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Title: The course of creation
Author: John Anderson
Release Date: April 27, 2023 [eBook #70648]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COURSE OF CREATION ***
THE
COURSE OF CREATION:
BY
JOHN ANDERSON, D.D.
WITH A GLOSSARY OF SCIENTIFIC TERMS.
“In these morning-days of existence, Nature at once stamped,
with her plastic hand, her lineaments of beauty and adaptation
on everything she made. There is nothing omitted to be
afterward supplied—nothing formed defective in a single part
or organ that required to be corrected. The first discoveries
in Geology at once speak conclusively of a plan or Course of
Creation devised from the beginning—a power, not delegated,
but linked forever with the first intelligent Cause—a world,
through all its changes, continually presided over and ruled by
Him who made it.”
CINCINNATI:
WM. H. MOORE & CO., PUBLISHERS,
118 MAIN STREET.
1851.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
WM. H. MOORE & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Ohio.
E. MORGAN & CO.,
STEREOTYPERS, PRINTERS AND BINDERS,
111 MAIN STREET.
PREFACE.
It is no mitigation of an author’s temerity in publishing, that he can
say for himself he had no intention, when collecting and arranging
his materials, of ever submitting them to the eye of the public, or
of provoking criticism by his speculations. Certain it is, however, I
have often, and with severity at times, questioned myself as to the
propriety of my geological pursuits, my ardent love of them, and their
compatibility with the strict discharge of professional duty. My answer
generally was, I sought not these things of themselves; they were hung
up and displayed before me, wherever I went on pleasure, on business, or
on duty. I simply inquired after their names; and of all the geological
phenomena that have passed under my review, I can safely affirm of them,
in their darkest, deepest places, they have uniformly led me “from
nature up to nature’s God,” and have inscribed upon them in brightest
characters—BENEDICTUM SIT NOMEN DEI.
How often, I have argued, in the leisure hours of life do we find men
idling away their time, wasting it in vain talk, or consuming it in
the most trifling pursuits, when a most interesting branch of science
can be learned by wandering over the green fields, the rocky dell, the
mountain side, or by the walk at even-tide, and there to hold converse
with the Creator’s works and the records of his will? I have recalled
the list of great and good men, whose names are imperishably connected
with the science of geology, who have given much of their time to these
researches, and who have reaped laurels from their discoveries. Can
Buckland, Conybeare, Sedgwick, Sumner, Smith, Fleming, and Chalmers—all
either explorers or expositors—and other eminent divines, have been
engaged in improper pursuits, or have given the sanction of their
authority to tenets and views connected with the scheme of nature that
do not accord with the religious principle? Often on such occasions
have I dwelt upon, and compared with my own humble pursuits, the lofty
and impassioned descriptions of the Psalmist, where, sometimes in a
single piece, he takes a magnificent sweep of the great master-keys
of creation—the foundations of the steadfast earth—the course of the
fluid waters—the revolutions of the sun and moon—the vicissitude of the
seasons—the habits and instincts of the lower animals—the earthquake and
volcano—and all recited as demonstrations of Divine wisdom and goodness,
and all calculated to awaken and to sustain the devotional feelings of
the heart.
Having, under the influence of such impressions, gathered, and now put
together in this form, the notes of my researches, I do not mean to aver
that I have visited every locality referred to, or personally observed
everything noticed in the publication. Where so much has been done by
others I have carefully examined their works. Where the field is so
boundless, and the course of illustration necessarily so discursive, I
have freely made use of their collected materials. Still, I have been
chiefly induced to adopt the line of description from the Grampians
to the Alps, because, at sundry though often distant periods, I have
examined the various suites of rocks comprised betwixt these mountain
boundaries. If there be any novelty in the volume, it will be found,
not in the subject-matter itself nor in the mode of treating it, but by
following the geographical sequence in the descriptions of the several
geological formations, and their relations to each other in the countries
passed over.
I have to express my acknowledgments to Messrs. W. and R. Chambers for a
considerable number of the figures contained in the volume, and which
have already appeared in one or other of their numerous publications. To
Mr. David Page, than whom I do not know a better practical geologist, I
am indebted for much valuable information, gleaned by him in an extensive
acquaintance with most of the ground passed under review. The errors of
the volume are my own, and these, I doubt not, in a science subject to
such daily mutations and receiving daily such additions as the science of
geology, will be found neither few nor venial.
NEWBURGH MANSE, May, 1850.
CONTENTS
PART I.
GEOLOGY OF SCOTLAND.
CHAPTER I.
Introductory—General Sketch of the Science, 13
CHAPTER II.
Primary System.—Ben-Mac-Dhui.—The Grampians, 22
CHAPTER III.
The Silurian System.—First Traces of Organic Life, 34
CHAPTER IV.
The Devonian System.—Fossils of the Old Red Sandstone, 43
CHAPTER V.
The Yellow Sandstone.—Dura Den—Fossils of, 62
CHAPTER VI.
The Trap Rocks.—The Sidlaws and Ochils, 79
CHAPTER VII.
The Carboniferous System.—Period of Gigantic Vegetables, 93
CHAPTER VIII.
The Carboniferous System—_continued_.—Geographical Distribution
of Coal.—The Great Coal-Field of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Ohio.—Coal Deposits of Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and
Michigan.—Economic History of Coal.—Conditions of Formation, 115
CHAPTER IX.
The Geological Structure of Fifeshire, 132
CHAPTER X.
Geology of Edinburgh and its Environs.—Mid-Lothian
Coal-Basin.—The Pentlands, 138
CHAPTER XI.
The Lammermuirs.—The Border Land.—Reptilian Foot-Prints in
Old Red Sandstone of Pennsylvania.—General Structure of
Scotland, 150
PART II.
GEOLOGY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
General Sketch.—Geology of the Lake District, 160
CHAPTER II.
The Permian System.—The New Red Sandstone.—Foot-Prints near
Pottsville, Pennsylvania—In Connecticut, Massachusetts, and
Virginia.—Rock-Salt.—Exhumation of immense Skeletons of Birds, 168
CHAPTER III.
The Oolite System.—Period of Gigantic Reptiles, 183
CHAPTER IV.
The Wealden Formation—Remarkable Fossils of, 198
CHAPTER V.
The Cretaceous System.—General Reflections, 206
CHAPTER VI.
The Tertiary System—Eocene and Miocene Formations of.—London
Basin, 216
CHAPTER VII.
The Mammoth Period.—Remains of, on Banks of Missouri.—Concluding
Remarks, 229
PART III.
FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND.
CHAPTER I.
Physical Union of France with England.—Basins of Paris and the
Loire.—Volcanic District of Central France—Auvergne, 241
CHAPTER II.
Geological Structure of Switzerland—The Alps—Mont Blanc—Bowlder
Formation—Glaciers, 265
CHAPTER III.
Thickness of the Earth’s Crust.—Central Heat—Theories of, 279
PART IV.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
CHAPTER I.
Résumé, 286
CHAPTER II.
Theories of Organic Life—“Vestiges of the Natural History of
Creation,” 293
CHAPTER III.
Analogical Order—Physical and Moral—of Progression, 311
CHAPTER IV.
The Extinction of Organic Life, 320
CHAPTER V.
Time, and the Geological Epochs, 328
CHAPTER VI.
The Mosaic Account of Creation—Geology, how reconcilable with, 348
CONCLUSION.
THE CREATOR, 366
Glossary, 377
THE COURSE OF CREATION.
GEOLOGY OF SCOTLAND.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Geology is that branch of science which comprehends the knowledge of all
that relates to the form, structure, mineral and fossil constituents, of
the earth. The Scottish Grampians, it is generally admitted, form part of
the lowest sections of its crust, to which the researches of geologists
extend. We must go to other countries for any coeval, and, to North
America for any older, competing land: and still, there, the rocks are
of the same mineral qualities and arrangement. The Ben-Mac-Dhui group
form the highest and most prominent masses in the whole range of these
crystalline mountains.
When I first stood on the broad flat top of Ben-Mac-Dhui, I had no
thought or purpose of ever recording its geological history. The
excursion was undertaken simply for recreation, and a delightful one it
proved. I longed to plunge into the deep recesses of the old forest,
and to see the trees which nature had strewed with careless hand, ere,
perhaps, Caledonia was tenanted by the human family. I looked down from
its rugged sides, as I ascended, with awe and wonder—snatched a little
alpine as I drew breath for the next spring—chipped a piece of granite
as I obtained a footing over a yawning chasm, or breasted along by
jagged precipitous defile,—and when, having fairly scaled the summit,
I gazed out upon the world beneath, the feeling which for a moment
flitted across my mind was one of no merely vain complacency, that I was
then the most elevated subject of all the twenty-six or twenty-seven
millions inhabiting the British Islands—and the lowest, too, in their
stony regions! The mountains of the earth serve to inspire some of
the loftiest sentiments that can fill the breast of its intelligent
inhabitants. Imbosomed in their deep solitudes, man feels his own
littleness, and is forced to inquire who made these wonders, and who
sustains them? We are all the better, morally speaking, for leaving
occasionally our daily-trodden haunts, where we see only human things,
and hear only of the triumphs of human craft, the excitement of human
passions, the littleness and vanity of even the noblest human daring.
There is an image of Jehovah’s greatness impressed upon the outward face
of nature, which for a time will awaken and sustain the most salutary
reflections, breathing, as it were, a new life into the soul of the
wayfarer. A man escapes from himself, forgetting the burden of a thousand
petty cares, and rising above his sensual condition, when he looks upon
the physical world in these its grander features and secluded scenes,
which irresistibly speak to the inner sense of divinity, wisdom, and
omnipotence.
The philosophy of the mountains, in the classic ages of Greece and Rome,
inclined but little to any analysis of their grosser materials of earth
and stone. The poetic and ideal were exclusively associated with their
structures and form. The dii majores dwelt upon, and thundered from,
their lofty summits. The clouds hovered in peaceful majesty over their
council of sage or fierce debate. The elements were the ready ministers
of their will; and Oreads, Dryads, and Naiads, peopling all the hills,
forests, and streams, were the creations of that principle of the inner
man, which has always searched for the spiritual behind and beyond the
tangible attributes of Nature. Hence, too, the gnomes of the caverns,
the spirits of the mists, the fairies of the glens, the kelpies of the
torrents, were all the embodiment of forms, which fancy, in her later
superstitions, has cast around the mountain landscape, with the witchery
at once of the terrible and beautiful. The charm that spell-bound the
human mind for ages, is not dissolved when, with ruder intent, we
traverse these rocky solitudes, listening to the echo of our obedient
hammer, learning the secrets of the universe amidst the voices of the
everlasting hills, and seeing the wonders of the material world throwing
light on the wonders of the spiritual.
We are reminded, among the mountains, of one of the first and loveliest
of all material things, the creation of light. Loving them for their own
sakes, as well as for the legends of the old world with which they are
everywhere inscribed, the geologist takes to the hills with the first
faint fresh streak of dawn. Emerging with earliest day from the somber
shades of the forest which, like night, invests the prospects with its
own sadness and gloom, speedily a scene of joy and activity bursts upon
the sight. The light comes upon you like a real tangible thing. You see
it glinting and breaking on the lofty ridge, then nearing down along the
brown slope of the mountain, here projecting in long bright lines through
the trees, and there—delicious, golden morn! first-born of Nature’s
children, harbinger of life and gladness. How beautiful are thy first
footsteps upon the heath-clad mountains! What a brood of gloomy thoughts
thou dispellest, chasing them before thee, like yonder envious mists
rising lazily from the plains, valleys, and streams, which they would
fain hide from the eyes that now revel amid their exuberant loveliness.
These lofty peaks are worthy altars for the beacon-fires of the orb of
day, after he has finished his journey through the nations; and comes
back to us, over the floating splendor of the sea, in the eastern
heavens. And see! he hath lit a hundred on these splintered summits,
which blaze now as they blazed centuries ago, and diminish not!
The view from this remarkable group of mountains—the most remarkable by
far in the island—differs much from any other with which I am acquainted.
The impressions at first are all very confused, and some time is required
to resolve into distinct pictures the wondrous panorama before you.
We have stood upon Skiddaw, where everything is clear, distinct, and
palpable in distance and form; on Ben Lomond, where the far-stretch of
perspective over lakes, rivers, and plains, is like a first lesson in
painting; on Ben Lawers, where the eye sweeps rapidly over well known,
familiar objects, spots of wood, glen, and mansion; on Ben Nevis, where
you fancy yourself in mid-air, every object is so separate and apart,
and so disposed the whole you are looking on, that the view is all
_downward_ upon the picture. But here, these dark giant masses crowd as
it were against you. There is a struggle for the post of elevation. You
are highest, no doubt of that; but so jealous all are these proud somber
peaks, that every one seems to overlook, though yet actually beneath,
the broad ample table-head of the center of the group. Sometimes one is
tempted to leap across the narrow dells of separation, and at once master
the geology of the district, so near seems every hill-top as almost to be
touched. But as you approach their several positions, expanding valleys,
deep fathomless chasms, and the channels of noble rivers, bar farther
approach, and attest the wide, independent domains of each. They are
monarchs every one of them—Brae-Riach, Cairn-Toul, Cairn-Gorm, Ben-Avon,
Ben-y-Bourd—each holds his own regal court, over tarn, lake, and stream;
torrents, cataracts, and all the appurtenances of the boldest mountain
scenery.
After one has time to gather up his thoughts and perceptions, the scene
resolves itself, still indeed as of one whole, but of distinct component
parts. In the far distance you attempt in vain to number the peaks that
everywhere rise against the sky line; but more closely around, five or
six summits are seen to spring from a single root; a common circumference
marks out the limits of the group; and, by no unreasonable liberty with
the imagination, you easily replace the old materials into the vacant
interstices, before the water had begun its work of abrasion, or the
earthquake coming to its assistance shivered their solid rounded forms
into these hideous, precipitous gorges and chasms. The great hills here
stand, every one of them, upward of four thousand feet above the level
of the sea; and when entire, one aggregated whole, as possibly they
originally were, the center mass may have towered thousands more into the
overhanging firmament. The scene is utterly unmatched, as it cannot be
described, by any other in Great Britain: and make your ascent when you
may, there are sights and objects to be met with at every step, in every
salient dell, that will cause you evermore to rejoice you commenced your
travels among the Aiguilles of Ben-Muich-Dhui.
It is in the great mountain groups that the true key is to be found to
the science of geology, as well as all those collateral circumstances
which impart so much charm to it as a healthful and invigorating exercise
to mind and body. Here, amidst these piled-up masses, we are furnished
with the lowest ascertained sections of the earth’s crust, from which
we can at once study the nature of its rocky divisions, and the laws
which prevail in the order of their superposition. When the world was
in its primeval state of chaos, without form and void, we are warranted
to assume that the mountains as yet had no place on its surface, but
subsequently arose out of the bosom of the deep; and lifted up, as they
emerged above the waters, the rocky strata already enveloping the globe.
These strata are still to be seen folded round the central masses,
disrupted and torn like a garment too tight for the body, and displaying
through innumerable cracks and fissures the inclosed rocks. This fact
lies at the foundation of all geological inquiries, gives to the subject
all its pretensions as a science, and before proceeding on our “Course” a
word of explanation will be in place.
The first condition of the earth, of which we have any historical notice,
is that which is represented in Genesis, where, after the initial
declaration that God was creator of all things, we are told of a period
when the whole of its materials were as yet unarranged, “and darkness was
upon the face of the deep.” The Divine Spirit moved upon the surface of
the shapeless mass, when the various elements of air, earth, and water
gradually assumed their respective positions. The form which the earth
had impressed upon it, as philosophy has demonstrated, was that of a
spherical body, flattened at the poles, a figure resembling as nearly as
possible that of an orange. There is reason to believe, therefore, that
every part of the solid mass of earth is symmetrically arranged, and that
every individual particle occupies the position which Divine wisdom has
assigned it.
Rocks, let the reader be assured, have not been indiscriminately heaped
together. Everything here, amidst all the apparent confusion which
surrounds us, is in the most perfect order, following one uniform law
of superposition. When God fixed the foundations of the earth, stretched
his compass “upon the face of the deep,” and laid “the beams of his
chambers in the waters,” he completed the mighty edifice agreeably to the
plan which he had determined upon “from the beginning:” the different
portions of the building rise one above another in regular succession;
and the work, so far as we can survey the interior, displays the several
_courses_ into which the materials have been thrown. These constitute
what geologists call the strata of the earth, layers of varying
thickness, such as our slates, sandstones, and limestones exhibit, and
which nearly envelope the circumference of the globe. The order in which
the strata are disposed is uniform from below upward, and this order is
never inverted. From the blue slates of the Grampians to the Chalk cliffs
at Dover, there is a regular succession of intermediate rocks, piled one
upon another like the mason-work of our houses; and while to many there
appears nothing but confusion, to the scientific eye every portion of
the series, although the same ingredients enter into several classes of
rocks, is as well defined and as easily recognized, as the two members at
the extreme points are by the common observer.
But beside the stratified rocks, there is another class of rocks equally
extensive, and which occupy an important place in the economy of nature.
These are the granites and whinstones of which the highest mountain
ranges are usually composed. There are many subordinate varieties
belonging to both classes, which are characterized by slight shades
of texture and composition and distinguished by different names. One
thing is common to the members of each group. They are not disposed in
layers, and exhibit no lines of stratification, except in the granite
rarely, throughout the entire mountain chain. These rocks occupy no
fixed place in the order of superposition, but seem to be intruded in
the most irregular manner among the stratified rocks, separating one bed
from another, filling up fissures and rents; and binding and interlacing
the various deposits more closely and firmly together. They are often
composed of the fragments of other rocks, agglutinated into a compound
mass by a base of clay. Remarkable changes are also produced upon all
the strata where they come in contact with granite and whinstone—chalk
being converted into crystalline limestone—limestone into chert—clay
and sandstone into a substance as hard and compact as flint—and coal is
deprived of its bitumen or the quality which renders it so useful as a
combustible body.
From these, and other appearances, geologists have been led to the
conclusion, that these rocks are of later origin than those which are
stratified, that they have been injected among them in a state of fusion;
and by the expansive force of internal heat, that they have burst through
the stony crust of the earth, and elevated and disrupted the strata
which compose it. They are, if we may use the expression, the _levers_
which the Almighty has employed in bringing up the lower deposits to
the surface, in laying open the interior chambers, and in producing all
that infinite variety in our earthly habitation which ministers to the
comfort and well-being of man. Much seeming confusion and disturbance
mark everywhere the course of these rocks, similar, though upon a more
extensive scale, to the disorders attendant upon the irruption of a
modern volcano; but throughout the whole there reigns such a harmony of
purpose, that the conclusion is irresistible, these operations could
only have taken place by Divine permission, and are in accordance with
the Divine plan, controlling the most refractory agencies of nature, and
causing them to contribute to the general good.
These eruptive rocks have been produced under the sea, at a period, many
of them, when the waters and the dry land were not as yet separated
from each other. They are therefore termed sub-aqueous products, and
are, in consequence of the pressure to which they have been subjected,
hard, compact, and heavy. They differ in this respect from the products
of modern volcanoes, which are light and porous, as being formed under
the simple pressure of atmosphere, and are denominated sub-aerial. The
most prevailing ingredient both in ancient and modern lavas is feldspar:
this, combined with hornblende, quartz, and augite, characterizes the
whole of the two families of the trap and granitic rocks; and completely
establishes their claim to be regarded as originating in submarine
volcanoes. Geology is thus in its first step, and initial principles,
in perfect accordance with the scripture record; and, in walking over
the varied fields of creation, we shall tread all the firmer, and enjoy
our recreations all the more, that we find the word and works of God
illustrative of each other, revelation never contradicted, and science
bearing enlightened testimony to the wonderful truth—that the hills
melted like wax before the Lord.
Two reasons, therefore, are to be assigned for the starting point of
our investigations, and the route fixed upon in following them out.
This center group of mountains comprises the first or lowest phenomena
connected with the science of geology: here the earliest lessons are
inscribed; and here, developed on a great scale, we are presented with
the axis of elevation which has given character and outline to the whole
surrounding district. Ben-Mac-Dhui is the most prominent type of our
primary mountains, and has been mainly instrumental in lifting up a large
portion of the Grampian range. Looking abroad from its summit, over all
that varied landscape of plain and valley, and further than the eye can
reach, summoning in imagination before us the successive strata as they
recede in the far distance, a diagram which would faithfully represent
the order of the rocks and their relation and proximity to the granite,
would be quite correct in making Ben-Mac-Dhui a pyramidal basis, and the
other formations as steps to the apex of the pyramid.
This lofty chain of primary rocks on the one hand, and the Alpine region
of Switzerland on the other, may likewise be regarded as constituting
the barriers or edges of one great basin, within which are inclosed
members of almost every rock formation, fossiliferous as well as
non-fossiliferous, existing anywhere on the face of the earth. Along
the line of tour indicated, you pass over every intermediate deposit,
from below upward; and have laid before you, for inspection, specimens
of all that is interesting and curious in the science. Betwixt the
two points, selected as our termini, lie strata upon strata, organic
bed upon bed, not piled up in one colossal mass, but drawn out and
slipped over the edges of one another, and so arranged and disposed
at successive intervals as most happily to suit the convenience and
successive stages of the journey. This is one of the most remarkable
facts in descriptive geology, whereby we learn that a depth of nearly
ten miles of solid rock can be duly examined, every particle and fossil
of it, not by perforation _downward_ to the bottom, but by the natural
inclination of the beds, and their several outcrops rising to the surface
like the inverted tiles on a roof. In consequence of this persistent
arrangement, objects, both new and strange, will at every step meet the
view. There the whole system of geology, page after page, is spread out
before you. Every day opens up a new chapter geographically, as well as
mineralogically divided. And when you have gained the summit of Mount
Blanc, you can leisurely, in the mind’s eye, look back over the whole
COURSE OF CREATION.
It is a reproach, I am aware, sometimes cast upon geological researches,
that the portion of the earth’s surface exposed to view is as nothing
compared with the entire mass, and that another portion, by far the
largest segment, is concealed by the ocean, and its own debris. In
addition to these disadvantages, it may now be objected that the line
of description indicated narrows the field of research still farther,
and that a few disconnected materials only are all that can therefrom
be extracted. It may be answered,—“That the earth is constructed with
such a degree of uniformity, that a tract of no very large extent may
afford instances, in all the leading facts, that we can ever observe
in the mineral kingdom. The variety of geological appearances which a
traveler meets with, is not at all in proportion to the extent of country
he traverses; and if he take in a portion of land sufficient to include
primitive and secondary strata, together with mountains, rivers, and
plains, and unstratified bodies, in veins and in masses, though it be not
a very large part of the earth’s surface, he may find examples of all the
most important facts in the history of fossils.”[1] We shall, however,
along with our lineal descriptions of the mineral kingdom, notice the
occurrence, position, and fossil contents of the strata as represented in
other parts of the world.
CHAPTER II.
NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF THE GRAMPIANS. PRIMARY ROCKS.
In beginning a description of the earth, every one is prepared for the
information, that it must have existed in some form or other antecedent
to the development of life upon its surface. Revelation asserts a
succession in the objects created, as well as in all the cosmical
arrangements connected with the early history of our planet. Things
were not perfected at once, and brought simultaneously into adaptation
and form; a preparation and a fitting up, as it were, of the inorganic
preceded the introduction of the organic structures of creation; and,
accordingly, the solid framework of the globe gives corroborative
evidence of this anterior condition of its history. The rocks of the
period are, from this circumstance, denominated PRIMARY, because they not
merely denote the absence, but are assumed to have been formed before the
existence, of any types of organic matter, vegetable or animal.
Nowhere can this first lesson in geology be more forcibly taught than by
an examination of the sterile rocks and rapidly decomposing precipices
of this bleak and hoary region. Once through the glens, and fairly
commencing the ascent of the center mountain, every symptom of existing
life has disappeared; and amid the huge, tabular masses that accompany
you in the upward journey, there is no trace of organic forms in these
vestiges of the past. The nucleus of the whole group is granite, one
dense aggregation of crystals; now rent and furrowed by a thousand seams,
the heart and penetralia bared and open, a convulsed sea of molten matter
still and motionless as the grave! The associated rocks, all of the
primary class, are gneiss, mica-slate, quartz-rock, chlorite-slate, and
limestone; and these inclose no relic of a living thing. Geology thus
ascends the stream of Time; but it gives no farther tidings of a scene
like this, save that it arose from the depth beneath at the Creator’s
bidding.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE DISTRICT.—The mountain of Ben-Mac-Dhui, according to
recent measurements, is 4,418 feet in height, and covers a superficial
area of nearly forty miles in extent. It occupies a central position
in the Grampian range, being about equidistant betwixt Aberdeen on the
German Sea and the western coast, so ribbed and indented by the Atlantic.
Ranges of granitoid rocks, of the primary class, diverge for nearly forty
miles south and north of Ben-Mac-Dhui, thereby giving this mountain a
prominence in position possessed by no other within the boundaries of the
island.
The valleys by which this monarch is surrounded, open in every direction,
and run toward every point of the compass. Two great rivers, the Don and
Dee, take their rise in some of the deep gullies of the mountain, while
the Spey is fed by the innumerable streams that issue from its sides.
These rivers have each an easterly direction, which, by their water-shed,
give shape and character to the whole district. A hundred lateral glens,
with their tributary streams, and all their tarn-head or loch, debouch
upon the three principal straths, whereby their deepest solitudes are
reached, and the very foundations of their loftiest peaks bared and
laid open. There, remote from human habitation, the geologist sees as
it were two conditions of the world,—the one, the shattered framework
and fragments of its early convulsions, huge mountains prostrate and
crumbling beneath his feet,—and the other, the spring-heads of renewed
vitality collecting in countless dripping rills, each to sustain its
own little plot of pasturage and flowerets, not the less welcome that
they are all so rare and alpine, and looking in their freshness as if
they were there purposely to cicatrize and heal up the deep scars in the
rugged precipices around.
Loch-na-gar on the south-east, and Ben-y-gloe on the south-west, have
also their separate congeries of lofty hills and precipitous defiles,
inclosing tarns, lochs, and rivers; likewise their own peculiar grouping
of glens and straths, whose inner recesses are all most speedily attained
through the velvet pathways of their moss and crow-berry. From the poetic
peak the prospect is worthy of its fame. All around is a vast rolling
surface of mountains, with steep mural precipices, and separated by deep
ravines, while immediately underneath a cliff of 1,300 feet lies the
lake, contracted to a span, and rendered even darker in its gloom by the
snowy glaciers that sparkle here and there on the overhanging rocks.
From Loch-na-gar eastward to Craigdarroch and the more distant Morven,
and through the great forests of Balloch-bowie, Glentanner, and Glenesk,
granite is the prevailing rock. Around Balmoral, immediately under “these
steep frowning glories,” the granite rises into a number of smaller and
beautifully dome-shaped hills. Cloch-na-bein and Mount Battock, washed
by the Feugh and the Dye, are likewise composed of granite. Gneiss,
mica-schist, quartz-rock, and clay-slate hang on the southern slopes,
training down into the plains of Kincardine and Forfarshire. To the west
of Loch-na-gar, and intermediate betwixt that range and the granitoid
masses which cluster round Ben-Mac-Dhui, the same alternating series of
stratified rocks occur. From Castleton to the head of Loch Callater, and
along by Glen-clunie to the junction with Glen-beg, where the counties
of Aberdeen and Perth meet, the strike of these rocks is again passed
over in a walk of a few miles; the beds penetrated and tilted up by
veins of granite and feldspar. Several dykes of the latter mineral, of
an extremely deep-red color and glassy crystalline texture, traverse
the district, extending over a vast range of country, penetrating
indifferently the granites and schists, and always forming attractive
objects in the beds of the rivers.
In the immediate vicinity of Castleton and Invercauld, the geological
phenomena of the district are very accessible as well as instructive, in
consequence of the comparative smallness of the mountains, and isolated
position into which they are thrown. A magnificent amphitheater of hill
and plain is spread out before the traveler, through which the Dee,
after a course of upward of twenty miles from its wells—mysterious as
the fountains of the Nile—rolls its waters, now joined by the Quioch,
Clunie, Candlie, and all the tributaries of the surrounding peaks.
Some of the hills present bare precipitous cliffs, as Craig Koynach and
the Lion’s Face, where the granite, schistose, and calcareous rocks
are finely exposed to view. Their strike is continued westward, when
they are severally crossed in the easy ascent of Morne, half of whose
dome-shaped top is covered with quartz-rock, which here, as in most of
the neighboring heights, attains to an enormous thickness, and shows
in weathering the yellow granular texture of sandstone. So remarkably
like are some specimens we picked up by the roadside, that for a time
we imagined ourselves to be approaching a region of secondary deposits.
Internally, however, the bright crystalline structure is uninvaded by
decay. Ben-Beck, Cairn-a-drochel, and Ben-Viach behind Mar Lodge, are
chiefly composed of gneiss, passing into a slaty micaceous schist. The
same character of rock continues upward through Glen-lui until its
junction with Glen-lui-beg and Glen-derry, where the granite maintains
its sovereignty over all that primitive lofty region.
The geologist, in penetrating these primeval wilds, has but little
choice left him as to the comforts of his pathway. Arrived at the top of
Glen-lui, the two diverging passes, right and left, are equally desolate,
savage, and grand. He may make his selection as the feeling of the moment
prompts, but he will not be able to congratulate himself as the traveler
in a different field—
Hic locus est, partes ubi se via fundit in ambas:
_Dextera_, quæ ditis magni sub mænia tendit;
Hac iter Elysium nobis: ut _læva_ malorum
Exercet pænas, et ad impia Tartara mittit.
No “fiends,” indeed, as Dryden renders it, are here, unless the belated
traveler may allow his fancy to shape these gnarled withered stumps of
the old forest, as it well may, into grisly living forms; or the red deer
breaking from their coverts, and gazing in wild amazement from the crags,
startle him from his propriety. Still Loch Avon, black as pitch, and
imbosomed in horrid rocks, is not an unfitting emblem of the Tartarean
lake.
Pursuing his route to Strathspey, either through the desolate openings
of Ben-Avon, or by the wild passes of Brae-Riach and Cairn-gorm,
the geologist again drops down among the gneiss, schists, limestone,
and quartz. These types of rock line the trough of the Spey, on both
sides, as far as the granite district of Ericht and Laggan, presenting
the usual phenomena of granitic and feldspathic dykes, and in some
places, as at Loch-an-Eilan, remarkable twistings and flexures in the
mica-schist around this eagle-haunted lake. Glen Tilt, on the south-west,
is distinguished by a singular display of granitic veins, appearing
to radiate from a common center—the well-known phenomena which the
philosophers of the Hutton and Playfair school pressed so keenly and
successfully into the service of their theory. The gneiss is generally to
be observed in the form of low ridges, interstratified with quartz-rock,
and approaching in mineral qualities to the mica-slate.
The bearing of all these stratified rocks is, on the main, sufficiently
indicated by the outline of the Grampian range. The quartz, mica, and
chlorite slates, are nearly continuous along the chain, traversing in a
S. W. by N. E. direction the breadth of the island, from sea to sea. The
line of strike, however, is often interrupted, either by the eruptive
veins above mentioned, or by the upheaval of the central axis, which,
as it rose with greater violence, or was parted into higher and unequal
ridges, would necessarily occasion corresponding changes in the lie and
direction of their coverings. This principle in geological dynamics has
been satisfactorily established by Mr. Hopkins of Cambridge, who has
shown, that in the production of any great line of elevatory disturbance,
whether affecting straight, curvilinear, or ellipsoidal masses, the
strata would frequently be broken by fissures at various angles to the
chief line of strain or elevation. Hence these interminable glens,
transverse straths, cul-de-sacs, and countless depressions, forming tarns
and lochs, all inosculating into each other, and which give such variety
and grandeur to this alpine region. The pent up ebullient matter beneath
the crust would thereby force its way to the surface—now in the form
of veins—now in long narrow ridges—and in other quarters assuming the
contour of broad mountain domes. The dip, in like manner, corresponding
to these partial strikes, as well as great axis of the chain, is often
various—as at the Linn of Dee, and along the braes of Corry Mulzie, the
beds being almost horizontal, while generally they are so highly inclined
as to be nearly vertical.
There are also numerous examples where the crystalline strata dip inward
toward the granite ridges, and in this manner form an acute angle with
the base, instead of being infolded over and welded to them. The only
admissible explanation in these instances of the dip is, that the ends
of the strata adjacent to the eruptive masses have sunk into depressions
occasioned by the evolution of igneous matter, while their upper edges
have been tilted backward. Hence the schists often rise into independent
elevated crests all along the chain, and even where no granite appears
at the surface. The rocks in Glen-Beg and Glen-Clunie afford examples
of this kind, where, as in Cairn-na-well, and the other mountains here,
they are highly inclined, and plunge in the direction of the principal
range. Geology, viewed in this light, becomes an auxiliary to physical
geography, explains many anomalous appearances on the earth’s surface,
and successfully accounts for all the flexures, breaks, undulations, and
inequalities, that constitute such marked features in the primary strata.
Until very recently, the doctrine maintained was, that nearly all the
inequalities on the earth’s surface were produced by the erosive and
denuding effects of water; that not merely the small lateral valleys and
branches of rivers, but likewise all their main trunks, were caused by
the slow and gradual working of the stream, cutting the most solid and
massive rocks in the same way and almost with the same instrument by
which the lapidary divides a block of marble or granite. Nay, with such a
ready agent, acting through incalculably remote and indefinite periods of
time, the conclusion was arrived at, that “on our continents there is no
spot on which a river may not formerly have run.” A sounder philosophy,
and one far more accordant with the facts, is now beginning to prevail,
namely, that nearly all transverse gorges, by which rivers escape across
ridges from one water basin to another, are nothing more than ancient
apertures in the crust of the earth, which have resulted from the former
disruption and denudation of the rocks: and that rivers, properly so
called, have never cut sections through chains, but simply flow in
chasms prepared for them.
NATURE AND QUALITIES OF THE ROCKS.—The granite is the most prevailing,
as well as the most striking in its appearance and texture, in the whole
range. Mineralogically considered, every specimen is a gem. Granite
is a compound, aggregate rock, here of a lively flesh or rose color,
consisting of perfectly formed crystals of quartz, feldspar, mica,
and in some instances hornblende, when it merges into what is termed
syenite. The sparkling film is mica. It is not metallic; but it shines
with metallic luster; and in some places of the chain, as at Rothes on
the Spey side, it is found in plates so large as to become a substitute
for glass. The component parts of mica are silex, alumine, potash, iron,
manganese, and traces of other substances. The colors of the mineral are
various, according to the proportions of some of the ingredients. The
laminæ are divisible into plates no thicker than 1/300,000th part of an
inch. Entering into the composition of almost every rock from the oldest
to the newest, it abounds chiefly in granite and schist, but also occurs
in sandstones, and the slaty shales of the coal formation.
I never look at a piece of granite, fragments of which are strewed on
every heath, without being reminded of Paley’s inaccurate and disparaging
comparison betwixt “the stone” and “the watch,” in his celebrated
argument for the existence of Deity. Take a specimen fresh and living
from the rock, or from any bowlder that meets you on the way. There is
not a stain in all that composite mass: how bright every ingredient! No
workmanship of man can rival it in its closeness of texture, beauty of
color, distinctness and delicacy of shading and outline. What chemistry
elaborated these particles as they separated and united? What scales
weighed their impalpable elements? What hands constructed their nicely
harmonizing proportions? Whence derived their principle of cohesion as
they cooled and inosculated in the burning crucible? As that fragment of
rock, so is the whole interior of the mighty range—the whole basis of the
continents of the world—countless myriads of sparkling gems wrought into
symmetry and form; the foundations of our earthly habitation literally
“garnished with all manner of precious stones.”
Paley, forgetful of every law or purpose so conspicuously developed in
the whole of these beautiful arrangements, thus commences his great work
on Natural Theology:—“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot
against a _stone_, and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might
possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain
there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of
this answer. But, suppose I had found a _watch_ upon the ground, and it
should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should
hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I
knew, the watch might have always been there.”
How many fallacies are there in this statement so far as mention is made
of the stone? The science of geognosie, not so far advanced in Paley’s
time, now clearly establishes the “absurdity” of supposing its having
lain from “eternity” in the place where it is found. The relative ages of
mountains, and therefore their succession in Time, are now demonstrable
and well understood. Then, the component parts of the mineral are as well
defined, as accurately proportioned, and arranged in manner and order as
precisely, as the several parts of the watch. The mica, the quartz, the
feldspar, have each their law or order of structure, as well as their
principle of aggregation; and they have taken their respective forms and
no other, and have assumed their compound structure and no other, in
obedience to chemical affinities and an atomic adjustment, as certain and
unalterable as are the conditions and requirements of dynamics.
Nay, more, the parent rock, from which that stone was taken, has its own
place in the system; its position, amidst the upheaved disrupted strata
around, has been assumed for a purpose; and the very size, form, and
outline of the giant mass, are all shaped to an end. Rocks are as easily
distinguished as trees or animals, which have not risen up by accident,
but have been constructed out of certain materials, and arranged each
according to its own class. Their internal characters, and even outward
shape, are marked and defined. The gnarled oak in fiber and texture
differs not more from the soft, pendulous, graceful willow, than are
the differences of rocks and minerals in their normal arrangement of
particles; in their diversity of fracture, cleavage, luster, and density.
We see at once the mechanism of the watch, the growth and expansion of
plants and animals. But so, upon gaining the least knowledge of its
frame-work and structure, we cannot open our eyes upon any part of the
external world, without being impressed with the conviction, that all
which we see and admire, must be the work of a higher power. Design
is stamped upon everything. Will, order, and might are everywhere
visible.—Geology, discovering harmony amidst apparent confusion,
renovation in decay, shows that every rock is fitted to its place;
that systems and series of formations are arranged upon a principle
of utility; and so thoroughly calculated to exercise their assigned
functions have all the parts been formed, that the most elaborate
machinery of man’s contrivance falls infinitely short of the beauty and
perfection everywhere displayed in the material creation. Lain forever!
No; such a scene of mountain, valley, river, plain, and ocean—all related
to each other—does not exist by chance, is not conserved nor arranged by
accident.
THEORY OF FORMATION.—When we examine a piece of granite, nothing appears
less likely, to a common observer, than that it was once in a molten
state through the action of fire, and that its crystalline structure was
assumed in process of cooling. Now, the fact of its crystallization,
the beautiful and perfect arrangement of its parts, the impress of the
one crystal upon the other reciprocally communicating their respective
shapes to each other, and the compact, agglutinated state of the whole,
is regarded as the strongest proof of the igneous origin of this
remarkable rock. Granite is not a mere congeries of parts, which, after
being separately formed, was somehow brought together and united; but
it is certain that the quartz, at least, was fluid when it was molded
on the feldspar. In some granites, the impressions of the substances
on one another are observed in a different order, and the quartz gives
its form to the feldspar. The ingredients of granite were therefore
fluid when mixed; and this fluidity was not the effect of solution in a
menstruum, as in that case one kind of crystal does not impress another,
but each retains its own peculiar shape; and the conclusion is, that
they crystallized from a state of simple fluidity, such as, of all known
causes, heat alone is able to produce.
This is the account given in the Huttonian theory, as expressed nearly
in the words of Playfair, which, along with the position of veins, the
disruption of superincumbent strata, and other phenomena, has resulted
in the universally received admission of the Plutonic character of this
class of rocks. Dr. Macculloch has extended the principle, and has
satisfactorily proved, that granite is but one term in the series of
igneous products, the passages from which are distinctly traceable into
granitoid syenite, and syenitic greenstone, and thence into greenstone,
basalt, and lava. Professor Forchhammer considers granite, when melted,
as one simple compound, and which only on cooling becomes separated into
the different minerals that compose it.
Granite, wherever it is found, is inferior to every other rock; and as it
composes many of the greatest mountain chains, it has the pre-eminence
of being elevated the highest into the atmosphere and sunk the deepest
under the surface, of all the mineral constituents of the globe to which
our researches extend. The associated primary rocks in this upland region
overlie the granite, and possess a distinctly stratified structure.
They are not now in their original position. They have been tilted up,
traversed, and interlaced by the granite while in fusion, and have been
altered greatly in their texture and qualities by their contact with the
heated mass. Hence they are called METAMORPHIC ROCKS, because of the
change to which they have been subjected.
The rocks that immediately overlie the granite are gneiss, mica-slate,
quartz-rock, and limestone. They all partake of the crystalline
structure, and all, except the last, possess the same ingredients,
and assume interchangeably the same aspect. Of gneiss there are three
varieties, each composed of feldspar, quartz, and mica, and distinguished
by the size and form of the crystals that constitute the mass. This rock,
consisting in all cases of thin lenticular plates, has a ribbon-like
appearance, and, according to the predominance of one of the parts,
becomes glandular, slaty, or aggregate. Mica-slate consists of quartz
and mica—the latter predominating—and feldspar frequently entering as
an adjunct. Quartz-rock, as the term implies, is formed of the pure
siliceous matter, nearly homogeneous in many instances—but scales of
mica are often present—and feldspar not always absent. The limestone,
again, differs from all the above in the excess of the calcareous
element, while, along with talc, steatite, actynolite, asbestus, and
other simple minerals, mica, quartz, and feldspar are likewise to be
numbered among the imbedded crystals. These rocks, over the entire
surface of the globe, are of one family, and generally associated. They
are always the lowest of the stratified series, and follow in the order
now described. They are essentially one and the same in their constituent
mineral qualities—different in the form and proportions in which they
are aggregated—and geographically connected with the granite in their
distribution. Thus these crystalline rocks not only constitute the floor
of our earth, but have in all probability supplied the materials under
whose plutonic agency, when fused and molten, the massive pavement was
raised above the waters and tempered into its present consistency.
Granite, the derivative rock, is found, accordingly, in every region of
the globe—the lowest as well as the most universally distributed—the
basis as well as the apex of every great mountain chain. No true Highland
scenery is anywhere to be found that does not embrace granite as the
most prominent feature in the picture. Not a hill in Scotland, two
thousand feet high, but incloses a portion of this rock. The beauties
of the English lake country are all derived from this source. The lofty
serrated peaks of Wales have been raised upon its crystal foundations.
The north-west and central portions of France, the Swiss and Tyrolese
Alps, the vast expanse betwixt Dresden and Vienna, the Caucasus, great
part of the Himalayan, Uralian, and Altai mountains, and large elevated
districts in China, are all less or more of granite formation. Through
Northern Russia and Scandinavia the granite may be regarded as merely
a continuation of our Scottish range—one great stony girdle, which
forms the primary mineral boundary of Northern Europe. America, Africa,
Australia, possess not a single ridge of celebrity through which the
same fundamental rock is not traceable in every district. How simple,
uniform, universal the component elements of the globe! One and the same
atmosphere surrounds it, one ocean washes it, one system of massive
pillars supports it, one sun enlightens it. How direct and irresistible
the inference, that one intelligent, all-powerful Being fashioned and
framed it!
