calendars of all nations. This would secure an exactness for which chronlogers and historians have been searching. The world's age is, however, only a subject for scientific disagreements. To the masters in such quests the planet, with feminine-like reluctance, refuses to reveal the secret, and so end the wordy warfare.
32. When (to quote from Lord Salisbury's Presidential address to the British Association in 1894) one scientist, Lord Kelvin, has 'limited the period of organic life upon the earth to one hundred million years, and Professor Tait, in a still more penurious spirit, cut that hundred down to ten,'[1] who then, we ask, can hope to strike the golden mean between an æonian and the actuarial age of our planet? 'On the other side of the account,' the president proceeded, perhaps sarcastically, 'stand the claims of the geologists and biologists. They have revelled in the prodigality of the ciphers which they put at the end of the earth's hypothetical age. Long cribbed and cabined within the narrow bounds of popular chronology, they have exulted wantonly in their new freedom.' Thus we see that certain figures are given by one scientist, only to be questioned and subverted by a professional brother. The birth-year of a whale and the age of the Californian giant trees are computable to comparative exactitude, but it seems practically impossible to link botanical facts, geological ideas, and astronomical figures into some united chronology regarding the earth's age. We consequently must deal with chronology measurable by some "ascertained order or succession of events," which Argyle defines as 'Time-relative.'
- ↑ Brit. Assn., p. 12.
