Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
institution. Forty years after his death a crater on Mars was named
after him, which is appropriate in view of his work published in 1897
on the nature and origin of Martian canals.
JOLY ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
Joly's first documented thoughts on the antiquity of the Earth were in
written verses penned on 28 August 1886 in the WicklowMountains,
south of Dublin. These considered the age of the enigmatic trace fossil
Oldhamia antiqua Forbes which is preserved in green and purple
slates of Cambrian age. It occurs as faint fan-shaped markings, the
origin of which still remains a mystery to palaeontologists. Joly
suggested the fossil was a witness to the long, slow changes that had
affected the Earth in a sonnet:
Is nothing left? Have all things passed thee by?
The stars are not thy stars! The aged hills
Are changed and bowed beneath repeated ills
Of ice and snow, of river and of sky.
The sea that raiseth now in agony
Is not thy sea. The stormy voice that fills
This gloom with man's remotest sorrow shrills
The memory of the futurity!
We - promise of the ages! - Lift thine eyes,
And gazing on these tendrils intertwined
For Aeons in the shadows, recognize
In Hope and Joy, in heaven-seeking Mind,
In Faith, in Love, in Reason's potent spell
The visitants that bid a world farewell!
Joly's first scientific foray into the subject of dating the Earth, or geo-
chronology, came 13 years later in 1899 with the publication of his
first, and probably most celebrated, if somewhat controversial paper,
which expounded what became known as Joly's sodium method. Joly
turned to the oceans for inspiration, which was not surprising. In
the latter half of the nineteenth century a considerable volume of