The separation of the dry land from the waters was, doubtless, effected
through the instrumentality of means. The igneous theory of granite, and
other amorphous rocks, is in accordance with this supposition, which
thereby imparts a sacred and peculiar interest to all our investigations
respecting the origin and elevation of mountains. The range of geological
investigation is thus wide as the circumference of the globe—deep as the
foundations of the earth—and sublime thoughts are everywhere awakened of
Him—
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things!
CHAPTER III.
THE SILURIAN SYSTEM. FIRST TRACES OF LIFE.
The group of rocks on which we next enter are termed fossiliferous, that
is, there is contained in their hard stony substance the impressions and
actual remains of organic bodies. As we proceed upward through the series
in their ascending order, we will find different rocks distinguished by
different classes of fossils, and characterized by distinct lithological
appearances. They are in consequence divided into different formations,
and called by particular names. Hence the origin of SYSTEMS, of which
there are five or six recognized by geologists, separable into their
respective groups of strata. Descending from the primary, the highest as
well as lowest in the series of rocky combinations, the group which first
invites attention is the SILURIAN; so denominated because the strata
are widely spread over the districts in England and Wales, anciently
inhabited by a people called the “Silures.” They are found in various
quarters of the world, and occupy a large area on the southern frontiers
of Scotland.
The rocks of this class consist of a group of argillaceous, calcareous,
and arenaceous deposits, varying in color and texture. They are of
great thickness and severally impressed with their own written story,
the fossil memoranda of the changes and events that occurred betwixt
the formation of each. These are the transition rocks of Werner. The
newly-adopted term of Silurian implies no peculiar theory as to their
origin. It simply expresses the fact that in the district in question a
complete succession of fossiliferous strata is interpolated between the
oldest slaty crystalline rocks and the old red sandstone. The system is
divided by their discoverer and historian, Sir R. I. Murchison, under the
ascending series, into the Cambrian System, Llandeilo-flags, Caradoc
Sandstone, Wenlock Shales and Limestones, and Lower and Upper Ludlow
Rocks.
Do the equivalents of all, or of any, of these groups exist in the
Grampian range? Geologists for the most part have been answering these
questions in the negative. Hitherto no true silurian deposits have been
recognized as existing among the northern Scottish mountains, and no
well-authenticated organism of the system has been detected in any of
their localities. This, however, will hardly be taken as a conclusive
argument after the admission into the family of the Skiddaw slate, in
which the faintest traces of organized matter have only very recently
been observed, while the over-lying series consisting of chlorite-slate,
and alternating beds of porphyry and greenstone, from twenty to thirty
thousand feet thick, have not yet been proved to contain a single fossil.
“Good fossil groups,” Professor Sedgwick argues, “are the foundation of
all geology; and are out of all comparison the most remarkable monuments
of the past physical history of our globe, so far as it is made out in
any separate physical region.”
We are convinced that the clayslates and graywackes which repose on the
southern flank of the Grampians, as well as abundantly in the interior,
will, upon strict examination, have their place assigned among the
Silurian class. Mr. Nicol, who has done so much for the Lammermuir
deposits, will find ample scope for his investigations, and all his
ingenious speculations, in determining the true position of these
argillaceous beds, which are of prodigious thickness and vast extent.
This is not the place to enter into details, but in support of the view
now advanced, the following among other reasons may be given.
First of all, the clayslate of the Grampians resembles in its lithology
the slates of Wales and Cumberland, admitted to be silurian. In hand
specimens they cannot easily be distinguished from each other: practical
men consider the slates of Dunkeld and Glenalmond as softer and less
flinty than those of the south. They pass from extremely coarse into the
finest grained varieties, when the graywacke character is entirely lost
in the homogeneous mass. Their position in reference to the crystalline
rocks, in the next place, is very distinct, never alternating with, nor
lying conformable to, either the gneiss or mica-schists. They form the
outer zone, from east to west, of the Grampian range, where feldspar,
porphyries, and trappean rocks are along the whole line mixed up or
associated with them. Then overlying the clayslate, precisely as in
Cumberland, the old red sandstone is found in immediate succession and
resting unconformably. Shall we add that, even in a topographical point
of view, these beds will be admitted to vindicate their claim to Silurian
origin, constituting, as they do, in extension, a portion of the great
primary belt that encompasses the western shores of Great Britain, and
beyond the channel, stretches through Brittany and Normandy?
From considerations such as these there are sufficient grounds, we
think, for constituting the clayslates and porphyries of the Grampians
into a “physical group,” existing in a “separate physical region.” The
absence of organic remains may be accounted for by the fact of the vast
disturbance prevailing in the seas at the period, and indicated by the
prodigious quantity of igneous matter spread repeatedly over their
bottom. These causes would act in so far in preventing the existence and
increase of living things, over all these parts, and most certainly in
obliterating the traces of their remains, if any were deposited. But as
future explorers may yet detect them in abundance we proceed to consider
the nature and classes of fossils elsewhere discovered in the Silurian
strata.
ANIMAL REMAINS. Here, in this series of rocks, we are carried back to
the beginning of life upon the globe, in which we see the very dawn and
commencement of earthly enjoyment, the first forms and races of creatures
which were privileged to eat at the banquet of creation. As matter of
history, therefore, nothing can be more interesting; as a subject of
mere curiosity concerning ancient relics, the most ardent archæologist
will be amply gratified; and as showing the manner of the divine actings
in replenishing the earth with living things, the word and the works
of Deity are again to the devout inquiring mind brought into pleasing
harmonious comparison.
We find that the creatures belonging to this first epoch of organic
existence are, generally, low in the scale of animated being. The
rocks in which their remains are imbedded are, in some instances almost
entirely composed of organic matter, showing that life at first was
not bestowed sparingly, or, through some hidden mysterious processes,
stealthily introduced upon the stage; it rather appears in an abundance
and variety, speaking of a purpose in obedience to a designing creative
act. As suitable to the condition of the planet, not at once but
by successive arrangements brought into a state of adaptation for
sustaining life, the animals now formed appear to have been chiefly of
the invertebrate division, that is, animals of comparatively simple
structure, destitute of a bony skeleton, suited to live in shallow waters
and muddy bottoms, and to be content with such fare as an infant state of
things over the young earth could produce. Among these ancient families
are graptolites,—many of them zoophytic bodies, allied to the modern
sea-pen; crinoids, or lily-shaped animals, of beautifully-developed
forms; and trilobites, crustacean creatures divided into three dorsal
lobes. There are several species of each. And so accurately has nature
adhered to her plan of operations, that we find the corals of that early
age doing the same offices, and piling up similar submarine reefs, by
which these busy little architects are still distinguished. The mollusca
of the period are very numerous, embracing almost every order and form
of shell that are found in our present seas, though wholly of different
species; conchifera, brachiopoda, gasteropoda, cephalopoda, pteropoda,
beside the heteropoda, of which there are no existing analogues. The
habits of all these orders must have been nearly the same as those of
our modern types. The cephalopoda, embracing the nautilus and orthoceras
tribes, were then as they are now, the tyrants of the deep, furnished
with eyes and ears, and armed with powers that enabled them to roam and
prey at will in the bays and estuaries of the primeval world. There have
been named and catalogued of these first forms of the moving creatures of
the deep about three hundred and fifty distinct species.
But, beside these, there have been discovered in the silurian rocks six
or seven genera, involving a still greater number of species, of fishes
of the order of the Placoids, so denominated from the broad scales or
plates with which they are covered. The probability is, that more of
these higher organisms will yet be brought to light, as all the strata
of the system consist of marine deposits, and only the most limited
sections have anywhere been explored. They constitute the lowest of
the fossiliferous beds; are generally found, except in Russia, in a
vertical or highly inclined position, and consequently but little of
their superficial area is exposed. Here, however, geologists have named
and described an Onchus Murchisoni, a Thelodus parvidens, and other four
genera of equally erudite-sounding names. The onchus type is continued,
and greatly multiplied in species, in the two succeeding formations, when
it dies out, or at least no trace of the genus is found in later times;
while the rest appear to come and to depart within their own geological
epoch. These organisms are all as yet termed Ichthyolites, that is,
simply fossil fragments of fish, as no entire animal has been anywhere
detected, while of their true class M. Agassiz affirms with confidence.
Teeth, fins, spines, occur so abundantly in a stratum of the Upper Ludlow
series in Wales as now to be termed “the bone-bed,” giving assurance that
the seas were thus early stocked with the finny tribes. The families of
most of these fishes have yet to be determined. But nature, though in her
operations “simpler than man’s wit would make her,” was still pretending
enough to be shaping out thus early the higher types of life.
The science which introduces to such sights and studies, occupies no mean
place among the various branches of human inquiry. To neglect to decipher
what is so indelibly recorded on these pages of creation, is willfully to
shut oneself out from what has been actually preserved for information—a
voice from the past, which speaks in the same distinct articulate
language as the present of the fiat of Omnipotence. No object is mean or
contemptible which divine wisdom has formed, and no subject is unworthy
of investigation which illustrates His ways and works during any period
of creation.
The mind, at this starting point of life, is curious to know what
amount of information can be obtained as to the organic structure and
specific characters of these first denizens of earth, so as to compare
them with the forms and species of the analogous families now existing.
The information derived from this first chapter in palæontology, we
believe is, that the earliest specimens of organization are as perfect
as the latest, each after its kind; and that, in these morning-days of
existence, nature at once stamped, with her plastic hand, her lineaments
of beauty and adaptation on everything she made. There is nothing omitted
to be afterward supplied—nothing formed defective in a single part or
organ that requires to be corrected. The first discoveries in geology
at once speak conclusively of a plan or course of creation derived from
the beginning—a power, not delegated, but linked forever with the first
intelligent cause—a world, through all its changes, continually presided
over and ruled by Him who made it.
VEGETABLE REMAINS were long wanting, and sought for in vain, to complete
during this period the picture of the ancient world, as described in
the pages of revelation. Geology, indeed, had everywhere sternly held
back the required evidence, and animals were announced to be the first
of living things. This, though contrary to all analogy with regard to
the conditions of animal subsistence, was generally received as a well
established dogma; and the earliest book of history was laid aside, or
its statements in these circumstances regarded as irrelevant. Vegetable
remains, however, have been detected in the oldest fossiliferous group
of rocks, and this apparent discrepancy has been forevermore disproved.
Fucoid plants are found in great abundance in the transition series of
Scandinavia as well as in the silurian strata of our own island. That
they are not more widely distributed is satisfactorily accounted for by
experiments which show that some species of plants entirely disappear in
water. A productive flora, therefore, may have existed from the earliest
period, but, unable to resist decomposition, all traces thereof have long
disappeared from the tablets of the earth.
Nay, so abundant in some quarters of the globe has vegetable matter been
at this period, that there are traces of beds, approximating to coal,
entirely composed of it, and the rocks inclosing these beds so charged
with bitumen and carbon as to be used as fuel. “The silurian strata of
the Scandinavian peninsula and the Island of Bornholm, contain,” says
Professor Forchhammer, “in their oldest parts, large beds of aluminous
slate, which is used in a great number of manufactories for making alum;
and this aluminous slate has the great advantage over those slates of the
carboniferous system of Germany and a part of France, that it contains
the sufficient quantity of potash which is required to make alum.” It
is well known that potash constitutes an ingredient in most vegetable
bodies; and that when a plant is burned there remains a skeleton of
this substance. Hence, possibly, the origin of the potash in the alum
slate. But the argument does not rest upon inference. The same authority
relates, that in Bornholm and in Scania, the southernmost part of Sweden,
this slate contains a great number of impressions of a fucoidal plant, of
which Liebmann has given minute botanical descriptions. Then, pursuing
his interesting tale of this first flora of creation, he says,—“According
to Professor Keilhau, Professor Bock, and M. Esmark, the same ceramites
occurs frequently in the aluminous silurian slate of Southern Norway.
Recently M. Hisinger has figured an imperfect specimen of it from Berg,
in the province of Ostergothland, in Sweden. Thus this fucus appears to
be characteristic of the alum slate of Scandinavia: and I can scarcely
doubt that the most characteristic properties of the alum slate, as
depending upon its carbon, its sulphur, and its potash, are derived from
the great quantity of sea-weed which has been mixed up with the clay,
and whose carbonaceous matter so affects the whole rock, that the slate
is used as fuel for boiling the aluminous liquor, and burning lime; and
in some parts of the province of Westergothland in Sweden, even small
courses of true coal occur. There can hardly remain any doubt that this
coal is derived from sea-weeds, of which fossil parts have been found,
for not the slightest trace of land plants has ever been discovered.”
These are instructive facts, yet greatly to be extended, when, we
question not, the land will also contribute of its flora to complete
our knowledge of the most ancient fossiliferous strata.—But recently,
bands of true coal have been discovered completely inclosed in this
group of rocks near Oporto, the town of which stands on a ridge of
granite, four or five miles wide, with mica-slate and gneiss resting on
both sides. To the eastward, these again are overlaid by sedimentary
rocks, chiefly clayslate; which, commencing on the coast about thirty
miles north of Oporto, run down and cross the Douro, about sixteen
miles above that town.—To the south of Vallango, the strata overlie a
deposit of anthracite in several beds, some of them from four to six feet
thick.—This coal is now worked in several pits, and principally sent to
Oporto. Along with it are beds of red sandstone and black carbonaceous
slates, with vegetable impressions too indistinct to be determined, but
strongly resembling ferns of the coal measures. In the shales above
this coal Mr. Sharpe, the discoverer, found many fossils, as orthides,
trilobites, and graptolites, most of them new species, but others well
known in the lower silurian rocks of Northern Europe. It would thus
appear that the coal deposits of Oporto are included in the silurian
formation, and are far below the usual level of the coal.
We cannot overvalue the theoretic importance of these discoveries, which
do not indeed bring to light any exuberant variety of the vegetable
tribes, such as the earth afterward threw out of her affluent bosom.
But they mark sufficiently the period when plants, according to the
geological reading of the history, first make their appearance on these
lithological pages: fucoids and algæ are there in abundance, to give
the vegetable portion of the narrative, as trilobites and molluscs form
unquestionably the predominating features of the animal department.
The coal-beds of Oporto—should their position turn out to be truly
defined—show the dawning of a terrestrial flora, not sparingly but
luxuriantly developed: and thus the silurian period may be regarded
throughout as sufficiently characterized by well-marked types of
vegetation, more doubtful in the higher forms, but determinate in the
acotyledonous and cryptogamic tribes which prevail indifferently from the
lower to the upper beds of the system. Nor do we require to overstrain
the statement, by questioning nature or revelation as to the species,
genera, orders, and classes of vegetables referred to in their respective
pages. They are coincident as to the great truth itself, that PLANTS
did exist in the earliest “days” of the earth’s history. As a science,
nothing is taught in the Sacred Record. None of the technicalities
of physical inquiry are employed. But a beautiful progression, and
elimination of one thing after another, are intimated. The light is
separated from the darkness. A firmament is set in the midst of the
waters. The first plant that burst from the soil had thus every element
provided which its nature and habits required—the light, to which it
turns and ever yearns after—the air, in which to perform its respiratory
functions—the water, from which to secrete the juices of circulation—and
a dry land, out of which to elaborate materials for its structure. This
is a Wisdom which is above all philosophy, instructing in the elements
and principles of things, long before botanical arrangements were dreamed
of, or “bushy dell” there was, where
“hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.”
The silurian group of rocks is very widely extended, as in Britain,
France, Russia, the north-west of Asia; in South Africa, North and South
America, the Falkland Islands, and Australia. The most ancient physical
features of the Old World can almost be recalled, as we thus trace the
outline of the deposit, marking out, by its geographical distribution,
the primary islands and mountain peaks of the aboriginal land. How
changed the very face of things—continuity between states and kingdoms
where seas now roll—and all the great continents occupying the sites over
which the waters held unbounded sway!
[Illustration: Trilobites of the Silurian System.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE DEVONIAN SYSTEM, OR OLD RED SANDSTONE.
A geologist requires not, like the tourist, to be told of the various
conflicting roads that run among the mountains, in what precise course
he is to wend his way. He will follow his own pathways, roads of
nature’s forming, guided by the strike and lie of the rocks rather
than by the beaten tracks of every-day life. But come whither he
will—through Glentilt, Glenericht, Glenbeg, and the Spittal, Glenisla,
and Clova,—or along the Dee, the heights of Glentanner, and penetrating
to the sources of the Esks—sure we are, when he reaches by any of those
passes the frontiers of the Grampians, he will pause and gaze wistfully,
thoughtfully, admiringly, ere he descends, upon the magnificent prospect
that stretches before him, unrivaled by any on the terraqueous globe. The
GRAN-PEN, _celticé_, the shelvy or precipitous summit, Romanized into
Grampius, has its own inner charms, peaceful rock-girt valleys where
princes dwell, and happy as Rasselas ever trod.—And escaped from these,
what an outer world beneath, fertile, abundant, replete with everything
that can charm the eye or interest the student. Looming in the far
distance, the Lammermuirs, of silurian origin, can just be descried as
a dark-blue line on the verge of the horizon; the Ochils and Lomonds,
of carboniferous age, repose like islets on the pendant sky; while, in
the foreground of the picture, there is the most charming variety of
woodland, meadow, farmstead, town, and mansion, all as I now gaze upon
them in their autumn coloring, invested with a Claud-like mellowness that
speaks with a moral yet romantic sympathy to the heart. The round tower
of Brechin, the moldering walls of Edzell, the frowning battlements of
Glammis, the worn-out and now verdant ramparts of Dunsinane, have each
their crowds of visitants, and are all within the compass of a single
day’s journey.
The eye of the geologist is in search of another object as it wanders
over that lovely scene: Kinnordie, the birth-place of Sir Charles
Lyell, must ever be classic ground in the history of our science. It
rests on the old red sandstone, and furnishes some of the most valuable
illustrations in Sir Charles’s early sketches. What influences, may
we here ask, gave being and shape to the ingenious and splendid
generalizations of this accomplished geologist? Is it too much to assume
that the philosopher, as well as the poet, is all his life-long captive
to first impressions, that the scenes of his boyhood claim “a local
habitation” for many of his future speculations, and that his most
matured trains of thinking have been dependent upon casual circumstances?
Born and educated in the shadow of the Grampians, who can doubt that the
spirit within was early stirred to lofty views as he gazed upon their
elevated forms, and wondered how their peaks rose so high in air, and
were thus lifted above the valleys? May it not be presumed, though the
philosopher himself may have no recollection of the matter, that his
speculations regarding the alternate elevation and depression of land and
sea had its germ in some such happy moment of mountain inspiration? Byron
owned the influence in all its power, when, in the rocky defiles and dark
pine forests of Lochnagar, he had early communings with spiritual beings,
the wreathe-forms and kelpies of the streams; and in visions imparted
amidst the wilds of the Dee, prepared his mind for the daring flights
of the Alps. The geologist had here all the materials of after-thought,
which in his various essays and works he has so skillfully expanded—from
his explorations of Bakie-loch with its alluvions, peat, marl, shells,
and horns, in which he had the type of some of his Alpine tertiaries—the
old canoe and ripple-mark here too, the representatives of their
far-sundered ages and onward to his bold speculations on the elevatory
hypothesis, of which the Grampians, as well as Sidlaws, supplied him with
ample illustrations.
The descent from the mountains upon the series of rocks that occupy the
plains, is one not merely of space, but likewise of time. A geological
epoch has vanished, and a new order of things has been called into
existence. This implies a change in the animal as well as in the mineral
kingdom. The change may not have been sudden, but it has been thorough
and pervading, accompanied by circumstances that show a general shift
in the sea-bottom, and causes that have been nearly uniform in their
operation over the surface of the globe. The shift in the sea-bottom is
detected in the elevation of the silurian group of rocks, which have
been lifted from a horizontal into a highly-inclined position: in some
instances they are nearly vertical; and in most cases where the igneous
rocks occur, they are bent and twisted, greatly altered and disrupted, by
the process of upheaval to which they have been subjected.
Geology notes in this an epoch or age of organic existence. The
superjacent series of rocks are seen lying unconformably upon the
silurians, that is, the older series had been consolidated and upheaved,
and a period of intervening time had elapsed before the deposition of the
newer. The fossils imbedded are likewise distinct and peculiar—one and
the same over the superficial area of the globe—and thus we learn to mark
the great and interesting cosmical changes which had already begun to be
effected. We are now among the Old Red Sandstone, or Devonian system of
rocks, so denominated from their great development in that district of
the sister kingdom.
As contrasted with the former system, the rocks of this period indicate
considerable disturbance in the waters of the ocean, currents and
agitations widely prevailing, and perhaps also deeper seas. The crust
of the earth was still rising, and the mountains becoming higher, and
these effects would necessarily follow. A superior order of animals
were introduced. The fishes, which begin to appear in the upper beds of
the silurian group, are now increased both in numbers and in variety of
structures. The invertebrata were the prevailing types of the former
age. The old red sandstone is pre-eminently characterized by the
vertebrata, when, completely adapted to the element to be inhabited,
mailed and plated over with thick horny scales, huge bony heads, fins
and tails of corresponding strength and size; the Sauroid family appear
upon the stage, capable all of buffeting the waves and fulfilling their
destiny amid the greatest commotions. The fish of this early period are
generally well preserved, even better than those of the tertiary age,
in consequence of their osseous scales being harder than the bones, and
which, from their interlocked arrangement, have contributed to preserve
the general form of the body when the inner skeleton has disappeared and
every other part and organ have been destroyed.
The old red sandstone formation is very extensively distributed in
the northern counties, forming a great belt round the coast from
Caithness-shire to Aberdeenshire, and consisting of three well-marked
divisions, the lower, middle, and upper series of beds. The strata flank
the northern walls of the Grampians and their out-liers, traversing the
great central or Caledonian valley for a hundred miles, and training
round the western coast by Oban, the shores of Mull and Morven. They
are of great thickness in many places; and in some of the beds, as at
Cromarty, Lethen-bar, and Gamrie, contain nearly all the fossils peculiar
to the formation.
The order of Ganoid fishes, which afterward fulfill so distinguished
a part in the kingdom of nature, is wholly absent from the silurian
group, while, in the Devonian, nearly thirty genera, and considerably
above sixty species, have been described and named. The scales of
these creatures would appear to have been richly ornamented, enameled,
and shining, and hence the term Ganoid applied to the order. In the
northern districts, beyond Ben Mac-Dhui, the following genera, with
several species belonging to each, have been found, namely, coccosteus,
cheiracanthus, cheirolepis, dipterus, diplopterus, diplocanthus,
glyptolepis, osteolepis, pterichthys. The principal localities of these
fossils are—the Dipple on the Spey, Tynet Burn in Banffshire, Seat-Craig
near Elgin, Altyre on the Findhorn, Clune, and Lethen-bar in Nairnshire,
Gamrie, Cromarty, and various places in Sutherland and Caithness.
Shetland is chiefly composed of the old red sandstone, which yields
abundantly the fossils peculiar to the deposit. The formation extends
through the Orkney islands, inexhaustibly fertile in organic remains,
and among which have been found plates and fragments of the Asterolepis,
the largest of all the genera belonging to the period: the head and
jaws, at least, appear to have been of enormous dimensions, and portions
of the inner skeleton must have been bony, contrary to the general
cartilaginous structure of the class. The Placoids of the subjacent
rocks have many resemblances to the cestracions, centrinæ, and spinaxes
of our present seas, their scales being set like plates at irregular
distances over the body. The Ganoids, on the other hand, whose scales
were continuous, and enveloped the entire animal, have no affinities to
any living types.
Specimens of vegetable organisms are very common in some of the
flagstones of Orkney, resembling, in some instances, the Lycopodiaceæ,
or club-mosses, so abundant in the carboniferous strata: and branching
fucoid plants, of which portions have been found from two to three feet
in length, and of nearly the same diameter of stem throughout. But in
tracing the COURSE of CREATION in this department of her works, the most
important fact to relate is, the discovery of a coniferous lignite,
imbedded in the old red sandstone of Cromarty. This interesting relic
was obtained from these beds, several years ago, by Mr. Miller; and,
though still of that remote age an instantia solitaria of its kind, like
the foot-print of Robinson Crusoe, it is the sure token of a race that
inhabited the island, and harbinger of a luxuriant flora then waving
along the shores of the boundless waters. These northern localities, on
the mainland, as well as in the islands, are also remarkable for their
shell-beds in this deposit, while very few of such organisms have yet
been detected in any of the Scottish rocks of the system to the south
of the Grampians. The relics are confined to one species of shell,
resembling in general appearance the form of the Cyclas, and are found in
various quarries in the district.
What a revolution in letters, knowledge, and civilization since the days
of the Romans! This, their Ultima Thule! and a science in the very rocks
of which they never even dreamed. Proud they were of their fabled origin
from the twin boys suckled by the wolves. Here are the spoils of ages
long anterior to their myths of remotest genealogy—families of creatures
that had fulfilled their destiny—buried in the sand, and upheaved into
lofty mountains, while the Seven Hills of their proud city slept beneath
the waves.
We now proceed to trace the order of the formation southward of the
Grampian chain.
1. The conglomerate, a deep red and well-marked deposit, skirts the
base of the mountains, and in some places is of vast thickness, betwixt
Stonehaven and Blairgowrie. This rock is composed of fragments of
the primary series, gneiss, mica-slate, quartz, and porphyry; the
granite constitutes the paste in which these are set and agglutinated
together. Excellent sections are to be seen in those localities,
where the principal rivers, the North and South Esks, the Wast Water,
the Isla, and the Ericht, make their passage in debouching upon the
plains. In all these defiles the cliffs are precipitous, and often very
picturesque, their variegated and bright flesh-colored sides forming
a pleasing contrast with the dark waters as they eddy into pools, or
dash headlong over their broken ledges. A momentary inspection of this
composite rock leaves not the shadow of a doubt upon the mind as to
its derivative origin, while its vicinity to the great chain where its
several ingredients are to be found as directly points to the quarry
whence it was hewn: not, it may be, slowly accumulating, as generally
asserted, during the lapse of indefinite periods of time, but rapidly
brought together and consolidated, as so many of the sharp angular
edges of the materials most unequivocally attest. The finer beds that
occur in the vicinity would seem to have been the talus or outgoing
of the coarser conglomerate, formed of the minute particles of the
same ingredients which had accumulated in the more tranquil hollows of
the sea-bottom. The slaty fissile sandstone of Coventry Quarry near
Fettercairn (so remarkably tilted up and welded literally to the igneous
dyke), stretching throughout the north-east and south-west parts of the
counties of Kincardine and Forfar, and prevailing over the districts of
Auchtergaven, Crieff, and Callander, may be mistaken in many places for
the clay-slate itself slightly altered in texture and appearance.
These conclusions as to the derivative origin of the conglomerate are
fully confirmed and borne out by the fact, that the deposit is everywhere
found precisely where such materials would be collected, all around the
shores of the Scottish Highlands, overlying or fringing the base of
the crystalline rocks, filling up the creeks and bays of the primeval
world. After thousands of years the massive blocks of syenite, chiseled
and half-dressed, are still lying in the quarries of Upper Syria,
while the cities for which they were preparing are heaps of ruins in
the desert. Nature, left to her own operations, treasures up the waste
occasioned by the elements and other forces, and by thus raising outworks
and buttresses protects her crystal foundations against the inroads of
consuming time.
2. Forming an outer zone or rampart, and overlapping the conglomerate, a
gray fossiliferous sandstone constitutes the next member of the Devonian
group. This deposit is widely extended, and consists of several beds.
One of these is a fine-grained, compact building stone. Another, the
well-known flag-stone, is of a more slaty texture, of a dark-blue color,
and abounds in mica. These sandstones occupy a great part of the sea-ward
barrier by Montrose, Arbroath, and the high grounds of Carmylie. They
fold over the Sidlaws on both acclivities of the range, where they form
a well defined example of what geologists term the _anticlinal_ and
_synclinal_ axes, that is, the rock curves and reduplicates, like a soft
flexible substance, according to the undulations of the surface. The
several beds cross the Tay in the direction of Dundee, and emerge on the
opposite banks at Wormit-bay, Parkhill, and Newburgh; ranging eastward
along the northern slope of the Ochils by Norman’s Law and the high
table-land of Balmerino.
3. A limestone rock, termed CORNSTONE, from its practical application
to grinding purposes in England, occupies a place among the old red
sandstone series. This deposit occurs in thin bands of a dull yellowish
or blue-colored stone, containing numerous cherty nodules, and, where
compact, is of a sub-crystalline texture. The cornstone generally
contains more of silicious than of calcareous matter, and is consequently
not much prized for building or agricultural purposes. In Scotland no
organisms have been as yet detected in it, but in England it yields
abundantly remains of the cephalaspis and various crustaceans. This
rock is not co-extensive with the other members of the group, nor do we
find it continuous in any part of the district which it occupies. It is
generally found in small detached patches, as at Glen-Finlay, Meigle,
Cargill, on the north of the Sidlaws; at Ballendean, Rait, Meurie, in the
Carse of Gowrie; at Parkhill, Newburgh, Clunie, Kinnaird, on the south
bank of the Tay; and at Newton and Craigfoodie, on the southern face of
the Ochils. At the Newburgh station of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway
the cornstone is inclosed among the eruptive rocks, partaking of their
common induration, and, except in its distinct lamination, cannot be
distinguished in color or texture from the traps.
4. A rock-marl underlies the cornstone in the form of a reddish,
variegated sandstone, and contains about fifteen per cent. of lime.
Deep sections of this calcareo-arenaceous deposit are displayed along
the basin of the Tay, on both sides, from the confluence of the Isla
to Stanley, at Pitcairn Green on the Almond, and occupy the ridge from
Methven to Crieff. A remarkable vein of serpentine skirts the base of the
Grampians in a south-east and north-west direction, of a beautiful dark
olive-green, in some places of a blue and whitish color, and at Cortachie
Bridge, where it crosses the Esk, containing crystals of diallage. This
dyke widens in some parts to nearly ninety feet, of a hard compact
texture, and, as the marble of the district on the lakes of Clunie, it is
extensively used for ornamental purposes.
5. The geologist, as he pursues his journey by either of the lines of
railway that intersect Forfarshire, has still many interesting localities
and objects before him. Traversing “the fertile plains of Gowrie” by the
Perth and Dundee Junction, he enters at Inchture upon a higher member of
the old red sandstone, a fine-grained yellow-spotted bed. The deposit
first appears to the eastward of Inchture, in the den of Balruddery,
where its outcrop is seen immediately to overlie the gray fossiliferous
beds.—The same variety emerges on the opposite bank of the Tay at
Birkhill; at Abernethy, where it abuts at nearly right angles against the
trap in a small ravine to the south of the village; whence it skirts the
base of the Ochils, and occupies the center of Strathearn at Dumbarnie.
The Clash-bennie sandstone, doubly interesting from having furnished the
first and best specimen of holoptychius, the type of its age, may be
regarded as an extension of the Balruddery and Inchture rock. The beds
vary a little in their lithological characters, as well as in the deep
flesh-color predominant in the latter; still the spherical markings are
there, and, as their organic remains are identical, their position in the
series may be considered as one and the same. The yellow or upper beds of
the old red sandstone fall next to be considered; but these, from their
geographical limits, are deferred to the subsequent chapter.
6. Approaching Perth by the Midland Junction, the geologist cannot fail
to be arrested by the vast accumulations of sand and gravel, which
everywhere present themselves, sometimes in the deep cuttings and
railway sections; sometimes in the shape of rounded hillocks or long
narrow ridges; and at other places as extended plateaux or sea-margins
of different elevations. Along the whole western and southern slopes
that overhang the city, these objects give a pleasing variety to the
landscape, and form interesting subjects of speculation as to their
origin, doubtless the gathered wreck of all the rocks we have been
contemplating; for after a careful examination of their contents the
conclusion cannot be avoided, that with much of the spoil of the primary
rocks, we have here the detrital waste of the entire old red sandstone
series. The Carpow cutting, in Strathearn near Newburgh, contains large
rounded masses of all the varieties, with their peculiar ichthyolites;
the gray, red, and yellow deposit that prevails in Fifeshire, and one
solitary patch of which still exists _in situ_, near the Kirk of Dron, as
if on purpose to mark its ancient and more extended boundaries. Nodules
and bowlders of the cornstone are likewise abundant. In the vicinity
of Perth, the waste of the yellow sandstone is to be found, unmixed in
several spots, consisting of thick beds of fine argillaceous sand.
Similar masses of gravelly debris are spread over the middle-basin
of the Earn, from Forteviot to Muthil. The Scottish Central cleaves
its way for ten miles through scarcely any other material. The dreary
monotony of these endless hillocks, around Auchterarder and Blackford,
is relieved in part by the fine undulating grassy braes of the Ochils,
and the richly-wooded rising grounds skirting the left bank of the river.
The geologist’s eye wanders eastward, through the district occupied by
the lower basin of the Tay, where the whole was one great estuary or
strait, and these the shoals covered by the ancient waters. The eastern
shores, from Wormit-bay to Leuchars, are accordingly characterized by
vast accumulations of sand and gravel, originating in the same causes and
deposited at the same period.
It will excite no surprise, therefore, should we remark that the various
beds of old red sandstone now so disjoined, or appearing only as patches,
once covered the greater part of the district traced above, extending
from the Ochils across the Sidlaws to the Grampians. Nor can there be
difficulty in finding an adequate cause for their up-break, especially
in the upper members of the group. Consider not merely the constant
waste arising from aqueous abrasion and meteroic influences, but also
the tearing effects occasioned by the convulsive throes and elevatory
movements of the Grampian, Sidlaw, and Ochil ranges, either singly, or,
as it may have happened, in combination, when the overlying rocks must
have been shattered and broken in every direction, and rendered capable
of easy transportation. Although belonging to a posterior geological
epoch, these hillocks of gravel and sand are thus the collected records
of primeval times, attesting that mighty agencies have been at work in
rending the globe, re-adjusting its materials, and preparing them for
future combinations.
How speedily, in these first days of creation, does geology make us
acquainted with the liability to change and mutation stamped upon
all earthly things! The mountains are raised up, and their earliest
struggles are to get down again. Nor is it the law of matter, if we may
use the expression, to rise. The waters seek the hollows of the earth,
because they are material. The rocks, more solid, are subject to the
same principle of gravitation, and their course is downward, and their
natural place the bottom of the waters. When the rocks were separated
from and elevated above the waters, it was not by any virtue or power
in themselves to assume these positions. The separation as well as the
elevation were the results of direct arrangement; both certainly provided
for in the original plan, and yet not the less brought about against
their own material tendencies by a special agency. Geology thereby
establishes the fact, that the mountains were raised up and the dry land
COMMANDED to appear. And now, decomposing and wasting down, we see them
seeking back to their old places, to be there re-constructed, and to
subserve other purposes.
THE ORGANIC REMAINS, which fall next to be described, are confined to
three of the beds, as enumerated above. The first of these, in the order
of superposition, is the micaceous flagstone of Carmylie and Arbroath,
likewise extending along the south bank of the Tay, and distinguished
by the vegetable culmiferous impressions with which it abounds. These,
in some places, are so numerous, as to cover the entire surface of the
rock. The idea of an ancient marsh is immediately called up in the mind,
as one sees stone after stone split up, and all the interstices mottled
and streaked over with the stems and leaves of the plants which were
fed by its waters. While we write, every pond, and every lake in the
neighborhood has crept quietly under its carpeting of ice, a congelation
of the living with the dead. How beautiful and distinctly delineated the
culms and leaves of the chara locked in its crystal embrace; the flower
of the juncus yet lingers on the stalk; and there, how gracefully float
the long broad continuous stems of the scirpus lacustris! The pike and
perch, both typified in the olden rocks, may be seen motionless as a
stone, or softly buoyant as the down, in the clear depths below. Not so
brightly, but now as fixedly set, and as minutely preserved, are the
fragments of the flora of the Devonian age: if blackened and jetty in
their hoary antiquity, these films of mica give light and relief to the
darker background of the picture; and shapes, too, were there sporting in
the waters,—the seraphim and buckler-headed cephalaspis,—which painter
never conceived, nor poet feigned.
These fossils are not in a state of petrifaction, but generally consist
in the form of an easily-separated film of carbonaceous matter, or more
frequently as a simple coaly marking. Sometimes, but very rarely, the
plant is found betwixt the slaty layers, as it were in a dried state, and
still perfectly flexible; and the impressions not unfrequently resemble
the narrow striated leaves of the alopecurus geniculatus, the floating
foxtail-grass, with its knotted culms. There are other specimens, that
look like the bark of trees, or the branches of the gnarled oak, ribbed
and jointed crosswise. The round dotted patches, varying from the size of
a garden pea to an inch in diameter, not unlike, in shape and appearance,
the form of a compressed strawberry, are very plentiful. Dr. Fleming,
in Cheek’s “Edinburgh Journal” for February, 1831, has figured this
organism in connection with the stem, which thereby forms a graceful and
well-defined flowering plant, while Sir Charles Lyell considers these
berry-shaped forms to be the relics of the ova of some gasteropoda of the
period. But at Wormit and Parkhill they are so uniformly, and in such
numbers, associated with the culmiferous and leaf impressions, as most
strongly to vindicate their claim to a vegetable origin. We have in our
collection several specimens, with this organism separated certainly from
the culm, but still in such closeness and proportionate size, as, with
little aid from the imagination, to infer their former connection, and
assign to them a place among the phanerogamous and seed-yielding plants.
If so, we cannot too highly prize these relics, regarding them, as they
undoubtedly are, among the oldest of organic substances—the first of the
green herbs that sprung from the earth—the fragile flower, that withers
often in a day, there to attest the mandate of primeval creation. How
many seasons have returned; how many seed-times and harvests have covered
the fields; what revolutions and changes over all these hills and plains,
since that flinty rock formed the soil, and these vegetables sprung from
its fertility! They are not admitted among the economic order of the
gramineæ; nor whether of marine, semi-marine, or lacustrine origin, have
geologists been able to determine.
Of the ANIMAL REMAINS of fishes belonging to the gray sandstone, the
Cephalaspis Lyellii was one of the earliest discovered, as it still
constitutes one of the most remarkable of these fossil relics. The
head of this creature, and hence the name buckler-headed, is large in
proportion to the body, forming nearly one-third of its length. The
outline is rounded in the form of a crescent, the lateral horns inclining
slightly toward each other, while the anterior or central parts project
considerably outward; this peculiarity of structure is occasioned by the
intimate anchylosis of all the plates which compose the cranium. The
body resembles in appearance an elongated spindle, swelling out on the
ridge of the back, and narrowing to the extremity of the tail, which
terminates in a long slender point. How like, peradventure, the very
dagger with which the murderous Thane of Glammis threatened to render—
“The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red!”
The sanguineous fluid, in those days, was not indeed very plentiful;
but the sharp-horned orthoceræ, and the swift predaceous nautili were
cotemporaries; and hence, either for protection or attack, we find that,
while the head of the Cephalaspis was one entire plate of enameled
bone in the upper division, the body was wrapped in a closely woven
net-work of bony scales, of peculiar form, and differing from the scales
of every other genus of ganoids. The scales along the center of the
sides are so high, that their breadth exceeds their length eight or ten
times, occupying more than half the height of the animal. Everywhere
meshed in smaller but equally impervious nettings, there are of the
larger scales, from twenty-six to thirty covering the sides, thereby
completing a mail-clad figure of a singularly warlike aspect, and bidding
defiance, like his great anti-type, to all his foes,—“let fall thy blade
on vulnerable CRESTS”—but now, like Banquo’s ghost, “the bones are
marrowless.”
These curious fossils were first detected in the quarries at Glammis, by
Sir Charles Lyell, and from their striking resemblance to the cephalic
shield of certain trilobites, were supposed, for a time, to belong to the
class of crustaceans. The beds of Carmylie and Balruddery, yield these
organisms in the greatest abundance. One solitary specimen, a fragment of
two inches in length, of the smaller scaly net-mesh, has been obtained
by me in the gray rock, on the south bank of the Tay. The heads are
uniformly in the best state of preservation; indeed hundreds of these lie
entire, where no part of the body has left the trace of an impression. M.
Agassiz assigns, as the reason of this, the great difference that exists
in the structure of these two parts, and especially in the disproportion
of their dimensions and forms, which would offer a distinct resistance
to the pressure to which the animals must have been exposed. “If, on the
other hand,” he adds, “the heads usually present their superior surface
to us, it is because their inferior surface, the cavity of the mouth,
the branchial arch and sinuosities of the inferior bones of the cranium,
are points of support comparatively more solid, and more adapted for
sustaining the matter which has filtered into them, than a larger surface
slightly convex, which would naturally be detached from the rock wherever
a separation was found in it.”
THE DEN OF BALRUDDERY presents us with a group of very remarkable
fossils, comprising, in an area of the gray sandstone of a few square
yards, innumerable impressions of the plant-markings already noticed,
multitudes of the Cephalaspis, spines, and other ichthyolites, along
with two entirely new genera of fishes of the order of Placoids. The
sandstone here is of a very slaty character, splitting up into thin
layers, betwixt every one of which some organism or other has impressed
its form; and the different kinds are often so promiscuously huddled
together, as to suggest the idea of some violent commotion in the element
which collected and destroyed them. In the “Synoptical Table of British
Fossil Fishes,” by M. Agassiz, we find inserted a _Parexus recurvus_,
and a _Clematius reticulatus_, from this locality; they are represented
simply as ichthyodorulites, no complete specimens of the creatures having
been presented to him, nor indeed have any been as yet obtained. One of
the specimens in the Balruddery collection, when returned by M. Agassiz,
was labeled as a _Palæocarcinus alatus_: and in the 14th Livraison of
his “Poisson Fossiles,” he thus writes:—“Enfin j’en dois aussi plusieurs
espèces à M. Webster de Balruddery. Parmi ses échantillons j’en ai
trouvé plusieurs d’un grand intérêt, parce qu’ils m’ont fait connaître
que le genre Pterygotus que j’avais établi, il y a plusieurs années,
sur des fragmens très-imparfaits, n’appartient point à la classe de
poissons, mais bien en celle des crustaces. Une pareille erreur semble
à peine possible, et cependant elle paraît excusable lorsque je ferai
connaître les caractères de ce fossile; des botanistes célèbres n’avaient
pas hésité à les ranger parmi les Algues. Les Seraphius fossiles
des carrières de Forfarshire, que M. Lyell a soumit à la Section de
Geologie de l’Association Britannique réunie à Edinbourg en 1834, sont
des ces mêmes crustaces gigantesques du terrain Dévonien. Ils offrent
des rapports éloignés avec les Entomestracés gigantesques du terrain
houiller, décrits sous les noms d’Edotea et d’Eurypterus.” The Lobster,
accordingly, of Balruddery is the first discovery of its fossil kind;
portions of nearly every organ of the body have been found, so as to make
the restoration of the crustacean complete: a creature of at least four
feet in length, and as in the fishes of this epoch, the shelly covering
is dotted all over with enameled scale-like markings. This magnificent
collection remains still undescribed, hundreds of the specimens, from
the minute to the gigantic, and of the greatest diversity of character,
being only detached fragments of the structures to which they belonged;
but enough have we there to testify as to the early prolific abundance of
Nature, and that, throughout all ages, her types and forms of life are
wonderfully allied.
