Report, 1886, Part D, p. 84.]

[Footnote 50: Report, 1885, Part B, p. 67.]

[Footnote 51: _Bull. Geol. Soc._, Vol. 13, pp. 305-352.]

[Footnote 52: _Id_., p. 336.]

[Footnote 53: _Id_., p. 336.]

Quite recently this region has been studied by Marius R. Campbell of the
Washington Survey Staff (Bulletin 600), while the part in Alberta has
been studied by Rollin T. Chamberlin of Chicago. Much of the vast area
involved is not yet well explored; but over it all, so far as it has
been fully examined, the same lithological and stratigraphical
structures reappear with the persistence of a repeating decimal. And
were it not for the exigencies of the theory of Successive Ages, this
whole region of some five or six thousand square miles would be
considered as only an ordinary example, on a rather large scale, of
undisturbed horizontal stratification cut up by erosion into mountains
of denudation, with of course occasional instances of minor local
disturbances here and there, as would be expected over an area of this
extent.

Richards and Mansfield in a recent paper describe the "Bannock
Overthrust," some 270 miles long, in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. The
Carnegie Research recently reported a similar phenomenon about 500 miles
long in northern China.

But it would be tiresome to follow these conditions around the world. We
have plenty of examples, and we have them described by the foremost of
living geologists. What we need to do now is to adopt a true scientific
attitude of mind, a mind freed from the hypnotizing influence of the
current theories, in order correctly to interpret the facts as we
already have them.

_How much of the earth's crust would we have to find_ in this upside
down order of the fossils, before we would be convinced that there must
be something hopelessly wrong with this theory of Successive Ages which
drives otherwise competent observers to throw away their common sense
and cling desperately to a fantastic theory in the very teeth of such
facts?

The science of geology as commonly taught is truly in a most astonishing
condition, and doubtless presents the most peculiar mixture of fact and
nonsense to be found in the whole range of our modern knowledge. In any
minute study of a particular set of rocks in a definite locality,
geology always follows facts and common sense; while in any general view
of the world as a whole, or in any correlation of the rocks of one
region with those of another region,