our brief reviewal has assured the reader, that its great Author has impressed on its leaves no other account of His ways and His works, than that He has disclosed through the lips of His servants; and that in truth and in fact, its ponderous pages are so handsomely illustrated with graphic intaglios, they give fullness and completeness to the volume that is written. When accepted together, as they certainly should be, we have both the text and the comment, graciously furnished us by "The Father of light, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

CHAPTER VIII.

A MATHEMATICAL SUPPLEMENT.

"Monstrous numbers heap I up,

Millions piling mountain high,

Time unto time I add,

World heaped on world doth lie."-HALLER.

THE geologist, as if conscious of the extravagance of his own speculative conclusions in regard to the immensity of ages, during which he avers nature was employed in heaping strata upon strata, to prepare the earth for man's reception, has felt constrained to make a direct assault upon ordinarily received opinions, and, the better to defend his own, has ingeniously planned a countermine to overthrow the chronological system of his adversaries. He insists that

if his appears to be hugely great, that of his opponents is certainly incredibly small, and very far short of the actual truth. This is geological strategy, undoubtedly intended to produce a dilemma; and the better to accomplish his purpose he appeals to the exact science of mathematics, as an irresistible method by which to measure bygone time.

As the assurances of great men are all powerful with some, and mathematical certainty grown into a proverb with others, this course of argument has proved a stumbling block in the path of many whose faith has otherwise well withstood the force of the most learned, but hypothetical deductions. For this reason we have concluded to examine the geologists' mathematics, to ascertain the real worth of this branch of his demonstrative science, and to enable us the more accurately to appreciate the true power it should possess in unsettling established faith, or even the common chronology of history.

With great confidence he points to the layers of lava, superimposed, one upon the other, around the brows of Etna, as most satisfactorily establishing an endless series of successive centuries for which the earth has existed, that actually defies enumeration. This subject we have before referred to in our chapter on Physical Geography, and by way of elucidating what was there stated, out of many, we cite the case of Graham Island, also referred to in treating of the Flood. In the Mediterranean Sea, not very far distant from Etna, this island, composed of volcanic lava, arose from the bed of the sea, in water six hundred feet deep, in the short space of twenty days. The first shock of the earthquake was felt by

Sir P. Malcolm, on the 28th of June, 1831, when passing over the spot, and on the 18th of July following, John Corrao, the captain of a Sicilian vessel, beheld the crater twelve feet above the surface, from which was pouring volcanic lava, cinders, and an immense column of vapor. Were the discharges of the liquid in this case intermittent, as is by no means uncommon with eruptions resulting from the waves or oscillations in the interior fluid, each outflow would, as layers, cool and harden beneath the sea, before another would be spread upon it; and thus would be presented the phenomena existing upon Etna. And were Graham Island now upheaved with its base above the surface of the water, it would furnish in its accumulations similar proofs of its great antiquity and preadamite origin. Hence it is evident, that the many wrinkles upon Etna's horns are by no means sure indications of her protracted age, as they denote only waves and not centuries of time; and it is by no means impossible that they may have all been produced in some brief period, perhaps even since the Flood.

Again, the geologist assures us, that by his mathematical tests he has well ascertained from the Mississippi delta, that the earth is at least one hundred thousand years old, and consequently scripture chronology must be unreliable. To fairly examine this conclusion, we state the data upon which it is founded:

"From the mouth of the Mississippi, at the Balize, steamboats may ascend the river for 2000 miles, with scarcely any perceptible difference in its width. At its junction with the Missouri it is half a mile wide, and the latter is of the same width with the former, the union of the two producing no increase whatever.

The junction of the Ohio seems also to produce_no increase, but rather a decrease of surface. The Saint Francis, White, Arkansas and Red rivers are also absorbed by the main stream, with scarcely any apparent increase of its width, although here and there it expands to a breadth of one and a half or even to two miles. On arriving at New Orleans, it is somewhat less than half a mile wide. Its depth there is very variable, the greatest at high water being 168 feet. The mean rate at which the whole body of water flows, is variously estimated; according to Mr. Forshey, the mean velocity of the current at the surface somewhat exceeds two and a half miles an hour, when the water is at a mean height of eight feet below the maximum. From his observation he infers that the annual average could be 1.88 mile per hour at the surface, and about 1 mile for that of the whole body of water. On visiting New Orleans in 1846, our author relates that he found Dr. Riddell had made numerous experiments to ascertain the proportion of sediment contained in the water of the Mississippi, and he concluded that the mean annual amount of solid matter was to the water as 1245 in weight or in volume.”

With the width, depth and velocity as above stated, and assuming 528 feet as the thickness of the mud and sand in the delta, founding this conjecture upon the depth of the Gulf of Mexico and some borings in the delta, our author continues:

“The area of the delta being about 13,600 square statute miles, and the quantity of solid matter annually brought down by the river 3,702,758,400 cubic feet, it must have taken 67,000 years for the formation of the whole; and if the alluvial matter of the plain above be 264 feet deep, or half that of the delta, it must have required 33,500 more years for its accumulation, even if its area be estimated as only equal to that of the delta, whereas it is in fact larger."

Even admitting the accuracy of the data, it is impossible to discover the process by which the conclusion has been reached; for a proper combination of the figures yields no such return as 100,000 years. The problem is one of very easy solution, and the unscientific reader need not be alarmed.

As the whole body of water flows with a velocity of about 1 mile per hour, we know that all the water in the river, for 11⁄2 mile above any given point on the levee at New Orleans, must pass down at the end of that hour. Hence the whole volume of water hourly passing any point must be equal to its length, 11⁄2 mile, or 7,920 feet, multiplied into its width, a half mile, or 2,640 feet, and their product into the depth of the river, or 160 feet. This yields as the hourly volume of water 3,345,408,000 cubic feet. But the sediment suspended in this quantity of water, according to Dr. Riddell's estimate, amounts to 3000 part of the volume; and therefore amounts to 1,115,136 cubic feet. In a day the quantity of sediment is twenty-four times as much, or 26,763,264 cubic feet; and in a year, or 3651 days, it amounts to 9,775,282,176 cubic feet, instead of 3,702,758,000 deduced by geological mathematics, disclosing an error of only six thousand millions of cubic feet per annum.*

It is also estimated that the delta covers an area of 13,600 square miles, and that the depth of the sediment is 528 feet. The whole solid contents must therefore amount to 200,189,214,720,000 cubic feet,

* Charles Ellet, Jr., Civil Engineer, in his Smithsonian Contributions, states the annual average discharge of the Ohio alone, as high up as Wheeling, at 835,323,000,000 cubic feet, the result of six years' observation.