xplanation was offered--

Nevertheless the thing can be nullified--

But the nullification that we find is as much against orthodoxy in one
respect as it is against our own expression that inclusion in quartz or
sandstone indicates antiquity--or there would have to be a revision of
prevailing dogmas upon quartz and sandstone and age indicated by them,
if the opposing data should be accepted. Of course it may be contended
by both the orthodox and us heretics that the opposition is only a yarn
from a newspaper. By an odd combination, we find our two lost souls that
have tried to emerge, chucked back to perdition by one blow:

_Pop. Sci. News_, 1884-41:

That, according to the _Carson Appeal_, there had been found in a mine,
quartz crystals that could have had only 15 years in which to form:
that, where a mill had been built, sandstone had been found, when the
mill was torn down, that had hardened in 12 years: that in this
sandstone was a piece of wood "with a nail in it."

_Annals of Scientific Discovery_, 1853-71:

That, at the meeting of the British Association, 1853, Sir David
Brewster had announced that he had to bring before the meeting an object
"of so incredible a nature that nothing short of the strongest evidence
was necessary to render the statement at all probable."

A crystal lens had been found in the treasure-house at Nineveh.

In many of the temples and treasure houses of old civilizations upon
this earth have been preserved things that have fallen from the sky--or
meteorites.

Again we have a Brahmin. This thing is buried alive in the heart of
propriety: it is in the British Museum.

Carpenter, in _The Microscope and Its Revelations_, gives two drawings
of it. Carpenter argues that it is impossible to accept that optical
lenses had ever been made by the ancients. Never occurred to
him--someone a million miles or so up in the air--looking through his
telescope--lens drops out.

This does not appeal to Carpenter: he says that this object must have
been an ornament.

According to Brewster, it was not an ornament, but "a true optical
lens."

In that case, in ruins of an old civilization upon this earth, has been
found an accursed thing that was, acceptably, not a product of any old
civilization indigenous to this earth.

10

Early explorers have Florida mixed up with Newfoundland. But the
confusion is worse than that still earlier. It arises from simplicity.
Very early explorers thi