The interesting locality of Balruddery is succeeded by another in the
ascending order of the strata, but lower on the plain of the Carse of
Gowrie,—Clashbennie, situated about six miles to the westward. This
rock is well entitled to be denominated the Holoptychius Bed, as here
the first complete specimen of that remarkable genus was obtained, and
of which there are three species in the deposit, namely, H. Giganteus,
Noblissimus, and Murchisoni. Three other genera, of the ganoid order of
fishes, have left their relics in this bed, some of them in a beautiful
state of preservation: these are Glyptosteus reticulatus, Phyllolepis
concentricus, and Glyptolepis elegans, all named and described by M.
Agassiz.
The Holoptychius ranks among the family of Cœlacanthes, and the term
Holoptychius (holos, entire; and ptyche, a wrinkle) is applied to the
fossil from the circumstance of the scales being covered with wrinkled
dots or markings, the enameled surface of which is indented with deep
undulating furrows. Another characteristic feature of this genus consists
in the distant position of the ventrical fins, being considerably removed
toward the tail, and in the arrangement of the branchial organs, which
form two large plates between the branches of the inferior ray, as in
the genus Megalichthys. The structure of the “nageoirs,” the rounded
form of the ventrical fin, and the manner in which the rays of its
anterior edge are insensibly prolonged, in connection with their relative
thinness, are also marked distinctions. The head of the Holoptychius
is remarkably small in comparison with the size of the body, which, in
the Clashbennie specimen measures thirty inches in length by twelve in
breadth. The scales are still disproportionately larger than either the
head or body, some of them being nearly three inches in length by two
and a half in breadth, with a corresponding thickness. The structure
of the dermal covering is beautiful in the extreme; it is composed of
these scale-plates, articulating, and laced together in such a way as
to combine the greatest possible strength with the highest degree of
flexibility; and, protected by a rich coating of enamel, it must have
been capable of the greatest endurance, and of resisting any pressure.
Two thickly set rows of teeth; one inner, and extremely minute, the other
large and pointed, completed the equipments of a mouth adapted to seize
and crush to powder any intruder upon its pasturage. The vertebral column
extended to the extremity of the tail, which was forked or divided into
two unequal lobes, a contrivance of nature that enabled the animal to
turn quickly on its back before striking its prey. This form of the tail
is called the HETEROCERCAL; it is characteristic of most of the fishes
of the period, and prevailed during the palæozoic age; when it gave way,
at the era of the chalk formation, to what is termed the HOMOCERCAL
structure, and which still exists in the fishes of the current epoch.
The Phyllolepis is a very striking genus of the same family, and has
also been noticed at considerable length by the Swiss naturalist. The
scales, or other plates, which covered the body of this fish are of
enormous dimensions, being nearly half a foot in diameter, and rounded
to an obtuse angle. What distinguishes them from all other scales, and
particularly from those of the Holoptychius, with which they have certain
external resemblances, is their extreme tenuity, consisting simply of a
film of enamel spread over a thin osseous membrane, scarcely so thick as
the blade of a knife, and varying from three to five inches in diameter.
Their surface is smooth, or slightly marked with concentric wrinkles
parallel to the edge of the scale. Two species of this genus have been
found, one in the old red, and the other in the coal formation. In the
Clashbennie sandstone only a few detached scales have been detected, but
sufficiently well preserved to show the superposition, or imbrication,
perhaps, in which they stood relatively to each other, the wrinkles
serving as grooves by which their adhesion was more firmly effected. One
decided characteristic of this organ in the _Phyllolepis concentricus_
is, that it is a little raised toward the middle, whence it again
declines or sinks on all sides, after the manner of a roof.
The sandstones flanking the hill of Kinnoul, and stretching along the
left bank of the Tay, by Scone and Lethendy, appear to be a continuation
of the Clashbennie beds, as also those occupying the ridges by Ruthven
and Dupplin, where they assume much of the fissile character and
micaceous aspect of the Carmylie flag-stone, but everywhere destitute of
organic remains in the whole western district from Perth to Callander.
The absence of fossils from particular beds has been accounted for in
various ways. But even in the same series of rocks, and where there is no
break in the continuity of the strata, it is a maxim of geology that the
range of fossils is not always co-extensive with the mineral deposits.
Then, as now, the explanation is, that the slightest physical changes
affected the tastes and habits of the animal kingdom; the direction and
strength of a current; the depth of water; the character and qualities
of the sea-bottom; the force of tidal action; the season of the year,
being, it is well known, singly sufficient to produce great differences
as to the migrations and favorite haunts of almost every aquatic race.
And hence it is laid down as a recognized principle in the science, that
a particular bed of rock within certain limits is not to be excluded
from its place in a system, and another substituted therein, by the mere
presence or absence of a certain class of fossils. Individuals, too, will
often outlive the family to which they belong, and be found in certain
localities intermixed with the races of a higher group of rocks.—And
these remarks are applicable to all the formations, less or more,
from the lowest fossiliferous strata to the latest of the tertiaries.
Applied to the old red sandstone, they serve to explain the fact that,
while the precise relative position of the western beds in the district
under review cannot in every instance be determined, large spaces or
areas are entirely destitute of organic remains which in the eastern,
and not distant, localities are detected in the greatest abundance and
variety. The system of rocks is unquestionably the same, but neither
cephalaspis, parexus, clematius, holoptychius, glyptosteus, phyllolepis,
nor glyptolepis, ever would seem to have frequented these parts; whether
for the reasons above assigned, or for any other local cause, or simply
that they did not like the region—as the grouse and ptarmigan, even now,
will not descend to the plains—is one of the recondite problems of animal
life connected with the new as well as the older state of things. These
beds may yet, however, be discovered to be fossiliferous, as the smallest
space in local distance may reveal their hidden stores, to reward the
diligent observer, and add to our knowledge of the aboriginal fauna of
the district.
The lesson farther taught by the varied phenomena which have passed under
review in this chapter would seem to be, that there is nothing fixed or
permanent in such arrangements of nature.—These are the beginnings of
creation, and both as respects organic and inorganic matter, change and
re-construction have prevailed from the earliest periods to which our
researches can penetrate.—The Divine Architect did not complete things
as we now see them, in one initial act; nor, as we regard quiescence
and stability, were the elements and forces of nature so balanced as
not to interfere even in violent collision with one another. A world is
called into existence. Storms and commotions rend its frame.—Sea and land
contend for mastery. And everything within its bounds, like the flux of
time, like day and night, summer and winter, life and death, is observed
to have emerged into being and form, to have assumed new arrangements,
then to have perished; or gradually, as its nature might be, to have
consumed away.
No reason can be assigned for all this, as the law or order of events,
except the appointment of Him who made and continues the constitution
of nature as it is. No adequate cause of creation can ever be conceived
but that of the Divine Goodness; and while we never can expect fully
to comprehend the wisdom that planned, and the power that carried into
effect, the purposes of that wisdom, still the very effort to attain
knowledge concerning them, fulfills one great object for which man is
made curious about the works of his Maker. In contemplating the wonders
of those days, the variety, adaptation and perfection of everything
in itself as then constructed, he will always refer to that Infinite
Intelligence through whose goodness he is permitted to enjoy knowledge.
In becoming wiser he will become better. His increasing knowledge will be
made subservient to a more exalted faith in that everlasting “Word” who
framed the worlds; and in proportion as the vail becomes thinner through
which he sees the origin and course of things, he will admire all the
more the brightness of Him who was the true light which lighteth every
man that cometh into the world.
[Illustration: Holoptychius Noblissimus.]
CHAPTER V.
YELLOW SANDSTONE.
Dura Den, whither the scene of our explorations now shifts, occupies a
central position in Fifeshire, and lies equidistant betwixt St. Andrews
and Cupar, the county town. This classic field of geology is therefore
of the easiest access. The railway traverses the opening to the ravine,
a lovely valley of choice archæological as well as fossil remains,
where parliaments have assembled and a scepter was contended for, the
retreat of learned churchmen, and a refuge in the caverns of its rock
for persecuted saints. A day’s excursion to such a place cannot fail to
be a profitable as well as agreeable one, where the students of geology,
or of botany, or of history, will severally meet with objects suitable
to their taste; and, if lovers of the tragic, a short detour to the left
will furnish a sight of Magus Muir, of cruel memory and most indefensible
policy.
The geological structure of Dura Den is more than ordinarily interesting,
presenting, as it does within a limited distance, and in close
juxtaposition, the two series of the old red sandstone and carboniferous
systems, an included mass of overlying trap, a greenstone dyke, and a
vein of galena. The whole length of the dell, with its windings, from the
ruins of the castle resting on the conglomerate red, to the outgoing on
the south into Ceres basin of the coal formation, does not exceed a mile
and a half. The rocks overhang the road which passes through the valley,
the sandstone in some places rising precipitously into bold mural cliffs
of a hundred feet in height, and presenting colored and well-defined
sections of the different layers of which it is composed. These
constitute the fish beds of the yellow sandstone group, lying toward the
northern extremity of the den, and consist of beds of variegated marls,
intermixed with friable arenaceous bands, and hard, compact, fine-grained
building stone.
The carboniferous series are separated from those of the yellow sandstone
by the greenstone dyke referred to, which immediately, and inconveniently
for sight of the junction, interposes betwixt the two systems. The lower
beds of the independent coal formation are here thrown up to an angle of
26°, the yellow sandstone adjacent being nearly horizontal, and in no
place exceeding an inclination of eight or ten degrees. The coal beds
have been lifted up by and repose anticlinally upon the trap, where the
cutting for the road has exposed the outcrop of the seams; and thus,
in a narrow space and lying on the surface, we may mark the outgoing
and the incoming of a vast revolutionary epoch, organic and inorganic,
in the earth’s history. The strata, consisting of alternating bands of
coal, shale, ironstone, and sandstone, assume toward the head of the
valley a nearly horizontal position, abutting against a mass of trap
which separates the lower from the upper workable beds of the bituminous
mineral in the Ceres basin.
Dura Den, in addition to the interest arising from lithological
structure, presents an excellent example of a valley of erosion. The
river which traverses it rises at times into considerable volume,
and sweeps with violence through the pass; connected above, at one
period, with a lake, and acting continuously on soft friable matter,
the abrading powers of the instrument are sufficiently adequate to the
production of the effect. The qualities of the rocks penetrated may be
easily inferred from the windings of the stream—the harder substances
occasioning a divergence from the straight course—the soft and marly
scooped out into wider and more extended areas. A section of any one of
them is thereby labeled for the fullest inspection, which are arranged,
not perpendicularly one upon another, but drawn out in longitudinal
succession on the floor and sidewalls of the valley, and exhibiting to
the geologist, after so many types and forms of the old red sandstone,
the first break and most northern limit of the coal metals in the great
central basin of Scotland.
THE YELLOW SANDSTONE, as it is termed from its prevailing color, though
not uniformly so, belongs to the old red or devonian system of rocks,
of which the cornstone and conglomerate beds are in the immediate
vicinity, and the position and relation of the three to one another
easily determinable. The upper or yellow deposit occupies the valley of
Stratheden nearly throughout its entire length and breadth, and ranges
along the base of the heights of Nydie, Cults, the Lomonds, Binnarty,
and the Cleish hills, dipping under the carboniferous lower group, and
generally separated by overlying masses of trap. The sandstones, indeed,
of both systems, resemble each other so much in color and texture, that
in many instances along the line now indicated the trap must be taken as
a guide by which to ascertain the qualities and respective positions of
the two series. Glenvale, a beautiful ravine which intersects the Lomond
range, presents admirable sections of the whole group, in their regular
order of superposition and finely displaying their contrasting mineral
characters.
ORGANIC REMAINS. These are abundantly distributed in scales, teeth,
spines, coprolites, and other remains, and are to be found in every
opening and quarry throughout the range of the deposit. It is only
in Dura Den, however, that any entire animal forms have as yet been
obtained, and these all confined to a portion of the rock not exceeding
thirty yards by three in breadth, a narrow trough excavated for the
purpose of forming a water-shed to the mill, which stands in the center
of the valley. The fossils derived from this single spot consist of four
new genera, and seven or eight new species, that have been added to
our catalogue of extinct animals. These remains were all in a state of
beautiful preservation; the scales and fins are brightly enameled, and
contrasted with the matrix in which they are set, the colors are as vivid
and glistening as when the animals were sporting in their native element.
The specimens, I believe, of the various collections made in this rich
depository by different parties were all submitted to the examination of
M. Agassiz, who has figured several of them in his “Monograph” on the old
red sandstone, but without completing, it is much to be regretted, his
descriptions of the various fossils. We give the following abridgment of
such descriptions as are contained in the work.
There are two new species of Holoptychius represented, namely,
_Andersoni_ and _Flemingii_, and these are distinguished entirely by
the form and tracery of their respective scales. The H. Andersoni is
described as a small spindle-shaped (_fusiforme_) fish, thick and short,
and narrowing rapidly toward the tail.
[Illustration: Holoptychius Andersoni.]
The scales are much less than those of the other species, as deep as
they are broad, and resembling in general form the scales of the H.
Murchisoni found in Clashbennie. What peculiarly distinguishes them is
the figure of the ornaments (_le dessin des ornemens_) of the surface,
which are parallel, horizontal, very marked and distant in the A. and
never extending in the striæ to the posterior edge. The scales, again, of
H. Flemingii are on the sides of the fish deeper than they are broad, and
on the belly they become rounder. Their ornaments are also very distinct
in the F., consisting of a system of waving lines, which run horizontally
toward the outer edge without any perceptible ramification, while the
wrinkles of the scale rise from a series of little hills (_collines_)
ranged parallel over the length of the inner edge, undulating and very
close. This specimen is represented as very imperfect. The other is
nearly entire, the plates of the head and several of the teeth are well
preserved, every scale is in its place, and the fins are only wanting to
restore the normal outline of the fish. This fossil has been figured and
erroneously described in the author’s “Geology of the County of Fife”
under the name of gyrolepis (holoptychius now) giganteus, from which,
says M. Agassiz, it differs specifically.
From the fossils of this locality has been established the new genus of
GLYPTOPOMUS, the specimen of which being originally mistaken by Agassiz
for a platygnathus, but since found by him to differ from that genus in
several material points. The scales of the platygnathus, for example, are
round and imbricated, possessing in this respect all the characteristics
of the scales of the cœlacanthes, while on the other hand those of the
glyptopomus resemble the scales of the sauroids, which are rhomboidal or
square (_ou carrées_), closely set and never imbricated, as shown in the
subjoined illustration.
[Illustration: Glyptopomus Minor.]
Moreover, the platygnathes are lengthy (_allongés_) in the body, likewise
long (_longue_) in the tail, which is furnished with a very strong
fin, whereas the body of the glyptopomes is very thick, and the tail
short. The ornaments of the scales of G. bear a close affinity to those
generally of the cœlacanthes. Only one species as yet has been found, the
glytopomus minor, and figured in the tab. 26 of the “Monograph” under the
name of platygnathus minor.
The glyptopomus minor, says M. Agassiz, found in Dura Den, and of which
there is but one specimen, is possessed of a body broad and thick,
approaching in form to that of the holoptychius. The fish is lying on
the belly, and turned slightly to the left, so that it is the back and
right side which are represented in the plate. The head is proportionally
small, covered with bones very irregularly carved, presenting a dense
and diversified granular aspect. On the side of the head there is a
large enameled plate, which shows that the cheek was covered, as in the
polypterus, with one single osseous plate, on the under edge of which
was fixed the large masticatory muscle. The scales on the body of the
fish are large, high on the sides, and nearly square on the back, where
in the middle they form an oblique series converging to an acute angle.
The scales are very thick set on the side of each other, and apparently
connected only by means of the skin to which they are attached.
The enameled surface is not smooth, but rather marked with a fine
granulation, which imparts a rich velvet gloss to the scale. Traces only
of the fins are preserved, partly of the ventral, partly of the dorsal
or caudal, and the rays of which are all apparently short and slender.
This specimen forms a part of the author’s collection, but inadvertently
described as belonging to that of Professor Jameson.
Another genus, established from the fossils of Dura Den by M. Agassiz,
is the Pamphractus, of which there are two species, _Hydrophilus_ and
_Andersoni_. These are both in the collection of the author, and have a
special history of their own, from which, when read in all its details,
it would appear they have suffered as roughly at the hands of geologists
in simply determining their class, order, or genus, as they ever did from
the physical revolutions amidst which their lot was originally cast.
Before the type of a new and strange form called _Pterichthys_, had been
determined by this learned palæontologist, collectors were everywhere
puzzled by the specimens of the animal that, from time to time were
casting up. The winged appendages of the sides of the head, as movable
fins, had easily given rise to a variety of opinions concerning their
true affinities, and which, says M. Agassiz, “have been regarded by the
most able naturalists successively as Tortoises, Fishes, Crustacea,
and even Coleoptera.” The fossils of Dura Den were at first regarded
by him as belonging to the type as well as genus Pterichthys, and my
specimens were actually returned from Neufchâtel so named—the “broad”
and “narrow” species—and the label still remains attached. Meanwhile,
five or six species of the genus Pterichthys had been already determined
and described by him, from the fossils of Cromarty and Morayshire—these
in the collection chiefly of Mr. Hugh Miller; and Mr. Miller being,
about the same period, engaged in the preparation of his work, “The
Old Red Sandstone,” speedily under the new nomenclature, as he was so
opportunely furnished with the materials, gave the public the benefit of
M. Agassiz’s discovery and version of their true and authentic history.
What we had hastily, certainly, but still influenced much in the matter
by the judgment of others, referred to the order of Coleoptera, he
was enabled at once, upon the inspection of a Dura Den specimen, and
from its very striking resemblance to his own, to pronounce to be a
Pterichthys. A few pages before he had stated that he could make nothing
of the creature, although some specimens of the fossil had been in his
possession for a period of nearly ten years; but NOW, he was able to
record,—“I very lately enjoyed the pleasure of examining the _bona fide_
ichthyolite itself,—one of the specimens of Dura Den, and apparently one
of the more entire, in the collection of Professor Fleming. Its character
as a Pterichthys I found very obvious.” But short-lived, indeed, are all
mundane enjoyments. The most intellectual, in the revolutions of science,
are not exempt from their general character of vanity. While the two
northern sages were thus gazing, in all the raptures of a new discovery,
“upon the _bona fide_ ichthyolite _itself_,” the philosopher, under the
shelter of the Jura, was doubting, re-examining, and finally correcting,
his own first judgment; and, while the virgin pages of “The Old Red
Sandstone” had scarcely time to reach their author, the “Monograph” was
announcing to the world the determination of a new genus, and that the
fossil of Dura Den was a Pamphractus, and no Pterichthys at all.
“I had at first,” says Agassiz, “connected with pterichthys the only
species known of that genus, by calling it _pterichthys hydrophilus_,
but a more profound study and attentive comparison of that species with
the genus coccosteus, have proved that it ought to form a distinct
genus, intermediate betwixt pterichthys and coccosteus, which I
have named _pamphractus_, in consequence of the divided form of the
carapace. The pectoral fins of pamphractus resemble very much those of
the pterichthys in their form, being slender, elongated, and crooked
(courbée). But the plates of the carapace are all differently arranged.
The central plate is very large (énorme); it covers two-thirds of the
whole carapace, and unites the anterior articulation of the head with
the carapace. The lateral plates, which acquire so great a development
in the pterichthys, are here reduced to narrow stripes, stretching to
the edge of the carapace; while, on the other hand; the posterior plates
are of very great size, and form with a small intercalated plate the
extremity of the carapace. The disposition of the plates of the head is
likewise very different from that of the pterichthys, in which we discern
no thoracic cincture as in that genus, but a transverse line, which
separates in a striking manner the plates of the head from those of the
carapace. _We see not any portion of the tail_; but I presume that it
would bear a resemblance to the form of that of pterichthys.” Agassiz
thus concludes his description of pamphractus, which we have partly
abridged:—“The excessive development of the central plate of the carapace
which reaches the articulation of the head—the absence of a thoracic
cincture making the round of the body—and the distinct separation of the
occipital articulation, will always distinguish this genus from that of
pterichthys.”
Again, however, the ashes of the dead have been disturbed, the history
has been recast, and the old genealogy attempted to be restored. Sir P.
G. Egerton, in a paper read before the Geological Society of London,
on the 19th April, 1848, and a copy of which he did me the honor to
transmit, has examined very minutely every organ and portion of the
animal as delineated in the “Monograph,” and is satisfied that it
is, indeed, still to be regarded as a genuine pterichthys. However,
Sir Philip very cautiously adds,—“Having never seen a specimen of
_pamphractus_, I should not be justified in expressing any positive
opinion respecting this genus, but I cannot help thinking that it is
founded on a specimen, showing the true dorsal arrangement of the
lorication of the Pterichthys.” Accordingly, Mr. Miller, who supplies a
considerable portion of the paper in question, affirms, with abundant
confidence, that he has been able to penetrate the mystery of the error.
“I have succeeded,” he says, “in tracing to its origin the _Pamphractus_
of Agassiz. The specimens which he figures could never have furnished
the materials of his restoration—These materials he evidently derived
from the print of a Pterichthys of the upper Old Red (showing the
dorsal superficies of the creature), given by the Rev. Dr. Anderson of
Newburgh, in his Essay on the Geology of Fifeshire (‘Quarterly Journal
of Agriculture,’ Vol. XI, 1840), as that of a fossil beetle.” Now, with
all submission, this hypothesis is wide of the fact. While Mr. Miller
was inspecting, at Aberdeen, “the bona fide ichthyolite itself,” and
which, as we shall immediately see, was not a Pterichthys, Agassiz had
both the print and the real specimens lying before him. The impressions
on the slab are ELEVEN in number, three of the “broad” and eight of
the “narrow” species; and, comparing the one with the other, the print
with the fossil, he records, “They have been figured VERY FAIRLY by Mr.
Anderson, in his interesting Memoir on the Geology of Fifeshire.” “But,”
adds Mr. Miller, “I have ascertained, by the examination of the greater
number of specimens of this species yet found, in the general outline
of the carapace, which was longer in proportion to its breadth than
in the print, and not defined by such regular curves.” ... The print
is a perfect transcript of the fossil, as if taken in a mold,—curves,
projections, and tubercles all duly and “fairly” preserved, as in the
original; and, with all the materials, and so many actual impressions
before him, Agassiz hesitated not to change his views, and to feel
assured that it was really a Pamphractus, not a Pterichthys, that he
was examining. Farther, we have only to add, that in the Essay in the
Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, it is not true that the print of a
Pterichthys is there “given as that of a fossil beetle;” the higher
patronymic had, ere the publication of the prize essay, been withdrawn;
and the author, along with all others, states, he was waiting the
judgment of the highest and most competent authority from the blue lake
of Neufchâtel.
And thither also, it would now appear, that other inquiries had been
transmitted respecting the organisms of Dura Den, to be famed by modern,
as it had already been by ancient, genealogical claims. We suspect, at
least, it is of “the bona fide ichthyolite itself” that M. Agassiz,
in the “Monograph,” speaks in the following extract:—“Dr. Fleming m’a
communiqué le dessin d’une pétrifaction recueillie par lui à Dura Den,
qui resemble beaucoup, quant à la forme du Pamphractus hydrophilus. La
tête est courte, arrondie, large, presque en forme de croissant, le corps
est allongé, formant avec la tête un ovale qui se termine en pointe en
arrière. Les pectorales sont grêles, courbées et aussi longues que
le corps. L’articulation de la tête avec le corps est très-nettement
marquée, d’une manière qu’a la forme de la carapace près, qui est
beaucoup plus pointue, on croirait voir un Pamphractus. Mais ce qui
distingue surtout ce fossile (à en juger du moins d’après le dessin qui
n’est, à vrai dire, qu’une esquisse) c’est qu’il n’y a pas de plaques
separées, et que toute la surface de sa carapace ne montre qu’une
granulation uniforme et continue, si toutefois la délinéation des plaques
n’a pas été omise par le dessinateur. Nous aurions donc dans ce fossile
un genre nouveau de cephalaspide, caractérisé par la forme de sa tête et
par sa carapace uniforme. Quoi qu’il en soit, j’attends de plus amples
informations sur ce sujet, avant de préciser davantage les caractères de
ce type, et je me borne à reproduire les contours de ce dessin, Tab. 31,
fig. 6, afin de fixer d’une manière plus particulière l’attention sur ce
fossile.”
Now, making every allowance for the imperfection of the sketch of Dr.
Fleming, (qu’une esquisse), and which had not the aggravation of being
a “print,” only see how many marvels have been successively evolved
out of “the _bona fide_ ichthyolite itself:”—it is not a Pamphractus,
though very much resembling it in form—it is not a Pterichthys, of
which alliance there is not a hint even dropped by Agassiz, though its
character as a _Pterichthys_ Mr. Miller “found very obvious;” but “we
have in that fossil a new kind (genre) of cephalaspis, characterized
by the form of its head, and by its uniform carapace,” all which
characters have been overlooked in “the pleasure of examining the
_bona fide_ ichthyolite itself—one of the specimens of Dura Den, and
apparently one of the more entire.” Has this creature undergone a
still further metamorphosis, numerous as those of the Pterichthys
itself? Or what specimen is it which now rejoices in the appellation of
_Homothorax Flemingii_, also again challenged or suspected at least by
Sir P. Egerton, not to be its true designation! But, _quocunque nomine
gaudeat_, the cabinet of science is enriched by the addition of a new and
remarkable fossil fish.
Repeatedly, since the notice in Mr. Miller’s work of the Dura Den fossil,
and his fanciful commentary on the truth and accuracy of the plate in
the “Geology of Fifeshire,” have I examined, compared, and recompared
the design and the original, and never have I been able to detect the
slightest disagreement, even in the minutest feature. Others, and parties
innumerable have examined them freely in my presence, have pronounced as
to the fairness of the representation. There are five figures in all upon
the plate of the Dura Den fossils; they were all, fossils and figures,
under the ocular inspection of M. Agassiz; one of these, _Holoptychius
Andersoni_, he has figured in the “Monograph;” the representations are
identical, and all are declared to be “figured very fairly.” True, the
pamphractus had not been able to preserve the tail, nor any trace even
of that member. Agassiz did not think himself justified in supplying
the deficiency. I added none either, “carefully sinking” the nonentity.
But Mr. Miller had a point to establish: the fossil MUST be one and the
same with the _bona fide_ ichthyolite _itself_, which appears to have
retained the caudal appendage. It will not certainly account for the
obliteration of this organ in ALL the specimens of Dura Den, that, in
common with _Pterichthys_ and _Coccosteus_, the _Pamphractus_ was not
possessed of the _heterocercal_ structure, so characteristic of the
fishes of the period. But yet it is not there. Then, “the tubercles seen
in profile,” are exaggerated: Agassiz thought fit, upon examination, to
retain the exaggeration, as Nature, he perceived, had designed. And now,
Mr. Miller finds it proper to communicate to Sir P. Egerton, that after
examining the specimens (presented by me) in the Museum of the Highland
and Agricultural Society in Edinburgh, “one of the MOST STRIKING specific
distinctions of the creature consists in the length and bulk of the arms,
and the comparatively great prominence of those angular projections by
which they are studded on the edges—projections which seem to be but
exaggerations of those confluent lines of tubercles by which the arms of
all the other species are fringed.” So, Nature has her “exaggerations,”
likewise! and the first of the genus which ever rose to the stroke of the
hammer, has in no degree been misrepresented in its fair proportions,
except that the angular projections referred to are not so prominently
developed as in other specimens in the author’s collection.
It will readily be inferred from all this that the locality of Dura
Den is entitled to much consideration in consequence of the variety
of its interesting remains, not to speak of the diversity of views
which the remains themselves have occasioned in so many quarters. The
Pterichthys, Pamphractus, Homothorax, and Cephalaspis are all of the
family _Lépidöides_, and have such a close affinity in outward form
as readily, in mutilated specimens at least, to be mistaken for each
other. The appendages of the head, having the appearance of wings,
suggested the term _pterichthys_, the winged fish: the plates covering
the body, according to their number and form, gave rise to the generic
distinctions; and the species of each have subsequently been determined
by minor differences. The external organs in all were enameled, and
discover, like the fish of the period, the tuberculated surface. The
Pterichthys of the more northern counties vary in size from nearly a
foot to an inch in length, and generally the wings of these, so far
as they have been figured in works, are extended horizontally and
perpendicularly to the body. The Pamphractus of Dura Den are all nearly
of a size—about two inches and a half in length,—the wings in every
instance depressed and inclined to the sides, and in no instance of the
twenty to thirty specimens exhumed from the rock, has the tail been
appended, or a fragment of the caudal organ detected. The cephalaspis has
only been found in the lower beds of the system, and highly important
would be its discovery in the upper, where, however, we have reason to
think the new genus Homothorax has been substituted in its place. Mrs.
Dalgliesh of Dura, in whose collection we found a Glyptopomus, and a slab
containing several impressions of the Pamphractus, has kindly, and with
a commendable love of science, informed us that her quarries are freely
open for the researches and explorations of geologists, and that every
facility will be afforded them in their interesting task.
In addition to the fossils already referred to, I find in the specimens
of my collection returned from Neufchâtel, that two are labeled as
Diplopterus, new species; two as Glypticus, new species; and one as
Holoptychius, new species. This last is now figured in the “Monograph” as
the Platygnathus Jamesoni. None of these are described in the narrative
of the work, so that until his return from America, where palæontology
will unquestionably reap much from his indomitable perseverance, his
almost instinctive skill, and vast learning, we cannot expect that M.
Agassiz will have leisure either to supplement the deficiencies of his
great work, or confirm his former conclusions against the alterations
suggested in his absence—suggested certainly in no small degree upon
fanciful organization and mistaken assumption.
[Illustration: Platygnathus Jamesoni.]
In closing our review of the old red sandstone, we shall briefly state
the principles of classification of fossil fishes, as determined by M.
Agassiz, from which it will be seen by the earliest types of the marine
vertebrata, while admirably suited to the perturbed condition of the
element in which the strata were formed, differ widely in their structure
from all existing races.
The fishes of the present era, it is well known, are divided into two
great classes, the cartilaginous and the osseous. In the former are
comprehended the sharks, rays, and sturgeons of our present seas; the
latter embrace the salmon, cod, herring, and the various kinds possessed
of similar forms. The bony structure in all the cartilaginous class is
soft, destitute of fibers, and contains scarcely a trace of earthy or
calcareous matter. The osseous fishes, on the other hand, are constructed
internally of true bone, composed of calcareous matter, like that of
birds and quadrupeds, which is possessed of a fibrous arrangement, of
great hardness and capable of long endurance. Now, it would appear that
the fishes of the old red sandstone belong almost exclusively to the
cartilaginous class. The internal frame was composed chiefly of this
soft, soluble substance; hence it is that no portion of the inner
body of the fish, in any of the fossil specimens, remains.—The teeth
and scales, with fragments of the bones of the head, are all that have
survived, but so hard and enduring has been the scaly outer coating, that
the figure and contour of the animal have been preserved entire. The
specimen of Holoptychius Andersoni, from Dura Den, is still enveloped
in its original covering, not a scale in the whole body displaced or
missing, the head and belly slightly compressed, while the posterior
ridge of the back and tail is sharp and angular.
Here, then, in this class of animal life, we find that what is defective
in the internal structure—if it be a defect—is completely supplied in the
outer appendages, whereby the fishes which have the softest bodies are
possessed of hard, horny skins, coated with enamel. Their bones are thus
all on the surface, sometimes in the form of scales; sometimes assuming
the shape of spines and tubercles; now in small, now in large plates;
and often disposed in the most singular and grotesque arrangements, as
in the genus coccosteus, or the osteolepis, whose entire skull consisted
of shining naked bone, and in the cheiracanthus, a creature possessed of
fins scaled and enameled all over.
The Swiss naturalist, accordingly, in adopting a new principle of
classification, so essential in the case of the fossils of the old red
sandstone, has made the scales and external organs the groundwork of his
system. The classification of Cuvier and the older naturalists proceeds
mainly upon the character and disposition of the fins. Hence the order
of the Acanthopterygii, or thorny-finned; and the Malacopterygii, or the
soft finned order.—The classification of M. Agassiz, proceeding upon the
characters of the scales and plates, has given rise to the following
orders, namely, the Placoid, or broad-plated scale; the Ganoid, or the
shining-scale; the Ctenoid, or comb-shaped scale; and the Cycloid, or
marginated scale. Upon the simple basis of these four orders, he has
constructed his system and composed his “Poissons Fossiles,” the standard
authority in fossil ichthyology, and elaborate monument of his learning
and genius.
The relations, as well as distinguishing peculiarities, of the fishes
of the old red, are thus described by Agassiz:—“Of the Placoidian
order,” he says, “the genera ctenacanthus, onchus, ctenoptychius,
and ptychacanthus, are provided with spinous rays to the dorsal fins,
resembling the gigantic ichthyodorulites of the carboniferous and
jurassic formations, but differing in their less considerable size; they
are distinguished among themselves by the forms and ornaments of their
rays. In the order of ganoid fishes, the genera acanthodes, diplacanthus,
cheiracanthus, and cheirolepis present themselves at first sight as a
separate group; for although covered, like the others, with enameled
scales, these are so small, that they impart to the skin the appearance
of shagreen. The manner in which the fins are sustained by spinous rays,
or the absence of these rays, and the position of the fins themselves,
have served as characters in the establishing of these genera. The genera
pterichthys, coccosteus, and cephalaspis, form a second group exceedingly
curious: the considerable development of the head, its size, large plates
which cover it, and which likewise extend over the greater portion of
the trunk, and the movable appendages in the form of a wing, placed on
the side of the head, give to them the most remarkable appearance. It is
these peculiarities, indeed, which caused the class to which these genera
belong for a long time to be misunderstood. The large bony and granulated
plates of coccosteus, led to their being considered as belonging to
trionyx: and it will be sufficient excuse for this error to call to
recollection, that the greatest anatomist of our age had sanctioned this
approximation. The form of the disc of the head of the cephalaspides,
which has the appearance of a large crescent, and their more numerous,
but very elevated scales, resembling the transverse articulations of the
body, explain how it was possible to see in these fishes the trilobites
of a particular genus. Lastly, the winged appendages of the sides of
the head of pterichthys, as movable as fins, have easily given rise to
the variety of opinions concerning the true affinity of these singular
creatures, and has caused them to be taken at one time for gigantic
coleoptera, at another for crustacea, or small marine tortoises; so
little do the types of the classes appear fixed in certain respects
at these remote times. Another singularity of these genera is the
association to the bony plates of the head of a vertebral appendage,
which is far from having acquired the same solidity; but appears, on the
contrary, to have remained fibro-cartilaginous during the whole life of
the animal—resembling in this respect the skeleton of the sturgeon.
“It would be difficult to find among recent fishes, types presenting any
direct analogy with the genera pterichthys, coccosteus, and cephalaspis;
it is only from afar that they can be compared to some abnormal genera
of our epoch.... The analogy which they offer, on the one hand, in form
with the dorsal cord of the embryo of fishes, together with the inferior
position of their mouth, which is equally met with in the embryos; and
on the other hand, the distant resemblance of these fishes to certain
types of reptiles, present the most curious assemblage of characters
that can possibly be conceived. A third group of fishes belonging to
this formation, comprises those genera whose vertical fins are double
on the back and under the tail, and which approach very near to the
caudal. These are the genera dipterus, osteolepis, diplopterus, and
glyptolepis, which differ from one another by the form of their scales
and their dentition. And lastly, it seems necessary to regard as a fourth
group of this order, the genera which are characterized by large conical
teeth, situated on the margin of the jaws, between which are alternately
smaller, and indeed very small ones, in the form of a brush. Such are the
genera holoptychius and platygnathus, and the genus recently established
by Mr. Owen under the name of dendrodus, and respecting which this
learned anatomist has given some exceedingly interesting microscopical
details.”
The philosopher here, in these views as to the primitive diversity of
the ichthyoid types in the old red sandstone, adduces such illustrations
and others not quoted, as subversive of the theory of the successive
transformation of species, and of the descent of organized beings now
living, from a small number of primitive forms. He asserts the doctrine
that the characteristic fossils of each well-marked geological epoch
are the representatives of so many distinct creations, and affirms
that he has demonstrated by a vast number of species that the presumed
identifications are exaggerated approximations of species, resembling one
another, but nevertheless specifically distinct. M. Agassiz introduces
the same doctrine in his latest great work, the “Iconographie,” wherein
he goes the length of saying, that, even when species are, so far as
the eye can judge, identical, they may not be so—that there may exist
species so nearly allied, as to render it impossible to distinguish
them—and reiterates that each geological epoch is characterized by a
distinct system of created beings (the results of a new intervention of
creative power), including not only different species from those of the
preceding system, but also new types. Under his safe guidance we have
glanced at the earliest groups and forms of life upon the globe, and have
seen the simple structures of the beginning succeeded by higher, if not
more perfect or more complex, at least by creatures capable of a wider
range of action and enjoyment. The deductions and sweeping inferences of
geologists may be often vague and uncertain; but a science, whose direct
aim is to decipher the records of the past and compare the successive
types of animal life upon the earth, deals with important objects, and
leads to salutary trains of thought, keeping continually before the view
the Fountain-Head of all being; and adding a new proof to the sublime
doctrine, that Man who is privileged so to range through creation and
time will himself outlive a term of existence, measurable by a few points
of space and a few moments of eternity.
[Illustration: Pamphractus Andersoni.]
CHAPTER VI.
TRAP ROCKS.
We do not select the rocks which form the title of this chapter from
mere arbitrary choice, or because they are geographically connected with
the district under review, but because they are immediately the next
in the chronological order of our course. The Sidlaws and Ochils have
their position as precisely determined in relation to time as to space,
for difficult often as it may be to fix the sequence of events within
the historical era, there is generally no lack of evidence by which to
ascertain, in the far remoter times, _when_ the several strata and the
igneous masses assumed their respective places on the surface of the
globe. The proofs here are of a cumulative character, and irresistibly
conclusive. The animate and inanimate things of earth, the living and
the dead, are both admissible witnesses in the question, and their
testimony is alike unexceptionable. The saurian seas had been disturbed
upon the upheaval of their beds; these with their organic contents were
elevated by the irruption of plutonic matter, and in their altered
position gave a bolder contour and additional bulk to the primitive
land. New accumulations were forming during the devonian period in the
waters still mightily agitated along the lines of disturbance; new races
of scale-enameled creatures occupied their depths, and huge crustaceans
anchored among their rocky shallows. The interior regions again let loose
their giant forces, and these chains of hills rose above the surface,
disrupting and heaving into day the various deposits of the old red
sandstone. Hence the formation of the one set of rocks preceded, in
the order of time, the elevation of the other: not an islet appeared
over all these parts while the sedimentary strata were accumulating
beneath: plants and trees covered the flanks of the Grampians, algæ and
fuci abounded in the waters, and myriads of fishes sported amid their
luxuriance; but as yet there was no basin of the Tay, no fertile Carse
of Gowrie, no kingdom of Fife stored to repletion with its precious
metals of iron, lime, and coal. The Sidlaws and Ochils, therefore, become
invested with even a romantic interest, when we thus view them in their
geological relations—their age precisely defined—and themselves, flinty
and weather-stained, the memorials of the vast convulsions and changes
of nature. They mark the outgoing of a period comparatively barren
of vegetable life, and the incoming of the exuberant products of the
carboniferous epoch.
I. THE STRUCTURE of the Sidlaw and Ochil ranges, from the amorphous
character of the rocks, furnishes little or no room for geological
description. These nearly parallel chains of hills, separated only by an
interval of from two to five miles, and forming the lower water-shed of
the basin of the Tay, consist of the various members of the trap family
usually denominated whinstone, and whose structure is very different,
upon a glance, from that of the sandstones and other sedimentary deposits
we have been considering. This class of rocks have all a tendency, in
mineralogical phraseology, to a spathose structure, and discover at
least the rudiments of crystallization: there is no lamination in their
internal texture, and the lines of stratification which they sometimes
exhibit are assumed, or impressed by the previously consolidated strata
among which they have been injected. They are not lavas, which are
sub-aërial products, nor are they aqueous formations, whose materials
have been deposited in water. These rocks are the results of igneous
fusion deep under the crust of the earth, poured over the bottom of the
sea, and protruded into the diversified dome-shaped forms which they
generally present.
Trap-rock consists of several varieties, as porphyry, clinkstone,
compact feldspar, amygdaloid, greenstone, and basalt. These all pass
into each other by insensible gradations, often forming one continuous
mass, for the most part composed of the same ingredients, and have in
consequence been regarded by geologists as belonging to one group,
produced under similar circumstances, and elevated at intervals about
the same period. The porphyritic structure prevails generally in both
chains, and “porphyry has the peculiarity of being rarely found in any
but the primary strata: it seems to be the whinstone of the Old World,
or at least that which is of highest antiquity in the present.”[2] But
not only are both ranges characterized by the same qualities and texture
of rocks in hand-specimens, one hill answering to another; they also
preserve the same general features of outline, and the same relations to
the disrupted sandstones among which they have been injected. The highest
point, for instance, in the eastern division of the Ochils, is Norman’s
Law, attaining an elevation of nearly one thousand feet above the level
of the sea: in its uprise the mass has brought along with it the lower
beds of the gray sandstone, which flank its northern and eastern sides,
within three hundred feet of the summit. To the north and west of Dundee
the highest points of the Sidlaws are encompassed in like manner with
their analogous beds of the gray rock. And so in every locality, whether
along their base lines, or among the numerous ravines and valleys that
intersect their cultivated slopes, the strata may be seen cropping out,
bearing testimony to the convulsive movements to which they have been
exposed, and the altered positions they have in consequence assumed.
