WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE LAST MAN?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 238, 23 November 1877, Page 7

WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE LAST MAN?

Various theories that Lave been seriously maintained by scientific men are described in the Svientijio American, and we summarise them :—: — 1. The surface of the earth is steadily diminishing, elevated regions arc being lowered, and the seas are filling 1 up. The land will at last be all submerged, and the last man will be starved or drowned. 2. The ice is gradually accumulating at the North Pole and melting away at the South Pole, the consequence of which will be an awful catastrophe when the earth's centre of gravity suddenly changes. The last man will then be drowned by the rush of waters. 8. The earth cannot always escape a collision with a comet, and when the disaster comes there will be a mingling of air and cemetery gas, causing an explosion. If the last man "is not suffocated he will be blown up. i. There is a retarding medium in space, causing a gradual loss of velocity in the planets, and the earth, obeying the law of gravitation, will get closer and closer to the sun. The last man will be eun struck. 5. The amount of water on the earth is slowly diminishing, and simultaneously the air is losing in quantity and quality. Finally the earth will be an arid waste, like the moon. The last man will be suffocated. 6. Other suns have disappeared, and ours must, sooner or later, blaze up and then disappear. The intense heat of the conflagration will kill every living thing on earth. The last man will be burned up. 7. The sun's fire will gradually burn out, and the temperature will cool. The earth's glacials "will enlarge, driving our race toward the equator, until the habitable space will lessen to nothing. The Lost man will be frozen to death. 8. A gradual cooling of the air will produce enormous fissures, like those seen in the moon. The surface will become extremely un» stable, until the remnant of humanity will take refuge in caves. The last man will be crushed in his subterranean retreat. 1). The earth will at last separate into small fragments, leaving the people without any foothold. The last man will have a dreadful fall through space. 10. The tenth theory, proving that there will be no last man at all, is thus expressed : " Evolution does not necessarily imply progress, and possibly the race may have retrograded until the human being possesses the nature of the plant louse ; such being the case, this single inhabitant will spontaneously produce posterity of both sexes. — American jfajter.