MOSES REFUTED.

Inangahua Times, Volume IV, Issue 15, 14 May 1877, Page 3

MOSES REFUTED.

Th& subjoined ludicrous production, from the New York Times, is one of the beat burlesques on the " scientific method" that has come tinder notice. The " hit " at geologists who construct elaborate theories on exceedingly frail suppositions might well be extended to some learned professors in other branches of science, who hare reared wonderful fabrics of apparent facts solely from the " scientific " (?) use of imagination. A new and violent blow has just been struck at the Mosaic account of creation by the discovery of an extremely important fossil in a coffee sack at Baltimore, In the centre of this sack was found the ukull of a monkey. There enn be ho doubt as to the facts. The coffee was of the variety called Bio, and the skull was perfectly preserved. Let us dwell for a little upon the meaning of this discovery fls interpreted by the principles of geology. The coffee sack was twelve (say twelve and a-half) inches in diameter, nnd four feet in height. The skull, which lay in the middle of if, was therefore two feet below the surface. To suppose that it was violently forced into the sack after the latter was full would be unscientific. No on« imagines that the fossil birds of the old red sandstone dng down into that locality through the superincumbent strata. Nothing is more universally conceded than that fossils are always found where they belong. The animals whose remains we find in the rocks of the paleozoic, the Methe.Gothic, and the Syro»Pho3nician strata belong respectively to those several systems. The "■ fossil monkey skull waft, therefore, deposited in the coffee sack when the latter was half full, and the two feet of coffee which rested npbn it was a subsequent deposit. Now, it follows from this premise that monkeys existed during the early part of the Bio coSee period. It is the opinion of most geologists that the Bio coffee period succeeded the tertiary period, and immediately preceded the present period Now no tertiary monkeys have yet been found; but the Baltimore discovery shows thatmonkeys existed as early as the middle of the Bio coffee period, a date far earlier than any which has hitherto bees assigned to them. We are now in a position to inquire what is the least period of time which must have elapsed since the skull of the Baltimore monkey was the property of a live and active simian. The answer to this ques« {ion must be sought by ascertaining the rate at which coffee is deposited. It is the opinion of Mr Huxley, based upon a lone and careful examination of over 300 garbage boxes, that coffee is deposited in a ground condition at the rate, of an inch in a thousand centuries; but the deposition of unground coffee is almost infinitely slower. He has placed bags, coffee-mills and other receptacles in se* eluded places, and left them for months at a time, without, finding the slightest traces of coffee in them. Although Huxley does now hazard a guess at the rate of deposition of nnground Eio coffee, Professor Tyndall does not hesitate to say it i* at least as slow as the rate of deposition of tomato cans. Let us suppose, as we are justified in doing, that 30,000,000 of years would be required to bring about the deposition of a stratum of tomato cans one foot thick all over the surface of the globe, and an equally long period must certainly have elapsed while a foot of unground coffee was accumulating over the skull of the Baltimore monkey. We thus ascertain that the monkey in question yielded up his particular variety of ghost and became a fossil fully 30,000.000 of years ago. Probably even this enormous period of time is much less than the actual period which has elapsed since that monkey's decease ; and we may consider ourselves safe in assigning, to bis skull the age of 50,000,000 years, besides a lew odd months. •• In the light of this amazing revela* tion what becomes of Moses and his 6000 years ? It will hardly escape notice that he nowhere mentions Bio coffee. Ob-

-11! I' Ithl31 thl3 omss sion is duo to the fa that he knew nothing of it. But if >f was unacquainted with one of the me ,t recent formations, how can we suppo ,« mat ne knew anything about the eld d rocks--ihe mctaomorphio and stereoscop c strata P And yet it is this man ignora ie of the plainest facts of geology, and of i c very simplest strata, who boldly assunn ; r to tell us all about the creation I"