A remarkable bed of conglomerate or tufaceous trap intersects the chains
at different, but generally corresponding, points of elevation, varying
from two to four hundred feet above the sea-level. On the Ochil side this
bed crosses the chain of hills from Letham school-house to Lindores Loch,
where, along the line of the Edinburgh and Northern Railway, the out-crop
may be observed at various places—very interestingly on the western
slope of Clatchart—and again appearing at intervals toward Abernethy,
whence it is traceable through the glen. In the ravines of the Sidlaws,
behind Rossie Priory, in the den of Pitroddy, on the face of Kinnoul and
Moncrieffe Hills, and across the ridge intersected by the Perth tunnel,
indications of the same tufaceous bed can be traced, consisting, for the
most part, of quartz rock, schist, and rounded masses of the different
varieties of the trap, mixed not unfrequently with bowlders and smaller
pieces of the gray and red sandstones. This formation has, doubtless,
been produced on the bottom of a troubled sea, where the crust has
been exposed to violent action—much of it comminuted and broken into
fragments, rolled and fashioned into nodules, large portions of it torn
up, but retaining their continuity for a space—when the molten flood has
poured from below, and diffusing itself through the mass, the whole,
after successive eruptions, has been lifted to its present elevation.
II. The amygdaloidal portion of these hills forms an interesting
feature, and prevails very widely in both chains. This rock has a
conglomerated stratified appearance in some places; but generally the
matrix is very compact, rather porphyritic, of a dark brown or greenish
hue, and when exposed to weathering, the innumerable small cavities
or vesicular tissue by which it is laminated are prominently exposed.
These cavities are filled with zeolites, carbonate of lime, chalcedony,
prebnite, and various other crystalline silicious deposits. The green
hue is derived from the decomposition, on the exposed surfaces, of the
imbedded substances. This rock forms the true habitat of the richest and
most beautiful specimens of the agate and jasper family, of the purest
Scottish pebble, and of large sparkling geodes of amethystine crystals.
The agates of Kinnoul and Moncrieffe are prized by lapidaries, as they
are admired by amateurs, and no mineralogist should fail to visit the
romantic pass of Glen Farg—illustrated by the classic pens of Galt,
Lauder, and Scott—adorned and stored, in every niche of its serpentine
course, with calc-spars, analcime, chabasie, stilbite, heulandite,
konilite, and the entire family of the zeolites, presenting often
fasciculi of crystals several inches in length, thin as silken threads,
and rivaling frost-work in the transparency and brilliancy of their
texture. The mass of rock constituting Bein Hill, and intersected by the
turnpike for miles, appears as a simple agglutination of nodules of the
size and color of garden peas, and consisting principally of analcime,
zeolite, and chalcedonic pebbles.
What account is given of these curious formations—of their color,
structure, and qualities—all so different from those of the surrounding
matrix? Assuming the igneous origin of the trap family of rocks, and
against which there can scarcely exist the possibility of an argument,
it is supposed that, when in the act of cooling, cavities would
necessarily be produced in the heated molten mass by the expansive power
of gases, and that upon their escape silicious and other deposits would
be formed in the empty spaces. All the ingredients of the included
crystals, of every genus, are plentifully diffused through nature, mixed
up with the matter of every kind of rock; air and water are nowhere
wanting, and substances sufficiently porous, for their transmission; a
lamination or separation of coating, layer upon layer, is discernible in
every agate; while the still partially existing hollows in some nodules,
and the concentric nature of the bands of earthy matter which lines their
surface, clearly demonstrate the deposition of the outer prior to that of
the inner layer, and prove that at the very time when the crystallization
had commenced, the cavities had assumed the form and shape which they
now retain. Sometimes, too, the nodules have a compressed or flattened
appearance; and the explanation in such cases is, that the cavities, if
formed during the cooling of the beds, must have been altered in their
shape by pressure either before the deposition of the silicious matter,
or during the successive formation of the layers. Other, and indeed
many, theories are broached, among which the most plausible is, that the
cavities in which the agates are now found were caused by the “molecular
aggregation of the silicious particles compelling the surrounding matter
to yield in proportion to the attraction of these homogeneous particles.”
The former explanation, however, is the most generally adopted, the most
obvious in its conditions, and the most accordant with the existing
processes of nature, the laws of heat, and the order of crystallization.
The porosity and fibrous structure of agates, consisting of a congeries
of minute radiating fibers at right angles to the rings or concentric
layers, have also been established from microscopical examination, and
hence the diversity of their colors, whether from vegetable matter or
metallic oxides everywhere so abundant in the soils and crust of the
globe.
The same law or mode of formation applies to crystallized minerals
generally, and has continued to operate from primitive times to our own
in their production. The sparkling topazes of Cairngorm and gigantic
crystals of the Alps—the semi-opal of Iceland and the heliotrope of
Kinnoul—the dazzling emeralds of Brazil and Ethiopia—the stupendous
garnets of Fahlun—the delicately-colored fluors and calc-spars of
Derbyshire and Cumberland—the gorgeous rubies and sapphires of India
and Ceylon—the beautiful prismatic idocrase of Vesuvius and Etna—the
splendid amethystine geodes of Oberstein, Siberia, and Spain, little
grottoes lined with polished geometrical figures, all declare a common
birth as they all nestle in rocks of a common origin. The diamond, the
richest as it is the rarest of all, belongs to a totally different class
of crystallized bodies, and owes its formation to the agency of entirely
different causes.
III. THE DYKES OR VEINS form another striking feature among the
geological phenomena of these hills, and seem as if nature intended
them for lacings or bands to give greater cohesion and stability to
its parts. They consist of long narrow strips of rock, which have made
their way through the previously consolidated strata, intersecting the
planes of their several beds at nearly right angles, and constituting
among themselves a system of parallel and vertical partitions in the
rock. Once observed in any district, these dykes are of too marked a
character not to excite inquiries as to their uses and mode of formation;
and occurring, as they do, in every region and among all classes, from
the oldest primary to the newest tertiary deposits, they are obviously
designed for some great purpose in the plan of Creation.
Veins may be described as tabular masses that penetrate the earth’s
crust to an unknown depth, and almost invariably consist of different
materials from the rocks they traverse. They are supposed to have all
been in a state of fusion, and either themselves to have produced rents
and fissures in their pressure upward, or to have filled with their
molten ingredients such as from other causes were already existing.
When detected in sandstone or other stratified formations, they are
readily distinguished, and acknowledged to be of foreign origin as well
as of posterior date. The matter of them consists generally, among
the secondary formations, of basalt or greenstone; more frequently of
porphyry and feldspar among the older and crystalline rocks. In their
passage through whinstone the sides of the veins are usually smoothed
and polished as if by the action of another body rubbing against
them; the sandstones and other sedimentary rocks are indurated, or
discoloration may be traced for a considerable space inward from the
walls of the vein. There is no mixing up of the materials of the dyke,
nor any approach to incorporation with those of the including mass.
After exposure on the surface to atmospheric influences, the basalt or
greenstone splits up into large tabular blocks, which become extremely
friable, and scale off in thin layers, leaving a central ball, which
exfoliates in like manner, and gradually molders into dust. These dykes
are very numerous in the Grampians, occurring everywhere, and diverging
in every direction through the primary rocks. They traverse the lower
district on the south of the range, five or six crossing the Tay, and
running nearly parallel in a north-westerly course. They rise above
the sandstone in various places of Strathearn, forming mural ridges,
furrowed into broad jointed masses, or piled loosely above each other.
The outgoing of some of these remarkable concretions can be traced into
the German ocean. From St. Andrews westward, their line of bearing may
be detected, both among the trap-hills and the sandstones which flank
them, and like well-run stags, after debouching from the Ochills and
Sidlaws, converging upon the forest of Glenartney. Doubling, winding, and
dragging out and in among the passes from Crieff to Comrie, two of them
may be descried on the steep face of Aberuchill, fairly scaling its lofty
summits; and driving onward, may others be observed on the south of the
Ruchle, to the far heights of Uam-Var.
The etymology of the term _Ochil_, would seem to be connected in some
way with these geological phenomena. A tradition exists that, from
time immemorial, the earthquakes of Comrie were cotemporaneous with
subterranean movements or noises in the _Ochil_ range, near Devon. The
Gælic word _ochain_, or _ochail_, signifies, according to Armstrong,
“moaning, wailing, howling;” and hence it is inferred that the name of
the “Moaning Hills” may have been given to the range, from the sounds
so frequently heard in the district. There can be no question as to
the probability of a subterranean sympathy betwixt the two localities,
through the instrumentality of these dykes, or otherwise; and, though
the series of events referred to above belong to an anterior age—far
remote, indeed, from the human and all its traditions—a plausible origin
is thus given to the name, in connection with an analogous series of
events that did happen within the human period.
IV. A vast historical interest, therefore, is to be attached to these
hills, and their phenomena of veins, connected as they are with the
first elevatory movements of the globe, and when form and outline were
being given to its massive fullness. The hand of the Creator is clearly
seen in raising them up from the depths below. Not a particle of the
entire volume is in its original position, or that which it would of
itself statically assume. God formed everything for use, while beauty and
agreeableness of shape are inseparably combined. When viewed in the light
of causation, it is not enough merely to say, and there to stop short,
that we see in the outward face of nature the impress of power, wisdom,
and goodness—that none of these things made themselves—that the rocks
and mountains are an image of Jehovah’s greatness—the streams, plains,
trees, corns, animals, the effect of His love and care. All this they
unquestionably are, but they are more. Their arrangement and disposition,
beside their mere existence, evince a continued superintendence—a purpose
and a will to maintain an order and construction of elements which would
otherwise separate and dissolve—a keeping together, and as one, each
after their own kind, the inorganic and organic parts of creation. The
philosophy, as well as theology, of these arrangements have been thus
beautifully recorded: Thou coveredst the earth with the deep as with a
garment, the waters stood above the mountains; at thy rebuke they fled,
at the voice of thy thunder they hastened away into the place thou hast
prepared for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over;
that they turn not again to cover the earth.—It is demonstrable that,
were all the rocks which compose our mountain ranges and dry land to
be dissolved and carried into the sea, the waters of the globe are
sufficient again to cover and conceal from view their vast and multiform
materials, and to replace them in those depths whence they originally
arose.
Dr. Chalmers, in his work on natural theology,[3] has not, we think,
correctly apprehended the bearings of the argument for the existence of a
God drawn from the fact of the existence of a material world. “We do not
perceive,” he says, “how, on the observation of an unshapen mass, there
can from its _being_ alone, be drawn any clear or strong inference in
favor of its non-eternity: or that simply because it now is, a time must
have been when it was not. We cannot thus read in the entity of matter,
a prior non-entity, or an original commencement for it: and something
more must be affirmed of matter than merely that it is, ere we can
discern that either an artist’s mind or an artist’s hand has at all been
concerned with it.” Is this either sound reasoning or good philosophy?
The fact of the entity of matter does, necessarily and directly, lead to
the inference that it had a beginning. It could not originate itself,
and just the more as it is viewed in its mere materiality, so much the
stronger and irresistible the conclusion that there was no potentiality
inherent in itself to cause it to begin to exist. Strip these hills of
all their verdure—remove from the mind all consideration of their beauty,
variety, and softness of outline—divest that landscape of its ebb and
flow of tide—of all that constitutes the scene one of the most charming
on the face of the earth, and in its desolation and sterility you would
still in idea revert to a period when it was not. These shapeless, inert,
barren masses of rock, and soil, and sand, did not place themselves there
by any power of their own. Whether on Mount Horeb or Bencleugh, the
mind will learn, from its own inner voice, that the traces of Jehovah
are there—a Power, beyond and above, that called these rude piles into
being—the absence of all form and vitality in themselves the proof and
the witness of the Creator’s mind and the Creator’s hand. Death cannot
originate anything into life. Matter, as matter, cannot constitute nor
begin of itself to be. A scene like this could not now commence its own
being, and at no period in the past did it possess a single property of
self-existence. The entity and eternity of matter are, therefore, two
physically impossible things, as nothing but the one supreme intelligent
God can be at once self-existent and eternal, and that which is God
cannot be material.
But, if the reasoning here is bad, the philosophy is still worse. It
is not philosophy at all to speak of anything in nature as _unshapen_.
Matter is never presented to us in its simple elements. What we see of
the visible, material world, is something in combination with something
else, substance united with substance, and the union and combination
are not accidental or chancework. There are law, order, and definite
proportion in every compound body. Things go together by determinate
arrangement. When first summoned into being, the elements of the universe
had each separately their own communicated properties; they took their
places in the mass, each according to their natures; and now the little
and the great, the bowlder on the heath and the orbs on high, the
concrete rock and our whole planetary system, are modeled upon a plan,
and all subservient to a purpose. In decomposition none of them waste or
decay. Resolved into their primary atoms, they unite in new arrangements,
and collect into new bodies; and in the putrid corrupting mass, the law
of order, symmetry, and beauty, reigns in active operation, eliminating
new structures and establishing new harmonies.
Men have long been acquainted with the fact, that in all combinations
of two or more substances, there are certain proportions which obtain
among the different ingredients, and that the best mixtures are those
which are regulated according to a scale. The arts have flourished, and
improved in one age above those in another, just in proportion as this
principle has been attended to, and the degree in which the properties of
compounds have been ascertained. We hence learn to imitate the crystal
in its clearness, and to rival the colors of gems and flowers. The
metals are thus tempered for the use and benefit of society. The acids
are neutralized, and salts are formed, and the health of man is restored
or preserved. Dalton discovered the law of combination in definite and
multiple proportions to be constant in the thin air we breathe—that
water, in all conditions and situations, consists of the two ingredients
oxygen and hydrogen, and that these in weight are always as eight of
the former to one of the latter—that even the most elastic gases are
composed of particles of real, ponderable, definable matter—and that
through all substances, palpable or impalpable, gross or ethereal, the
principle of aggregation, according to the atomic theory, is universal.
Science has not, indeed, as yet determined what is the law of connection
between the chemical composition and the crystalline forms of bodies;
although Sir David Brewster has clearly established that there is
an exact correspondence between their optical properties and their
crystalline forms,—the law of the transmission of light through specific
substances. Sir Isaac Newton had long before cone to the conclusion—and
from the heavens brought down a philosophy to explain the theory of the
earth—that “All things considered, it seems probable that God, in the
beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable particles,
of such sizes, figures, and with such other properties, and in such
proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed
them; and that these primitive particles, being solids, are incomparably
harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard as
never to wear or break to pieces, no ordinary power being able to divide
what God made one in the first creation.” Philosophy such as this,
verified, much of it, by an induction of rigid experiments, discovers
a universe of matter worthy of its author, and like him—a God, not of
confusion, but of order; things framed, every one of them, according to
rule and method, and all stamped with the indelible impress of utility,
design and loveliness. The “unshapen” has no place in the physical world.
“It is not,” continues Dr. Chalmers, “from some matter being harder than
others, that we infer a God; but when we behold the harder placed where
it is obviously the most effective for a beneficial end, as in the nails,
and claws, and teeth of animals, in this we see evidence of a God.”
Now, this is precisely what has been done in the construction and
disposition of the several parts of our planet. The hardest matter is
placed where it can subserve a beneficial end, on the bottom of the
sea, the shores of a continent, the hills that border the valleys of a
country. The framework of the globe is in itself of the most durable
materials, and these materials have been all so arranged as to render
the earth solid, fertile, and beautiful diversity of climate, combined
with diversity of soil, moisture, and shelter. These rocks may have been
molten in the depths beneath; but no innate powers of nature raised
them unto mountains, and separated the hard from the soft, lifting the
heavier substance into the highest places, and scooping out the hollows
for the lighter. These are acts, all of them, of divine might, directed
to a purpose, and what alone could render this world a fitting abode for
living things. Wonderfully made are all the creatures of our earth,—every
bone, sinew, and muscle in its appropriate place—and so constructed as
best to perform their respective functions. But equally wonderful the
adjustment and adaptation, through all its parts, of that earth on which
they are domiciled, and which ministers so admirably to the various
wants and requirements of its diversified tribes of plants and animals.
Not more significant of design, nor more effective for a beneficial
end, the bony heads and enameled scales of the finny inhabitants of the
period, the cephalaspes and holoptychii of the stratified rocks, than
the indurated texture of the traps as a solid casement in which their
waters were to be retained, and a storehouse of well-assorted materials,
whence substance and nutriment were to be extracted for the land. The
argument, in short, so far as fitness and utility are concerned, is one
and the same in both classes of objects—the house and its inmates alike
illustrative of contrivance and skill—equally eloquent in praise of the
artist’s mind or the artist’s hand.
And in this way it is, that the story of our earth should be read, and
the course of creation should be traced. In the first ordering of things,
we see the interposition of a great First Cause; and the farther back we
go in our geological researches, the more closely do we discern the chain
that connects our globe, and all that is in it, with the throne of the
Eternal. The everlasting hills, we are constantly reminded in Scripture,
are the witnesses of his power. They are appealed to as the evidences of
his ever-active, ever-sustaining presence. What wonderful manifestations
of his might and wisdom have they been called to testify! Mount Ararat,
the symbol of his saving interposition—Mount Sinai, for the giving of the
law, and surrounded with the thunder and terror of his great name—Horeb,
proclaiming his mercy and the gentleness of his love—Gilboa, drenched in
the blood of his swift vengeance—Hermon, a token of the minuteness of his
care and the sweetness of his grace—Tabor, Olivet, and Calvary! scenes of
the mystery of incarnation and awful purity of inflexible justice.—And
these very hills and mountains around, standing memorials through all
ages and their revolutions, that at his bidding they arose, and by his
sustaining agency they are still upheld and preserved on high.
We regard as utterly untenable the doctrine, therefore, that from the
“entity” of matter we cannot infer the existence of a God. Matter, as
mere matter, we do not see, and know nothing of. All the matter that
is brought under our notice, is either organized or elaborated into
arrangement and disposition of parts, as nicely harmonized and adjusted
as organic shape and form.—The organic and inorganic structure may
differ, but the difference is one of degree, as much as of kind. The
argument, from the existence and composition of the atmosphere, the
salubrious mixture of gases in the formation of water, the capacity
and adaptation of soils for the germination of seeds and the growth of
plants, is equally pointed as to the proof of design and beneficial end,
as that which is derived from the fleece of the sheep, the feathers of
the bird, and the silicious coating of the wheat-stalk. The uses of these
things are obvious, and seen and appreciated at once.—But so is every
molecule of matter and aggregation of rock, in the largest amorphous mass
as in the polished crystallized gem, assimilated by law and indurated
for use. And when we see the structure of the entire globe so directly
conducive to the well being of its numerously diversified families, we
have the argument the same in the WHOLE as in the parts, in the lumpish
mass as in the order and symmetry of the bones, muscles, and organs of
the animal frame. But for these hills the rain would fall perniciously,
and the dews distill in vain. Of what use the return of the seasons,
with no variety of climate? and while the ocean encompassed the globe,
where would be the courses of the rivers, the mists and exhalations of
the valleys? We may often mistake the uses of things, the end and purpose
of particular arrangements; but the doctrine of FINAL CAUSES we ought
never to leave out of our calculations. They pervade all nature. They
permeate all bodies. The world as constituted, the creation which we
contemplate and admire, is in all its parts and dispositions a system
of means and ends, a combination of instruments end skillfully-balanced
agencies, a bright ever-discoursing record of the Eternal Mind, which
yet shrouds itself in light inaccessible and utterly unfathomable to the
comprehension of all created, finite intelligences, whether human or
angelic.
Thus geology takes us up to the beginnings of creation—shows us the
ingredients and arrangements of matter—lays bare the foundations of our
earthly dwelling, the divisions and conveniences of its apartments—and
seeing wisdom in adaptation, design in endurance and suitability, we
infer, upon equally irresistible grounds, that the earth is of God, and
manifests in everything the perfections of its Author. The SCHEME of
creation, in all its parts and relations, we may never know; its course
and order we can distinctly trace through many of its arrangements.
[Illustration: Relative Positions of Trap.]
CHAPTER VII.
THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM—PERIOD OF GIGANTIC VEGETABLES.
The system of rocks termed the Carboniferous constitutes the most
remarkable, as well as the most valuable, group in the whole range of
geological investigation. The strata of which this system is composed,
evince design in the clearest and the most unequivocal manner, testifying
to the mandate given on the third day of Creation, that the earth
was to bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree
yielding fruit after its kind; and which, in the prodigious development
of vegetable matter that so early and rapidly ensued, demonstrate such
productive powers of nature to have been chiefly prospective, and
preparatory to the still higher development of life that was to follow.
Milton has finely imagined a tradition in heaven, long subsisting,
concerning the creation of a new world, and of man for whose habitation
it was intended:
“Space may produce new worlds, whereof so rife,
There went a fame in heaven, that He ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favor equal to the sons of heaven;
The happy seat
Of some new race, called Man.”
The idea here so beautifully expressed is, that the cosmical arrangements
of the earth were, from the beginning, so conducted as to be subservient
to man’s well-being; and, certainly, nothing could show more the dignity
of the new race, or the interest taken in them by their Creator, than
this tradition which ran of them in other spheres. But geology, more
to be relied on than poetry, furnishes demonstrative evidence of the
anterior designs and purposes of Omnipotent Wisdom in actually fitting
up “the happy seat,” and in storing it beforehand with materials suited
to the wants and comfortable subsistence of him who was to be its
loftiest inhabitant. The coal-metals, in the discovery of their history
and position, alone vindicate the importance of geology as a science.
The whole group with which they are associated, in their mineral and
vegetable contents, their place in the system, and the means provided at
once for protection and excavation, manifest a series of contrivances so
expressive of design, as cannot fail, when read aright, to draw forth our
gratitude and wonder.
I. THE MINERAL INGREDIENTS, POSITION, AND ARRANGEMENT OF THE
CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM.—The rocks belonging to this formation, in the order
of superposition, succeed the old red sandstone, consisting of a series
of deposits of great thickness, of an infinite number of alternations and
varieties, and nearly the same in every coal-field all over the earth.
They constitute one great group of marked physical characters, formed
under similar conditions, and produced during the same epoch or period of
time. The out-crop of the beds meets the eye along the ridge of which the
Lomonds may be taken as the center, ranging eastward by St. Andrews to
Fifeness Point, and extending indefinitely westward by Stirling, Campsie
Hills, Port-Glasgow, to the coast of Arran. The southern lip of the great
coal basin of Scotland stretches from the German Ocean, near Dunbar, to
the Ayrshire coast in the North Channel, flanked by the old red sandstone
and Silurian rocks almost continuously throughout. And within the space
now indicated are situated all the principal coal-fields of the northern
part of the empire.
The lower beds of the formation consist generally of coarse-grained
sandstone, termed by the English geologists millstone grit, and inclose
a few thin unworkable seams of coal. Bands of ironstone, shale, and
sandstone are superimposed in repeated alternations. A thick massive
limestone lines the edges, feathering in and out through the area
of the basin which contains the coal metals. This is the mountain
limestone, the most of which is supposed to have once existed as coral
reefs, raised on the bottom of shallow seas, so subdivided as to form
suitable compartments for receiving and retaining the matter of the coal.
Accordingly, corals, encrinites, and shells everywhere prevail in the
rocks of this deposit, and, in some instances, present the appearance
of a homogeneous, agglutinated mass of the remains of these marine
animals—the first of living creatures which the waters were charged to
bring forth, and with which they were now swarming. The bituminous beds,
the true coal, generally occupy a central position in the group, firmly
caked and inclosed between the arenaceous and shaly strata. The number
of seams vary in different basins, ranging in Scotland from eleven to
thirty-two or thirty-three, and comprising an average thickness of the
useful mineral of a hundred and twenty feet. The varieties of coal—as
anthracite or blind-coal, cannel or parrot, and the common house or
glance-coal—are occasioned chiefly by the different proportions of the
bituminous elements which enter into their composition. Compared with
Scotland, the coal-measures of England and Wales are of a greater average
thickness, lie far beneath the surface, and contain in general a greater
proportion of bitumen.
The basin containing the coals, as defined above, is inclosed within the
great chains of primary and secondary mountains of the central district
of Scotland, which were upheaved into dry land before the coal-measures
were formed. A period of violent disturbance had thus passed away, when
the carboniferous formation bears evident tokens of having been begun and
completed in tranquil waters. But after being collected, the coal-metals
were exposed to the action of disturbing forces: eruptive masses, of
igneous origin, have invaded their domain; basalts and greenstone,
trap dykes and veins, are everywhere found within their inclosure;
and apparently the utmost disorder and irregularity now reign, where
order and stillness once prevailed. But look a little closer: examine
the length and breadth of any coal-field in any part of the world, and
you will discern proofs of a purpose, not only in the quality of their
materials, but in the position, arrangement, and grouping of the metals;
those very disturbing forces, to which they and all earthly things have
been exposed, giving unequivocal testimony of an overruling intelligence
continuing, through all ages, to superintend and guide their various
operations.
Study any coal-field in your neighborhood, and observe _the place_ of
the mineral. It does not lie exposed upon the surface, but is placed at
a considerable depth in the earth; of which many are apt to complain,
thinking that, if a different arrangement had prevailed, much needless
labor and expense would have been saved. But the constituent elements
of coal are such, that by exposure on the surface the mineral would,
in a comparatively short period of time, have run to waste and decay.
Even a thick covering of earthy mold would not have been sufficient to
protect it; and therefore was the treasure purposely hid in the earth,
and so inclosed that the floods could not wash it away. Then consider the
_quality_ of the rocks by which the coal is protected, and along with
which it is invariably associated. These consist of limestone, sandstone,
shale, and clay ironstone, which always occupy the same basins, and
alternate with the coal sometimes in a series of more than a hundred
beds. Such a group of well-characterized rocks not only act as a guide
for determining the localities of the valuable mineral, but they serve
the double purpose of facilitating the excavation, by affording at once
a safe roofing to the mine, and an easy passage for the drainage of
the water which accumulates in the pits. No other class of rocks would
have been so suitable. The granite and crystalline rocks would have
been inconvenient, or wholly unfit: no borings could have been effected
through such materials to any extent; the operations underneath would
have been equally difficult and unmanageable; and through such hard
compact substances the drainage must have been impracticable. But a still
more remarkable indication of contrivance arises from _the elevated_
and _inclined position_ into which the coal strata have been thrown.
Had they remained in the position which they originally occupied, and
been covered with the vast accumulations which have subsequently taken
place, their depth would have been utterly beyond the industry of man to
have reached. Hence the waters have disappeared, having accomplished the
purpose for which they were, in this instance, spread over the earth, and
the rocks formed beneath them have lifted up their heads; not uniformly,
or in one continuous unbroken mass, but divided into small sections, and
inclined in every possible direction. The wisdom of this appears from
two considerations: From their inclined position, the various beds of
coal are worked with greater facility than if they had been horizontal, a
_level_ is produced for the drainage of the water, and the edges of the
coal bent upward are brought nearer the surface. But these advantages
are, every one of them, increased incalculably by the division of the
coal-field into limited sections, whereby less water is allowed to
accumulate than if the beds had been indefinitely extended; their lower
extremities are prevented from being plunged to a depth that would be
inaccessible; and their several portions arranged in a series of tables,
like the steps of a stair, rising one behind another, and gradually
inclining outward from the lower to the upper seams of the basin. Again,
every coal-field is furnished with a system of checks, in the shape of
_faults_ or _dykes_, against floodings, fire-blaze, and other accidents
that occur in the operations of mining. These faults or dykes consist of
clay, the detritus of the associated rocks, or of intruded whinstone,
with which the fractures produced at the period of the disruption and
elevation of the coal-field have been filled up, and the various sections
of the metal insulated, and contracted to more workable dimensions.
They present the appearance of a vertical wall, cutting the strata at
right angles; and, though often occasioning much inconvenience and
interruption, yet, as every experienced collier well knows, forming
upon the whole his greatest safeguard, and essential every way to his
operations. To all which add, as _constants_ in every coal-field, the
minerals of lime and iron, gifts, both of them, of inestimable value:
the former in the amelioration of the soil and construction of every
social edifice; the latter ductile and plastic as wax, capable of being
welded, and yet, by a slight chemical change, possessed of adamantine
hardness; and the coal always there, in juxta-position, to serve as a
fuel for the reduction of the limestone and ironstone into their economic
properties—properties starting into agency as if by a miracle.
These are a few of the facts connected with the arrangement and
distribution of the coal-measures, in whatever quarter of the globe
they are found. Is it possible to resist the conclusion, that, in such a
disposition of things, there are the clearest indications of contrivance
and design? Nay, that the argument derived from the construction and
positions of the solid parts of the earth is the same in kind, if not in
degree, with that which is so irresistibly demonstrative in the case of
the organic structure of the living frame? The dance of atoms imagined
by the philosopher of antiquity, could never have terminated in the
perfect order and harmony of the heavenly bodies—innumerable systems of
worlds maintained,—each hung upon nothing, and duly preserved all of them
in their respective spheres. Equally impossible is it to contemplate
a disposition of things so adapted, and indeed so indispensable, for
availing ourselves of the mineral treasures of the earth—essential
to our wants, and ministering so directly to our social comfort and
improvement—and yet to refer the whole, or any part, to the blind
operation of fortuitous causes. Impossible, indeed, it ever will be,
for the human mind to embrace or unravel all the mysteries of creation;
but thus admitted to the mighty wonders of the interior, we are almost
enabled to trace the history of the moving atoms from their chaotic
disorder into their places and arrangement in the visible universe—to
see dead matter assuming the forms of life and organization—clothing the
earth for a season with luxuriance and beauty—buried for ages under the
solid rock—and again, out of coldness and death, affording light, and
warmth, and power to the successive generations of men.
II. ORIGIN OF THE CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS.—The strata comprised within the
coal-measures are variously estimated; being, in some instances, about
eleven thousand feet in thickness; in other cases, of much greater depth;
and of this mass of matter, the coal itself does not occupy more than
a maximum average of one hundred and fifty feet. The shales consist of
thin beds of mud, washed down by the rivers from the neighboring heights,
and would appear to have formed the soil on which subsisted a rank
vegetation; the impressions of plants, roots, and trunks of trees being
still found in a standing position. It is from these bands of mudstone
that the best specimens of the flora of the period are derived; every
thin splitting presenting the most entire and beautifully-preserved
figures of fronds and stems. The ironstone is usually mixed up or
associated with the shales, and consists, like them, of comparatively
thin beds of ferruginous clay. The sandstones, of which the greater
proportion of the mass consists, have clearly resulted in the continued
action of the same causes that produced the old red deposit of the
anterior period. But the two remarkable products of the age are the
calcareous and coaly strata, which give character to the system as
well as the epoch in which they were formed; the one showing a sudden
development of carbonate of lime, and the other an increase of vegetable
matter, whose enduring monuments point them out as the most striking
cotemporaneous and co-extensive formations on the surface of the globe,
or connected with the history of our planet. The bituminous products of
the Silurian period, if the anachronism may be pardoned, are but as the
gleanings after the full harvest.
The limestone is unquestionably of marine origin, as the countless
myriads of testacea inclosed in it testify, and was probably constructed
by the primeval families of those island-making architects by which the
coral-reefs of our present seas are raised, and whose instincts have
found them similar employment in all ages of the world. The limestones of
the earlier systems may have been formed in the same manner; and then, as
in the subsequent period, we must go to the great original storehouse of
Nature for the materials on which they worked. The spoils of the primary
rocks could not supply them, as the quantity of the carbonate of lime
therein contained bears no proportion to the masses which constitute
the mountain limestone group. But the calcareous substance was already,
in some elementary form, in combination or otherwise, in existence—the
animals capable of secreting and arranging it anew, as the secondary
instruments of creation, were abounding in the seas—shallow bottoms over
the subjacent sandstones of the devonian system, and within the required
conditions of life, were prepared for their operations. The waters had
now brought forth abundantly the moving creatures, which, at first more
scantily distributed, produced the limestone of the silurian rocks, as
the arborial remains of the land, in like stinted measure, are inclosed
in the older palæozoic deposits. Their day of increase as it advanced,
each after their kind, is recorded in the vast accumulations of animal
and vegetable matter which compose the strata of the carboniferous
system, both of an order and quality purposely so arranged, and never
upon the same scale of magnitude to be repeated in the combustible
mineral.
This account, as given by geologists, of the origin of the mountain
limestone, is rendered not only probable, but almost certain, by the
manner in which we find these little insects, the coral-builders,
constructing their piles of masonry at the present day. For example,
certain species of polyps, of solitary habits, work alone, each rearing
a single stem or stalk, from which others project; then more stems are
produced, until, upon the completion of the whole, there results one of
those beautiful arborescent structures so much prized as ornaments for
cabinets and drawing-rooms. Some, again, attach themselves to the loose
stones, upon which they form their little tree or flower-top; others
adhere to the solid rock, from which there springs a stony vegetation,
rivaling often, in variety, luxuriance, and brilliancy, the most showy
vegetable productions of tropical climes. But a certain class are
gregarious, and will only work in company. Myriads of these inhabit the
Pacific, constructing entire islands, and throwing up mighty barriers of
rock, and threading over vast areas of the sea with inosculating lines
of coral reef. The calcareous accumulation, known as the Great Barrier
Reef, extends for about a thousand miles in length, by about thirty in
mean breadth, filling up, with its various reticulations, the whole
intermediate space betwixt the coast of Australia and Bristow Island, off
the coast of New Guinea. The works of these minute creatures thus occupy
an area which may be roughly estimated at thirty thousand square miles;
the different branches forming compartments of variable extent, which are
divided into linear, outer, and inner reefs, and embracing within their
ample folds the entire spoils of ocean living or floating in these parts.
The mountain limestone of our own country, formed in like manner on the
sea-bottom of corallines, has a wide geographical range, extending from
the bay of St. Andrew’s on the north, to the extremity of Wales on the
south; passing into Ireland, where it is elevated into long ridges, or
occupies the mountain-slopes; and forming outliers or extended barriers
in all the southern counties of Scotland, and in the greater portion of
the northern, the middle, and the south-western districts of England.
These were the coral reefs of an ocean now raised into dry land, divided,
too, into outer and inner compartments, or arranged into systems of lines
and branches, which diverged from or inosculated with each other. Nor
does the resemblance between the recent and the more ancient formations
stop here, but extends to the structure of the deposits, lithologically
considered, the mechanical, sub-crystalline, and crystalline texture
being exhibited in both sets of rocks. Thus, in the examination of Heron
Island, the coral beds, one to two feet thick, are found to have a
tendency to split into slabs, and joints are observed to cross each other
at right angles, parallel to the dip and strike, respectively, giving to
the still living coral rock the jointings, cleavage, and stratification
of the greater palæozoic deposits. Naturalists divide these polyps
into existing and extinct races. But whether extinct and specifically
different, or otherwise, they are creatures of a family, possessed of the
same habits and performing the same operations, now as of old; and if,
as geologists say, millions of ages have elapsed between the actings of
the first and last generations, our admiration will be only all the more
unbounded by thus witnessing the harmony of creation through indefinite
time, and the accuracy of the Book which contains the record of it.
The coal itself, as now universally admitted, is of vegetable origin.
Under the microscope, in the most compact specimens, the tissues by which
all the coal plants are more or less distinguished can be distinctly
traced. Chemically considered, its vegetable origin is equally well
established. Carbon constitutes the principal ingredient of the mineral
the quality of which enters most abundantly into the composition of
vegetables. One theory of its formation is, that vegetable matter,
carried to the sea or extensive lakes, has undergone a process of
decomposition, by which, while some of its principles may have escaped
or been evolved in new combinations, the carbon, with a portion of the
hydrogen, has remained; this, mixed with more or less earthy matter, has
in its soft state been consolidated by the force of aggregation simply,
or by compression from the superincumbent strata, and the action of a
higher degree of temperature than now exists. Others are of opinion
that coal is the altered residuum of trees and smaller plants that have
grown on the spot where we now find them—that the forests were submerged
and covered by detrital matter, which was upraised to form a foundation
and a soil for another forest, to be in its turn submerged and converted
into coal—and that thus the alternations which the vertical section of
a coal-field exhibits are to be accounted for. The former views are
maintained by Sir R. Murchison and other eminent geologists. The latter
have been adopted by Sir Charles Lyell, in consequence mainly of the
arrangements and structure observed in the remarkable coal-field of Nova
Scotia, where he states that there is a range of perpendicular cliffs
in the Bay of Fundy, composed of regular coal-measures, inclined at an
angle between twenty-four and thirty degrees, whose united thickness
is between four and five miles. By neither theory, perhaps, nor by any
other yet advanced, is it possible to reconcile all the appearances which
that singular compound, a COAL-FIELD exhibits—the various changes which
the vegetable matter has undergone to convert it into lignite, jet,
common coal, cannel coal, and anthracite, two or more of these varieties
often occurring in the same coal-measures—in one quarter the clearest
indications that the sea has let in its floods and mingled its spoils
with those of the land, and in another quarter, through fourteen thousand
feet, for example, of the drift accumulations in Nova Scotia, that
there is not a trace even of any substance of a _marine_ character, all
appearing to have been deposited in fresh water. But while no explanation
yet given of the phenomena can be regarded as satisfactory, while Nature
withholds much, and ever will, of the wonderful processes through which
she attains her ends, the vegetable source of the product cannot be
questioned; nay, the origin of coal from the extinct forests, from the
trees and plants of a former age, is so very probable, that some beds
sound like wood under the beat of the hammer; and large areas, when thin
slices are placed under the microscope, are found in every portion to
retain the woody-fibrous structure.
III. THE BOTANICAL CHARACTERS of the flora of the coal period form of
themselves an interesting subject of study, and suggest some very
important considerations as to the history and purpose of the formation.
These will be best understood by a reference to the structure and habits
of plants in general. Those of the coal, it will thence be seen, belong
exclusively to one or two families,—as ferns, palms, and coniferæ,—which
seem to have grown in every soil, and to have been adapted to every
climate.
The most general divisions of existing plants are into the _vasculares_
and _cellulares_. The former kinds all bear flowers, possess a system
of spiral vessels, and are termed phonogamous. The latter, on the other
hand, are flowerless, have no spiral vessels, and are denominated
cryptogamous.
Another extensive subdivision of plants proceeds upon their anatomical
structure, and the laws which regulate their mode of growth. Thus one
class, it has been observed, increase in bulk by additional increments
to the outside of all the parts which compose the plant, as the roots,
stems, and branches; another, by additions to the inside of all these
members: and for this reason the former are called exogenous, and
the latter endogenous. In the one case the new or youngest growth is
always exterior to the old; and if thus left unprotected, it will be
readily admitted that the growth of all such plants would be greatly
and constantly endangered by atmospheric as well as innumerable other
causes. The remedy provided by nature against this, is a covering of the
substance called bark, which is folded round the entire exterior, stem
and branches, of the whole exogens, and within which the newly-formed
tissue is all safely deposited. No plant, on the other hand, whose growth
is from within, needs any such protection, and accordingly none of
them—as all the grasses, corns, canes, and fungi—are possessed of bark,
or any analogous membrane. The bark is an ephemeral substance, which
lasts only for a year, and has annually to be renewed.
The additions to all exogenous plants are indicated in the stem or
trunk, by concentric lines or circles. In the center there is a cellular
substance called pith. When you take, therefore, a cross section of the
trunk of this class, the structure and parts will be arranged thus—bark
on the outside, pith in the center, and between these, concentric
deposits of woody matter, and all connected into a solid mass by plates
of comb-like tissue, radiating from the interior to the circumference,
and termed medullary rays. A structure like this, so closely and firmly
united, and filled up through all its parts, was surely intended for
endurance; and yet out of this class of the vegetable tribes, nature has
selected few of her carboniferous models. The plants of the period, as
yet detected, are composed chiefly of cellular tissue, mixed up with the
substance of the stem, and without pith, medullary rays, concentric woody
deposits, or the binding ligament of bark. The hardy oak and tall slender
cane may be taken as examples of the two modes of structure—the former
allied to existing, the latter to extinct families.
Another ground of distinction among plants consists in the leaves
or flattened expansions, from which they derive all their grace and
symmetry. This is farther connected with the seed and rudimentary organs,
and gives rise to the division into _cotyledonous_ and _acotyledonous_
plants. The non-flowering or cryptogamous are all of the latter kind. The
flowering or phonogamous not only belong to the former, but are again
subdivided into monocotyledonous or dicotyledonous, according as their
seed-vessels are possessed of one or of two lobes. Where there are two
lobes the expansion of the germ upon bursting from the ground terminates
in two imperfect leaves, by which the botanist can at once determine the
class to which it belongs. The corns and grasses have single cotyledons,
from one extremity of which descend the roots, and from the other the
stem springs up, terminated with a single leaf.
The leaves perform important functions in all those orders of plants
with which they are connected, and serve as interesting guides in fossil
botany, which seldom derives any assistance from the more destructible
and “fleeting flower.” The leaves of plants consist of a complicated
net-work of vessels, filled up in the interstices by cellular tissue,
and covered over with a thin epidermis or skin. Those belonging to the
monocotyledonous sub-class are traversed by a number of parallel veins,
while dicotyledonous leaves are divided into regular compartments,
some of which upon withering display the most perfect and beautiful
system of reticulation, rivaling in delicacy of texture the wing of
the gossamer. Leaves which outlast the season, as in evergreens, are
termed non-deciduous, and are covered or interwoven with a thin crust
of silex, which at once serves to protect and communicate to these
ornamental shrubs their bright enameled appearance. The grasses possess
this property, and some of them can elaborate in their joints crystals of
considerable magnitude. The leaves of ferns are called fronds, and differ
from true leaves in bearing the reproductive organs on the surface, while
the slightest inspection of their form and mode of expansion readily
distinguishes them from all others. Fronds, properly so termed, originate
in the stem and are part of it; there is no distinct line of demarkation
between them: stem, leaf, and spori, or seed; are all as one body; and
thus, as being of one piece, these membranous organs have been quaintly
likened to a garment without a seam.
From this brief description it will be seen that all plants and trees
arrange themselves under two great classes, namely, the soft and spongy,
or the hard and fibrous-woody structure. The remains of such as have been
detected in the carboniferous rocks belong almost exclusively to the
former class, the cryptogamiæ and endogenæ, while of the three hundred
and upward of fossil species which have been described and figured, not
more than ten, and some of these still of doubtful characters, can be
regarded as of exogenous and true woody growth. Ferns, mosses, palms,
and gigantic succulent plants, now all allied to those of tropical
climates, constitute the vast preponderancy of the fossil flora of the
age in question. Are we to infer from this that the other families and
tribes which at present so abundantly cover the earth were not then in
existence? The botanist can now refer to his catalogue of eighty to a
hundred thousand species of existing plants, growing in the different
regions of the globe, and of widely distinguished habits and forms;
and were few or none of these in being then? We possess not, as yet,
sufficient data for the solution of this very interesting problem,
although in the progress of geological discovery, every year is adding to
the list, and giving us a more extended acquaintance with the vegetable
products of the coal period. An important experiment recently made by
Professor Lindley would seem to favor the probability that a far more
numerically abundant flora had then existed. One hundred and seventy
plants were thrown into a vessel containing fresh water, and among them
were species belonging to all the natural orders of which the flora of
the coal-measures consists, and also to other natural orders which it
might have been expected would be found associated with them. In the
course of two years, one hundred and twenty-one species had disappeared,
being entirely decomposed, and of the fifty which remained, the most
perfect specimens were those of coniferous plants, ferns, palms,
lycopodiaceæ, and the like—the families, all of them, most allied to
those preserved in the coal-measures.
