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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
Anatole FranceEven so, it was 99,970,000 years getting ready … because God first had to make the oyster. You can't make an oyster out of nothing, nor you can't do it in a day. You've got to start with a vast variety of invertebrates, belemnites, trilobites, jebusites, amalekites, and that sort of fry, and put them into soak in a primary sea and observe and wait what will happen. Some of them will turn out a disappointment; the belemnites and the amalekites and such … but all is not lost, for the amalekites will develop gradually into encrinites and stalactites and blatherskites, and one thing and another … and at last the first grand stage in the preparation of the world for man stands completed; the oyster is done. Now an oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a man has, so it is probable this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for him. That would be just like an oyster.
Mark TwainGravitation structures the earth in concentric shells, or geospheres, according to their specific gravity.
Gal-orStandard geochemical and geodynamic models of the mantle involve one or two layers.
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