PREHISTORIC COLLISION

Shannon News, 15 January 1926, Page 4

PREHISTORIC COLLISION

COMET AND THE EARTH. A WRITER'S THEORIES. Scientists have often speculated on the probable results of a collision between the earth and a comet. The near approach to our planet of one of these fiery visitors has, in quite recent times, produced something like a panic. And at least two eminent writers in Jules Verne and H. G. Wells have used the idea as a theme for a fantastic novel. • Now comes another well-known author, who, -under the pseudonym of ' "Appian Way," lays down the startling proposition in a book, "The Riddle of the Earth," that further speculation on the question is needless, for such a collision has already occurred at least once in the history of the earth, And the-results are plain for all to see, if we look in the right place. And the right place is here—a?.i round us! In shorty Appian's Way'iS astonishing theory is that the physical effects which scientists attribete to 1 the Ice Age, are, in reality, the result 1 ox a comet's headlong impact with the earth.' There never was an Ice Age, says Appian Way, or, at any rate, not as a period extending over thousands of years. What science has hitherto ' regarded as proof of it was the work of an instantaneous catastrophe—the smashing blow delivered byvthe Comet on Europe. The destruction was frightful and sudden. It struck the highest mountains and the lowest valleys, and rained like a storm of sleet, in a state of fusion, draining down the elevations and filling up the hollows. Many peaks'were loosened, and part of the great comet body left chalk and sand in the rolling downs and hills discoverable in so many parts of Britain. The comet, says Appian Way, descended on mountains and their were no more. It appeared to burn ur the very ocean. In a moment cities and i the habitations of man were obliterated. It fell' on verdant forests and petrified the trees into coal. It buried beneath the liquid rocks and mud the bones ofc the great beasts which had vainly sought shelter from the coming terror. And the remains of these have become the subject of learned discoveries by authors upon the Ice Age, or the era of volcanic vents In the Tertiary period.

Such is Appian Way's theory. He does not merely state it. He brings forward many arguments for which I have no space, but which sound —to the layman, at least— entirely convincing. And incidentally he gives many equally sound reasons for disbelieving the accepted ideas concerning an Ice Age of enormous duration. One thing is quite certain. If Appian Way's theory is anywhere near the truth, the approach of another comet towards our earth may well be regarded with a certain amount of uneasiness.