TIME-CORMORANTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 288, 8 November 1878, Page 16

TIME-CORMORANTS.

The folio-win:? witty passage from an address of Professor Haughton, of Trinity College, Dublin, to the British Association, throws a light on the opinion of that eminent man of science respecting the Darwinian theory : — The geologists were very extravagant about time. They had no economy at all in that matter. They Avould not even take the trouble of considering how much time they actually required. Mathematicians were apt to have differences with them upon this point. One mathematician said to them — How much do you require 1 Will ten millions of years do 1 Another, more liberal, offers them a hundred millions. But the geologists cried out, " Oh, nonsense, we must have a billion billion of millions of years at least ; how otherwise can man be developed according to Mr. Darwin's theory ? " (Applause and laughter.) Though he (Professor Haughton) thoroughly agreed with the geologists that it would take a very long time indeed to develop nian according to Mr. Darwin's theory, still he could not help thinking that, as a general rule, geologists might reasonably be more economic in. their ideas about time.