, it is very probable that each point
of the surface of the planet we inhabit is really in the case of
successively finding itself subjected to different climates." He then
exclaims in eloquent, profound, and impassioned language:

"How curious it is to see that such suppositions receive their
confirmation from the consideration of the state of the earth's
surface and of its external crust, from that of the nature of
certain fossils found in abundance in the northern regions of the
earth, and whose analogues now live in warm climates; finally, in
that of the ancient astronomical observations of the Egyptians.

"Oh, how great is the antiquity of the terrestrial globe, and how
small are the ideas of those who attribute to the existence of this
globe a duration of six thousand and some hundred years since its
origin down to our time!

"The physico-naturalist and the geologist in this respect see things
very differently; for if they have given the matter the slightest
consideration--the one, the nature of fossils spread in such great
numbers in all the exposed parts of the globe, both in elevated
situations and at considerable depths in the earth; the other, the
number and disposition of the beds, as also the nature and order of
the materials which compose the external crust of this globe studied
throughout a great part of its thickness and in the mountain
masses--have they not had opportunities to convince themselves that
the antiquity of this same globe is so great that it is absolutely
beyond the power of man to appreciate it in an adequate way!

"Assuredly our chronologies do not extend back very far, and they
could only have been made by propping them up by fables. Traditions,
both oral and written, become necessarily lost, and it is in the
nature of things that this should be so.

"Even if the invention of printing had been more ancient than it is,
what would have resulted at the end of ten thousand years?
Everything changes, everything becomes modified, everything becomes
lost or destroyed. Every living language insensibly changes its
idiom; at the end of a thousand years the writings made in any
language can only be read with difficulty; after two thousand years
none of these writings will be understood. Besides wars, vandalism,
the greediness of tyrants and of those who guide religious opinions,
who always rely on the ignorance of the human ra