Note 312 — Chapter VIII

[“In the neighbourhood of Mount Ætna, or on the sides of that extensive mountain, there are beds of lava covered over with a considerable thickness of earth; and at least another, again, which though known from ancient monuments and historical records to have issued from the volcano at least two thousand years ago, is still almost entirely destitute of soil and vegetation; in one place a pit has been cut through seven different strata of lava; and these have been found separated from each other by almost as many thick beds of rich earth. Now, from the fact that a stratum of lava, two thousand years old, is yet scantily covered with earth, it has been inferred by the ingenious Canon Recupero, who has laboured thirty years on the natural history of Mount Ætna, that the lowest of these strata which have been found divided by so many beds of earth, must have been emitted from the volcanic crater at least fourteen thousand years ago, and consequently, that the age of the earth, whatever it may exceed this term of years, cannot possibly be less.”—Brydone’s Tour through Sicily and Malta (1770). Plato, in his Critias, mentions the island Atlantis as having been buried in the ocean nine thousand years before his own time. In the Universal History, vol. i, (preface,) we are told that the astronomical records of the ancient Chaldeans carry back the origin of society to the remote period of four hundred and seventy-three thousand years. Among comparatively well-known authorities, there is a good deal of difference in the time of the supposed formation of the world. The Hebrew bible makes the creation 3,944 years before the Christian era. The Samaritan bible, 4,305 years; the Septuagint, 5,270 years; Usher, 4,004 years; Josephus, 4,658 years; M. Pezron, 5,872 years. In all these differences, however, there is nothing so striking as in the theories we mention above, of Recupero, the Chaldeans, etc.—Editor.]