Lord Kelvin[1] has come to the conclusion (from data which various other authorities regard as very unsatisfactory) that not much more than 100,000,000 years can have elapsed since the molten globe acquired a consolidated crust. Further time must have passed before the surface had become stable and cool enough to allow the temperature of the collecting oceans to fall below boiling-point, and it is obvious that life cannot possibly have begun until after this had happened.
Wallace, in his 'Island Life,' by making use of Professor A. Geikie's results as to the rate of denudation of matter by rivers from the area of their basins, and estimating the average rate of deposition, concludes that 'the time required to produce this thickness of rock [Professor Haughton's maximum of 177,000 feet] at the present rate of denudation and deposition is only 28,000,000 years.'
- ↑ William Thomson: 'On the Secular Cooling of the Earth,' Transact. R. S. Edinb., xxiii., 1864, pp. 157-169.
