THE STORY OF THE EARTH

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11390, 17 May 1915, Page 5

THE STORY OF THE EARTH

j LECTURE BY MR W. W. COLONS. ! There -a as a large audience' at j Theatre last evening, when. i Mr W. Vr. Collins gave the second, of ; his illustrated science lectures. Tiu» ! subject dealt, with was " Tho Story ot j tho Earth,'' and for an hour and a | hail' Air Col Sins held" the attention of i ;ili present while he described the various changes the Earth had undergone in its transition from a nebulous mass, cooling, contracting and solidifying till it became a globular body rotating on its axis and revolving around its primary, the sun. The time for this transition alone must have been so vast as to be utterly inconceivable by us. | Pastor Russell had stated that this j stage of the Earth's history w'as not i included in the six days of creation "as : recorded in Genesis and that those j days, which were days of 70U0 years • each, referred only to '' the ordering | of die Earth for "human habitation. 1 ""' j Even ft slight acquaintance with the : story of the Earth would show how in- \ adequate six days of 7000 years each, lor 42.000 years in all. were for the I formation of the stratified rocks which | formed so great a part of the earth's i outer crust, and which were \iue en- ' tir< ly to the action of water. Exoep--1 lion mast also be ta.Keu to Pastor RusI self's theory of rings or belts of water i and minerals which, he says, were pre- | cipitated upon the earth as great doluges, and accounted for the minerals • found under layers oj chafe and ■ soil. Such a theory was quite unsup- ' ported by facts, winch showed that 1 minerals and metals had been forced I through the strateficd rocks by tho ; earth's internal energy and not deposi ited by deluges from without. Equally i unscientific was Pastor Russell's the- | orv that early forms of life came into j existence before tho light of the sun 1 h;-.d penetrated the dense carbon charg;ed atmosphere. Bui, this theory of an i a;. mo-sphere heavily laden with carbonic ! acid had long sinc'o been dismissed bj j competent scientists as accounting lot ; tho proline vegetation of tile carbonif'erous age. raid the known existence of j air iu-eathing animals was conclusive : Oil that point. Both _on land and in : the sens the plants and animals of the ' Silurian and Devonian periods led vo ; the. profuse forms which appeared hi [ tlie great carboniferous age. From ! fossil remains found in the coal mea- ; sines if had been possible to restore the chief plants of that wonderful period, *> that we were now able to see what the great forests from which our coal deposits had been produced were realty like. Perhaps the recent, approach to tho conditions under which those forests grew were to be found to-day in tho Sunderhunds of India or in tha swamp forests of America. But the vegetation of that far off geologic time wai all of the simpler kind, being composed of bundie;; of fibrous vegetable matter like the modern ferns and bamboos,..■ and like them growing from withhv and lint from without like tlie hardwooded e'xogens of to-day. Plants' which witli net are hut insignificant weeds. >uch a'; the club-mosses and horse-tilik were then great trees growing sometimes to the height, of 100 ft, among them being the scaly Lepidodendron, the Calamite with its fluted stem and tlie graceful Sigilarin. It was from the decay of this prolific vogelation that the greatest coal seams had been derived, and it was true tc say that in the coal measures we had stored up the light and heat of the sun of countless "ages ago. The lecture was illustrated throughout by a series of interesting and instructive views, was listened to with the greatest attention, and at its conclusion was heartilv anph.uded. The subject for Sunday next will be '•' Pi oofs of Evolution."