Now the important fact to be attended to in this experiment is, the wide
geographical distribution during the carboniferous era of those tribes
of plants which enter most certainly and abundantly into the composition
of the coal metals. Many others may, and doubtless did, flourish within
the period of the formation. But that the plants, possessed of the most
conservative vegetable qualities, and the most capable of resisting
solution in water, should be precisely the kinds which had then a
universal range over the earth’s surface, can be ascribed to nothing else
than to a wise predetermined purpose and arrangement. These plants were
growing in every region. Every clime favored them—every soil nourished
them. The bituminous product was intended for man’s use, whose family
was destined to inhabit the whole earth. How irresistible the conclusion,
corroborative of all the proofs of design derived from the nature
and structure of the coal-measures, that, anticipating his wants and
providing for his improvement, nature purposely constructed such forms of
vegetable life, possessed, like the watch, with a compensation balance
so as to suit every condition, and to thrive in every land; or, what
is equally probable and consonant to the requirements of the problem,
that there was such a uniformity of climate and temperature, and other
chemical adjustments, as were most adapted to the peculiar and prevailing
vegetation of the period.
IV. THE ORGANIC REMAINS we proceed to consider more in detail, where a
remarkable contrast will be observed between the vegetable and animal
types presented, so far as they have been respectively fossilized and
preserved. The vegetables are nearly all of terrestrial, the animals are
as generally and predominantly of marine, characters. Is this the result
of blind chance, or of contrivance and foresight?
The plants of the coal epoch consist chiefly of the cryptogamia, and
of these the ferns are the most abundant, composing, according to the
estimate of M. Brongniart, about two-thirds of the entire carboniferous
flora.
[Illustration: 1. Sphenopteris linearis; 2. Pecopteris Mantelli; 3.
Sphenopteris affinis.]
The number of known existing ferns amounts to between seven and eight
hundred, of which about fifty species belong to Great Britain, and
upward of two hundred to the inter-tropical island of Jamaica. Nearly
two hundred fossil species have been discovered in the British coal
strata alone. The fossil genera most common to the district around, and
occurring in every section of the great valley of the Scottish lowlands,
are cyclopteris, neuropteris, pecopteris, and sphenopteris. The shales
and clay-ironstones in which these beautiful plants are detected, are
generally of a dark brownish color, while the impressions are all of
the deepest jet, bringing out in lively contrast the complete cast
of the fronds. There is a great resemblance between the specimens of
extinct ferns and the existing families of our filices, now growing
on every hill, brae, or mountain corrie; and, if this were all the
difference, nature would seem to have departed but little from her
original models. But the presumption is that most, if not all, the
ferns of the coal era were trees which attained to a great height, and
similar to the tree-ferns now growing so abundantly in the islands of
the Pacific. The decorticated stems and trunks are deeply indented with
scars, the markings, it is supposed, of the fronds which dropped from
their feathery sides. This inference is borne out by the additional
circumstance, that the fossils are generally much flattened and
compressed, as would necessarily happen to succulent plants and such
trees as consisted of the cellular tissue of the endogenous class. What
a striking change in the vegetation of our country, where purple heaths,
and cheerful grasses, and luxuriant corns, and forests of every tint
and structure, have replaced the long green stems, and dark somber hues
of the fern-clad regions of the olden times! The remains of this tribe
are so numerous as to have stinted, one would suppose, or utterly to
have prevented the growth and increase of every other order of plants,
bringing before the imagination the scenes of our Australian colonies,
so wild and wondrous to European eyes—and carrying back the mind to the
vision of primeval ages, through a long succession of times and their
events, the vista of an infant world.
The lycopodia, or club-moss tribe, are also very widely distributed
among the coal-measures, and attained in the earlier ages of the earth’s
history an equally gigantic size with the tree-ferns. At the present
day, they are all weak, prostrate plants, of from two to three feet in
length, and, following the same laws as the mosses and ferns, they are
most abundant in hot, humid situations within the tropics, and especially
in the smaller islands. As respects their botanical affinities, the
lycopodiums are intermediate between ferns and coniferæ on the one
hand, and ferns and mosses on the other; related to the first of those
families in the abundance of annular ducts contained in their axis, and
to the second in the whole aspect and outline of the stem of the larger
kinds. Indeed, so great is the resemblance between lycopodia and certain
coniferæ, that there is no other external character, except size, by
which they can be distinguished; and, according to Professor Lindley,
it is, at least, as probable that some of those specimens detected in
the ancient flora of the world, which have been considered gigantic
club-mosses, are really and truly pines, as that they are flowerless
plants.
Another family of fossil plants abundant in the coal formation are the
calamites, so named from their jointed reed-like structure. They attained
to the size of trees, trunks upward of a foot in diameter being often
met with, but still of such a soft succulent texture as to maintain the
character of being, if reeds, easily shaken by the winds. These, and
various specimens of the palm tribe, are to be found in every coal-field,
and often in such vast masses as to show that they constituted no
inconsiderable proportion of the flora of the period. Palms now only
flourish within the regions of the tropics, where, from their various
properties, as well as great productiveness as fruit-bearers, they
constitute the chief source of dependence to the inhabitants for all
their supplies of the necessaries, luxuries, and medicines of life. A
single spathe of the date contains about 12,000 male flowers: another
species has been computed to have 207,000 in a spathe, or 600,000 upon a
single individual. The spathe constitutes the raceme or flower-stem of
the tree, and on a single raceme of a Seje palm, Humboldt estimated the
flowers at forty-four thousand, and the fruits at eight thousand. When
these magnificent productions of nature covered the plains and marshes of
our northern climes, there were no roaming tribes to gather their fruits,
inhale their fragrance, or bask in their shades. And yet they were not
formed in vain. Buried in the rocks, their collected remains now yield
a product as useful and valuable to the human family—as contributive
to intellectual improvement, as they would have been to mere animal
enjoyment.
The genus sigillaria, one of the most common of the coal plants,
possessed the singular properties of being apparently hollow in the
center, yet with an inner woody axis floating in a woody succulent jelly,
and inclosed in a thick outer coating of bark. The trunk is beautifully
fluted with longitudinal parallel lines, regularly arranged along the
surface, and dotted all over with small scars, as if impressed by the
leaves penetrating through the bark into the central woody axis. The
stigmariæ, once supposed to be a distinct genus, are now generally
regarded as simply the roots of the sigillariæ; they are, for the most
part, found resting in their natural position, in large clusters often;
and forming with their dense matted fibers a floor of considerable
thickness, on which, season after season, the leaves fell as the coaly
matter accumulated. This tree grew to an enormous size, specimens of
four feet in diameter by fifty feet in length being frequently met with;
traces of a vascular and fibrous structure can be observed in the
stems—also the annular wood layers are sometimes beautifully defined;
and, combined with a coating of bark of an inch in thickness, the
probability is, that the sigillaria belonged to the exogenous class of
vegetables.
[Illustration: Calamite.]
But of all the plants found in the coal-measures, the CONIFERÆ or pine
tribe, distinguished by their punctated woody tissue, are the most
interesting, whether we consider their characteristic properties,
extensive distribution, antiquity, and consistency of habit through
all the epochs and changes of creation. Unlike the tree-forms already
noticed, the pines grow now as they grew before, inhabiting the same
places, and preserving the same appearances in bulk and figure. In
structure the coniferæ occupy a place intermediate between cellurares
and vasculares, connected with the former through the lycopodiums, and
with the latter by the myriceæ, or aromatic gale tribe. The scales of the
cones are regarded by botanists as true foliage or reduced leaves, and in
this respect they approximate to the genus zamia, of the order cycadeæ,
where these organs are distinctly developed as carpellary leaves. Thus
widely connected through the chain of vegetable life, the fossil pines,
discovered in our coal-fields, form also the most interesting link
between the present and the remote past, showing similar conditions of
vegetable existence and forest landscape. No class of plants have been
more useful to man than the whole pine family; none are more universal
in their distribution over the face of the globe; none are possessed
of such powers of endurance, existing through all time, and natives of
every part of the world, from the perpetual snows of Arctic America,
to the hottest regions of the Indian Archipelago. These trees differ as
remarkably in form as in size, ranging through every gradation from the
stinted juniper of the Grampians to the stately cedars of Lebanon. And
the fossil specimens, huge in dimensions as those of Craigleith are, do
not excel the existing races. The araucaria, or Norfolk Island pine,
attains a height of two hundred feet; and in the Oregon territory of
North-West America, there are species of the fir tribe (P. Lambertiana
and P. Douglasii), which rise to even still more gigantic proportions.
Figuratively, it is said of the cedar, that its branches shall cover the
earth, and in the shadow thereof all fowl of every wing shall dwell:
literally and truly we find, that members of the same family have existed
in all lands, and flourished in the mountains through all ages.
Compared with the present condition of things, New Zealand bears the most
striking resemblance in the character of its vegetation to the flora
of the ancient carboniferous age. “The number of species of plants at
present known is 632, of which 314 are dicotyledonous, and the rest, or
318, are monocotyledonous and cellular. The number of monocotyledonous
is very small in comparison with the cellular; there are 76 species.
The grasses have given way to ferns, for the ferns and fern-like plants
are the most numerous in New Zealand, and cover immense districts.
They replace the _gramineæ_ or grasses of other countries, and give a
character to all the open land of the hills and plains. Some of the
arborescent species grow to thirty feet and more in height, and the
variety and elegance of their forms, from the minutest species to the
giants of their kind, are most remarkable.”[4]
These few types of the flora of the ancient world clearly indicate the
course and progress of creation. A dense vegetable covering already
existed over all the earth. No grasses, indeed, as yet are found to have
clothed the plains. But marsh plants grew luxuriantly in the waters.
Fucoids and algæ abounded in the seas. The hills and mountains raised
high in air their pines, palms, and fern-trees; nor would creepers and
parasites be wanting, climbing to their topmost branches and mingling
their bright enlivening hues with the dark somber shades of the forest.
Earth heard the voice of its Maker, and everything good and seasonable
sprang from its teeming bosom.
The carboniferous limestones are everywhere loaded with ANIMAL remains.
Every member of the series, the ironstones, sandstones, shales, and
even the coal itself, all abound in relics of the past; and, as was to
be expected, the fossils chiefly belong to marine forms of life. And in
these there is no great departure, as might likewise be inferred, from
the orders, and even generic types, we have been surveying in the lower
formations. But there is an increase in the species of some of them, as
well as the introduction of new and distinct creations altogether.
[Illustration: 1. Product. scabriculus; 2. Inoceramus vetustus; 3.
Bellerophon tangentialis.]
Thus the corals and encrinites remain with scarcely a change in
outward form, but of increasing variety, and in countless myriads. The
trilobites are nearly extinct, while the annelidæ, which appear not in
the devonian system, return to the stage in greater numbers and diversity
of structure. The conchiferæ are likewise enlarged in every order; as
also the crustaceæ, which are more than quadrupled. Pteropodæ present
four genera in the silurian group, decline to one in the devonian,
which genus is not found in the carboniferous, but a new one takes its
place. The brachiopodæ are again very abundant, as they were in the two
former groups. The most characteristic shells of the order and period
are the productus, spirifer, terebratula. One genus of heteropoda,
the bellerophon, appeared in the silurian rocks, of which there were
eleven species. Eight species occur in the devonian system along with a
new genus, porcellia. The bellerophon numbers nineteen species in the
carboniferous rocks, and the porcellia, which occurs also, contains
three.
The cephalopods, the most predaceous of their kind, lose generically,
while they multiply prodigiously in species during the latter epoch. Thus
the goniatites alone amount to fifty-four, the nautili to forty-two, and
the orthoceratites, which had declined to twelve in the devonian, swell
to thirty-two species in the carboniferous series.
But the fishes in this group of rocks exhibit, unquestionably, the
largest amount, both in number and form, of new types. Here the sharks
and sauroids appear, for the first time, not small, or attenuated in
bulk, but vigorous, robust specimens of their kind, strong and expert
swimmers, armed with enlarged destructive organs, and every way equipped
for maintaining the due proportion of numbers, and the free trade
of the ocean. Thus of the order of placoids, there are twenty-eight
genera, and ninety-four species; of ganoids there are five genera, and
twelve species; and sauroids enumerate thirteen genera, and twenty-four
distinct and entirely new specific creations. A specimen of reptilian
life has here also been detected; and what is of still greater theoretic
importance, in tracing the course of creation, the immediately overlying
sandstones have yielded up impressions of the winged tribes that “fly in
the open firmament of heaven.” This interesting fact will, in its proper
place in the order of superposition, be more fully alluded to.
The genus holoptychius, which began in the old red sandstone, again
occurs in the carboniferous system, under eight new specific forms. Along
with the megalichthys, afterward noticed, these constitute the two great
natural families of fishes of carnivorous propensities, which give a
marked character to the period. The prodigious increase of the shark-like
creatures, of which not less than sixty species have been described from
thousands of teeth, fins, detached vertebræ, and other fragments, is
equally striking. Thus, in all, the faunæ of the carboniferous period
amount to upward of a thousand species, which have been either figured or
described.
In contemplating the period of creation under review, we are struck
not more with the forms of life which actually existed, than with the
absence of races which were afterward so abundant. No quadruped or true
terrestrial animal is found so low in the series of rocks, or mixed up
in any way with all this profusion of marine exuviæ. Fossil insects
and indications of other winged tribes have been detected; but no bone
nor foot-print of beast, or inhabitant of land, has anywhere been
discovered. The fact is all-important, as showing not only a plan, but a
progress and succession in the work of creation. A vegetation, so rank
and luxuriant as has been traced, trees towering hundreds of feet into
the sky, and branches of the densest foliage stretching on every side,
was amply fitted to afford shelter and food to families of terrestrial
creatures of every kind. But in the circumstance, that during this period
there were repeated alternations of marine and fresh water deposits,
and consequently repeated submergence and elevation of land, we see a
reason why the terrestrial races were not yet called into being. Great
continents, comparatively speaking, did not exist; and there was no
ark of safety provided to float them over the billows. Race after race
would have violently perished during every shift or subsidence of the
sea bottom: and hence, until the carboniferous series was completed and
a statical equilibrium established between the land and waters, few or
none of the races which afterward swarmed in our plains and forests were
introduced upon the scene.
[Illustration: Fragment of Encrinital Limestone.]
CHAPTER VIII.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF COAL—GREAT COAL FIELD OF PENNSYLVANIA,
VIRGINIA AND OHIO—COAL DEPOSITS OF ILLINOIS, INDIANA AND
KENTUCKY—ECONOMIC HISTORY—CONDITIONS OF FORMATION.
Considered mineralogically, and now demonstrated beyond a doubt, coal and
the diamond are found to be one and the same in substance, and nearly
also in their modes of formation. Newton detected the properties of the
diamond in its refractive power over the rays of light, and inferred
that, like amber, it was an unctuous body crystallized. In the crucible
he reduced it to a state of pure carbon, burning, volatilizing, and
resulting in the same elementary products as charcoal. Liebig goes a
step farther, and declares the diamond to be a crystalline residuum from
decayed vegetables. The action of fire could not produce the mineral, but
would rather have the effect of drawing out its inflammable tendencies.
“Science,” he adds, “can point to no process capable of accounting for
the origin and formation of diamonds, except that of decay. And there
is the greatest reason for believing that they have been formed in a
liquid.” Sir David Brewster, in his beautiful optical analysis, has
arrived at the same general conclusions.
Coal is also a product of vegetable decay, collected and formed in a
liquid. It has not crystallized, and therefore wants the sparkle and
the luster of the diamond. It retains all the carbon, and more of the
hydrogen, and is in consequence infinitely more useful and valuable than
even the precious gem. It is carefully incased and preserved among the
rocks of the earth, and thereby in like manner akin to the glittering
idol, whose true habitat has been found to be the sandstones[5]
immediately overlying the carboniferous formation. Thus far the parallel
can be traced between the two apparently very dissimilar and unequally
prized minerals: in extent of substance and geographical distribution,
the history of each stands apart.
I. THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE COAL METALS.—Our knowledge on
this subject is increasing with every new geographical detail connected
with the history of the earth. Until very recently the carboniferous
system was supposed to be of very limited extent. The return of every
vessel, engaged in a voyage of discovery or otherwise, brings tidings of
some new island or continent on which it is found. The same tribes of
plants and animals are everywhere observed to accompany the deposit—all
presenting the same generic and often the same specific characters—and
uniformly on the same great scale of development. This circumstance
alone bespeaks a universal formation, when every region was capable
of producing all the requisite conditions in climate, vegetables,
corallines, and sea-bottom, and prepares the mind for the ready admission
of the existence of the mineral in every unexplored quarter of the globe.
Accordingly, all the great continents of the old world abound in coal. In
Russia, the carboniferous system occupies, betwixt the Dnieper and the
Don, an area of about eleven thousand square miles. India, China, and the
Australian archipelago give up yearly more and more of the bituminous
substance. Egypt is not destitute of the jetty mineral: for recently beds
several feet thick have been discovered near Asuan, on the right bank
of the Nile. The vast continent of America has it in proportion to its
own vastness. And man, go where he will with the knowledge of the arts,
and the diffusive blessings of religion and civilization, will always
find that a wise Providence has anticipated his wants, and prepared the
treasure for his use.
The coal formation in Scotland has been already traced as occupying the
great central valley of the Lowlands, which separates the primitive
crystalline and feldspathic rocks of the north from the silurian series
of the southern border, and traversing the mainland from sea to sea. The
middle and northern coal basins of England have an average uninterrupted
stretch of about two hundred miles in length, by forty in breadth.
The Bristol and Welsh coal-fields, are also very extensive. That of
South Wales forms an immense double trough, comprised within a great
oval elongated tract, betwixt St. Bride’s Bay, and Pontypool, with an
anticlinal axis ranging east and west, and embracing an area of one
thousand and fifty-five square miles. This is the largest coal-field in
Britain, in which there are sixty-four seams of coal, of all qualities,
from the highest bituminous to the purest anthracite, and having an
aggregate thickness of one hundred and ninety-feet. In Ireland the coal
basins are comparatively small, and isolated from one another: the
principal workable seams are in the counties of Kilkenny, Tipperary,
Cork, Tyrone, and the northern extremity of Roscommon.
The coal metals immediately present themselves on the French coast
at Boulogne, more inland at Mons, and in the central district at St.
Etienne, betwixt the valleys of the Loire and Rhone. This last basin
is of small extent, but possesses great geological interest from its
position among the primary and metamorphic rocks, and the materials of
which the series is composed. The metals are inclosed in a long narrow
trough, of about twenty-five miles by less than a mile at its greatest
breadth. Granite, gneiss, mica-slate, underlie them throughout: instead
of shales, and sandstones of the usual kind, the coals are imbedded in
micaceous grit, and the detrital alluvia of the crystalline rocks. It has
been described as a self contained repository, with its own furnishings
and equipments all, as it were, self-originating: the vegetable matter
is of native growth, the trees are still vertical, and in one part of
the field present the appearance of a suddenly petrified forest; the
iron, too, is native, and seems to have been actually smelted on the
spot, by subterranean self-combustion. The coal, underlying one of the
bands of ironstone, has undergone fusion, and been changed into coke;
while sulphur and crystals of sulphate of lime have been separated in the
crucible by the process of sublimation, as if to complete this scene of
marvels.
In the low countries, at Namur and Liege, and other places along the
banks of the Meuse—in Germany, Silesia, Moravia, Poland, the Carpathian
Mountains—on the banks of the Volga, the Dnieper, and the Don, the
coal-measures are found to occupy tracts of greater or lesser extent.
These are sometimes accompanied with the usual alternating series entire
and unbroken, sometimes with the absence of one or more members. In
Russia the metals are imbedded in the middle mountain limestone series in
one field, while in another district they are situated in the lower part
of the series, or beneath the calcareous deposit, as in the thin beds of
Fifeshire. The Liege coal-basin is of a remarkably complex structure—the
metals lying in small hollows of contorted strata, which are bent and
twisted like a sapling—elevated into every varying position and degree of
inclination—and thus, by obtaining cross or horizontal sections, you pass
repeatedly over the edges of the same beds. An enterprising Scotchman has
long been lessee of one of these coal-fields, out of whose iron bands
he has molded cannon and ball for every nation in Europe; and whose
locomotives, forged from the same strata, now ply in pleasure excursions
along every railway of the Netherlands and vine-clad banks of the Rhine
and Moselle.
The American coal-fields, like its interminable forests, endless rivers,
and everything in that vast continent, are all on the gigantic scale.
The basin of the Mississippi, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the
Alleghanies, forms an area equal to two-thirds of the states of Europe,
almost every part of which is covered with the carboniferous limestone,
supporting the coal metals and the newer palæozoic rocks. The great
coal-field of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio, extends, according to Sir
Charles Lyell, continuously from north-east to south-west for a distance
of 207 miles, its breadth being in some places 180 miles. The basin of
Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, is not much inferior in dimensions to
the whole of England, while another coal deposit, 170 by 100 miles, lies
farther to the north, between lakes Michigan and Huron. Mr. Logan,
in his report on the geology of Canada, states that the coal-measures
occupy nearly the whole of New Brunswick, a great part of Nova Scotia,
Cape Breton island, and the south-west district of Newfoundland. And
in the most remote northern regions, along the shores of the frozen
sea, and the various rivers and their tributaries which fall into it,
the carboniferous rocks with their inclosed beds of coal, some of
considerable thickness, are found to prevail. A single seam, of an
average thickness of ten feet, occurs in Pennsylvania, in the district of
Pittsburgh, covering a superficial extent of about 14,000 square miles;
which shows how inexhaustible the resources, and how limitless the means,
of social advancement, of progress in the arts and sciences, garnered up
for the generations to come in that mighty continent.
Upon the authority of Sir Charles Lyell we learn, that all the floral
fossil phenomena are substantially the same as in Europe—a great
preponderance of stigmariæ, ferns, lepidodendra, and calamites—some
consisting of trees in an erect position, and of broken trunks, with
their rootlets attached, and extending in all directions; and the
same grits or sandstones, are found, as those used for building near
Edinburgh and Newcastle. Of forty-eight species of fossil plants or
trees, detected in the strata of Nova Scotia, thirty-seven are identical
with those discovered in the British beds; and, in the United States,
thirty-five out of fifty-three species are described as specifically the
same with the European fossils. But the most remarkable of Sir Charles’s
discoveries is that, in the prodigious thickness and singular structure
of the coal-basin in Nova Scotia, there are the remains of more than ten
forests which rose up successively one over the other, and which, with
their interposed layers of clays and solid stone, deposited at intervals,
constitute a series of beds, whose vertical thickness is 14,570 feet.
II. THE ECONOMIC HISTORY OF COAL.—It does not appear, from any well
authenticated records, at what precise period man availed himself of
this useful mineral, either for the purposes of art, or of domestic
comfort. The early history of nations is traditionary; but there is no
tradition from very remote times, in any of them, as to the discovery of
coal—no philosopher speculating about the importance of the fact and its
bearings on the progress of civilization—no poet extolling the genius of
the new Prometheus, that brought up the fiery combustible from the bowels
of earth. The aborigines who dwelt amidst the primeval forests had no
occasion to seek farther for fuel, when every hill and plain supplied
them with all that was needed, and more than was convenient, as the
cultivation of the soil engaged attention. Accident, doubtless, would
first lead to the knowledge of the virtues of the hidden treasure. As the
ground was cleared, and cities became populous, and the arts advanced,
more diligence would be exercised in its search; and in proportion as it
came, from the destruction of the woods, to be regarded as a necessary
or luxury of life, coal would be sought for as an article of barter,
or of commerce. Thus many ages might elapse before coal was introduced
into general consumption, and though stored up specially for man, it was
wisely ordered that the supplies and incumbrances on the surface should
first be exhausted or removed, ere the inner chambers of his habitation
were broken into and explored.
Bituminous matter, if not the carboniferous system itself, exists
abundantly on the banks of the Euphrates. In the basin of the Nile coal
has been recently detected. It occurs sparingly in some of the states of
Greece: and Theophrastus, in his “History of Stones,” refers to mineral
coal (_lithanthrax_) being found in Liguria, and in Elis, and used by the
smiths; the stones are earthy, he adds, but kindle and burn like wood
coals (the _anthrax_). But by none of the oriental nations does it appear
that the vast latent powers and virtues of the mineral were thus early
discovered, so as to render it an object of commerce or of geological
research. What the Romans termed _lapis ampelites_, is generally
understood to mean our cannel coal, which they used not as fuel, but in
making toys, bracelets, and other ornaments; while their _carbo_, which
Pliny describes as “vehementer perlucet,” was simply the petroleum or
naphtha, which issues so abundantly from all the tertiary deposits. Coal
is found in Syria, and the term frequently occurs in the sacred writings.
But there is no reference anywhere in the inspired record as to digging
or boring for the mineral—no directions for its use—no instructions as
to its constituting a portion of the promised treasures of the land. In
their burnt-offerings, wood appears uniformly to have been employed;
in Leviticus, the term is used as synonymous with fire, where it is
said that “the priests shall lay the parts in order upon the wood, that
is, on the fire which is upon the altar.” And in the same manner for
all domestic purposes, wood and charcoal were invariably made use of.
Doubtless the ancient Hebrews would be acquainted with _natural_ coal, as
in the mountains of Lebanon, whither they continually resorted for their
timber, seams of coal near Beirout were seen to protrude through the
superincumbent strata in various directions. Still there are no traces of
pits or excavations into the rock to show that they duly appreciated the
extent and uses of the article. Their term גחל, which properly signifies
_charcoal_, appears to have passed into the northern languages, as in
the Islandic _gloa_; the Danish _gloe_; the Welsh _glo_, a coal, _golen_
to give light; the Irish _o-gual_; and the Cornish _kolan_—terms all
expressive of the act of burning or of giving light.
For many reasons it would seem that, among modern nations, the primitive
Britons were the first to avail themselves of the valuable combustible.
The word by which it is designated is not of Saxon, but of British
extraction, and is still employed to this day by the Irish, in their form
of _o-gual_, and in that of _kolan_ by the Cornish. In Yorkshire stone
hammers and hatchets have been found in old mines, showing that the early
Britons worked coals before the invasion of the Romans. Manchester,[6]
which has risen upon the very ashes of the mineral, and grown to all its
wealth and greatness under the influence of its heat and light, next
claims the merit of the discovery. Portions of coal have been found under
or imbedded in the sand of a Roman way, excavated some years ago for
the construction of a house, and which, at the time, were ingeniously
conjectured by the local antiquaries to have been collected for the use
of the garrison, stationed on the route of these warlike invaders at
Mancenion, or the Place of Tents. Certain it is, that fragments of coal
are being constantly, in the district, washed out and brought down by the
Medlock and other streams, which break from the mountains through the
coal strata. The attention of the inhabitants would, in this way, be the
more early and readily attracted by the glistening substance.
Nevertheless, for long after, coal was but little valued or appreciated,
turf and wood being the common articles of consumption throughout the
country. About the middle of the ninth century, a grant of land was made
by the Abbey of Peterborough, under the restriction of certain payments
in kind to the monastery, among which are specified sixty carts of wood,
and as showing their comparative worth, only twelve carts of pit-coal.
Toward the end of the thirteenth century, Newcastle is said to have
traded in the article, and by a charter of Henry III, of date 1284, a
license is granted to the burgesses to dig for the mineral. About this
period, coals, for the first time, began to be imported into London, but
were made use of only by smiths, brewers, dyers, and other artisans,
when, in consequence of the smoke being regarded as very injurious to
the public health, Parliament petitioned the king, Edward I, to prohibit
the burning of coal, on the ground of being an intolerable nuisance. A
proclamation was granted, conformable to the prayer of the petition;
and the most severe inquisitorial measures were adopted to restrict or
altogether abolish the use of the combustible, by fine, imprisonment,
and destruction of the furnaces and workshops! They were again brought
into common use in the time of Charles I, and have continued to increase
steadily with the extension of the arts and manufactures, and the
advancing tide of population, until now, in the metropolis and suburbs,
coals are annually consumed to the amount of about three millions of
tons. The use of coal in Scotland seems to be connected with the rise of
the monasteries, institutions which were admirably suited to the times,
the conservators of learning, and pioneers of art and industry all over
Europe, and in whose most rigorous exactions evidences can always be
traced of a judicious and enlightened concern for the general improvement
of the country. Under the regime of monastic rule at Dunfermline, coals
were worked in the year 1291—at Dysart, and other places along the
coast, about half a century later—and, generally, in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries the inhabitants were assessed in coals to the
churches and chapels, which, after the Reformation, have still continued
to be paid in many parishes. Boëthius records that, in his time, the
inhabitants of Fife and the Lothians dug “a black stone,” which, when
kindled, gave out a heat sufficient to melt iron.
How long will the coal-metals of the British isles last at the present,
or even an increased expenditure of the fuel? So great has been the
discrepancy, and so little understood the data on which to form a
calculation, that the authorities variously estimate from two hundred
to two thousand years. For home consumption the present rate is about
THIRTY-TWO MILLIONS of tons annually. The export is about SIX MILLIONS:
and yet such is the enormous mass of this combustible inclosed in one
field alone, that no boundary can be fixed, even the most remote, for its
exhaustion. The coal trade of Great Britain is nearly in the proportion
of three to two of that of all the other nations of the world; while in
superficial area her coal measures are to those of the United States
only as 11,859 square miles to 133,132 square miles. What a vision of
the future is hereby disclosed! If rightly employed, if the arts and
progressive development of society at all keep pace with the means
provided, the human race in the New World have a destiny to run, and a
work of civilization to accomplish, to which the Old, in its brightest
achievements, can furnish but a faint analogy. Scarcely two centuries
have elapsed since coal was employed as an article of domestic use, or
introduced upon the most limited scale into the manufactures; its now
ascertained extent and boundless latent powers were not dreamt of or
imagined even but half a century ago; and very recently the lamentation
was general, that no coal-measures existed in the mighty continent of
America. Who now can fancy a limit to the social movement with which
that vast hemisphere is heaving all over—the advancing tide of its
population spreading in every region—the forests cleared and covered
with a net-work of railways, the rivers bridged from end to end with a
navy of steamships—and all vivified and in motion through the agency of
this long undiscovered product of the earth? Geological time rolled on,
and the surface of our planet was replenished with the hidden treasure,
and the man of science has no numbers to reckon the years that are past.
More agreeable far to look through the vista of coming events, where
a moral era has commenced out of which a mightier series of phenomena
will emerge, the purposes of a wise Providence be illustrated in so
transmuting and preserving the entombed relics of distant ages, and the
glories of the latter day arise, when the desert place shall teem with a
new life, and the wilderness give praise to the Creator of all.
III. Universal, and shall we add, synchronous as a formation, there is
a very interesting question connected with this subject, namely, IS
COAL NOW FORMING? The general opinion among geologists leans to the
affirmative side of the question, and that here, as in all the other
cosmical arrangements going forward on the earth’s surface, time is
the grand requisite. The necessary agencies are all at work, the other
conditions are all admitted, and in the course of some future untold ages
a new bituminous product will arise, similar in all respects to the old.
The subject and the conclusions arrived at are not, however, free of many
and great difficulties, to some of which we shall merely advert.
Reverting to all the circumstances connected with the geographical
distribution of the coal metals, we are inclined to think that the era
which produced them was not only peculiar in the wide geographical
distribution of its families of plants, but equally, if not more so, in
its limitation of all those physical conditions which were necessary for
their conversion into coal. The basins, it will be observed, in which
the vegetable matter was deposited, were, as compared with the existing
ocean, small and shallow; for most of the plants and trees grew within
their area or their immediate neighborhood, and are still found in their
erect position, uninjured by roughing or transport in their smallest
veinlets and even minute fructifications.
Then it is highly probable, that the great continents were not yet
formed, but that a series of islands, barrier reefs, and inland seas,
prevailed generally over the earth’s surface, being still chiefly
oceanic. Consequently no great rivers could, in such circumstances, be
in existence, rolling down like the Ganges, Nile, and Mississippi more
stony detritus and mud than arborescent matter, and all to be mixed and
confounded in one indiscriminate mass. Atmospheric influences, too,
must have been widely different from what they now are; for all the
cast-off apparel of a summer’s luxuriance is, we see year after year,
speedily dissipated by the droughts, or absorbed back as _humus_ into
the earth, and when spring returns the ground is parched and bare. A
difference of temperature must also be taken into the list of modifying
causes; for the plants, during the coal era, are nearly of a class—a few
great types with little variety of structure—one and the same in every
region—and approaching the characters, most of them, of the existing
tropical flora. The climate, according to Mr. Bunbury, was characterized
by excessive moisture, by a mild and steady temperature, and the
entire absence of frost; and it has been established by Mr. Darwin’s
interesting observations on Chiloe and other islands of the southern
temperate zone, that extreme heat is not necessary to the existence of a
very luxuriant and quasi-tropical vegetation. Mr. Austen, on the other
hand, thinks that the temperature of Great Britain has not much changed
since the coal period, because few of the fossil-ferns, found in the
coal-measures, present any fructification, while those in more southern
latitudes possess it; and, by experiments made by himself, it appears
that the existing ferns of tropical climates would not fructify at a low
temperature. Still, the great general fact remains unquestioned, that
tree-ferns during the carboniferous age grew gigantically and in vast
forests, where they do not grow at present over all the zones of the
earth; and where now growing, in three out of the four zones, that the
whole family are reduced to the size of small herbaceous plants.
Now, is it not a legitimate inference from all this, that, out of so
many concurring circumstances, not one of which is similar in all
respects now, a determinate effect was INTENDED to be produced, and
which cannot, in the altered condition of things, be produced again? The
argument is cumulative, and bears the strongest presumptive evidence
on its side. The carboniferous series cannot be repeated—not for want
of vegetable or animal matter, for there is a hundred times more of
both at present on the surface of the earth than perhaps ever existed
in any former period—but because there are so many new causes now in
operation, so many changes in the relative position of sea and land,
to modify its distribution and qualities, and to influence its place
in the system generally, that the same conservative arrangements and
chemical appliances cannot occur, nor any similar bituminous compound as
a geological formation issue from Nature’s laboratory.
Leonard Horner, in enumerating the difficulties connected with the
formation of the coal deposit upon the theory of the whole of the matter,
vegetable and earthy, being spread over the sea-bottom, says—“That the
terrestrial vegetable matter, from which coal has been formed, has in
very many instances been deposited in the sea, is unquestionable, from
their alternations with limestones containing marine remains.” Such
deposits and alternations in an estuary at the mouth of a great river are
conceivable; but whether such enormous beds of limestone, with the corals
and molluscs which they contain, could be formed in an estuary, may admit
of doubt. But it is not so easy to conceive the very distinct separation
of the coal and the stony matter, if formed of drifted materials brought
into the bay by a river. It has been said that the vegetable matter is
brought down at intervals, in freshets, in masses united together, like
the rafts in the Mississippi. But there could not be masses of matted
vegetable matter of uniform thickness, 14,000 square miles in extent,
like the Brownsville bed on the Monongahela and Ohio (the Pittsburgh
seam): and freshets bring down gravel, and sand, and mud, as well as
plants and trees. They must occur several times a year in every river;
but many years must have elapsed during the gradual deposit of the
sandstones and shales that separate the seams of coal. Humboldt tells us
(“Cosmos,” p. 295),—That in the forest lands of the temperate zone, the
carbon contained in the trees on a given surface would not, on an average
of a hundred years, form a layer over that surface more than seven lines
in thickness. If this be a well-ascertained fact, what an enormous
accumulation of vegetable matter must be required to form a coal-seam of
even moderate dimensions! It is extremely improbable that the vegetable
matter brought down by rivers could fall to the bottom of the sea in
clear unmixed layers; it would form a confused mass with stones, sand,
and mud. Again, how difficult to conceive, how extremely improbable in
such circumstances, is the preservation of delicate plants, spread out
with the most perfect arrangement of their parts, uninjured by the rude
action of rapid streams and currents, carrying gravel and sand, and
branches and trunks of trees?”
Nor, according to Mr. Horner, are the objections to the lacustrine
theory, requiring so many oscillations of land and water, of less
magnitude. “In the theory,” he says, “which accounts for the formation
of beds of coal, by supposing that they are the remains of trees and
other plants that grew on the spot where the coal now exists, that the
land was submerged to admit of the covering of sandstones or shale being
deposited, and again elevated, so that the sandstone or shale might
become the subsoil of a new growth, to be again submerged, and this
process repeated as often as there are seams of coal in the series—these
are demands on our assent of a most startling kind. The materials of
each of these seams, however thin (and there are some not an inch thick,
lying upon and covered by great depths of sandstones and shales), must,
according to this theory, have grown on land, and the covering of each
must have been deposited under water.—There must thus have been an
equal number of successive upward and downward movements, and these so
gentle, such soft heavings, as not to break the continuity, or disturb
the parallelism of horizontal lines spread over hundreds of square
miles; and the movements must, moreover, have been so nicely adjusted,
that they should always be downward when a layer of vegetable matter was
to be covered up; and, in the upward movements, the motion must always
have ceased so soon as the last layers of sand or shale had reached the
surface, to be immediately covered by the fresh vegetable growth; for
otherwise we should have found evidence, in the series of successive
deposits, of some being furrowed, broken up, or covered with pebbles or
other detrital matter of land, long exposed to the waves breaking on
a shore, and to meteoric agencies. These conditions, which seem to be
inseparable from the theory in question, it would be difficult to find
anything analogous to in any other case of changes in the relative level
of sea and land with which we are acquainted.”
While these statements show that we are still but imperfectly acquainted
with all the conditions and circumstances under which coal was formed,
two deductions may be made from them, not only as against the rival
theories themselves, of Murchison and Lyell, but still more strongly
against the application of either theory to existing causes in the
formation of the true bituminous product. In the first place, the
vegetable matter brought down by the rivers, and spread over the
bottom of the sea, does not amount to an infinitesimal fraction of
what constitutes the enormous compound of the carboniferous age; and
a different effect, according to the laws of nature of which we have
experience, will necessarily result from the causes now in operation.
Secondly, whatever, as a question of fact, it may have been with our
coal-basins in the times gone by, certain it is that NOW there are no
such oscillatory movements, causing the required changes in the relative
level of sea and land, in those quarters of the globe the most densely
covered with forests and jungle, and out of which the new coal-measures
are expected to rise. The thin accumulations of woody residuum, observed
by Sir Charles Lyell, in the sections exposed along the banks of rivers,
railways, and other passages through American prairies and forests, are
all unfavorably circumstanced—firm as the everlasting hills on their
rocky foundations.
We may be reminded of the numberless ages required for the production
of coal, that man’s experience is but of yesterday, and himself an
ephemeral of a moment as compared with the revolutions of time recorded
on the fabric of the globe. This record, we have reason to think,
should be vastly abridged. But grant it, for the sake of argument, in
all its indefinite dimensions, and still the answer is, that a moment
in a question of this kind is just as instructive as the lapse of a
million of years. Time, while it witnesses change, does not create or of
itself produce anything. It is rather a passive than an active agent.
Time marks on its horoscope the effects of existing causes, but the
causes themselves it neither fashions or eliminates. Geologists enter
into minute calculations as to the annual decay of vegetables, and the
transporting powers of water, the waste of forests and the uptearing
of hurricanes. Grant them all to be correct, and the data in these
respects to be unchallengeably sound, we again beg them to consider
that the Mississippi bears on its bosom the earthy spoils of half a
continent—that the Ganges mixes in its fabled flood the varied wreck of
all the Himalaya,—and when all are duly borne onward by these and the
mighty rivers elsewhere on the globe, that the arrangement of the mingled
composite has yet to be effected—the clays, sands, coals, conglomerates,
all in their serial superposition—the separation of the clean from the
unclean—and where is the agency thus to dispose and to proportion? The
deep says, it is not in me. The rivers show it is not in them. Are there
any cosmical affinities in the things themselves to cause each to each,
kind to kind, to take their respective places?
When we are told, that we know not what is going on in the depths of
ocean, and other hollow places of the earth, our answer is two-fold. For
first we reply, there were depths and hollows, lakes, estuaries, and
seas, during all the _intermediate succeeding_ epochs to the present
age, and no true coal was produced: accumulation after accumulation of
detrital alluvia followed, lapidified, and was distributed over extensive
areas, and common to every region of the globe; but the real bituminous
treasure has not been uniformly an accompaniment. A second answer is,
that when and where vegetable matter, in any quantity, did accumulate,
the result of the process was not COAL. The lignites of the tertiary
deposits, and many of the oolites, have been subjected to the first
and second stages only in those changes which plants undergo in their
transition into the bituminous combustible. Nature in these instances,
if we may use the expression, has made the effort, but the same results
have not followed; the process is incomplete, and the product is only in
patches. If we are reminded of the great oolitic deposit of Richmond, in
Virginia, re-examined and pronounced to be so by Sir C. Lyell, some may
still say non-content, that the problem is not yet solved as to the true
position of the coal there. Many anomalies in geognostic arrangements
occur in that vast continent: many of the intermediate series up to the
chalk are absent altogether, and the sandstones, discriminating the new
from the old red, are not fully determined. Lignite, in considerable
quantity, exists among the tertiary deposits of the Alps, and has
recently been found in the north-west provinces of India, in the vicinity
of Kalibag; but all partaking of the usual qualities—wood, only partially
altered by inhumation, and imperfectly adapted for domestic purposes.
One overwhelming consideration with us, in the discussion of this
question, is the position which MAN occupies, and the part he now plays
on the theater of creation. The beasts and quadrupeds of the earth do
not appear to have been formed so early as the carboniferous epoch.
Had they existed at the period it is impossible to say what effects
would have resulted from their graminivorous propensities in modifying
the amount of the vegetable exuviæ. But man has appeared, modifying,
changing, controlling everything—the earth and all its stores under his
dominion—and all submissive to his will. He has little influence, indeed,
over the more solid departments or structure of the globe—the form of its
continents—the direction of its oceanic currents—the rise of islands and
depression of land—the movements of the earthquake, and fiery torrents of
the volcano; but over all its living products, especially its vegetable
and terrestrial animal tribes, his influence is immense—increasingly
incalculable. And, the geologist says, had this new denizen left the
earth to itself, and nature to her own arrangements—were there no
tilling, draining, and reaping—were the jungle and the wilderness to
be still uninvaded—the marsh and the lagoon to welter in their dreary
desolation—a vast coal deposit would be preparing in all the great lakes
and seas of the globe. These postulates and conditions, however, can no
longer be granted. Every day and every season they are all curtailed and
limited in their influences. Man cuts down the forest, and applies it
in its green, woody state to his own use.—The waste is reclaimed. The
desert he makes his habitation; a place of beauty and civilization. The
moral triumphs over the material, the spiritual over the earthy, and his
charter-right is to subdue all things to himself. Thus the geologist
cannot, if he would, forget or overlook the remarkable human epoch in
which his own lot has been cast. As regards the future, there is a new
element to which a due place must be assigned in his speculations;
and all the great revolutions, and after-phases of our globe, he must
henceforth read and interpret in the REVEALED destiny of his own race.
