The first hundred years of the Geological Society of London : an address... at the Geological centenary celebration of 1907.

  • Grabham, Michael Comport.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The first hundred years of the Geological Society of London : an address... at the Geological centenary celebration of 1907. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Lord Kelvin on the age of the Earth as an abode fitted for Life. Life in the first century of the solid Earth’s history. gist, and cast upon him the onus of fixing a date for the first fitness of our planet to support living things, and for the more ancient beginnings of the first stratifi- cation. ‘The age of the earth as an abode fitted for life is certainly a subject which largely interests mankind in general. For Geology it is of vital and funda- mental importance—as important as the date of the Battle of Hastings is for English History/ ‘ It is quite certain that a great mistake has been made—that British popular Geology at the present time is in direct opposition to the principles of Natural Philosophy/ ‘Further as to the future, we may say with equal certainty that the inhabitants of the earth cannot con- tinue to enjoy the light and heat essential to their life for many million years longer, unless new sources, now unknown to us, are prepared in the great store- house of creation/ Such announcements, and the authority with which they came, profoundly affected every thinking geolo- gist, and very serious efforts—some of them extrava- gant—were made to harmonize the record of the earth with the mathematical limit now imposed. Estimates in years fell from five hundred millions to twenty millions, as giving sufficient time to account for every- thing; and Lord Kelvin wrote: ‘We cannot doubt that Confervae in a pool or rivulet of warm water, in the early years of the first century of the solid earth’s history, if favoured with sunlight, would have lived and grown,’ &c.