THEATRE ROYAL.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2478, 16 March 1882, Page 3

THEATRE ROYAL.

MR DENTON’S LECTURES.

The gecond of Mr Denton’* lecture* was given on Wednesday evening at the theatre to a very good audience, who listened throughout to an interesting lecture with great attention.

Mr Denton, resuming the thread of his Discourse on the previous evening, said that Ihia planet was once a burning ocean, and had to become a dead sun in order to become a live world. The question might be asked if their planet was burning for ages where were the ashes ? Well, this was just what they found. There were the mountains of limestone, which was simply carbonate of lime, and the limestone was merely the ash of calcium. Then came vast beds of slate, which were but the compacted ashes of aluminium, from which came the white clay known as alumina. Thus they would see that limestone and slate were but the ashes compacted, which had been burning for ages, till they arrived at the form they now found them in. Soda was the ash of sodium,magnesia of magnesium, and all the ores were but the ashes which had been burnt by the fiery furnace of a burning world. The reason why they had gold in a metallic state, and not in ash, was that it was too hard, for even the great fiery ordeal through which it had passed could not turn it to ash. Thus, when a clergyman said at the side of the grave, “ Ashes to ashes,” ho was stating a purely chemical fact, because the dust they scattered on the coffin was composed of the ashes of a burning world. So also with regard to the solid portion of their bodies; this also was composed of these ashes. There must have been a time when the whole earth was a vast desert of desolation, a desolation only varied by those volcanic openings going down to the fiery ocean beneath the thin cruet. They would ask where, then, were the oceans, the lakes, the rivers, and the springs ? To this, he would answer, in the atmosphere, which was, probably, ten thousand times larger than it was to-day. The carbon now in their ooal fields was then in the air, and the drops fell from the atmosphere on to the heated surface of the earth, only to rise again in steam. For what uncounted ages this process must have gone on until the oceans formed into the hollows. A combat went on for ages and ages between those two forces, fire and water, to see with which of these potent agents the victory would lie. This must have been a stormy time indeed, a time of earthquakes, spouting geysers, and volcanoes, but it was in this time that the foundation rock of the planet, the granite, was formed. He called this rock the mother of the rooks, because from this came the planet they lived upon. The story of the rooks was clearly told from the very molten rook, which was, as it were, poured out yesterday, to the most ancient of their granites. Let them take the common granite, with which they were all more or less familiar, and they would find it made up of three minerals—quartz, which was the hardest part of the granite—feldspar, which entered very largely into their pottery clay, and mica, which gave the shining and glittering appearance to the granite. The latter was used in the stoves in America for the doors through which the fire ceuld be seen. These minerals made up true granite, but there were granitoid rooks, which contained no mica, but hornblende, in this case these rooks were called syenite. The granitic veins were found in the tertiary rooks, which showed it to be younger than the rocks it traversed in veins. As the globe cooled the crust of the earth was constantly ridging, first into hill* then into mountains. So soon as the earth began to cool the rooks outside had to wrinkle to fit the decreasing size of the earth. So just as the wrinkles on the face of man grew mors as he grew older, so did the wrinkles on the face of the earth, which formed the hills. So soon as the bills began to rise the water began to pull them down, and then the conflict began between them, but the hills still went up. The material thus carried down was carried into the ocean, they thus got tho first rooks, which were undoubtedly fire made rooks. Here in New Zealand the pulling down process had been very much assisted by the ice, but still the hills got up. The mud of the early rocks was of oonrse carried further than the sand, and the mica would of course go a long way. The sand by pressure made sandstone and the mud shale, whilst the mica made a shale with mioa. The heat of the surface of the earth formed a kind of rook called quartzite. The shale going through the same process was changed into slate, and the mioa shales were changed into mica schists. These rooks were called metamorphio rooks, as their original character had been changed. At this time there was no life on the planet, no bird’s wing cleaved through the air, no fish swam through the water, no blade of grass grew on the heated surface. Now they came to the rooks containing the evidence of