Finally, let it be assumed, in the argument for the geologists, that vast
masses of vegetable matter are already stored up and duly arranged over
the sea-bottom, that more is continually accumulating, and that there
is heat enough under the earth’s crust to bituminize and indurate the
whole. A new coal epoch is thus approaching, or rather, even now, we are
living within its influences. But the question occurs, when completed,
of what avail would it be to man, who would inevitably be swept off the
earth in the elevation and breaking up of the strata from the depths
beneath? Geology makes known the undoubted fact, that our planet has
been subjected to many and most extensive changes before it was reduced
to its present condition. These, from the beginning, have been all found
subservient to the improvement and well-being of the human family. The
next, upon a similar scale of magnitude, would inevitably prove the
destruction of the race.
[Illustration: 1. Sigillaria pachyderma. 2. Stigmaria ficoides. 3.
Lepidodendron Sternbergii.]
CHAPTER IX.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF FIFESHIRE—DIVISIONS OF THE COAL-FIELD.
The general remarks on the coal deposit, in which we have been led to
indulge in the two last chapters, may be verified by, as they all receive
the most ample illustrations from, the admirable arrangement, position,
and distribution of the metals in the counties of Fife, Clackmannan,
Stirling, Lanark, and Renfrew, which are extensions of one great basin.
Fifeshire alone contains an epitome of the system, divided as it is into
numerous compartments, the encrinital limestone cropping out and marking
their several boundaries. Indeed, the whole series of the carboniferous
rocks are here laid open for examination on every hill-side, in the
numerous ravines which intersect the district, and along the eastern
and southern coast-lines. Approaching the coal-field from the north, a
panoramic section at once fills the eye, and will rivet the attention,
as, stepping from the strata of the antecedent epoch, you find, in
immediate superposition as well as contrast of color, the multiplied and
more diversified reliquiæ of the coal-measures.
The eruptive rocks will also be here studied to great advantage, where
they have played no insignificant part in giving shape and outline to the
landscape, and in laying open the inclosed minerals. It is impossible to
convey any adequate idea, in mere description, of the marvelous display
of plutonic action of which this peninsula has once been the theater:
subterranean movements crushing and grinding into fragments the solid
strata, parting and heaving them asunder, or crumpling into complicated
folds the tougher and more unyielding beds, as if it had been some fabric
of manufacture tossed and twisted by the wind. The bituminous breccia at
Pettycur, Elie, Balcarras Den, and which appears again at the Rock and
Spindle near St. Andrews, affords a remarkable instance of the action of
the intrusive rocks in breaking, and transmuting into a composite paste,
the series of beds constituting the coal-measures, in which every one
of the strata has its representative in fragments, from the size of a
garden pea to masses a foot in diameter or even upward. The storm lifts
the ocean into lofty curling billows, leaving long narrow troughs and
frightful yawning chasms beneath. Here, in like manner, and all over the
surface, the crust has been broken up, and the minerals tossed about, or
agitated like wreck upon the waves, and, upon subsiding, have been cast
into the form of ridges, or broad tabular masses. The ridges, with their
serrated outcrops, in the interior of the county, have been gradually
rounded off and covered with soil; while, by the shore, they still
present the effects of the violent commotions to which they have been
subjected, exposed and laid bare by the action of the sea, upon the lower
levels of the disrupted strata. The Ochils, Lammermuirs, and Pentlands,
were already above the waters, calmly contemplating the troubled scene,
as an inner circle of basalt and greenstone hills arose—the Lomonds,
Largo Law, the Binn, and Binnarty, on the north; Stirling rock,
Corstorphine hill, Arthur’s Seat, Berwick Law, and the Bass, on the
south—which were severally lifted into view, to be stationed as so many
sentinels on the outposts of the field.
The coal metals shared in the general elevation of the hills, where they
are either folded round their bases, or are depending, drapery-wise, from
their tops. Thus the members of the inferior carboniferous series are
raised about eleven hundred feet along the Lomond ridge, encompassing
the east and west cones, and training westward by Binnarty and the
Cleish hills. Largo and Kellie Laws have each their coal basins, of
workable minerals, stretched along their eminences, and dipping toward
the Teasses and Ceres basins. On the low grounds which skirt them on
the south, the metals dip rapidly into the Forth, and are collected in
various hollows or independent bands by the shore. The intermediate
coal-fields, which occupy the center of the basin, are regulated in
their strike and inclination by the dykes and outbursts of trap by which
the strata have been invaded. A limestone traverses the county at right
angles from north to south, emerging at Ravenscrag, which forms a line
of demarkation betwixt the number of the coal seams on its opposite
sides. The Lochgellic, Cowdenbeath, and Dunfermline basins, on the west,
average about twelve to fourteen workable coal-bands, while on the east
of the limestone, the Dysart, Wemyss, Teasses, and Ceres basins run from
twenty to thirty-three of various quality and thickness. The Clackmannan
coal-field recovers in numerical proportion, where there are twenty-four
seams of coal, from two inches to nine feet thick, and two great slips,
which raise the metals successively 700 and 1230 feet, as they abut
against the Ochil range. In the Elgin basin there are twenty-seven beds
of coal, with a thickness of fifty-six feet.
Fifeshire thus owes its diversified shape and contour, and access to all
its vast mineral treasures, to the early disturbances by which it has
been so thoroughly dislocated and furrowed. Every district has a section,
separate and independent, of its own. The ground you tread on is, every
foot of it, a cabinet of wonders—literally a necropolis, a city of the
dead. Go where you will, chronicles of the olden time are before and
around you, while everywhere—
“and at your side
Rises a mountain-rock in rugged pride,
And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms
Of creatures in old worlds.”
The cuttings of the Edinburgh and Perth Railway give excellent sections
of the various minerals of the county, from the gray sandstone to the
uppermost coverings of the coal-field. Entering Fifeshire from the west,
your course lies deep among the detritus of the various members of the
old red series already noticed. At the Newburgh Station, and under the
cliffs of Clatchart, the gray sandstone and cornstone may be observed—the
latter is regularly stratified; the former is embraced among the igneous
rocks, broken, isolated, and inclined at every possible degree to the
horizon. Clatchart Crag itself has been stirred to its foundations; the
huge mass, reverberating now to the passage of other fires, rests on
highly inclined beds of the gray sandstone; the black transverse dyke
of basalt, a few hundred yards on the west, may be conjectured to have
been the instrument of upheaval, as in fancy we can still discern in the
half-raised, half-suspended position of the rock, the enormous pressure
required for its elevation.
The Lomonds and Cults hills are conspicuous objects in the landscape.
The line traverses for miles the yellow sandstone and overlaying grits
which form their base. Greenstone and augitic trap in both ranges cap
the summits, bursting through the coal metals, and elevating the various
beds of limestone. The encrinital limestone sweeps round the peaks of
the Lomonds, filling up the intermediate plateau, in some places bare
of herbage or any covering of soil, and the fossils are lying exposed
on the surface fresh as when washed by the waves, about eleven hundred
feet above their ancient sea-bottom. A vein of galena occurs on the south
side of the hill, intersecting the limestone at right angles to the
plain of stratification, and is described in the notices of the period
of its discovery as rich in silver ore. But it has no great claim, we
believe, to be regarded as _argentiferous_. Two similar veins traverse
the county, one already noticed in Dura Den, and the other in the parish
of Inverkeithing, situated among the same series of rocks, and having
the same general line of bearing from nearly north-east by south-west.
The lead ore in all of them is partly massive, and partly in regular
hexahedral crystals. Lead, copper, cobalt, and silver are likewise found
in the Ochil range, but in no great quantities, in the culminating
heights betwixt Dollar, Bencleugh, and Dalmyat.
On approaching the river Leven at Markinch, the out-crop of the central
coal-basin comes to the surface. After crossing the viaduct the line lies
deep among the metals—a repetition of faults, upheavals, and depressions,
where in succession the edges of the same beds are several times passed
over. The dip is various, the strike generally to the south-east, and
under the sea at Dysart the metals are wrought at the depth of several
hundred feet.
The igneous rocks along the coast will not fail to call forth surprise
and admiration, unrivaled as they probably are in the number of
alternations with the deposits of the carboniferous series, and all the
interesting phenomena which accompany their intrusion. No description,
indeed, can do justice to the interlacings and alternations presented
of the two classes of rocks, so different in their origin, as those of
the traps and coal-measures; where, through the agency of the former,
the latter series are bent, twisted, re-united, altered, and lying at
every angle betwixt the horizontal and perpendicular. Nearing Kirkaldy
the coal is split up, and the fused matter injected between the layers,
converting them into cinder. Within the distance of a mile, from Seaforth
to Kinghorn, there are from forty to fifty alternations of the igneous
and sedimentary rocks; and again, on the west, toward Pittycur, there is
a recurrence of as many, with examples of the jointed columnar basalt
reposing on sandstones rendered quartzose, or converted into chert, and
on shales baked into brick. The outburst at the Burntisland terminus,
in three parallel ridges, throws up the strata, inclining them toward
the north, whence trending round the town they dip under the Binn-hill.
Orrock-hill, lying immediately to the north-east of Binn-hill, furnishes
a beautiful example of jointed basalt: the entire rock, three hundred
feet high, and nearly a mile long, by half-a-mile in breadth, is composed
of regularly constructed columns, which divide into concretionary masses
from one to three feet in length, and presenting generally the pentagonal
or hexagonal form. The columns are grouped into distinct clusters, which,
inclining at various angles, impart to the exposed face of the rock a
pleasing picturesque effect. The erosive action of water, or swell of the
ocean tide, is all that is required here to shape another Staffa—“that
wondrous dome”—out of these magnificent materials.
A fresh-water, or rather perhaps an estuary, limestone is an object of
considerable geological interest in this locality, mixed up and altered
in many places by the igneous matter. The best sections occur a little
back from Pittycur harbor, and on the western slope of Binn-hill, where
it is extensively quarried. Scales of fishes and other ichthyolites
are very abundant: also innumerable microscopic shells, belonging to
the order of entomostraca and the genus cypris. Several species of
palæoniscus have been found in good preservation, namely, P. ariolatis,
P. ornatissimus, and P. Robisoni. The Pygopteris Jamesoni and specimens
of the Eurynotus and Crenatis have likewise been detected in the
deposit. Vegetable remains are very plentiful, especially of the fern
tribe and the lycopodiums: the impressions of the sphenopteris, of which
there are several species, are extremely numerous, fresh, and beautiful.
This limestone is of a dull, earthy aspect, acquired obviously from the
bituminous matter diffused through the mass; not crystalline, though very
compact in texture, and possessed of great hardness. Wardie beach, on the
opposite shore, displays a bed having many points of resemblance, which
abounds in nodular masses, inclosing coprolites and fishes; and inland,
the celebrated Burdiehouse limestone is an extension of the Fifeshire
deposit.
Thus varied and important is this small peninsula, a speck on the face
of the globe, and affording so much room for speculation and detail.
Inclosed between the estuaries of the Tay and Forth are to be found
some of the most legible and remarkable chronicles of our planet’s
history. Fifeshire has been stirred and upheaved all over, abounding in
all the life-moving and plutonic energies of the carboniferous age. The
vegetable and animal kingdoms supply a vast proportion of the materials
of the sedimentary rocks, while the fires of the interior have mainly
contributed to the production of the rest. Shall we look across the
waters, and replace them, in imagination, by the former continuity of
land, when the center of the coal-basin was raised above them, and their
numerous islets were high and dry upon the surface? Certain it is, that
the erupted matter so abundantly scattered along the shores and piled
up in such masses landward, would leave room for subsidence, while the
outgoing of the deposits on both sides shows such an affinity in quality
and strike as to demonstrate an ancient union and geological connection.
[Illustration: Diplopterus—new species.]
CHAPTER X.
THE CARBONIFEROUS ROCKS—CONTINUED.
The geology of the northern division of Scotland is, almost in every
particular in the series of rocks that have been described, the
counterpart of the southern, which now falls to be noticed. The fossils
so richly imbedded in the former are here repeated, more sparingly in
some, more abundantly in other families, and, in several instances,
in the introduction of entirely new forms of organic life. Along the
west and south border counties, the granites, with their associated
crystalline group, are sparingly developed, stretching, at intervals,
from the island of Arran through Galloway and Kirkcudbright into
Dumfries-shire. The silurians follow in their order of superposition,
occupying an extensive area from sea to sea across the island.
The devonian system, chiefly in the upper and middle beds, wraps
round the base of the older formation, and rests unconformably on
its highly-inclined strata. The carboniferous deposits are widely
distributed, some in isolated basins, and enveloped by the old red, and
pregnant all of them with the fossils of the period. The ignigenous
rocks, the traps and porphyries, are also very abundant, some in the form
of detached cones, some in extensive ranges, and all demonstrative of
their character as the agents that have lifted up, disrupted, and twisted
the strata of the district.
In passing over this section of our course, it will not be necessary,
therefore, to dwell in any minute or lengthened descriptions.
I. The geological student, in commencing his researches at Edinburgh,
is immediately arrested by the more prominent objects that everywhere
rise into view—the Castle Rock—the Calton Hill—Salisbury Crag—Arthur’s
Seat—and the Pentlands. A wondrous, glorious scene, every one
involuntarily exclaims, upon reaching any of these heights, thrown, as
if by the hand of an enchanter, in and around this lovely city. Geology
here has its favorite residence—the birth-place and cradle of the
HUTTONIAN THEORY—Arthur’s seat there to attest its truth. What a history
of bygone times recorded in these two words! What a revolution produced
in the sentiments of mankind as to the science of world-making! And,
still more, how deeply were men’s minds agitated, and the foundations of
religious truth stirred, by the novel views which were then announced!
The assumption lying at the foundation of the rival, or Wernerian
theory, is, that the materials of which the various strata of the globe
consist were originally dissolved or suspended in water: they were thus
in a condition to assume any form which their physical qualities and
the laws of matter might determine; and, accordingly, in this fluid
menstruum they were consolidated into various combinations, partly by
means of crystallization, and partly by mechanical deposition. The
Huttonian theory, on the other hand, employs the force of subterraneous
fire as its principal machinery, which is placed at immense depths,
and the materials on which it operates are under a vast pressure; and,
consequently, while they are indurated into limestone, sandstone, and
coal, along with their included fossils, their essential qualities are
but very slightly affected, and the arrangement and disposition of their
particles but little disturbed. The hills around, by which this theory
was to be tested, and to whose singular structure it owed its origin,
consist of an alternating series of tabular masses of trap and the
sedimentary deposits, basalt forming generally the central nucleus, with
tufa, greenstone, and sandstone variously disposed and folded over. All
the conditions of upheaval, tortion, angularity, induration, fracture,
and dislocation, are amply furnished; the columnar, jointed structure is
well defined in Samson’s Ribs; the very momentum of pressure, forcing
the sandstone into the perpendicular, may be studied as a nice dynamical
problem on the Castle rock; and when Sir James Hall brought from his
crucible a reconstructed whinstone, regularly jointed and with no
trace of vitreous fusion, the demonstration of the theory was felt and
acknowledged, in its leading features, to be complete.
Palæontology has added its living wonders to the mere lithological
speculations which were then in vogue and engrossed all attention. And
geologists can now afford to smile at the misinterpretations, made by
both parties, of established facts and well-ascertained things—nay, at
the eagerness with which they irrelevantly pressed facts to bend to
their conflicting views—the vehemence with which the Wernerian declared
whinstone to contain organisms, and to be no exception to the law of
mechanical deposition; while the Huttonian as deliberately set himself
to prove that the nodules in chalk could only be the product of fire—the
formation itself, as now determined, being merely a concretion of shells
of the most perfect structure and undiminished luster. Truth, like
light, emerges slowly, feeble in its dawnings when objects are obscurely
seen or readily mistaken, a portion of the view half in shade, and
half in brightness. And thus it has happened with both systems, as in
the progress of the science errors have been detected and deficiencies
supplied, peculiar to each. The acrimony of the contest, too, has passed
away. Theology has been disentangled, and declared by the divine to
be in no way affected by the issue. And while the scurrilities of the
indiscreet abettors of both are utterly forgotten, the deductions of
Hutton and the masterly expositions of his illustrator are in the main
adopted as the basis of the only true system of geology.
II. In the general structure of the environs of the Scottish metropolis
this plutonic machinery is deeply impressed, as it has been most
vigorously exerted. There is everywhere the greatest derangement
existing among the sedimentary deposits, everything is tossed out of its
original place, and divided into small sections and detached groups. The
connections and relative positions are very difficult to trace. Still,
amidst all the disorder, the more general bearings of the different
formations may be ascertained. Mr. Charles Maclaren, indeed, has examined
everything with a pains-taking care, and described them with a minuteness
and fidelity of detail, which cannot be surpassed, as they need scarcely
be repeated. His “Geology of Fife and the Lothians,” will be in every
student’s hands who desires to be acquainted with the structure of the
district, conversant more especially as this learned geologist is with
the position, fragments, and medal-stamp of every rock—their relations to
each other, historical value, and bearings in the science—and illustrated
with such diversity of section and diagram, that we feel as we accompany
him,—
“Panditur interea domus Omnipotentis.”
The general contour of the city, so picturesque and remarkable in its
grouping of streets, may be taken as a pretty safe guide in determining
the nature of the geology. The town is built over two parallel ridges,
which completely expose the character of the inferior minerals. The
northern division rests upon a series of beds, which appear immediately
to underlie the true workable coal seams; the Old Town ridge and Castle
rock bear up the lower members of the carboniferous deposit, while along
the extended plateau on the south the yellow sandstone of the old red
has been brought to the surface. The whole would thus seem to occupy the
upraised floor of the great coal basin of Mid Lothian, dislocated and
separated by the igneous matter of Arthur’s Seat and the Calton, whence
the metals all plunge to the eastward.—The flat, extending from Restalrig
toward Granton and Craigleith, consists of the same series of beds as
those upon which the New Town stands, and which have been elevated by the
dykes and bosses of trap that so frequently intersect the strata.
The range of the yellow deposit, supposed to belong to the old red, is
well defined; it commences on the northern slope and face of Salisbury
Crags, and covers nearly the whole eastern side, depending to the
Hunter’s Bog. The same series of beds, readily distinguished by their
reddish hue, train round by Samson’s Ribs, thence proceeding by St.
John’s Hill, Heriot’s Hospital, Burntsfield Links, they bear toward the
New Cemetery on the estate of Grange. The beds here, exposed in several
quarries, consist of an alternating series of marls, concretionary
limestone, and sandstone, similar in all their lithological characters to
the deposits of Dura Den and Glenvale. Not a fragment, indeed, of scale
or organism has yet, so far as we know, been detected in the locality
now defined, so as unequivocally to determine the position of the group
in question. But is not the absence of the fossil test as fatal to its
connection with the carboniferous series? while, considering its remote
geographical distance from the undisputed domain of the new red, and its
proximity to a surrounding belt of the true silurian, flanked with the
old red, the presumption is that the deposit will yet be classed with
the upper or yellow sandstone division of the devonian family. Still we
merely indicate an unpresuming judgment, leaving it to so much gifted
local research to confirm or disprove the correctness of the proposed
classification.
III. The Mid Lothian coal-basin, so rich in minerals, forms part of the
great carboniferous valley of Scotland, and may be considered as simply
an extension of the coal-field of Fifeshire, the metals dipping on both
sides toward the middle of the Frith. The out-crop rises toward the
Lammermuirs and the Pentlands.—The area occupied by the coal-measures
includes a space of about eighteen miles in length, by twelve in
breadth. The series of beds composing the formation, are nearly five
thousand feet thick, or about a mile in depth from the upper to the
lower strata, and the whole fractured and dislocated in every part of
the field. There are fifty-two slips, indeed, enumerated by the miners,
which occasion a depression toward the north to the extent of 5,196
feet; the metals are again raised by a series of thirty-seven slips to
the height of 2,412 feet; thereby causing a change of relative level in
the strata, corresponding to the altitude of the highest points in the
Lammermuir range, namely, 2,757 feet. The disturbances above and below
thus approximate to each other. Have they been directed and modified by
the same agencies, the silurian group rising higher and higher as the
carboniferous subsided into the depressions occasioned by the evolution
of the igneous matter? The Bass, North Berwick Law, and Arthur’s Seat,
are the products of the change, though indeed these scattered points of
igneous rock on the surface can give no idea of its subterranean extent,
since basalt and greenstone are met with at unvarying depths in a great
portion of the coal district in question.
The whole field is prolific in organic remains. But BURDIEHOUSE LIMESTONE
claims a separate notice, not only from the abundance but the very
remarkable characters of the fossils contained in it, many of them met
with for the first time in the progress of our sketches. This rock
immediately underlies the encrinital limestone beds of Gilmerton, and
is about twenty-seven feet thick, of a dark dingy color, arising from
so much bituminous matter mixed up with the calcareous. The vegetable
remains are very numerous, and in a state of beautiful preservation.
Nowhere, indeed, in the best arranged herbarium, have we anything so
graceful, so minutely and skillfully delineated, as are the figures of
these plants upon the stone. There are several species of lycopodium;
also stigmaria, sigillaria, equisetum, calamus, and cyclopteris, in
great abundance. The fronds of the fossil sphenopteris furnish exquisite
tracings of nature’s penciling. Nor are the relics belonging to the
animal kingdom less remarkable for their freshness and variety. Here
are the extremes of organic life, microscopic shells innumerable, with
the claws, eyes, slender feelers of their occupants, all entire; and
the gigantic _Megalichthys_, with a body sixty feet long, teeth of four
to six inches still sparkling with luster, and scales of corresponding
magnitude brightly enameled. There are also the bones and plates of
another huge creature, the _Gyracanthus_, along with the jaws of sauroid
fishes, measuring from a foot to a foot and half in length, thickly
studded with teeth. And there, too, lovely trout-like animals, the
_Palæoniscus_—with all the fins and organs and body fresh and glistering,
as if ready to leap to their prey, strewed in countless myriads around.
Nor is the enumeration complete as to the kind and quality of the
fossils of this curious deposit: there _coprolites_ mark the habits of
the predaceous monsters of the period—fæcal excrements composed of the
remains of their victims—and in some places so numerous as to outweigh
the calcareous matrix in which they are imbedded.
M. Agassiz, in his synoptical table of British fossil fishes, 1843, gives
the following list belonging to the Burdiehouse limestone. In the Order
of Placoids, _Ichthyodorulites_, there is a Ptychacanthus sublævis,
Sphenacanthus serrulatus, and Gyracanthus formosus: of _Cestraciontes_,
Otenoptychius pectinatus and denticulatus, and Ctenodus Robertsoni:
of _Hybodontes_, Cladodus acutus, parrus, and Hibberti, and Diplodus
gibbosus, and minutus. In the Order of Ganoids the following occur:
of _Lepidoides_, Palæoniscus ornatissimus, Robisoni, and striolatus,
and Eurynotus crenatus, and fimbriatus; of _Sauroids_, Megalichthys
Hibberti, Diplopterus Robertsoni, Pygopterus Bucklandi and Jamesoni; of
_Cœlacanthes_, Holoptychius Hibberti, sauroides, and striatus, Uronemus
lobatus, and a Phyllolepis tenuissimus. Since this list was drawn up,
many additional fossils have been obtained from the same locality; some
of them exhibit characters which will establish, in all probability, new
genera as well as species. The collection in the Edinburgh College Museum
contains gigantic specimens in the highest condition of preservation,
exciting our wonder at the strange forms which peopled our ancient
seas, and admiration of those singular processes by which they have
been embalmed by the chemistry of nature, surviving so many changes and
disturbances in the history of our planet.
The comparative history of the fishes enumerated, in relation to the
systems of rocks through which they extend, is both interesting and
curious. For example, the genus ptychacanthus begins in the devonian and
ends in the carboniferous period, one species peculiar to each formation.
Palæoniscus begins in the carboniferous, and continues through the
permian age, in five new specific forms. The megalichthys begins in the
devonian and becomes extinct in the carboniferous types; diplopterus,
holoptychius, and phyllolepis have each the same terms of existence; and
again the pygopterus begins in the carboniferous, and survives, in two
new species, through the permian era. Thus five genera are common to the
devonian and carboniferous systems; two to the carboniferous and permian;
eight belong exclusively to and become extinct in the carboniferous.
These results clearly manifest an adaptation on the part of nature, as
well as some arbitrary principle in the order of her creations, and all
speak to the fact of progression in the course of events and of direct
interposition in the successive origin of organic existence. Look again
into these rocks. Consider the causes which so filled them with these
memorials of warfare and death. Two families only, the least predaceous
of their kind, survived the age which produced them—one wide revolution
covered with its spoils the surface of the earth—the wreck is closed over
and silted beneath the waves—and the carboniferous era, teeming with
animal and vegetable life, forever passed away.
The deposit, so fruitful in these organisms, has, with much probability,
been regarded as a fresh-water limestone, from the circumstance that it
contains no corallines or marine shells. The plants, too, are all of a
terrestrial or fluviatile kind, and so perfectly entire as to warrant
the inference that they have not been tossed and drifted about in an
ocean nor transported from a distance, but have perished _in situ_, and
dropped amid still waters. It may have been an estuary on the borders
of an ancient sea, whither the Megalichthys resembling the crocodile
family in bulk, and the Gyracanthi akin to the sharks in voracity, may
have roamed in quest of food, gamboled for pleasure amidst a luxuriance
of tropical vegetation, or indolently reposed by the umbrageous shades
of slimy lagoons. How different the scene over which they maintained
undisputed sway from all that is now in these parts subject to man’s
dominion. Transpose the zones of the earth, and then only could there be
an approximation to the more ancient condition of things.
[Illustration: Basin Form of Coal-fields. 1.1. Mountain Limestone.]
IV. The Mid Lothian coal-basin is bounded on the west and north-west by
the Pentlands, the Braid, and Blackford Hills. The Corstorphine Hills
stand out in bold relief above the plain, and are remarkable of their
kind; they consist of a sandstone basis, capped by an enormous mass of
greenstone, in which the groovings and polish of diluvial or glacial
action have long been familiar to the geologist. The carboniferous beds
occupy, at intervals, the district toward Falkirk and Stirling, much
broken and intersected by the igneous rocks. Stirling, like Edinburgh,
is greatly indebted to its physical features, the Abbey-Crag, the
dome-shaped and wooded rock of Cragforth, the Castle-Hill, and the
Gillies Hill, overlooking and sharing in the glories of the plain of
Bannockburn. These all consist of greenstone or dolerite trap, resting
on sandstone, or often alternating in nearly conformable beds with
sandstone, ironstone, and limestone. The Pentlands stretch about sixteen
miles in length by six in their extreme breadth, the axis of the chain
bearing almost due N. E. and S. W. The eastern division presents the
different varieties of feldspathic rocks—in the center or middle group
of hills the graywacke series are more developed—and on the west the
old red sandstone and carboniferous deposits prevail. The axis of the
chain in some of the higher points is capped with the sedimentary rocks,
and along the entire range the phenomena of upheaval, dislocation,
subsidence, and denudation all present themselves in turn, and in most
instructive forms. The Carlops and Kaim-Valley coal-basin exhibits some
remarkable appearances; within a trough-shaped, narrow space, beds of
feldspar, porphyry, greenstone, and conglomerate are mixed up with the
coal metals, all less or more denuded, separated by transverse openings,
and irregularly broken off at their outcrop. Fossils, though sparingly,
are found in the graywacke, as trilobites and orthoceratites. The Braid
and Blackford Hills are outliers of the Pentlands, and present the same
varieties of rock and general lithological structure.
Rapid and brief as the above sketch is, let the reader be assured there
is much, very much, in the district to interest and instruct. Make the
circuit of the Pentlands when he may, and he will not be satisfied until
he has penetrated every valley, scaled every height, and become familiar
as household words with every name and calling through the length and
breadth of their varied range. Habbie’s How, a very pastoral in the
sound, Carlops, Kaim-Valley, Mount-Maw, Deerhoperigg, Dalmahoy-Crags,
the Mendick Hills, how dear to every lover of nature in their sweet
retreats and cool shady banks! And Tintock, rich in prophetic lore, to
be understood must be ascended, the eye ranging over the whole central
valley of Scotland, embracing both oceans in its field of vision,
and numbering all over the lofty granite peaks of the Grampians.
Resting-spots like these impart a delicious charm to the geologist amidst
his wanderings. If pregnant with the materials of doubtful reasonings,
perplexing arrangements, and intricate soundings, the science has its
sunny sides and cheerful fields of recreation. And if compelled to
traverse regions of dangerous stepping, dark profound abysses, he is
speedily again by the side of sparkling rivers, among grassy holms and
pastoral dales, redolent with the bracing airs of crag and mountain.
Nor are the moral influences of such speculations of a less healthful
and refreshing kind. Geology, which deals with the cycles of time, is
yet the youngest of the sciences. One exclusively of observation, all
its objects lie scattered around the daily pathways of men. And still,
but as yesterday, has it been looked upon with a favorable eye, as a
means of investigating and establishing truth, and its truths themselves
recognized as of good character and tendency. Herein, until very
recently, the tree of knowledge was supposed to yield of its fruits of
good and evil, most abundantly of the latter, and men long pertinaciously
refused to partake of, or even to look at, the precious things that
dropped from its numerous well-laden branches. Hume had attempted to
demonstrate that there was no external world at all. Researches into
the structure of mind, metaphysics, the domain of “common sense” as
distinguished from the abstractions of the ideal philosophy, engaged and
confounded alike the learned and the unlearned. Beneath, in the strata
of the earth, lay the records and memorials, it was said, of vast untold
ages, and all shrunk from an abyss on whose brink it was perilous to
walk. The interior was literally regarded as unhallowed ground, from
whose Pandora recesses, open who might, nothing but evils could issue, at
utter variance with every fixed and established principle.
“Hic specus horrendum et sævi spiracula ditis.”
Religion and science thus stood in direct antagonism to each other,
divorced by general consent from an unnatural alliance; and men, in
those days, in the Scottish metropolis, were grouped into coteries who
eyed each other with a bitter jealousy. Some more liberal mind, indeed,
a Blair and a Robertson, would pass occasionally into the hostile camp,
but returned again to his own ranks, to be received with no very cordial
embrace or flattering approval.
But now, were one of the sages of scarcely half a century ago permitted
to rise from the dust, and to take his place among the intellectuals
of the present time, nothing would be more likely to excite his wonder
than the controversies, and their subjects, which figure in their
works. Theory there is scarcely any among those who now give law in
Modern Athens in letters and science.—Whether in the regions of mental
philosophy, the walks of physical science, or the sacred precincts of
religion, men’s minds are nearly at one as to the objects and distinctive
province of each. They do not fear or dread the pursuits in which
they are respectively engaged, assured that skepticism, or any desire
to maintain it, has now neither party nor standing; or come to what
conclusion they may, the WISDOM FROM ABOVE will in its own pure and
elevated region remain scathless against any or all the bolts with which
it may be assailed. The everlasting hills are still there on their old
foundations—the remarkable variety of structure, which, all around the
city they so marvelously present, still speaks in impressive language
of order and disruption, stability and change—and underneath, in the
imperishable forms of buried generations, are the records of a history
in which man has no part, and with which his destiny would seem in no
wise concerned. But the language written thereon, and the leaves on which
it is impressed, are divested of the awful sibylline mystery in which
they were then involved. The saint is scared not away by the frightful
characters and dark meanings which the sage pretends he can trace in
them. Nor is the sage himself startled at the alchemy of his own art, and
the singular forms he can summon to his presence from his subterranean
domains.
A delightful repose all this from the fierce personal controversies of a
few years ago. Healthful truths are brought to light. On one and the same
page, penetrate as deep as they may, all professions and their abettors
join alike in admiration of the ineffaceable impress of the order,
wisdom, and goodness everywhere to be traced in the structure of the
globe. There is no longer the metaphysician vainly attempting to resolve
the whole concrete mass into the ideal; or ridiculously striving to
raise a structure of materialism, on the assumption that all our ideas,
whatever we know and all we excogitate about, are derived through the
medium of our sensations. The regions of infinite space are explored,
and the devotional tendencies of the age have become the more decided and
intense in proportion as the mental vision has been enlarged. The mind
seizes with a firmer grasp, and advances with a steadier pace over the
fields of creation, because there _is_ a Creator whose invisible Godhead
is understood from the things which are made. And now, in search of
truth, one and the same through all things, religion and science go hand
in hand, sanctified and enlightened by the union, and imparting the most
salutary lessons from the physical and moral revelations of Him whose
path is in the deep places of the earth, and who for the display of his
own glory has become the Instructor and Redeemer of the world.
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAMMERMUIRS—THE BORDER LAND—GENERAL STRUCTURE OF SCOTLAND.
The interest which attaches to this division of our sketches of Scottish
geology is in no degree impaired by the consideration that the rocks,
all of them, belong to one or other of the systems which have already
passed under review. A belt of undisputed Silurian deposit here meets
us for the first time, flanked on all sides, and nearly throughout its
length, by the old red sandstone. Porphyritic hills, greenstone bosses
and dykes, and the various phenomena of trap intrusion and dislocation,
are again presented in many and very striking illustrative details. “The
border land,” physically as well as morally, could not well be without
its points of contention; and, accordingly, geologists have made “raide
across the marches,” and claimed as of Scottish origin an extensive
domain of the English NEW RED sandstone, or Permian system. Corncockle
Moor, too, and the quarries near Dumfries, unfold as curious a page in
the history of the old world as does the Crigup Lynn, hewn out of the
same family of rocks, of the stern warfare and fierce contendings which
adorn, as they likewise disgrace, the annals of the seventeenth century.
The GENERAL STRUCTURE of the district, as now indicated, is determined
in the main by the Lammermuirs, a high mountain-range of sedimentary
rocks, which formed the northern barrier of an extensive inland basin
or sea, and of which the Solway and Tweed occupy the central stretch or
depression. The old red sandstone was herein deposited, the strata of
which rest unconformably upon the older rocks. The carboniferous beds
succeeded, but at a period when the floor of the basin was elevated,
and the dimensions contracted; hence these beds, though reposing
conformably for the most part on those of the old red and not separable
on physical grounds, do not occupy the same extent of surface. Creeks
and bays existed around the silurian shores, into which the materials
of the sandstone were carried, and thus along the southern slope, from
St. Abb’s Head to Portpatrick, the old red is traceable in every opening
and indentation, running up in long narrow tongues, or detached stripes,
among the mountains. The coal series appear at various intervals in small
isolated basins, forming on the west the coal-field of Whitehaven, which
dips into the Solway, and on the east occupying from Kelso to Berwick,
the valley of the Tweed, where the metals lie in very thin bands, and
_underneath_ the mountain limestone. Here are porphyries, which have
disrupted and broken through the old red sandstone, and therefore,
corresponding in age to those of the Sidlaws, Ochils, and Pentlands; and
augite traps and greenstone, scattered over the coal-measures, which are
as clearly the product of the movements that issued in the elevation of
Arthur’s Seat and the Lomonds.
The Lammermuirs have an extent of nearly one hundred and fifty miles
in length, by an average breadth of twenty-five to thirty miles. The
axis of the chain runs from E.N.E. to W.S.W., broken at intervals by
rivers and their divergent valleys, and constituting the great frontier
barrier of Scotland. The Lowthers, Corston-cone, Queensberry, and the
high grounds along the upper right bank of the Nith, form outliers or
extensions of the general mass. Long regarded as furnishing a true
type of _Graywacke_ rock, the Lammermuirs are now, by general consent,
admitted into the family of SILURIANS, bearing affinities both to
the Upper and Lower series, and partaking likewise in some of the
characteristics of the Cambrian group. The eastern division of the chain
consists of very thick beds of a coarse brecciated rock, covered on the
southern side by a fine-grained clay slate. In Kirkcudbrightshire, the
slate-band and conglomerate, seen on the main land, and at White Bay,
in Little Ross Island, are very closely allied in their mineralogical
characters. And in the center division, about Innerleithen, the intrusive
traps constitute a marked and interesting feature, more particularly
as they there assume a subcrystalline granite structure, and convert
the sedimentary deposits into hard flinty slates, or Lydian stone.
The organic remains are not abundant: they are scattered, too, at wide
intervals, but still sufficiently characteristic of the formation. They
consist of graptolites, encrinites, trilobites, and several genera of
shells. The list of conchiferæ, in some beds, is almost entirely Lower
Silurian, while the _smooth Asaphi_ would seem to connect this range of
hills with the lower Silurian rocks of Tyrone and Fermanagh, in Ireland,
which have furnished the only other specimens yet detected in Britain.
The fossil localities are the lime quarries of Wrae, near Broughton,
Greiston slate quarry, near Traquair, St. Mary’s Isle, Kirkcudbright,
Loch Ryan, and Little Ross Island; and in certain graywacke beds
in Liddesdale, Mr. Nicol records the discovery of “fragments of
plants, not unlike the broken reeds, and other imperfect vegetable
remains, seen on some carboniferous sandstones.” The collection of
Lord Selkirk, from the vicinity of his residence, consists according
to Mr. Salter, of—_Terebratula semisulcata_, _Leptæna sarcinulata_,
_Atrypa reticularis_, _Bellerophon trilobatus_, _Natica_, _Turritellæ_,
_Murchisonia_, _Avicula lineata_, _Orthonaia cingulata_, _Phacops
caudatus_, _Beyrichia tuberculata_, and _Graptolites ludensis_. These
characteristic Upper Silurian fossils are accompanied by a _Leptæna
sericea_, and _Orthoceras tenuicinctum_ of Portlock, and appear to be
of the date of Wenlock shale. Their latest historian, indeed, ascribes
a vast indefinite antiquity to the whole range, and considers that the
depository matter has been _twice_ reduced to a muddy arenaceous state:
that a chain of hills existed in these parts at an age long anterior
to the Lammermuirs, and that another stratified formation has to be
intercalated in this district, between the oldest existing strata and the
parent rock, whence the sediment was derived. This opinion is founded
chiefly on the circumstance, that in none of the beds have there ever
been observed any fragments of granite, or the associated crystalline
gneiss and schists, while fragments of clay-slate and graywacke are not
uncommon amongst the conglomerate or coarser varieties. But, admitting
the truth of the statement, does it warrant the inference deduced? The
clay-slates and graywacke of the Highlands are equally destitute of the
inclosed granitoid portions so abundant in the superimposed conglomerates
of the old red; and, upon the supposition of an intensely but unequally
heated sea-bottom, and partial outbursts of irruptive matter, these
appearances in the Lammermuirs, where certain strata contain included
fragments of similar consolidated rock, receive an intelligible and less
extravagant explanation. We more willingly accede to the conclusion
of Mr. Nicol, that we have still here much of the original shape and
contour of this ancient land; that the rivers and valleys are all in
their olden places, and that since the elevation of the group there has
been no important change in their general character and physical outline.
The Lammermuirs, too, connected as they are with the great silurian
deposits of England, Wales, and Ireland, lend confirmation to the theory,
repeatedly adverted to, that these mountains, as well as those of the
preceding epoch, formed the land on which grew part at least of the
exuberant vegetation entombed in the coal formations of Great Britain. It
may have been a peninsula projecting into a sea, whose waves washed the
Grampians on the north, covered all the midland and eastern districts of
England on the south, and were bounded by the primary and silurian girdle
of rocks on the west. Through these depths roamed the successive races of
holoptychius, palæoniscus, gyracanthus, and megalichthys; the shallows
and bottom teemed with swarms of molluscs, trilobites, cephalaspes,
pamphracti; while the dense forests of ferns, palms, and pines, which
clothed the shores and uplands, have been distributed among the various
basins of the coal-measures.
Ascend the Eildons, or, as the route may be, Carterfell, Hartfell, or
Criffel, and witness the changes, as the different systems of rocks
were drifted into their places, and rose above that expanse of waters.
Criffel, the loftiest mountain on the west, is composed of granite, and
formed a solitary islet there, or one of a series of islands, of the
primary crystalline formation. The silurian chains, in their respective
positions, are next elevated to the surface. The old red sandstones
collect and form along their bases, spreading over vast areas all
around. These are lifted into day by the Eildons, and the numerous hills
of claystone porphyry, which give such diversity of character through
Liddesdale, Lauderdale, Cheviotdale, and the whole border landscape.
Carterfell, which consists of a dark greenstone trap, resting on a white
or light reddish sandstone, marks the upheaval of the carboniferous
strata, and probable retirement of the sea from these districts, where we
find no traces of any of the secondary or newer systems of rocks. Thus
the line of the Scottish Border, from Annan to Roxburghshire, consists
of the _under series_ of the coal formation passing down the Tweed,
by Kelso, Sprouston, Coldstream, to Berwick. The old red sandstone is
largely developed by Chester, Hawick, Melrose, Greenlaw, Dunse; and
again, after an interruption of trap and the coal-measures, it resumes
its course by Chirnside, Foulden, and Mornington, to the sea. Scales of
the Holoptychius and Dendrodus are found in the strata at Prestonhaugh,
near Jedburgh, and likewise at the Knock Hill, in Berwickshire. On the
higher grounds, from the Eildons to Hartfell and Peebles, the graywacke
and slate beds everywhere prevail, presenting at St. Abb’s Head, Selkirk,
and Ettrick Bridge, interesting specimens of crumpled and bent strata.
Remarkable veins of trap and calc-spar are to be observed near St. Mary’s
Loch; silver and other metallic ores are said to have been found in the
neighboring hills: near Moffat, gypsum, pyritous graywacke, and alum
slate, are very abundant—formations probably connected with the mineral
waters of Moffat Well and Hartfell spa. At Glendinning, in the parish of
Westerkirk, an antimony mine has been long wrought, which is about twenty
inches wide, and once rich in the valuable mineral. A vein of galena
or lead, lined with heavy-spar, crosses the Esk at Broomholm, below
Langholm, and here the usual series of shales, limestone, sandstone, and
thin bands of coal, are developed for miles, resting on the graywacke of
Hermitage, Ernton, and Witterhope Burn hills.
