants, like the
banana, that cannot stand the touch of frost,
survived the so-called iCe-age. And while we
find the drifts in the tropics of America, we do
not find it on the plains OF northern Siberia,
fhora ;,1x l,o,,o hoo. ,f
found anywhere. These two points are con
elusive that ice did not produce the drift.
THE AGE OF ICE AND SNOW.
81 think there was terrible age of ice and
snow, the floods and storms, but not of con
tinental ice-sheets reaching to the Mediter-
ranean and the Carolinas; and, moreover, the
glacialists have never pretended to show how
that ice and snow came about. Prof. Tyndall
has truly said that great heat was as necessaryto
the glacial age as great cold; that you could not
get these vast ice-felds upon the face of the
land unless the water comprising them had
been first evaporated and lifted up from the
oceans by great heat. 1t is conceded that to
make the continental ice sheets, claimed by
the believers in the ice IGN of The drift the
oceans would have to be lowered 1000 feet
There is no way to account for such sud
den accession of tremendous heat except by
contact with O comet, and the spectroscope
bustion and capable of producing such heat.
There are many comets that are big enough to
injure the earth if they did come in contact
with it. Comets have been seen that would
| reach from the earth to the sun and leave
&C, COO, 600 miles of tail hanging over on the
other side, and in one case the tail of a comet
was $4,000, 0C0 miles broad, while our little
earth is less than s 0G0 miles in diameter.
Herschel said that there are as many comets
in solar space as there are fish in the sea. 1t
would be impossible in a conversation to enu-
merate my proofs that the earth was struck by a
comet at the time of which l hav written,
but the strongest is the fact that about 200
pages of my book will be filed with the
various ancient legends OF mankind, of all
races, from Egypt to the Sandwich Islands,
from Norway TO Patagonia, in which this
contact of the earth with comet, the con-
fagration that followed, the people taking
refuge in caves, the great floods while the
clouds were restoring the evaporated waters
to the seas and the age Of darkness while the
dense clouds EMBODIED the globe, are all clearly
depicted.
LEGENDARY LORE.
"The 'Ragnarok' of the Norsemen is a cor
rect, literal, historical account of the event,
but il has never been understood. Ovid's
conhagration of 'Phaeton' is another. One
Central American legend not only describes
the fire falling from. heaven and the confa-
SrdLloHs anu Tue lall OF gravel from heaven,
but even describes the cracks in the earth, the
fords and the bursting up Of the trap.rocks,
which biologists assure us, were associated
with the drift age. Even the Bible is full of
descriptions and references to the drift age
and the comet; and the statements of the
Bible are confirmed by my theory in the most
marvellous manner, but in way never dreamed
OF before. Man existed before the drift; his
crushed bones have been found with the drift
piled upon them where he fell and persisted;
and in caves in Europe they have been found
associated with the remains of animals, which
we know certainly ceased to exist with the
coming OF the drift; that is, were destroyed
by it. Man not only existed before the drift,
but | prove he was civilized to
a degree now thought incredible If |
have proved my case, or have created a rea-
sonable probability of its truth, the effects will
be far-reaching and in many different direc-
tions: and not the least will be an increased
respect Tor the myths and legends of man
Kind, and for those fundamental ideas which
lie at the base of religion. l think l have
proved that 'the fall of man. the expulsion
from Paradise the darkness that rested on
the face of the Deep the destruction of Sodom
and Gomorrah, were all historical vereties,
and that science and religion, in some respects,
are not so far apart as has been supposed"
De- III I'LL 10 NOD