The Birth-Time of the World

It is from this epoch we date our geological age. Our next purpose is to consider how long ago, measured in years, that birth-time was.

That the geological age of the Earth is very great appears from what we have already reviewed. The sediments of the past are many miles in collective thickness: yet the feeble silt of the rivers built them all from base to summit. They have been uplifted from the seas and piled into mountains by movements so slow that during all the time man has been upon the Earth but little change would have been visible. The mountains have again been worn down into the ocean by denudation and again younger mountains built out of their redeposited materials. The contemplation of such vast events

[1] For a description of these early rocks, see especially the monograph of Van Hise and Leith on the pre-Cambrian Geology of North America (Bulletin 360, U.S. Geol. Survey).

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prepares our minds to accept many scores of millions of years