life, which were most interesting to them. These were the fotsiliferous rocks containing fossils of animals or plants. Sometimes they got only the impression that the fossil body had left. The shell had gone, but the impression remained; perhaps footprint of an animal which had walked over the mud, from which they gathered their information as to the habits of it. It was by means of these fossils that they could answer the doubts and questions which crowded in the minds of thinking men and women. Or if they could not answer these, they could point the way in which they could be solved. Who could say, were it left to fancy, what were the first animals and where they were first created. But when they came to interrogate these rocks, they found what in the very nature of things must have been the animals created. They found in the tertiary age beasts, and indeed througboutall the higher rocks small mammalian forms, of the lowest type of beasts it was true, but still beasts. Going through the rocks the lecturer traced the periods at which the various reptiles, amphibians, fishes, gigantic shells, radiates, protozoa existed on the planet. These latter were the earliest forms of life on the earth. These forms of life went through the vast ages until man himself appeared upon v the planet. These fossils told them this story, so that he need not point out how interesting they were to them in reading the story of the earth. The lecturer then proceeded to describe the appearance of tho various animals and plants, pointing out that as in the animals so with the plants, the beginning was made with the lowest types. In the Silurian period they came to the shells which had been the foundation of mighty continents, upon which that day dwelt millions of beings. They crowded the rocks like straws in the stack. This was the age they must remember of shells alone, no reptiles, no gigantic fishes, and when they found the remains of these gigantic shells they found what had existed for millions of years prior to the advent of mau on this planet. Must this not be a most interesting study to the minds of thinking men and women ? Mr Denton here quoted with excellent elocution Montgomery’s lines on a mole hill. When they considered the millions of creatures endowed with life which wont to make up a piece of rock, they saw how prodigal nature had been of life in those ancient geological ages. When they came to the Upper Silurian period fishes began to move through the waters, and peculiar shaped shell fish also appeared, the trilobites and others quite as singular in form. They know there was light then because the eyes of these trilobites had been discovered, and the lenses counted, similarly to the dragon flv of the present day. Next came the Devonian period when fishes were the monarohs of the planet—fishes of monstrous size, with plates of mail supplied by nature, to enable them to go forth to destroy—for even at that early period reproduction and murder went hand in hand together. This Devonian time w»s also a coralline period, and they owed kero sene to the coral insect, though perhaps they were not aware of it. There were a large number of theories on the subject. He had been asked by a lady whether he did not think that this kerosene was a new creation because coal was running short, and he had to say no. One man had accounted for the discovery of kerosene by saying that they were pumping up the oil from the carcases of tho antediluvian whales stranded in the ages long past. [Laughter.] The oil was not a ooal oil; of this he was perfectly certain, because if _ it were so it would be found near coal mines, but he had been in mines all over the world and had never found it. Besides this, the oil was found below the ooal—two miles below tho coal deposit. It was a coral oil, and secreted by the coralline insects in honeycombed stone. He had found it in the cells perfectly white, changing its color when the atmosphere began to not on it. This oil was found in Poverty Bay, and he believed that ere long the bay would have to change its name to Plenty Bay, because this oil was most valuable. In some localities there were

takes of this oil, which was the only way in which the wonderful yield* in America could he accounted for. There had been waiting for them through countless ages I errant 8 who only wanted the bidding of intelligent man tocome forth and serve him. This, and such as this, had been stored op for them, as a mother provide* for her unborn child, through millions of years. Beyond the ages of which he had been speaking, they came to the period when higher typea of life came into being, and this is what he would lecture on the next night. With every lecture the interest grew deeper, because they grew nearer and nearer to man and the higher type* of life, [Cheers.] Mr Denton concluded a most pleasing lecture by the display of some capital photographs by moans of the oxy-bydrogen light. To-night the subject of the lecture will bo “The Coal and Salt Periods.”