Show THE WORLDS AGE when ie the s scientific c bent efio geologist has baa nothing else to look after or when like ex senator ingalls ingalla be is out of a job be oftener than otherwise turns his hia attention to figuring out the age of the world considering the fact that hat we are all so BO well acquainted with the subject of speculation by reason of close and unyielding association it seems at a glance as though we ought all to know something regarding the length of time since it was fashioned and set on its triumphal march about the blazing zone but bat we dora dont lt as a matter of fact worldly wisdom in this instance consists of a mass of theories inte interwoven roven with a network of conjectures jec tures out of which a product is evolved and paraded before the in tel public as a conclusion the author of which la Is not always as wise as the reader we are now advised by a savant that the amount of lime salts in water which cornea comes as drainage from districts made up of granites goranites gra and basalla is found by a comparison of different analyses to be on an average of parts in parts of water those who adopt this mode of reckoning assume that the excess areas of of igneous rocks taken on an average throughout all geological time will bear to the exposures of sedimentary rooks rocks a ratio of one to nine and from these and other abstruse data it ft to Is interred inferred that the elimination of 0 the calcareous matter now found in all the sedimentary strata must have been going on for a period of there will be a few it if not a good many to whom the quoted passage will be about equivalent to so much sanskrit Sans crit since gince every one has not a scientific bent of mind but most moat of us can gather in the conclusion and hold fast thereto with but little trouble it to is said that even numbers are usually a just ajust object of suspicion and in this case they are especially so it if the whatever else he may be had inserted a fraction somewhere R n midst that long chain of el ciphers phere or had broken up its freight train appearance by the introduction of one or more of the other nume numerate ralp it would ca go 0 down somewhat easier and it aou would id have been no harder to do this either it could have been as well arranged as the existing result by the same game process of thought and reasoning for instance he might have shown that the calcareous sediment ot of the si silurian lurlan strata and the systems undergo a deteriorate ing abrasion of corresponding with a cycle of years and this sub gut joined to the maxims maxima of deterioration precipitated by the concatenation of hydrostatic and hydro carbonic press ure exhibit a remainder of per cent thus making up the sum total of the earths existence yean yeam if any reader is disposed to doubt that our system to is less scientific and methodical then than the other it is a sale bate guarantee that none of them will quee tion that the result last arrived at in ig as aa correct as the preceding one at least he or she will be unable to show that it |