MOSES REFUTED,

Waikato Times, Volume X, Issue 769, 22 May 1877, Page 2

MOSES REFUTED,

The subjoined lucicrous production from the " New York Times" is one of the best burlesques on the c scientific method' that lias come under notice. The 'hit' at geologists who construct elaborate theories on exceedingly, frail suppositions might be extended to some learned professors in other branches of science, who have reared wonderful fabrics of apparent facts solely from the 'scien titic' (?) use of their imagination : - " A new and violent blow has just been struck at the Mosaic account of creation by the discovery of an extraordinary important fossil in. a coffee sack at Baltimore.

In the canter of this sack was found the scull of a moukoy. There Gi\n[ be no doubt as to the facts. The coftee was of the variety called Rio, and the scull was perfectly preserved. Lst us dwell for a little upon the meaning of this discovery as Interpreted by the principles of geology. The coffjs sao.'c was 12 (say 12£) inches in diameter, aud four feet iu height. The skull, which lay in the middle of if;, was therefore two feet bolow the surface. To suppose that it was violently forced into the sack, after the sack was fall would be eminently unscientific; No ono imagines that the fossii birds of ths Old Red Sandstone dug down into the locality through the superincumbent strata, nothing is more universally conceded than that fossils are always found where they belong. Th 0 animals whose remains we find in the rocks of the paleozoic, the-metho-Gothic and the Syro-Puooui-ciau strata belong respectively to thoso several syatuins. Tho fossii

!■ ■ ■ I — monkey skalljwas, therefore, deposited ia the coffee sack when the latter was half full, and the two feet ef coffee which rested upon it was a subsequent deposit. Now, it follows from this premise that monkeys existed during the early part of the Bio coffee period. It is the opinion of must geologists that the Rio coffee period succeeded the tertiary period, and immediately preceded the present period . No w no < ertiary monkeys have yet been found j hut the Baltimore discovery shows that monkeys existed as early as the middle of the Rio coffee period, a date far earlier than any which has hitherto been assigned to them. *We are now in a position to inquire what is the least period of time which must have elapsed since the skull of the Baltimore monkey was the property of a live and active-simian. The answer to this question must be sought by ascertaining the rate at which coffee is deposited. It is the opinion of Mr Huxley, based upon a long and careful examination of over three hundred garbage boxes, that coffee is deposited in a ground condition at the rate of an inch in a thousand centuries ; but the deposition of unground coffee i3 almost infinitely slower. He has placed bags, coffeemills, and other receptacles in secluded places, and left them for months at a time, without finding tbe slightest traces of coffee in them. Although Huxley does not hazard a guess at the rate of decomposition of underground Rio coffee, professor Tyndal does not hesitate to say that ib is at least as slow as the rate of depositing of tomata cans. Let us suppose, as we are abundantly justified in doing, that 30,000.000 of years would be required to bring about the deposition of a stratum of tomata cans one foot thick all over the surface of the globe, and an equally long poriod must certainly have elapsed while a foot of unground coffee was accumulated over the skull of the Baltimore monkey. We thus ascertain that the monkey in question yielded up his particular variety of ghost and became a fossil fully 30,000,000 of years ago. Probably even this enormous period of time is much less than the actual period which has elapsed since that jmonkey's deceased; and we may consider ourselves safe in assigning to this skull the age of 50,000,000 years, besides a few odd months. • In the light of this amazing revelation what, becomes of Moses and his 6,000 years ? It will hardly escape notice that he nowhere mentioned R io coffee. Obviously, this omission is due to the fnct that he knew nothing of it. But if he was unacquainted with one of the most recent formations, how can we suppose he knew, anything about the elder rocks-the meaomorpbic • and stereosfcopic stratas ? And yet it is this man, ignorant of the plainest facts of geology, and of its very simplest strata, who boldly assttmetfto tell us all about the, creation ! '