The valley of the Nith, from the pass of Dalveen to Barjarg, incloses
a space of nearly ten miles in length by four in breadth, filled with
red sandstone and beds of limestone, and exhibits one of those original
creeks or bays in the primary and silurian rocks which characterize this
ancient belt. The lower basin, toward Dumfries and the Solway, presents
the same series of extremely fine-grained strata. The small isolated
basin of red sandstone near Lochmaben, and which contains the celebrated
impressions of foot-marks in the beds at Corncockle Moor, as well as the
very limited patch of sandstone in the vale of the Annan near Moffat,
are probably referable to one and the same system with the above. And
what is that system—the Devonian or Permian? The position of all these
beds, and of others in Annandale, has long formed a fruitful subject of
discussion with geologists and practical engineers, whether to regard
them as an extension of the English new red, or to refer them to the
predominant rock of the country. The latter view is borne out so far by
the fact, that no borings, which have been both numerous and deep, have
penetrated to the coal metals. On Greenough’s map, on the other hand,
the former theory is adopted, where the coal-measures are represented as
extending _underneath_ from Canobie, through Annandale to Arkit Muir, and
as again emerging at Arbigland near Criffel. It has likewise been argued,
that the foot-impressions on the slabs near Dumfries and at Corncockle
Moor, have no analogues anywhere in the true old red of Scotland,
while they are abundantly represented by the foot-prints of the newer
sandstones of England and America. But now indeed such proofs are not
wanting in America, that wide field of all organic things; the discovery
has been made and assented to by the most competent authorities, that,
in the old red sandstone of Pennsylvania, and 8,500 feet below the
upper part of the coal formation, reptilian foot-prints are numerously
and distinctly impressed, allied in form to the tread of the existing
alligator. Then the larger orthoceræ and other testaceæ, found so
plentifully in the limestones of Closeburn and Barjarg, also at Linburn
and Shielgreen, would seem to claim very clearly and decidedly for the
deposit in the middle basin of Nithsdale a Devonian origin.
We must refrain from entering upon the details of the extensive
geological fields which have just been glanced at. A volume would
not suffice to exhaust the subject. But, rapid as our sketch has
necessarily been, enough has been advanced to show how intimately
connected with the great fundamental principles of the science, and
with the original configuration of our planet more especially, are all
the deeply-interesting phenomena of the region in question. If at times
the reader, as well as explorer, is apt to complain of the dryness
of particulars, that the nomenclature is harsh and scholastic, how
delightful to close, even in imagination, the day’s excursion amid these
lovely valleys, to be steeped in fairy lore by St. Mary’s Loch, to dream
of legends and minstrelsy until morning dawn by Newark’s Tower. Nith,
Gala, Ettrick, Yarrow, Teviot, silvery Tweed!—who, indeed, will ever
associate with the minerals, sections, and technicalities of geology.
Still how refreshing to lie down, traveled and weary-worn, by their
green pastures and pure waters. How beautifully do these rivers, all of
them with an origin so remote, hold on in their pebbly courses—winding
and gathering from so many rills amidst the pastoral uplands—“making
sweet music with th’ enameled stones”—and anon with all their affluents
sweeping in placid majesty to the main. Hither will men of all
professions and pursuits,—the sportsman, poet, philosopher,—eagerly and
rejoicingly resort, each with his own object or his own care. Finely, in
imperishable verse, has the truth been expressed of that many-colored
tide of human life on which all are embarked—
“Which, though it change in ceaseless flow,
Retains each grief, retains each crime”—
—but NOW these streams, dales, and hills retain no impress of strife or
blood; and hence will the wish, age after age, breathe from many a heart—
“By Yarrow’s stream still let me stray,
Though none should guide my feeble way:
Still feel the breeze down Ettrick break,
Although it chill my withered cheek;
Still lay my head by Teviot stone,
Though there forgotten and alone.”
And so human life will glide away, a new epoch will come, and the
development of man’s immortal being will be accomplished in the new and
brighter earth that is to arise.
We here close our review, over Scottish ground, of the earliest lessons
to which we have access of the mineral structure of our globe. All the
primary, palæozoic, and older class of the secondary rocks, are largely
developed, leading us, indeed, a very little way into the inner chambers
of the earth, but back through periods of time into the records of its
history, for which the science itself furnishes no real standard of
measurement. Vast, inconceivable cycles pass before the imagination, and
fascinate the speculatist, while the sober inquirer pauses, doubts—nay,
startles—at such remote undefined annals of creation. The legends and
chronicles of Scotland are old indeed; but give geologists their own
way, and what an antiquity would they assign to the mountains, valleys,
and rivers of ancient Caledon! And yet, true it is, no rocks on the face
of the earth can claim a deeper origin, an earlier arrangement, a more
ancient ascent above the waters, than those whose nature and position we
have so cursorily described.
Leaving for the present the question as to Time, geology has this
advantage, in facilitating an acquaintance with its principles, that
its lessons are as general as they are particular. Go where you will
the record is before you, so that, generally speaking, what is observed
of its subject in one district or country, or even continent, has its
counterpart in some other place near or remote. The rocks of Scotland
are all on the great scale, not solitary and individual specimens, but
wide-spread formations along the face of the country. With scarcely a
single exception, every class of rocks described in our course stretches
from sea to sea over the island. The structure of Scotland is peculiar
in this, that the bearing and the strike of the various strata, are
correspondent and continuous. Hence the parallelism of the great straths
and valleys. The principal rivers are observant of the same law. The
several formations, from the primary crystalline to the coal and upper
sandstones, have a common axis of elevation from nearly E. N. E. to W. S.
W., partaking more of an equatorial than of a meridional direction. The
porphyries and chains of the older traps maintain a similar direction.
The greenstones and basalts, polygonal and jointed, or otherwise, are
for the most part to be found _within_ the area of the coal measures, or
rising along the out-crop of the basins. Hence a description of any one
locality will generally, in respect of the same series of rocks, be found
applicable to another. The student may indifferently begin his researches
as his convenience or sojourn for the time may direct. And whether it be
the granite on the coasts of Aberdeen or of Arran—the schists of Glenisla
or the Mull of Cantire—the silurian of St. Abb’s Head or Portpatrick—the
devonian of Stonehaven or Girvan—the porphyries of Dundee or Largs—the
shales and limestones of St. Andrews, Glasgow, or Ayr—the columnar
basalts of Earlsferry, Orrock, Campsie, or Staffa—the lesson throughout
will be one and the same, either as respects the mineral texture or
the geological position of the rocks examined. A section, therefore,
commencing at Ben Nevis and terminating at Kirkcudbright on the Solway,
would present the very same series in all the main phenomena of
superposition, structure, dislocation, and fossil remains, as the section
adopted from Ben-Mac-Dhui to the Cheviots. Granite, gneiss, quartz
rock, mica schist, and clay slate, underlie the old red sandstone which
traverses the upper district of Stirlingshire. The traps of the Campsie
Hills have thrown up, and form the boundary of the great coal-basin, of
which Glasgow constitutes the center, and within whose area and suburbs
are exhibited all the most striking features of the basalt and greenstone
family—the elevation at the Necropolis beautifully showing the effects
of their intrusion, and the induration of the sedimentary deposits. On
the south, the coal metals are again succeeded by the old red sandstone
and the porphyries, which in their turn are replaced by the silurian or
graywacke rocks of the border counties. The section throughout is of
the most varied and instructive character, diversified by the grandest
mountain scenery, the loveliest of the Scottish lakes, and a development
of the arts and sciences over inexhaustible coal and iron treasures which
has rendered the name of the western metropolis illustrious among the
cities of the world.
Should the geologist desire to extend his researches along the
western coast and among the islands, he will experience an additional
interest, arising chiefly from the numerous junctions of the different
formations or sets of rocks which the constant erosion of the Atlantic
has everywhere exposed to view. Gigantic isolated portions of granite
or syenite, bared all around, are to be seen on every headland. The
twistings and flexures of gneiss and the schists are frequent and
remarkable. Columnar basalt, similar to Staffa, fringes the base of
every islet and promontory; and from appearances like these, he will
invariably infer the presence of the carboniferous deposits, which, in
small detached patches are of common occurrence. Here, likewise, are
to be found the lias and oolites, in marginal stripes on several of
the islands, easily distinguished by their characteristic fossils,
and giving unequivocal indications of a far greater extension, and
continuity with the main land, ere the inroads of the sea had broken up
and parted so much of the aboriginal structure of the district. The _vi
et sæpe cadendo_ of geological agency—the convulsions of subterranean
forces, and the destroying powers of water—are exhibited in all their
grandeur, where, in the face of cliffs exposed to their foundations,
the hardest rocks may be observed yielding to every wave, and the whole
inner machinery of granitic and basaltic dykes which upheaved them from
their basis traced in their most varying forms and complicity. Out of the
Ægean a finer group of islands is nowhere to be threaded—some scarcely
raised above sea-level—some towering into the clouds, as in the lofty
peaks of Mull, Jura, and Rum, with an altitude almost equal to their
length—most of them glorying in names soft and euphonious as the choicest
of classic Greece—and yet, all fragmentary and disrupted, as if but
yesterday shivered by the thunder cloud. Skye exhibits an epitome not
of the islands only, but nearly of our whole British geology, in which
there is every variety of trap, combined with the primary series—coal,
white sandstone, and limestone—the lias and oolites of secondary
formation—and mountains 3,300 feet in height, composed of Labrador
feldspar and hypersthene, whose crystals in the dark composite mass rival
in structure, if not in beauty, the stalactitic concretions of the Spar
Cave itself. Rocks, too, are here, of metamorphic texture, to which a
Macculloch did not venture to assign a name or position in his list.
And the serrated jagged pinnacles of the Coolin ridge, with the black
Coruisk inclosed as in a crater, who will attempt to describe—unlike to
everything else in bleak, naked, precipitous grandeur! The poet of the
Isles has sketched the picture—
“Such are the scenes, where savage grandeur wakes
An awful thrill that softens into sighs;
Such feelings rouse them by dim Rannoch’s lakes,
In dark Glencoe such gloomy raptures rise:
Or farther, where, beneath the northern skies,
Chides wild Loch-Eribol, his caverns hoar—
But, be the minstrel judge, they yield the prize
Of desert dignity to that dread shore
That sees grim Coolin rise, and hears Coriskin roar.”
ENGLAND.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
ENGLAND—GENERAL SKETCH.
Differing as England does in people, manners, language, laws, and
institutions from Scotland, a still greater difference will be found
to exist in the physical structure, the mineral qualities, the organic
remains, and in all the other phenomena of her geological development.
In the ascending series of rocks, Scotland furnishes only a few steps of
the building—the lower courses of a gigantic pyramid; across the borders,
strata upon strata follow each other in regular gradation, until they
attain their apex of elevation in the center of the capital. Another
distinction exists in the quantity and extent of those rocks which are
common to both countries. All the primary, transition, and igneous
formations are more abundant in the northern division of the island,
constituting nearly three-fourths of its surface, while in the southern
division they do not amount to a fiftieth part; but, on the other hand,
the secondary and tertiary formations, which in Scotland are scarcely
recognized, or only found in patches, form in England about two-thirds
of its superficial area. Hence, on English ground, a new interest begins
as a totally new series of mineral strata rises into view, and all
charged with types and families of creatures of equally new and marvelous
organization.
The new series of rocks to be described, are termed the Permian,
triassic, oolitic, cretaceous, and tertiary systems. Some of these
deposits are of vast thickness and extent. They all abound in fossils,
some in the greatest profusion, others only in the rarest and most
remarkable types. In consequence of these accumulations, England, as
compared with her sister kingdom, may be described as the full organic
form in bones, muscles, and fleshy appendages, plump and rounded all
over, where one sees little of the framework or internal ossification.
The great masses are so covered over, the ribs and members are so silted
up, that the ridges and hills of the country, save on the outskirts,
dwindle into insignificance. Every original depression has been
concealed, new increments of matter are everywhere added, layer upon
layer superinduced, until the older fabric is nearly obliterated, or only
at wide intervals observed to rise above the surface. Scotland exhibits
the huge trunk, stripped and laid bare; every yielding thing has been
eroded and torn off; and little remains, except the giant skeleton, the
lineamentary fragments of the primeval world.
What is common to the two countries, among the primary and crystalline
rocks, occupies the whole western line of coast. The eastern shores of
Ireland, correspond in mineralogical character with the opposite shores
of Scotland, England, and Wales, where a great silurian belt covers,
almost continuously, both lines of coast. These districts have thus all a
common origin, are all of the same geological epoch, and were probably at
one period more united than appearances now indicate. The Cumbrian group
is isolated from the other portions of the system, and, as described by
Professor Sedgwick, comprehends the lowest fossiliferous beds in the
island, or perhaps as yet known in the crust of the globe. The elaborate
work of Sir R. I. Murchison on “THE SILURIAN SYSTEM,” has made every one
acquainted with the extensive deposits in Wales and Cornwall, in which
the divisions of the system are fully pointed out, their fossil contents
amply detailed, and their relations to analogous deposits in other parts
of the world satisfactorily demonstrated. Through all these regions,
therefore, we are again carried back among the earlier records already
noticed. Coincident with the same are the old red sandstone deposits
which stretch along the base of the more highly-inclined silurians,
covering the greater portion of Herefordshire and Devonshire; and here,
as in Scotland, the sandstones and conglomerates are immediately
succeeded by the rich treasures of the carboniferous age. In the rocks of
the three families lie, in profuse abundance, the organic remains of the
epochs which produced them—cast like wreck among the silts and sands now
hardened and upheaved into mountains—the peaks of Skiddaw and Snowdon, of
Plinlimmon and Helvellyn, once the beaches or floors of our ancient seas.
The Cumberland group of mountains, with its varied scenery and lakes, is
surrounded with the carboniferous rocks—as bright and lovely a picture,
set in a framework of jet or ebony, as the mind can contemplate. The
great _scar_, or mountain limestone, constitutes the base of the coal
series, resting on the old red conglomerate. This calcareous deposit is
of vast thickness, range, and extent—a concrete mass of animal remains
of five or six hundred feet. It presents the outline of a great coral
reef which anciently fringed the center cluster of the lake mountains:
and is still, with a few breaks, traceable along their wide and irregular
circumference. The sublime gorge of Gordale, the fine gray precipices
at the foot of Ingleborough, the caverns of Chapel-le-Dale and Clapham,
the rocks of Kirby Londsdale Bridge, and the great white terrace of
Whitbarrow, all derive their peculiar features from the effects of
erosive action on this formation. Diverging from the great terminal group
of the Cumbrians, the same deposit rises along the center of the district
into an independent ridge, taking up the most commanding positions—the
towering summit of Cross Fell on the one hand, and the celebrated High
Peak of Derby on the other, with all its wondrous caves and sparkling
fluor-crystals. The intermediate range of the Penine Alps, so denominated
by the Romans, is chiefly composed of the formation. The caves of
Kirkdale, the haunt of the British hyena and other extinct carnivora, are
situated in the same limestone, which is also the repository of numerous
lead mines, distinguished for their splendid metallic concretions and
fluor-spars. And here, too, are rivers which are lost in its dark
caverns; and that wonder of wonders, an astronomical paradox, where, from
the peculiar conformation of the hills and ravines, the sun does not rise
upon the inhabitants of Narrowdale, until he has passed his meridian,
and, as if to repair the loss, twice sets upon their horizon in the
course of every evening.
The coal-measures on the eastern side of this chain consist of the
Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Nottingham, and Derby fields; on the
west and north, Whitehaven, Lancashire, Manchester, and North Stafford;
and on the south lie the basins of Ashborne, Loughborough, Wolverhampton,
and Dudley. The limestone skirts the out-crop of the metals in all these
localities, and thus serves to define the relations of the several
basins, and the cause of so many divisions in the field, occasioned by
the net-work of coral reef with which it has been originally penetrated.
The Wolverhampton basin is remarkable for the number of roots and stumps
of fossil trees found “in situ;” in the Derby field the railway tunnel
has exposed to view a group of sigillaria, forty in number, standing at
right angles to the plane of the beds, and not more than three or four
feet apart. Many of the tree fossils occupy a similar position in the
Northumberland and Newcastle coal-measures, reminding us of the submerged
forests of which, within the modern epoch, our sea-coasts furnish so
many examples. The Newcastle coal-field embraces an area of nearly eight
hundred square miles, being forty-eight miles in length by twenty-four
in breadth; the depth of the shaft is about three hundred fathoms, from
which are annually brought to the surface an average of six million tons
of coal. Sixty thousand persons are employed in the mining operations;
and fourteen hundred vessels are engaged in carrying the mineral to
London and its environs. The iron trade, connected with the different
English coal-fields, is upon a corresponding scale of magnitude, there
being little short of a million and a half tons of the metal annually
smelted and brought to the market, estimated to be worth, upon an
average, twenty millions of pounds sterling, and comprising within the
dimensions of this small island, as much as is exhumed by all the other
nations of the globe. The Newcastle coal-measures have been singularly
disturbed. A basaltic dyke, in some places eighteen yards wide, crosses
the southern part of the field, throwing down the metals on one side
ninety fathoms, and reducing the coal, at the distance of fifty yards,
to a state of cinder. This great dyke is traceable through a course of
seventy miles. As an example of the prodigious power with which these
subterranean forces have acted in the district, suffice it to mention,
that the limestone which underlies the coal metals has been elevated
nearly to the summit of Cross Fell, a mountain three thousand feet in
height; and estimating the thickness of the formation at four thousand
feet, the limestone, it will thus appear, has been raised above its
original position upward of six thousand feet.
The “green rock,” or basaltic greenstone of the South Staffordshire
coal-field, presents an interesting subject of geological research.
The center of the formation, as also that of the eruptive agency of
the tract, may be considered to be in the Rowley Hills, from which the
latter diverges on all sides, setting off innumerable veins or vertical
dykes, which are subdivided into smaller veins of a white color, and
everywhere penetrating and altering the shales, sandstones, and coal
metals. This igneous mass is more of an underground than super-surface
rock, occupying an area of twenty-five square miles, and rising only
into slightly-elevated and detached ridges. It corresponds, in mineral
characters and position, with another extensive effusion of trap in the
northern coal-fields, termed the “Whinsill.” This consists of a bed of
basalt, which has been injected among the strata of the coal-measures,
or, as some conjecture, has been poured over them as a cotemporaneous
formation—an overflood of lava produced during the deposition of the
mountain limestone group, and overlaid in turn by the succeeding series
of upper strata. Nearly the entire coal-measures of the north of England
have been more or less influenced by the eruption of the Whinsill, from
which dykes are thrown off in every direction, accompanied by phenomena
precisely similar to those exhibited in the coal districts of Scotland.
In both countries the same agencies are thereby demonstrated to have been
at work, originating in the same causes and producing similar effects,
and doubtless cotemporaneous in their operations over these and other
immense areas of the globe.
The rocks which constitute the SECONDARY and TERTIARY DIVISIONS in
the great geological series remain to be described. These, generally,
all range eastward from the older formations, to which they succeed
in the order of superposition. The line of section of the whole bears
from Whitehaven on the north-west, to Newhaven on the German Ocean by
south-east, where, along this course, every formation in the island is
intersected, ascending from the granite of the Cumbrian mountains through
all the intermediate series to the London clay and upper tertiaries. The
strata of which these formations consist are all, more or less, inclined
to the horizon, dipping under each other, and emerging in succession to
the surface. The outcrop is at right angles to the line of section, so
that each class of rocks rises to and faces the north-west, meeting the
eye of the geologist as they are in turn approached, and narrowing in
extent and receding in proportion as they are vertically removed from the
older systems.
Hence, were our researches to begin here, instead of in the Grampian
range, the starting point would necessarily be in the Lake mountains.
The crystalline primary rocks are developed, though sparingly, in this
district; and these, again, are surrounded and overlaid by the lowest
fossiliferous deposits, termed by their explorer and historian, “The
Cumbrian System.” All the driest details of the science are here too
amply relieved by the charming and magnificent scenery amidst which
they fall to be wrought out, where the inner and outer arrangements
of Nature, in the disposition of her works, are alike fitted to call
forth our admiration and delight. The author of “Elia,” who had spent
his days in a city life and had a prejudice against every other mode
of consuming time, upon his first excursion so far into the country,
describes Coleridge as “dwelling upon a small hill by the side of
Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net
of mountains; great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all
couchant and asleep.” It was enough; the soul of the man of genius was
stirred. He clambered up to the top of Skiddaw; and he waded up the bed
of the Lodore; and he satisfied himself, “that there is such a thing as
tourists call _romantic_.” But Lamb was never meant for a geologist, and
for science of any kind he had no aptitude. The athletic Wordsworth is
of a different mold, compacted of different elements, a mind stored with
the loveliest images; an understanding capable of sounding the depths of
any subject, and a thirst after knowledge from all and every source of
visible creation; and yet, mark how disparagingly he pronounces judgment
upon the student of unquestionably the most poetical of all the branches
of physical inquiry—“that fellow wanderer”—
“He who with pocket hammer smites the edge
Of luckless rock or prominent stone,
The substance classes by some barbarous name,
And hurries on;
and thinks himself enriched,
Wealthier, and doubtless wiser, than before.”
But men, it would seem, can no more command their moods of thought than
their prejudices. The poetical vein, like the geological, will burst
through all restraints to illustrate and vindicate the principles of
truth. We have often repeated, recalling them from memory, as the index
of our own frame of mind, while searching in the crypts of the primeval
world, the beautiful lines—a hymn to Nature’s works, and the study of
them—
“These barren rocks, our stern inheritance,
These fertile fields, that recompense our pains,
The shadowy vale, the sunny mountain top,
Woods waving in the wind their lofty heads,
Or hushed; the roaring waters, and the still.
They see the offering of my lifted hands—
They hear my lips present their sacrifice—
They know if I be silent, morn or even.”
Nor does it rest here, for directly is our science under a deep debt
of gratitude to the author of the “Excursion,” who sought for and
obtained the aid of the geologist’s pencil to fill up the outline
of his own sweet picture of the “Scenery of the Lakes.” Read side
by side, one may well ask, whether the descriptions of the poet, or
the sketches of the philosopher, are the more buoyant in diction,
diversified in illustration, or pregnant with devotional inspiration.
The work of Wordsworth and Sedgwick as a companion of travel is without
a rival, in which, and out of the darkest pages of creation, we see the
light of science falling upon, as if intending in verity to produce,
an illuminated volume, and over which, at one and the same moment
imagination is throwing her gayer and softer colorings. The physical
structure of the district, in fact, furnishes the key to all its
picturesque and delicious scenery. The geology and the poetry are the
counterparts of each other. Wordsworth has drank deep at the fountains,
and told the story of the one: the lessons of the other have been read
by a kindred spirit, who has heard the mighty voice muttered in the dark
recesses of the earth, and, in his own eloquently impassioned diction,
Sedgwick has recorded the truths “of wisdom, of inspiration, and of
gladness; telling us of things unseen by vulgar eyes—of the mysteries
of creation—of the records of God’s will before man’s being—of a spirit
breathing over matter before a living soul was placed within it—of laws
as unchangeable as the oracles of nature.” And out of all the apparent
confusion, and multiplicity of objects so blended together, he has
brought “harmonies” to light, which are to have “their full consummation
only in the end of time, when all the bonds of matter shall be cast away,
and there shall begin the reign of knowledge and universal love.”
[Illustration: Structure of the Cumbrian Group.
1. Granite.
2. Skiddaw Slate.
3. Green Roofing Slate, Porphyry, &c.
4. Coniston Limestone.
5. Silicious Grits.
6. Ireleth Slates.
7. Slaty Flagstone.
8. Old Red Sandstone.
9. Carboniferous Limestone.
10. Magnesian Limestone, and New Red Sandstone.]
Thus, as seen in the preceding section, four geological systems are, in
this charming district of lakes and mountains, all clustered together
and rolled up for the convenient inspection of a few days’ rambles: The
Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian: and to these are to be
added the Granites, Porphyries, and Plutonic family of greenstones and
basalts.
CHAPTER II.
THE PERMIAN SYSTEM—NEW RED SANDSTONE.
The geological formations described are succeeded in the ascending order
by the PERMIAN system of deposits—a term borrowed from the department of
Perm in Russia, where the strata cover an area about twice the size of
France. This constitutes the new red sandstone of English geology, and
has many equivalents in other countries. Thus, in the lower division of
the group or true Permian, there occurs the Zechstein and Lower Bunter
series of strata: in the upper or triassic division, the equivalents
are the Upper Bunter and Grés Bigarré, or variegated sandstone, the
Muschelkalk and Keuper of French and German authors. The system is
largely developed in America, Africa, India and China; where, as in
Britain, the deposits are of extremely varied mineral characters,
consisting of grits, sandstones, marls, limestones, gypsum, and
rock-salt, each presenting its own family types of vegetable and animal
life.
The new red sandstone extends across England without interruption,
through the medial or central counties, and ranges nearly north-east by
south-west. The two great divisions of which it consists are everywhere
well marked, the dolomitic or magnesian limestone forming the base, and
giving character to the lower permian group; the upper triassic group
is sufficiently distinguished by the rock-salt deposit which is wholly
included in this part of the formation. Each, too, has its own peculiar
set of fossils. Those of the former are allied to animals that flourished
during the carboniferous period; two genera of fishes, the palæoniscus
and pylopterus, are common to both. The fauna and flora of the triassic
group are regarded as entirely new, neither borrowing from nor imparting
anything to illustrate the organisms of the older families of rocks.
The one series of strata thus represents the coming of a new, the other
records the departure of a past state of things.
In the central counties of England this deposit expands into a great
plain, surrounded on all sides by the coal-measures, while within its
own area several basins—as those of Leicester, Warwick, and South
Stafford—are included, being completely isolated by the new red. An
interesting economic question hence arises—Do the coal minerals occupy
the whole or any considerable portion, of the extensive area covered by
this formation? An equally important geological problem is connected
with the solution of the question—namely, What are the general relations
of the older to the newer deposits of the district? The researches of
Sir R. I. Murchison, and more recently, of the geological survey, have
shown that the three groups of stratified rocks in South Staffordshire,
the new red sandstone, coal-measures, and silurian beds, are each
unconformable to the other—that the upper rests indifferently upon the
two lower formations—and that where the old red occurs, the new is
sometimes in immediate contact. It is inferred from this, that there was
an uplifting of the silurian rocks, along with considerable denudation,
previous to the deposition of the carboniferous strata. Mr. Jukes has
observed pebbles of coal, in great abundance, in the lower beds of the
new red sandstone, and thence deduces the following conclusions:—1. That
there was a movement and denudation of the coal-measures, amounting,
in some localities, to their entire destruction and removal, before
the deposition of the new red sandstone. 2. That, subsequently to the
deposition of the new red sandstone, there was a very great movement of
all these rocks, producing their present faults and inclined positions.
3. That the boundaries of the South Staffordshire coal-field, as far
as examined, present examples of three kinds of relation between the
coal-measures and new red sandstones; _i. e._, by conformable succession;
by fault, the coal-measures being present on the downcast side; and,
thirdly, where the destruction of the coal-measures has brought the
new red sandstone into immediate contact with the silurian strata. The
author of this paper is farther of opinion that, while there is a great
probability that the larger part of the new red sandstone plain conceals
productive coal-measures, there is the presumption that these will not be
found at a depth of less than 500 or 600 yards below the surface.
Corresponding with these views it will be remembered that, after the
deposition of the coal-measures, there succeeded a period of violent
plutonic action, whereby the formation was dislocated, broken up
into smaller sections or basins, and pierced by the igneous rocks.
There would, consequently, during this season of paroxysm, be a vast
destruction of animal and vegetable life. The indurated crust would
everywhere undergo great trituration. Gravel, sand, and mud of every
quality would be cast along the shores, or silted up in the deeper
hollows. And then again would come a term of general repose, as the
angry elements subsided, exhausted by their own violence. The scene was
actually or nearly as described; and, in the aspect of the older denuded
and uplifted rocks, as above represented, there are the most striking
evidences of the agitations of the period. The exuberant flora of the
carboniferous age, suffered prodigiously, or became utterly extinct.
Conglomerates were formed which exhibit few traces of organic life.
To these succeeded the vast areas of the fine-grained sandstones, and
gypseous and saliferous marls, everywhere nearly horizontal, and still
undisturbed on their ancient beds. The tribes of animals were abridged
in numbers, changed or modified in structure, so as to suit the altered
state of things. The rain-drop, ripple-mark, and foot-print are all
witnesses to be adduced of the mighty change, as they are all proofs of
the doings of Him who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand, makes
the clouds to distill in showers, issues his command to the hurricane and
the earthquake, and restores in renovated beauty the face of nature.
The lowest bed of the formation is the magnesian limestone, which derives
its name from the quantity of carbonate of magnesia distributed through
the matter of the rock, amounting in some instances to as much as sixty
per cent. It is likewise called the _dolomitic_ limestone, from M.
Dolomieu, who first investigated its granular crystalline structure. This
limestone is generally of a yellow color, glimmering luster, passing
occasionally into blue and brick-red varieties, and exfoliates in thin
plates, or breaks up in large botryoidal masses. In this form it occurs
at the cliffs of Durham, where it assumes the grouping and arrangement
of chain-shot; and, as the beds are distinctly stratified, the face of
the rock has a very striking and pleasing effect. In the more southern
counties, this formation exists generally in the form of a conglomerate,
supposed to be derived from the debris of the older carboniferous
limestone united by a dolomitic paste; thus illustrating the source and
mode of the deposit, while in the organic remains there has been traced
a regular gradation between the types of the older sub-carboniferous and
the successive newer strata.
Let us consider some of the more remarkable forms, tracings, and
ingredients of the formation.
I. THE ORGANIC REMAINS are scanty as compared with those of the age
immediately anterior. The vegetable forms, as yet detected, are new and
distinct. The fishes consist of six or seven genera, and about as many
different species. And here commences, it is supposed, the singular
change in their ossification, for which science can assign no reason,
as it cannot detect the least appearance of graduation into the new,
for the first time, begun and completed change. The fishes of the
formation present the HOMOCERCAL—that is, the equally-lobed, or one-lobed
tail-fin,—a structure peculiar to existing races, with the exception
of the shark, sturgeon, and a few others, and form a striking contrast
to those in the antecedent groups, which were all possessed of the
HETEROCERCAL, or unequally-lobed tail-fin.
[Illustration: Heterocercal. Homocercal.]
The Permian system of strata has hitherto been noted for the introduction
of walking, air-breathing animals; hence it has been a canon of the
science, that in these deposits lie entombed the last links of that
ancient chain of organic life which prevailed from the beginning,
and also the first terms of the new series which attained to such
monstrosities and prolific exuberance in the succeeding epoch. Doubtful
as to the existence of reptilian and ornithic creatures during the
carboniferous period, both forms of creation are here distinctly
manifested; and, in the higher members of the triassic group, birds and
reptiles have left traces of their path. Thus remarkably defined, in an
invariable chronological series, was the new red sandstone formation; all
the ancient types of organic life were disappearing; completely new forms
had just begun to replace them. But, while we are writing, the discovery
has been announced that, so old as the devonian age, reptiles existed;
alligator-like foot-prints, in regular alternating order, have been found
impressed in the old red sandstone, near Pottsville in Pennsylvania, and
by Mr. Lea, their discoverer and American conchologist, the animal which
owned them has been named the SAUROPUS PRIMÆVUS. A revolution in geology
is decreed in the words. Many divisions in the systems of rocks will have
to be revised, many distinctions altogether obliterated, theories of
development and of many other things are now sadly misplaced, and out of
keeping with the newly-declared order and progress of organic life.[7]
But without venturing at present to enter upon the consequences to
palæontology involved in this important discovery, we proceed with the
known and recognized history of the formation in question.
The organic remains contained in the upper, or triassic group, differ
considerably from those of the lower division of beds.—While the same
families of vegetable fossils are preserved which characterized the
coal-measures, the particular species and genera have disappeared.
About twenty species of ferns and coniferæ, a few calamites, several
fucoid plants, and a gigantic genus named _Voltzia_, and resembling
the Araucaria or Norfolk Island fir, comprise the thinly-scattered
specimens of the flora of the period. The quarries at Coventry yield some
undetermined stems of trees, and leaves like those of our thick-ribbed
cabbages have been found in the strata near Liverpool. The animal remains
are more numerous as well as varied in their structures; some, indeed,
altogether anomalous in their organization, and foot-prints of the most
puzzling characters and dimensions. There are several new types of
mollusca and crinoidea, among the latter the _Encrinus formosus_, one of
the most beautiful forms in any department of the animal kingdom. The
fishes of the placoid order consist of seven genera and fourteen species,
of ganoids three genera and seven species. The REPTILIA supply the
marvels of the period. Prof. Owen has described six distinct genera from
these singular fossils, in which he has established an affinity to the
batrachia. From the curiously-complicated texture of the teeth, the term
_labyrinthodon_ has been given to one genus, while the same authority
suggests, that the foot-impressions to which the term _cheirotherium_
had already been applied, might belong to this animal. The two genera,
_claydyodon_ and _rhyncosaurus_, are remarkable specimens of organic
structure, the latter combining the lacertian type of skull, with
edentulous jaws, which impart to the forepart of the head the profile of
a parrot.
II. The ICHNOLITES, or foot-prints, constitute a marked feature of the
formation. These geological phenomena were first introduced to the
notice of the public, about twenty years ago, by the late Dr. Duncan
of Ruthwell, when his announcement of the tracks and foot-marks of
animals along the ancient shores of Dumfries-shire created a sensation
among all classes hitherto unprecedented in the history of the fossil
department of the science. Robinson Crusoe was not more moved at the
discovery of a human foot-print on the sands of his lonely island in
the distant main, than were men of science, that traces of organic life
should thus be stereotyped in a deposit believed to be utterly destitute
of fossil relics. The creatures which had traced them, so like to
existing walking things, greatly increased the interest and the wonder
excited by the picture—the tread in all the freshness of yesterday of
the inhabitants of the antediluvian world! The phenomenon, however,
is now one of very general and common occurrence, several quarries in
the same locality—various places in England—in Saxony—in the states of
Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia—having since been found to
yield the impressions in the greatest abundance, and of numerous types
and forms. And so well delineated and perfect are the impressions,
that, in the absence of any other reminiscence of the animal, these
characters have supplied the same aid to the skillful palæontologist that
the fragment of a bone, a fin, or a scale, did to Cuvier and Agassiz,
in the reconstruction of their organic models, and determination of
extinct genera and species. Birds and reptilian quadrupeds have all
contributed their share in the production of these curious lithographs.
Small toe-looking scratches, deep-palmy impressions, cloven hoof-like
indentations, and large gigantic hollows, have all been pictured in clear
distinct outline, covered up, and now again laid patent before you as
by the removal of the coverlit of your album. The Boston “Journal of
Natural History” communicates the following interesting account of the
researches of Dr. Deane:—“I have in my possession,” he says, “consecutive
impressions of tridactyle feet, which measure eighteen inches in length,
by fourteen in breadth, between the extremities of the lateral toes.
Each footstep will hold half a gallon of water, and the stride is four
feet. The original bird must have been four or five times larger than
the African ostrich, and therefore could not have weighed less than
600 pounds. Every step the creature took sank deep, and the substrata
bent beneath the enormous load. If an ox walk over stiffened clay, he
would not sink so deeply as did this tremendous bird.” Sir C. Lyell has
examined most of the foot-print districts in America, and found the
markings so numerous in some places as to resemble the puddled stand of
a sheep-fold or market-place; the very spots, doubtless, whither the
animals had resorted to quench their thirst, or screen them at mid-day
from the scorching heat. The various tracings become more distinct in
proportion to the distance from the scene of common rendezvous, and the
several routes by which they would return to their respective haunts, or
fields of pasturage, are clearly defined.
A considerable doubt hung over the accounts from time to time detailed
in the American journals and other publications, concerning these novel
and extraordinary discoveries, until they were more than matched by the
actual exhumation of the entire skeletons of the feathery tribes, far
exceeding in dimensions anything hitherto dreamed of in the science of
ornithology. The collections of Mr. Williams, and of Mr. W. Mantell,
from the alluvial deposits of New Zealand, utterly confounded all
previous calculations as to the size and bulk attainable by the bird
tribe. The tibia of a Dinornis, in the collection of the University
of Edinburgh, measures thirty-one inches in length, a femur seventeen
inches, the average circumference of both being nearly twelve inches.
From the foot to the top of the clavicle, the animal must have stood
at least thirteen feet in height. With the strut of the turkey, or the
pride of the peacock—head and neck of corresponding altitude—what a
denizen for the wilds and forests of this region of the new world! When
animals of similar dimensions, but of an earlier epoch, frequented the
beaches of Great Britain, we have to imagine the Cumbrian mountains,
the Penine chain, Derby Peak, and the lofty cliffs of Avon, surrounded
by an inland sea stretching by central France, the Black Forest, and
the Hartz mountains, and the shores all round silted with the materials
which now constitute the triassic group. Tortoises, turtles, bird-headed
lizards, birds themselves, salamander and frog-like creatures larger than
crocodiles, resorted as now to the sea-shore, in the cool fresh of the
evening or as tide-mark permitted, and regaled themselves at will on the
food which an ever-bounteous element furnished to their various wants.
The science which, from such _indicia_ as these, has succeeded in
determining not only the class, but the very form and habits, of the
animals which impressed them—no other traces remaining than those
petrified footsteps, covered up and hidden for ages—presents subjects of
study to the inquiring mind, which may well rank among the most valuable,
as well as curious, of human research. Is it not wonderful enough, that
organic impressions merely should have been transmitted so fresh and
entire, as to admit of classification, equal in scientific precision
to that of the families of living things? What matter of suggestive
reflection, inscribed on every page of that history? The tribes which
were created and flourished during the Permian-triassic age perished,
their earthy parts in most cases were all again absorbed by the earth,
dissipated or melted into the viewless air. Still there are memorials of
their existence, enduring and indelible, not of bones and sinews, but of
actions and habits, which the waters cannot obliterate, nor the floods
wash away! Man, a being of a different mold,—and with him
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?”
was the cry of instinctive dread—the foreboding of an assured conscience,
that the foul and guilty deed could never be effaced from the memory,
nor blotted from the records of creation. The foot-tread of the robber
has tracked him to his den; the minutest stain of blood has established
the crime of murder; a dream or vision of the night has pointed to the
mangled corse; a word uttered years after all was forgotten, or a rude
ditty chanted, have recalled the pictures of infancy, and the wanderer to
his home. Here we behold, stamped upon the rock, legible as the law upon
the tablets of the heart, intimations of the great universal law, that
an act once committed cannot be canceled; that a cause will be followed
by a sequence of effects; indefinite and ever-extending; and that the
Divine Spirit, which drew illustrations from the fields and taught wisdom
among the rocks of Horeb, still points the moral in these ineffaceable
memorials—that the recording angel so traces in the book of life the
story of every age, of every generation, of every individual, never to
be lost nor forgotten in that eternity whither their works do all follow
them.
III. Other singular records of the age under review have been preserved
in a similar manner; for the ocean itself has not failed to impress its
own movements on the sands laved by its waters. Hence the RIPPLE-MARK
has been detected, a recognized object of the science, and a phenomenon
to be seen in the sandstones of all ages and in all countries. The new
red, from the stiller waters perhaps in which it was formed, contains
everywhere beautifully minute and perfect delineations of the kind. The
_furrowed_ sandstones form a class by themselves, being selected in
the neighborhood of Brighton, as paving-stones for the streets, and in
the stable-yards as a protection for the horses against slipping. The
traces often of the more destructive violence of the sea, even of recent
date, in leveling villages, sweeping down plains, undermining cliffs,
overwhelming proud navies, are completely obliterated or forgotten, while
here the records of its still voice are indelibly engraven on the rock.
Observe other markings as you walk along the sea-shore on a summer’s
eve; how every wavelet that breaks upon the beach leaves its tiny
indentation, until the whole surface becomes furrowed as the reflex
of the ever-shifting flood; there spring up on every side innumerable
hillocks of sand, little blisters through which you detect the movements
of a creature within, and then the trail of the sea-worm is visible
all over. These were _vermes_ and _annelides_ burrowing in the sands,
in those ancient times, with instincts and habits precisely the same.
“We find,” says Dr. Buckland, “on the surface of slabs, both of the
calcareous grit, and Stonesfield slate, near Oxford, and on sandstones of
the Wealden formation, in Sussex and Dorsetshire, perfectly-preserved and
petrified castings of marine worms, at the upper extremity of holes bored
by them in the sand, while it was yet soft at the bottom of the water;
and within the sandstones, traces of tubular holes in which the worms
resided.” Nature here has changed little from her first models; the same
element, which is now chaffing upon the same materials of sand and rock,
has possessed through all time the same ingredients of life-stirring
action.
IV. Nor has the atmosphere—that twin ocean of upper earth—failed to give
evidence of the properties and laws by which it was then governed. The
RAIN-DROP, a singular unmistakeable marking, has also been detected upon
the sandstones of the period. These impressions have been described and
adopted by men of science as the true veritable indices of the showers
and cloud-falls of the old world. The very size of the drop may be
measured, the thick pattering of the rain compared with the scanty or
copious showers of the present day, and the very point detected from
which the wind blew on the day that these showers fell. What a curious
tale is thus disclosed, by a record, no modern version of which any one
will stay to read a moment longer than he can escape to shelter from
its influences. Astronomers tell us, upon the faith of the Herschels,
the measurements of Strüve, Bessel, and Mädler, that, notwithstanding
that light travels at the inconceivable speed of two hundred and
thirteen thousand miles in a second, the light from Uranus, one of our
own planetary system, does not reach our earth until two hours after
it has been emitted from its orb; that, from the edge of the Milky
Way, a star of the twelfth magnitude, careering in all the effulgence
of that luminous ether, cannot be descried until four thousand years
after the ray has begun its journeyings; and yet more, as the results
of the most rigid induction, it is revealed to us that the spots of
clouds, which under the resolving power of the best telescopes seem
more oval flakes or small specks of whiteness, are really distinct and
independent systems, floating at such an immeasurable distance that the
light has to wander millions of years before it can break in its faintest
morning-streak upon our horizon. Mark the analogy, therefore, ere you
scoff at the credulity of the geologist, or the power of the rain-drop
to transmit an image of itself through so many revolutions and ages of
the earth’s history. How impalpable a substance is light! how readily
effaced its impressions, or intercepted its brilliant colorings, by the
interposition of the frailest creation of matter—an insect’s wing, the
covering of a leaf, the disc of a flower-petal. But the light, thus
easily obliterated or dimmed on earth, has been maintaining its own
solitary independent course through every medium, every change, of upper
and netherworlds. The moment of its efflux from remotest orb, in depth
of infinite space, gave to every particle of that feebly or intensely
luminous beam, a separate being and direction, with no return back to
its parent source. And now, says the intelligent astronomer, as it drops
gently into the searcher of his telescope, that is a ray from yon far
distant unresolvable cluster of stars, or of astral systems, for millions
of years traveling through these incalculable heights, when as yet the
Chaldee sages had pointed no instrument to the heavens, nor the learned
of Memphis recorded an observation. Can you deny to other matter, argues
the geologist, a similar tenacity of self-preservation, the vitality of
impress which merely records the uniformity of the laws and constitution
of nature, and which intimates that, through all past time, there
were showers to cheer and to refresh the products of the earth? Truth
becomes more marvelous than fiction when traced in researches such as
these—showing the illimitable range over time and space permitted to
human inquiry—and producing, at the same time, things both of heaven and
of earth scarcely to be dreamt of in human philosophy.
