THE POCOPSON ERUPTION.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4601, 3 October 1883, Page 2

THE POCOPSON ERUPTION.

Vesuvius ard other old-established volcanoes have at various times thrown up a large variety of interesting and improving minerals; but there was au eruption on Pocopson, Perm., the other day, of an entirely novel description. It consisted of kitchen utensils—pans, pots, and pails, together with axes, hones, a complete stove, and a lemon- squeezer. The eruption lasted only a few minutes, and has not been renewed, so that Pocopson was spared the terrible fate of being buried out of sight under unwashed frying pans and Champion cooking stoves.

The circumstances of this peculiar freak of nature were as follows:— A A leading citizen of Pocopson was working in a stone quarry, where he had drilled a deep bole. The hole was afterwards charged with gunpowder, and the slow-match lighted. According to all precedent, the resulting explosion should have filled the air and broken the neighboring ;windows with a shower of s l ' mes ; that to the unspeakable astonishment of ooe leading citizen, nothing but kitchen utensils, together with a few human bones, were thrown up. It should Iso be mentioned that no windows were broken fnd that no utensils fell upon the he he; ds of the residents of Pocopson—a feature which alone would hare distinguished the eruption from any ordinary blast. .

From whence came the cooking stove and the pots and bones P Obviously they came from a depth below the surface of the rock which forms the Pocopsbn quarry. The thickness of this rook from its! original, surface to the lowest point to which the drill penetrated is estimated to be 37ft sin. The rock itself is reported uo be the common blue limestone of the Alleghany region. Blue limestone, in the opinion of the most eminent geologists, is deposited by nature at the rate of one inch in every eight thousand seven hundred and forty years, which is even slower than the rale at which an Irish labourer deposits blue limestone flaggings when paving a sidewalk under the instructions of a city contractor. The kitchen utensils thrown up at Poeopson were, therefore not le?s than 3,915,520 years old, that being the period which must have elapsed since the limestone deposit began to cover them. , ■;;

From these facts it is evident that nearly four millions of years ago cooking stoves and all the furniture thereunto appertaining were in use by man. The theory that the stone age is the earliest period of the human race must now be abandoned. The Pocopson eruption shows us that the cooking stove age preceded the stone age by at least two million years. The cook* ing stove age was also contemporaneous with the axe age, the water-pail age, and the lemon squeezer age. Man at that period was so far civilised that he ate cooked food, drank punch, and probably compelled his wife to split kindling wood. Thus the present theory that man lived at first upon raw chicken killed with stones; that he next formed the habit of eating out of bronze vases, and that he did not use jvon in any shape until long after the stone and bronze ages, is utterly over' thrown. The cooking stove age antedates the stone, bronze, and iron ages, and,, according to the testimony of the Pp«opV son rooks, the cooking stove age is s&parted from us by the tremendous chasm.of ,3,915,520 years."- ~\ It is to. be hoped! that a second eruption will throw up/ a few newspapers of the cooking stove age, from, which we may be able to ascertW more of the habits and customs of primeval man. As to the imbecile suggealion made by a Poeopson paper to-day, to the effect that the drill of the quarrymani must have pierced a care recently occupied by illicit whisky distillers, it does not deserve a moment's attention. Tue man who makes this suggeatioa would, it encouraged, be capable of upsetting the whoie science of geology* and he must not receive the. slightest approval or toleration.

We beijbvb that if etvcj one would urn Hop Bitfcera freely there would be muck less sioknesß and miMty in the world, and people are faat finding this out, whole families keeping well at a trifling cost by its use. We ad? 186 all to ttjr it. Head.

" Bcchti.Paiba."—Quick, complete. ewe> all annoying Kidney, Bladder, and UWnary Diseasei. Druggists. Moses 1 Mom & Co. Sydney, General Agejtf.