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II.—Suggestions as to Geological Time

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

J. Clifton Ward
Affiliation:
Geological Survey of England and Wales.

Extract

But a few years since geologists were in the habit of drawing largely from the Bank of time, and the more they drew the greater was the supply they seemed to want, till at last the thought seemed to come quite natural to them that the supply indeed was inexhaustible. Quite lately, however, these time-speculators have had it suggested to them that there is a limit to the supply, and that the countless ages on which they have depended seem to be very probably but some one hundred millions of years, and untold ages to be reckoned by telling numerals.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1869

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References

page 9 note 1 Example—The marine shells at an elevation of 1400 feet at Moel Tryfaen, near Bangor; for even if the hypothesis of a 600 feet fall in the sea-level be true, the land must have been raised 800 feet, giving a period of 80,000 years at the rate of one foot per century.

page 10 note 1 Article in Philosophical Magazine for November, 1868.Google Scholar

page 11 note 1 Of course the thicker a reef is the larger will be the area which it includes. If Darwin's chart of Coral-Rocks be referred to, it will there be seen that north of 10° north lat., there are but one or two small atolls, while in the southern hemisphere they extend in mass as far as the parallel of 25°.

page 11 note 2 Dana's Manual of Geology, p. 587.

page 12 note 1 Manual of Geology, p. 590.

page 12 note 2 Dana's Manual, p. 551.

page 12 note 3 Dana's Manual of Geology, p. 731.