Chapter 33

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Sir Charles Lyell, who is credited with having “happily invented” the terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, to mark the three divisions of the Tertiary Age, ought really to have settled upon some approximate length for his “mind-offspring.” Having left the duration of these periods, however, to the speculations of specialists, the greatest confusion and perplexity are the result of that happy thought. It seems like a hopeless task to succeed in quoting a single set of figures from one work, without the risk of finding it contradicted by the same author in an earlier or a subsequent volume. Sir William Thomson, one of the most eminent among the modern authorities, has changed his opinion about half-a-dozen times upon the age of the Sun and the date of the consolidation of the Earth’s crust. In Thomson and Tait’s Natural Philosophy, we find only ten million years allowed since the time when the temperature of the Earth permitted vegetable life to appear on it. (App. E et seq.; also Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., xxiii. Pt. 1, 157, 1862, where 847 is cancelled.) Mr. Darwin gives Sir William Thomson’s estimate as “a minimum of 98 and a maximum of 200 millions of years since the consolidation of the crust.” (See Ch. Gould, op. cit., p. 83.) In the same work (Nat. Phil.) 80 millions are given from the time of incipient incrustation to the present state of the world. And in his last lecture, as shown elsewhere, Sir William Thomson declares (1887) that the Sun is not older than 15 millions of years! Meanwhile, basing his arguments as to the limits of the age of the Sun’s heat, on figures previously established by Sir William Thomson, Mr. Croll allows 60 millions of years since the beginning of the Cambrian period. This is hopeful for the lovers of exact knowledge. Thus, whatever figures are given by Occult Science, they are sure to be corroborated by those of some one among the modern men of Science who are considered as authorities.