V. But the economic and practically useful, no less than the speculative
or fanciful, form constituents of the new red sandstone formation. The
strata are not only indented with impressions of strange and doubtful
origin; they inclose, like those of the carboniferous system, treasures
of the greatest value; and nature, in ceasing to abound in one kind of
product, has been no less exuberant in others, equally contributive to
the comfort and convenience of man. In this class of rocks are situated
our great deposits of ROCK-SALT and gypsum, of the former of which,
beside supplying the demands of the home market, the mines of Cheshire
alone export from Liverpool upward of half a million of tons weight.
The distribution of the saline mineral is very general over the earth,
and by no means constant in its geognostic position; as, for example,
in Galicia, it is found among the tertiary deposits; in New York, it
occupies the middle of the silurians; while in Hungary, Poland, and
England, it is uniformly associated with the new red sandstone. Rock-salt
has been long known to and prized by mankind; it became an object of
taxation or tribute six hundred and forty years before the Christian era,
as narrated of Ancus Martins, “salinarum vectigal instituit;” and hence
centuries afterward, when Great Britain was in possession of the Romans,
the legions received salt as part of their pay or “salary.” Our richest
mines are in Cheshire, and along the districts watered by the Dee, the
Weaver, and the Mersey. The beds, or rather masses, are imperfectly
stratified, and vary in thickness from a few inches to 120 feet and
upward: gypsum and variegated marls may be regarded as _constants_ in the
formation, the gypseous deposits sometimes attaining the enormous depth
of 150 feet.
We speak of the beds of gypsum as _deposits_, in common with those of
the sandstone matrix in which they are imbedded. It appears, however, on
inquiring into the theory of their origin, that they are not strictly
such in the true sense of deposits—originally as gypseous deposits—but
altered limestones, metamorphosed by the action of gases which have
escaped from beneath, and permeated the calcareous mass. The carbonates
of lime have been converted into the sulphates of lime, by means of
gaseous emanations produced in unknown volcanic depths. Even the
dolomitic member of the group is supposed to have a like metamorphic
origin; the needful elementary agencies having entered into the parent
limestone, and converted it into the magnesian type. Why nature should
not have done these things directly, at the first off-throw, science
could not, perhaps, very satisfactorily answer the skeptically inquiring
mind; but, as the ingredients are all chemically well known, and more
especially as there is a vast laboratory ever at work, filled with
all kinds of elements, in her subterranean regions, any hypothesis of
formation is as rapidly established as it is conceived, and the interest
of the subject humanly speaking augmented. The celebrated Berzelius,
when questioned on the point, had his ready solution of the problem,
easily derived from his unparalleled stores of chemical knowledge:—“Give
me a substance containing sulphur—admit the presence of the vapors of
sulphur, or sulphurous or sulph-hydrous vapors,—let limestone be also
present, and water on the surface or in the atmosphere, AND WE SHALL
READILY HAVE GYPSUM.” The origin of the saltness of the ocean is still a
mystery in science; equally involved in doubt and conjecture is that of
the other member of the series, the rock-salt formation. The generally
adopted theory, however, is, that it was dependent on volcanic agency
for development, as it both contains, and is uniformly associated with,
the acids, and other materials found in connection with volcanoes. The
chlorides of sodium and gypsum, for example, are at present sublimed
from volcanic vents; vapors charged with sulphuric acid are constantly
issuing from the same sources; and these passing through or associated
with the saline waters of the period, must have aided in the formation
of rock-salt and gypsum, which occur more frequently in irregular
masses than in true stratified deposits. An additional corroboration
of the theory is inferred from the circumstance, that the gypsum
accompanying the rock-salt is anhydrous, that is, free from water before
exposure to the action of the atmosphere. Hence the conclusion, that
the consolidation of both the rock-salt and the gypsum must have been
effected by the agency of heat, as, by means of aqueous deposition, a
hydrometric influence would have been sensibly perceived.
Wonderful certainly is all this—the inclosing, the consolidation, the
arrangement of these remarkable substances. The sea, in the first
instance, may readily and abundantly have supplied all the elements
of the formation; but how collected and retained, crystallized and
incrusted, layer upon layer, over the rocky bottom and volcanic inner
chambers, are points still of nice geological inquiry. The celebrated
salt mines of Cracow, in Poland, are wondrous operations of the art of
man, into the still more wondrous products and recesses of nature.
Here the entire arrangements of a city are almost perfected; the
streets, marketplace, chapel, rivers, reservoirs, grottoes, and all the
requirements of comfort and safety gleaming in a blaze of saline crystals.
“Scoop’d in the briny rock long streets extend
Their hoary course, and glittering domes ascend;
Down the bright steeps, emerging into day,
Impetuous fountains burst their headlong way,
O’er milk-white vales in ivory channels spread,
And wondering seek their subterraneous bed.
Long lines of lusters pour their trembling rays,
And the bright vault returns the mingled blaze.”
The deposit near Cracow is worked on four different levels or stories,
divided into innumerable compartments, with thousands of excavations in
every direction, and descending to the vast depth of one thousand feet
below the surface. The length of the several passages, in their windings
and turnings, is calculated to be nearly three hundred miles; about two
thousand men are constantly employed in the mining operations; and,
though the operations have been carrying on for the known period at least
of six hundred years, the mass of rock-salt in the locality is still of
inexhaustible extent.
The mines in our own land are equally remarkable after their kind, and
cannot fail to interest, if not to astonish, the neophyte who ventures a
descent. From the mode in which they are worked, the huge pillars left
to support the roof, the thousand lights that illuminate the caverns,
the reverberations from the blasting which at intervals ring through
their depths, a grandeur and impressiveness are imparted to a scene which
scarcely any other combination of objects could produce. And another
world—a world of coal and iron—in all its magnificence and riches, lies
interred under these glistering stores of lime and salt! How strangely
contrasting in their qualities and structure the two formations. But
except that a wise and far-seeing Providence collected and garnered
up the waste and decay of both for man’s use, no principle have we to
guide us when speculating on their mineral properties and arrangement—no
natural law certainly, self-acting upon matter and evolving new creations
of its own, organic or inorganic, to reveal His inscrutable purposes.
CHAPTER III.
THE OOLITIC OR JURASSIC SYSTEM—AGE OF REPTILES.
When one is about to travel, or to undertake a journey of any distance
from the daily beat of home, it is very seldom indeed that he puts into
his pocket a book of science. Voyages, travels, a review at most, or the
newest novel, may fill up a spare place in the portmanteau: anything
that requires study, or would draw upon the reflective faculties, can be
no fitting companion for the occasion, with at least nine-tenths of our
moving public.
If the preceding pages have been perused with any attention at all, it is
to be hoped that other things will be considered as worthy of a passing
glance, as sure we are they cannot fail to be replete with lessons of
instructive wisdom. On the ground of mere ephemeral curiosities by the
way, geological matters claim consideration. They are exhaustless, too,
and ever varying as you proceed. When you imagine that the last mountain
rock or quarry contained the whole catalogue of Natural History, and
showed you more than Goldsmith, or Buffon, you find that over the next
ridge, or in the neighboring field, there are new subjects for study, and
still renewing matters for wonder.
If you have taken up your abode for the night at classic Rugby, at
sporting Melton-mowbray, or among the academic bowers of Oxford, there
are objects all around, in every hill-side, ravine, or railway section,
to fill you at once with admiration and astonishment. Go, inquire of that
rock. It is the _lias limestone_; beyond it, and at no great distance,
lies the _oolite_; and there, in the immediate vicinity of both, you
have the _Stonesfield slate_. We invite you to examine any one of these
common-place looking stones; and not in Gulliver, not in the history of
the Knight of La Mancha, not in all the Mysteries of Udolpho, not in the
Romance of the Forest whose harmonious periods so charmed our youth, will
you find anything to compare with the marvels therein to be disclosed.
The machinery of a tale may require the aid of giants and genii, but
here is “truth without fiction,” more startling, marvelous, and so
beyond the bounds of nature as now felt and seen, that the most daring
fancy is utterly outstripped in its loftiest flights into the regions of
the ideal. The series of beds which constitute the mineral features of
this extensive district contains the full development of the reptilian
type to which we were introduced in the last chapter. Animals there are
in these rocks, with forms and features, so fantastic, and apparently
disproportioned, that the tales of the most unscrupulous traveler would
suffer in comparison. And in truth, there is no page in the book of
nature—none, certainly, in all the works of man—so fraught with wonders,
or remarkable for stirring incident, as the epoch of animal life whose
history is there inscribed.
I. THE NATURE OF THE ROCKS. The oolitic or Jurassic system, like that
of the new red sandstone, comprises the subdivisions of two well-marked
natural groups, in which the lias or lower series is included. In point
of geographical range, the oolite formation is extensively distributed
over the surface of the globe; in mineral character it is varied in every
possible degree of texture and composition; in geognostic arrangement
there are intercalations, without end, of marine and terrestrial
detritus; the organic remains are in the greatest profusion, both as to
diversity of type and increase of new creations; and, locally, such has
been the appreciation of its various members, that there is scarcely
a town or parish in the south-eastern part of England, that has not
received from or given habitations and name to, some one of its numerous
subdivisions.
Resting upon the triassic formation, there are bands of lias shales,
limestones, sandy and ferruginous strata, and upper shales, including
nodular concretions and beds of limestone. This series is distributed
over the counties of York, Northampton, Somerset, and Dorset. The next
are the lower oolites, which comprise an extensive series of calcareous,
concretionary sands and sandstones, limestone, thin seams of coal and
ligneous clays, and the Cornbrash limestone, which in many localities is
a mere aggregation of shells and other marine exuviæ. The Stonesfield
slate, the Forest marble, and the Fuller’s earth beds, are included
in the group, ranging along the Yorkshire coast, through Northampton,
Oxford, and Gloucester shires; and in Scotland we have their equivalents
in the Brora coal and oolitic limestone of Sutherlandshire, Skye, and
the adjacent islands. The middle oolite succeeds, which includes the
Oxford clay, the Kelloway rock, and the coral-rag, all more or less
distinguished by their profusion and peculiarity of fossils, chiefly
shells, echini, and corals. The whole formation terminates in two well
known deposits, the Kimmeridge clay and Portland oolite, with its bands
of green and red sands, layers of chert and drift-wood. This group
prevails in Oxfordshire, Berks, Wilts, Bucks, and the Isle of Portland;
the matrix of fossilized reptilia, fishes, and cycadeous plants.
The term OOLITE or roestone, as applied to the whole of the groups
enumerated above, is derived from the resemblance between the small
rounded grains of which the limestones are generally composed, and the
roe of a fish. The Jura mountains, which divide France from Switzerland,
consist mainly of these deposits, and hence Jurassic—the _Terrains
Jurrassiques_ of continental geologists. The word lias is simply a
corruption of liers (layers), and has from time immemorial been applied
to the rocks of this group. Their relation and order of superposition are
fully brought out along the sections of the Great Western Railway from
London to Bath. The Birmingham line from Derby by Rugby to the metropolis
intersects nearly every member of the series, until they are covered
about Wallingford by the chalk.
When one looks at these innumerable bands of rock, and the great
diversity of earthy matter of which they are composed, the mind becomes
utterly overwhelmed by the rapidity and vastness of the changes which,
during this epoch, occurred upon the surface of the globe. A turbid, and
often agitated, condition of the waters in which they were deposited is
very clearly indicated. The animals of the period were manifestly of a
class peculiarly adapted to the impregnated element, the slimy banks,
and shallows which prevailed. The flora was abundant, of a kind, and
produced in circumstances, favorable for the formation of a lignite
coal. The spasmodic action which prevailed after the deposition of the
carboniferous beds had not entirely subsided at the Permian period. The
change was of too violent a kind to have been brought about without
great internal, as well as external, commotion. We find, accordingly, in
most districts, that the rocks of this class are upturned and disrupted.
The detritus of the new red sandstone and magnesian limestone, thereby
occasioned, would go to form new land during the submergence of such
portions of the surface as were retained beneath the waters. The
oscillations were numerous and frequent, corresponding with the aggregate
of beds which compose the system; while the quality and arrangement
of the sediment point to changes and alterations in sea-levels, river
courses, land boundaries, estuaries, the size and distribution of the
basins into which the alluvia were transported. The geographic extent,
combined with the frequently insulated position of the oolitic series,
clearly demonstrates a vast alteration in the bed of the ocean, as well
as in the ridges and elevations which gave diversity to the land. The
oolites, in fact, constitute vast calcareous reefs, raised upon the
inverted strata of the older formations, which formed the cliffs and
headlands of a sea swarming with lizards and crocodilians, and over
whose thick umbrageous banks roamed the flying pterodactyle, watching or
perhaps escaping from, the singular saurians that reposed in the thickets
beneath. The substitution of the pyritous clays for the saliferous marls;
the dark argillaceous oolites and blue mottled lias for the yellow
crystalline dolomite, is in harmony and keeping with the plants and
animals which now, for the first time, sprang into existence.
II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS are very abundant, and in both plants and animals
there are various new kinds. Of the former are the cycadeæ, allied to
the existing pine-apple; also the lilaceæ, and some other undescribed
genera. With regard to animals, this has been emphatically called “the
age of reptiles,” along with which there are new families of fishes,
crustacea, mollusca, and corals. The warm-blooded animals now for the
first time appear, of which there are two genera, the _Amphitherium_
and _Phascolotherium_, found in the Stonesfield slate near Oxford, and
considered, by analogy of structure, to be allied to the marsupials
that inhabit the Australian continent. The same interesting locality
has furnished two new genera of insects, the _Prionus Ooliticus_ and
_Coccinella Wittsii_; in the lias, of different places, eleven genera
and species have been discovered, but of which only wings and fragments
have been obtained. A perfect specimen of this order has recently been
found, by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, in the upper lias, near Cheltenham,
resembling the genus _diplax_; but so shattered in the head, that its
precise character cannot be determined. The reptilians supply alike new
terrestrial and marine tortoises and turtles—lizards, whose arms and
legs were provided with a filmy membrane, like bats, to enable them
to fly—amphibious saurians, and water saurians unlike anything now in
existence.
Contrast this catalogue with the few organic remains to be met with in
the preceding period, and ask what called such a newly-inhabited world
into being? The face of nature, so remarkably elaborated out of the
waste and decay of these old stony materials, is moving all over with
life—replenished, so far as yet discovered, with seventy-five generic
and specific forms of new vegetation—a hundred and ten new forms of
hard-working corallines—seven hundred and thirteen genera and species
of the shelly tribes, from the simplest to the most complicated of the
chambered orders—a hundred and sixty distinct races of fishes, placoids
and ganoids—three varieties of the most strangely constructed mammalian
quadrupeds, with thirteen kinds of insects to titillate and keep them in
action—and all this array of organic life moving side by side with forty
families of gigantic reptiles, herbivorous and carnivorous, creeping,
swimming, and flying! The wonders of art have nothing to compare with
this. The structure of a blade of grass will not suffer an atheist to
live. During the six thousand years of man’s existence, one new living
thing, of any order or type, has not been called into being. Astronomy
is daily adding to her achievements, and penetrating farther among
the systems of the universe; but the nebular theory of creation is
gone, and the new-world germs will not expand at its fanciful bidding.
Geology nobly bears testimony in every page to the rule of one supreme
intelligent Creator—an exuberance of life and forms which announces the
authoritative interposition of Him
“Whose word leaps forth at once to its effect;
Who calls for things that are not—and they come.”
And the mandate goes forth, in that awful simplicity of OMNIPOTENCE,
which learning cannot mystify nor ignorance overlook.
This formation abounds in the remains of radiata, mollusca, and
crustacea,—all of them differing specifically from those of the older
secondary strata. The gigantic _crinoidea_ of the carboniferous age
have disappeared, succeeded only by a few dwarfish specimens of the
_apiocrinite_ and pentacrinite, while the _ammonites_ mark an increase of
nearly two hundred species, preserved in the most perfect state in the
shales and limestones of the lias and oolite.
[Illustration: 1. Ammonites obtusus; 2. Section of Ammonites obtusus,
showing the interior chambers and siphuncle; 3. Ammonites nodosus.]
The term Ammonite has been bestowed upon this remarkable shell-fish from
its fancied resemblance to the curved horn on the head of the statue
of Jupiter-Ammon. The spiral form of the shell is divided into several
chambers or compartments, all of which are connected by means of an
interior tube or siphuncle. It belongs to the order of Cephalopoda, among
which are included ancyloceros, belemnites, nautilus, orthoceratite,
and other many-chambered shells. Like the nautilus, the ammonite was
gifted with a singular apparatus by which it could pursue its instincts
either at the bottom or on the surface of the element in which it lived.
The organs of motion were arranged round the head (hence the name
_cephalopoda_); and, by the nicely adaptive arrangements of nature,
the outer chamber of the shell was capable of retaining the entire
body of the animal, while the interior chambers were hollow, thereby
rendering the whole structure of nearly the same specific gravity with
the waters in which it moved. An elastic tube passing through the
siphuncle connected the cavity of the heart with the extremity of the
shell, which enabled the animal to contract or expand itself as its
exigencies required. Being filled with a dense fluid, excreted by the
glandular organs, the creature, when alarmed or wishing to descend,
withdrew itself within the outer chamber, whereby the contraction of the
tube forced the fluid from the heart into the siphuncle, and increasing
the gravity enabled it to descend to the bottom. Upon a reversal of the
process—the simple projection of the arms of the head, and the consequent
expansion of the body—the ammonite rose with equal facility to the
surface, disporting itself at will in its native element. With a view to
resist the pressure, when at the bottom, a provision was made by means
of the _arch-form_ in the structure of the shell; and, additionally, by
the insertion of a series of transverse ribs, which comprise all the
mechanical contrivances for giving strength and solidity which are sought
by the divisions and subdivisions in the vaulted roofs of our Gothic
architecture. The geographical distribution of the ammonite partakes of
the universality so marked in the vegetable economy of the carboniferous
age, the same species even being common to Europe, Asia, North and South
America; and always, along with all its numerous congeners, manifesting
the most striking examples of that adaptation of means to ends which
prevails in every department of creation.
We shall now select a few details of the more remarkable of the reptilian
types of this period, referring the reader to the ample and graphic
descriptions of Buckland, Conybeare, Mantell, Phillips, and more
especially to the Reports of Professor Owen, in the volumes published by
the British Association in 1840-’1.
[Illustration: Ichthyosaurus communis.]
1. The first genus to be noticed is termed the Ichthyosaurus, which
partakes at once of the characters of crocodiles, lizards, and fishes.
So lavish has nature been in providing for the accommodation and wants
of this anomalous creature, that to the paddles of a whale, is added the
sternum of an _ornithorhynchus_; the head of a lizard is joined to the
vertebræ of a fish; and the snout of a porpoise is combined with the jaws
and teeth of a crocodile. The magnitude of the eye is prodigious, and
the jaws, sometimes exceeding six feet in length, are studded with an
apparatus of teeth, amounting in some instances, to a hundred and eighty.
“From the quantity of light admitted in consequence of the prodigious
size of the eye,” says Dr. Buckland, “it must have possessed very great
powers of vision: we have also evidence that it had both microscopic
and telescopic properties. We find on the front of the orbital cavity,
in which this eye was lodged,”—a cavity sometimes fourteen inches in
diameter,—“a circular series of petrified thin bony plates, ranged
round a central aperture, where once was placed the pupil; the form and
thickness of each of these plates very much resembles that of the scales
of the artichoke. It also tends to associate the animal in which it
existed, with the family of lizards, and exclude it from that of fishes.”
These bony plates gave strength to the surface of the eye-ball, which
required protection above and below, from the dashing of the waves when
it reared its head to the storm, and from the pressure of deep water
when it scoured the bottom. The nostrils, it would seem, were placed so
close to the anterior angle of the eye, as to render it impossible to
breathe without raising the organs of sight to the surface of the water.
An ocean, peopled with such monsters! Imagine so many eyes, larger than
a man’s head studding its surface, and illuminating, as with fire-balls,
their terrific jaws, glaring out from the briny flood; and what a scene
to gaze upon, so different from all that now covers these rich alluvial
plains!
[Illustration: Plesiosaurus.]
2. The Plesiosaurus is allied in some respects to the former, but in
other points differs so materially, and possesses characters so strange,
as to claim for it a degree of monstrosity unparalleled, even amid
the ruins of the old world. Here we have the union of the serpent and
chameleon, with a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary
quadruped. The mechanism of the lungs and ribs is peculiar, showing
that the animal must have breathed with such force and rapidity, as to
have rendered the color of the skin changeable, like the chameleon or
dying dolphin. The neck bore a resemblance to that of the swan; the feet
and motions were allied to those of the turtle; and, from the varied
intensity of its inspirations, it is conjectured that the creature
inhabited the shallow pools and marshy waters along the coast. The body
would thus be concealed among the rank vegetable aquatics; while, with
its long flexible neck, it would be prepared suddenly to pounce upon its
prey. Mr. Conybeare compares the Plesiosaurus to a turtle stripped of its
shell; and the ribs, being connected by transverse abdominal processes,
present a close analogy to those of the chameleon. Ichthyosauri and
Plesiosauri have been found in the secondary strata, from the lias to the
chalk inclusive; of the former, twelve species are known and described,
and nearly twenty of the latter. The most remarkable of the enalio-saurii
or marine reptiles, is the Plesiosaurus-dolichodeirus, discovered in
the lias of Lyme-Regis, and which is fertile in the remains of all the
animals of that remote and wonder-producing epoch.
[Illustration: Pterodactyle.]
3. Another example, taken from the lias, is of its kind even more
startling than either of the preceding. This consists of the remains of
an animal called the Pterodactyle, or flying reptile, which, more than
anything ever conceived or bred in poet’s brain, resembles what Milton
must have intended, when to the great arch-fiend he gave a form and
flexibility of body, that
“Swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.”
Certainly each and one of all these evolutions the Pterodactyle could
execute, and he was amply provided with the fitting instruments to
perform them. This animal possessed a head intermediate betwixt that of
a bird and a reptile, which in both cases is comparatively small, and
offering the least resistance to the medium through which it passed, in
quest whether of pleasure or subsistence. The hands were of the most
prehensile character, adapted by the claws attached at once to fix and
firmly grasp its prey, and, when needed for pursuit, to swing itself
squirrel-like from branch to branch, and from tree to tree. The wings
resembled those of the bat, but in length and size allied to nothing
in existing nature, and finding their match only among the dragons of
romance. Then, as to feet and limbs, these were of such a construction
as to allow the animal safely to repose after its toils in a standing
position on the ground, or to perch on trees, or to climb on rocks, or
disport from cliff to cliff. The eyes were large; the wings terminated
in fingers, from which projected long hooks; the beak was furnished
with about sixty sharp piercing teeth. No wonder that naturalists were
astonished at such heterogenous combinations, as they rose upon their
sight—
“That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth;
And yet are on’t;”
and knew not whether to ascribe them to the air, or the earth, or the
domain of waters. But, in the hands of Cuvier, the entire structure and
relations of the several parts of the framework have been explained
and developed; the libellulæ and other insects on which they fed have
been detected in the same rocks with their own relics; and out of that
apparent mass of inconsistencies and contradictions, the genius of the
skillful anatomist has produced one of the most striking examples of the
harmony that pervades all nature, that has been extended through all
ages, and that manifests the bounteous care of the common Creator in
adapting all living things, each after its kind, to the conditions of its
existence.
4. The Stonesfield strata belong to the lower division of the great
oolite. The slate of the district has been long known and prized for
roofing purposes. The village of Stonesfield lies about twelve miles to
the north-west of Oxford, beautifully situated on the brow of a valley,
both sides of which have been deeply excavated for the extraction of
the slate. Woodstock and Blenheim are both in the vicinity, neither of
whose remarkable heroes ever dreamed of the mighty wars, waged in a far
distant age from their own, by the fierce assailants whose remains have
now been disturbed by these operations. Here are abundant the remains of
palms, aborescent ferns, seed-vessels, leaves, stems of several genera
of coniferæ, and traces of reeds and grasses. Wings and their cases, the
_elytra_ of beetles, and other relics of insects, are mingled with the
teeth, scales, fin-bones, rays of fishes, in the greatest profusion. And
here, on the site of this ancient menagerie or battle-field, are the only
known vestiges of mammalian animals in the secondary formations. One
set of these remains resembles the Wombat, a marsupial didelphys of New
South Wales; the other remains indicate a small insectivorous mammal, the
Amphitherium, with thirty teeth in the lower jaw. Australia, therefore,
supposed to furnish evidence of an entirely new order of things, has
been long anticipated in all its types of plants and animals by the
denizens of our own land—our waters swarming with cestraceonts, trigoniæ,
and terebratulæ—and our fields clothed with araucariæ and cycadeous
plants—when perhaps but little of that continent rose above the waters.
5. The DINOSAURIA constitute a tribe or sub-order of the lacertians,
characterized by the large development of the sacrum, the dorsal
vertebræ, the bones of the extremities, which are all provided with
large medullary cavities. Of this tribe there are three well established
genera—the Megalosaurus, the Hylæosaurus, and the Iguanodon. These were
the gigantic crocodile lizards of the dry land, whose peculiarities
of osteological structure distinguish them as clearly from the modern
terrestrial and amphibious sauria, as the opposite modifications for an
aquatic life, characterize the extinct enaliosauria, or marine lizards.
The Dinosaurians belong properly to the Wealden fresh water formations,
which may be regarded as the true habitat of this order of terrestrial
fossil reptiles.
The Megalosaurus was first described by Cuvier, and the family
determined; he calculated the dimensions of the animal at from forty to
fifty feet in length. Professor Owen, from better preserved specimens,
has reduced it to thirty feet long: the head is five feet, the length of
trunk with sacrum thirteen feet, and the tail about the same, allowing
the Megalosaur to have had the same number of caudal vertebræ as the
crocodile. The sacrum consisted of five anchylosed vertebræ, new in
saurian anatomy: the hind-legs measure two yards, a metatarsal bone
thirteen inches; the teeth are of corresponding dimensions, and curve
backward in the form of a pruning-knife. The structure of the jaw
indicates a long projecting snout, while the curvature of the teeth
fitted them to retain like barbs the prey which they had once penetrated.
All the organs of the monster declare the Megalosaur to have been a land
animal, of carnivorous propensities, and in all probability performed,
as headsman the same office upon the smaller herd of reptiles, sometimes
making a snatch at a Plesiosaur, as both in turn did upon fishes and
crustaceans. The sport of an Indian jungle is child’s play compared
to the onslaught of these grim kings amidst their ancient preserves.
The remains occur in the deposits at Malton in Yorkshire, Cuckfield in
Sussex, Bath, the Purbeck limestone, Tilgate Forest, and the Wealden.
The next genus of the land reptiles was remarkable for the size
of the horny plates by which the body was protected. This is the
Hylæosaurus—that is, forest-reptile—about twenty-five feet long, and
covered with a series of large, flat, and pointed bones. These vary in
length from five to seventeen inches, and are from three to seven and a
half inches in breadth. In addition, as showing the kind of warfare to
which he was exposed, a ridge of thick thorny scales pass along the back,
and form an enormous dermal fringe, like the spines on the back of the
living iguana tribes. The skeleton of the Hylæosaur has been found nearly
entire, and all the parts in almost natural juxtaposition. The Wealden of
Tilgate Forest, the deposits at Bolney and Battle of the same formation,
contain the remains in considerable abundance.
What shall be said of the next figure that crosses the tragic stage,
during this age of tyrant prodigies? The Iguanodon—a gigantic herbivorous
lizard—is related to a family of harmless creatures (_Iguana_), which
swarm in the West Indies, and in all the tropical forests of America,
in certain peculiarities of the teeth greatly differing from those
of other reptiles. The largest of living Iguanas, do not exceed five
feet in length: the extinct genus attained a longitude of upward of
twenty-eight to thirty feet. The caudal member was about thirteen, head
three, trunk with sacrum twelve, and the girth of the body about fifteen
feet. The teeth resemble the teeth of the rhinoceros as to bulk and
general appearance, and, consisting as they do of incisors and molars,
were recognized to belong to the order of herbivorous quadrupeds. The
thigh-bone exceeds that of the largest-sized elephant, being from four
to five feet in height, and presenting a circumference of nearly two
feet in its smallest part. This animal, at its first discovery, was
supposed to have attained the exaggerated proportions of nearly a hundred
feet in length. But even under the reduced dimensions and more accurate
deductions of Professor Owen, confirmed by those of Dr. Mantell, there
is still size sufficient, as well as peculiarities of structure, to
lead us to regard it as one of the wonders of geology. One femur of a
recently-discovered Iguanodon is twenty-seven inches in circumference,
and must have been nearly five feet in length; and a tibia, found with
the same, is four feet long. Dr. Melville has established the important
physiological fact, that the cervical and anterior dorsal vertebræ were
convexo-concave,—that is, convex in front and concave behind, as in
the existing pachyderms; while the reverse form, the concavo-convex,
predominates in the existing crocodilians and lizards. It is farther
established, that in the Iguanodon, as in many fossil and recent
reptiles, the anterior extremities were much shorter and less bulky
than the posterior. As in the existing family, so in the extinct, the
huge body was ornamented with a horn of bone which projected from the
nose. This nasal organ seems to have been worn more for decoration than
for use; unless, perhaps, to assist in perforating its way through
the thickets of vegetation on which it subsisted, to push aside an
unwelcome intruder upon his pasturage, or as a mere set-off against
the unprecedented length of tail. Imagine a herd of these monsters
feeding in a prairie—the denizens of a period when all things partook
of the gigantic! “The concurrence of peculiarities so remarkable,” says
Buckland, “as the union of this nasal horn with a mode of dentition
of which there is no example, except in the Iguanas, affords one of
the many proofs of the universality of the laws of co-existence, which
prevailed no less constantly throughout the extinct genera and species
of the fossil world, than they do among the living members of the animal
kingdom.” Professor Owen writes—“No reptile now exists which combines a
complicated and thecodont dentition with limbs so proportionally large
and strong, having such well-developed marrow-bones, and sustaining the
weight of the trunk by _sychondrosis_ or _anchylosis_ to so long and
complicated a sacrum, as in the order _Dinosauria_. The Megalosaurus and
Iguanodons, rejoicing in these undeniably most perfect modifications of
the reptilian type, attained the greatest bulk, and must have played the
most conspicuous parts, in their respective characters as devourers of
animals and feeders upon vegetables, that this earth has ever witnessed
in oviparous and cold-blooded creatures. They were as superior in
organization and in bulk to the crocodiles that preceded them as to those
which came after them.”
6. We close our enumeration of these fossils by simply stating, that
the CROCODILIANS also flourished at this period. The living species
are twelve in number, all remarkable for the size of their mouth, and
their exuberant abundance of teeth. The extinct species were nearly as
numerous, but all more allied to the gavials of New Holland than to the
other members of the family. They seem chiefly to have subsisted on
fishes, while their modern congeners are furnished with powers which
enable them to prey upon mammalia and other quadrupeds. When Hobbes, the
philosopher of Malmesbury—the old haunt of all these monsters—adopted the
title “leviathan” for his political and anti-Christian views, he did it
more in derision of the name than from any belief that such things as the
term represents had ever or could ever have existed “in rerum natura.”
Persons, even now, to whom the subject is presented for the first time,
will turn with aversion from its details under the influence of the very
opposite feelings from those of the infidel metaphysician. The evidence
of facts however, will yield neither to prejudices nor to theories. And,
while we dream not of representing the patriarch of Uz as drawing his
inferences from geology, still his mind was alive to convictions of the
grandeur and diversity of the works of creation—to a sense of his own
ignorance—and filled at the same time with awe and veneration at the
unsearchable wisdom of the ways of Providence. “STAND STILL AND CONSIDER
THE WONDROUS WORKS OF GOD. HAST THOU ENTERED INTO THE SPRINGS OF THE SEA?
HAST THOU PERCEIVED THE BREADTH OF THE EARTH? DECLARE, IF THOU KNOWEST IT
ALL.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE WEALDEN FORMATION.
The Wealden formation is more local than any of the deposits we have yet
considered. The term has a particular reference to the district features
of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, known as the _Wolds_, from
the German _wald_, signifying a wood or forest: and as the geological
position of the group is in immediate _superior_ connection with the
oolites, and _inferior_ to the chalk, the character and history of the
Wealden fall to be given in this place. The Specton clay of Yorkshire,
displayed along the cliffs adjoining Filey Bay, is considered to belong
to the same series as the _gault_ or blue and gray marls of Cambridge,
Kent and Sussex; but it contains some characteristic indications of the
Kimmeridge clay, and, therefore, we should expect that, in Yorkshire,
these two strata are not separated as in the south of England.
I. NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE DEPOSIT. The Wealden is a fresh water or
estuary formation, as is clearly established by its fossils as well as by
its lithology. The group consists of layers of clay, sand, shale, with
subordinate beds of limestone, grit, and friable sandstone. The Hastings
sands, Tilgate Forest beds, Tunbridge Wells deposits, and the Ashburn
lignite shales and ferruginous sands, are all constituents of the series.
The Dover Railway traverses the formation between Red Hill and Ashford:
the branch leading to Tunbridge Wells affords excellent sections of the
clay and sands. Thus occupying, in an irregular triangular form, the
south-east of England, the wealden again emerges in the principality of
Hanover, and other places in the north of Germany: continuing in the same
course, it is again found on the British shores, occurring at Linksfield,
near Elgin.
It would not be easy to restore, in imagination, the surrounding aspect
of the superficial area now occupied by patches of the wealden formation.
Take your station on the Peak of Derby, or Shotover Hill, or the heights
of Ivanhoe—not so perilous adventure as that of the heroine of the tale
on the battlements of Malvoisin—and you overlook a vast extent of vale
and woodland, all then one broad expanse of water. This inland sea
filled the whole intermediate district traced above, studded, in all
probability, with islands, and fringed with shallows and rich arborescent
headlands. Sharks prowled and darted in every direction; pterodactyles
may be descried looming along the waste; while in terror or in joy, the
plesiosaurus reared aloft his far-stretching neck, and then withdrew into
his fenny retreats. The saurians, with their strong muscular jaws, are
actively engaged, each according to his kind, by the shores or in the
waters; while over the busy scene, the fierce-weltering ichthyosaurus
looks in wild amazement, his large eyes leaping in their sockets, and
spreading dismay among the tenants of the deep, as even now, when a kite
enters a thorny brake, or pursues his stealthy flight over the meadows
and green fields of timid nestling bird.
Nor would the land animals be less actively employed in maintaining the
laws of their creation. No skeletons of birds have yet been detected; but
their foot-prints, we have seen, are numerous. These clouds of insects,
and other brilliant objects that flit with such rapidity across the sky,
have all been stirred, and are leaping they know not whither, for the
tread of a monster’s feet is heard through the forest, mailed in plated
horn thicker than Ajax’s shield, and, pursued by another, presses and
plunges onward in reckless haste. Imagine the many encounters during a
single season between one set of the terrestrials only, the saurians;
of the class, there are the remains of the megalosaurus, the great
saurian—of the geosaurus, the land saurian—of the hylæosaurus, the forest
saurian—of the teleosaurus, the perfect saurian,—all fitted with jaws
and teeth, most cruelly bent on mischief, and restrained by no brotherly
sympathies when accident or bold defiance bring them in the way of each
other. The fell onslaughts of generous man, tribe against tribe, clan
to clan, nation to nation, for some inconceivable nothing or unintended
provocation, recorded within the brief historical epoch, may reconcile
one to a picture of the irrationals similarly engaged, and throughout
periods of time sufficient for the deposition of the entire oolitic
series, before which the rule of earthly dynasties shrinks into utter
insignificance.
These depositions accomplished, and successive races entombed within
them, there is evidence that the floor of the ocean was raised above
the waters, and that central Europe presented, all around, a breast of
high land. There are various intercalations, in the series of marine
and terrestrial deposits as well as of fresh and salt water fossils.
Violent internal convulsions prevailed throughout the period, and the
animals were all of a kind to care little for the war of the elements.
Meanwhile a fresh water formation is completed in many places a thousand
feet in thickness, and consisting of a series of beds; not continuous
all round the shores of the oolitic detritus, but confined to a few
localities, and characterized everywhere by its own group of organisms.
This is the wealden formation. And the question arises, How this series
of fresh water clays, and sands, and grits, was produced at a time when
the sea prevailed so universally over the whole of continental Europe,
and the eastern division of Great Britain? The solution is simpler than
at first sight might appear, when viewed in connection with the existing
distribution of all our great primary formations. The extent of dry land
was such as to furnish watershed for numerous rivers. The mountains
supplied the detrital matter. This was brought to the river’s mouth,
where it formed deltas; or spread out on the floor of estuaries, where it
received the few marine fossils which are found in the formation. Cast
your eye along the geological map of western Europe, and—in the mountains
of Wales, the silurian district of the north-west of France, the primary
rocks of the tributaries of the Elbe, the Hartz mountains, and the gneiss
and granites of Sutherland and Caithness—we have all the materials and
requisites that are necessary for the silting process of the wealden, its
accumulation, and geographical distribution as referred to in its range
and extent.
The continuity of the coasts of France and England is herein supposed,
and, upon geological data, this is a matter of far simpler inference than
the framing even of a political constitution that will stand a decade of
the years of our fleeting pilgrimage. The vision of Plato’s Atlantis in
the great ocean becomes in the geologist’s creed a reality, who believes
that a vast continent must have existed on our south and west, all
now sunk and whelmed in the deep abyss. A chain of islands would just
indicate the positions of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, and
the Caucasian ranges, all then overlooking central and eastern Europe,
not yet elevated above the waves. “At this period,” says Professor
Ansted, “it is most probable that no great east and west subterranean
movement had acted on the part of the earth’s crust now above the water
in the northern hemisphere, and possibly the first intimation of such a
disturbing force, may be traced, though faintly, in the existence of a
considerable estuary, in which our wealden beds were deposited. From the
condition of the upper Portland beds, we find, that, just at the close
of the oolitic period, there were very numerous changes of level induced
over a small area in the south-east of England, then, most likely, not
far from the coast line of a large continent.”
It may seem to many presumptuous, and beyond all the usual latitude of
exaggerated description to attempt to dwell thus minutely on physical
arrangements, and a vegetable and animal economy, so remote and beyond
the sphere of observation. Remarkable enough that our great healing
springs of Bath, Cheltenham, Leamington, Tunbridge, and Harwich, are all
situated among, or have their origin in, the series of deposits we have
been considering. But the judgment, more than the fancy, is employed in
studying the geography of the ancient world, in looking out from the
heights around, and trying again to unite the waters and the dry land, to
recall the vanishing traces of former sea-marks, and from the disinterred
remains of the remarkable races that inhabited the island, and swarmed
around its coasts, to contemplate the ways and doings of
“That Eternal Mind,
Who built the spacious universe, and decked
Each part so richly with whate’er pertains
To life, to health, to pleasure.”
And these three blessings all are striving to maintain, to restore,
or to acquire. Life, health, pleasure—these are the great stimulants
to all human exertion, and how best to promote them ought to be the
aim of human study. The suite of rocks which compose the carboniferous
system is one clearly of pre-arrangement, and designed for man’s use.
The strata, now beneath us, as undeniably evince a like beneficent
purpose. The treasures of saline rock, gypseous marls, iron sands, and
pyritous clays, may be mysterious all, in their origin: but their uses
and their ends, human wants and frailties have long since established.
The cravings of appetite satisfied, every creature has an instinct, which
unerringly leads it to seek a remedy against injury and disease; and a
provision for the one equally with the other, has been made by Him who
notices the sparrow in his fall, and careth for the ravens of the desert.
Slow of apprehension the mind, that cannot discern in the strata under
review, a striking instance of foresight, a gift of benevolent wisdom,
recesses long since stored with medicaments and restoratives for human
frailties; and, though no angel now is there to trouble the waters, a
kind Providence has designed them, and a good heart will use them, as
tokens of its love.
II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS are chiefly of a fluviatile and terrestrial
character. The beds in which they occur were deposited in the channel, or
delta, of a river of great breadth, and demonstrate the existence of a
large extent of neighboring country. These beds range from Hastings into
Dorsetshire, but are not found to the north of the Thames. In Portland
and the Isle of Wight they likewise exist with all their peculiar
organisms in the greatest abundance. In the latter locality, the wealden
beds form the cliffs between Atherfield Point and Compton Bay; they
also overhang the Bay of Sandown. The Purbeck beds and sands are well
displayed at Durdle Cove, Warbarrow, and Swanage Bays; and in the Vale of
Wardour the same strata are developed. In every one of these beautiful,
picturesque, accessible, and very limited districts, you have congregated
specimens of the fauna and flora of rivers, groves, forests, and plains,
which have no longer a place on the terraqueous globe. Compared with the
living or extinct races they constitute a chapter in natural history
nowhere else to be seen or studied.
Thus of eight genera of plants in the wealden, there are only four
common to it and the oolites, but not a single species. Of the hundreds
of zoophytes in the older formation, not one occurs in the newer.
Twenty genera of insects existed in the period of the wealden, one
only of which is prolonged from the antecedent period of oolitic life;
one new genus of Crustacean (the Cypris), and five species; while the
conchifera have little in common, save the mytilus and unio, and both of
which, generically, have been transmitted from the carboniferous era.
The fishes of the wealden consist of seven genera, of which only one
is new, the Sphenonchus. The reptilians amount to eleven genera, three
of which present remains in the oolitic group, Cetiosaurus, Chelonia,
and Megalosaurus—same species in both. The Cetiosaurus belongs to the
whale race of animals, and it is singular to find the tribe exhibiting
the same stupidity, or hardihood it may be, in forsaking, then as now,
their briny element, and seeking a grave in the clays and sands of fresh
water shoals! The Hylæosaurus and Iguanodon were both found in the
Tilgate Forest beds, but have been noticed under the fauna of the oolite
series, as probably living in the age of, as they approach so closely in
structure and size to, the reptilian types of the deposit; frequenting
the woods and pastures, while their mighty cotemporaries were following
their instincts in the seas and lakes of the district.
It would thus appear that the close of the oolitic period of the
earth’s history resembles the close of the carboniferous period, in
the sudden transition from an exuberant to a remarkably barren display
of vegetable fossils. In the comparative scantiness of the sauroid
family of fishes, by which the outgoing of the coal era is likewise
distinguished, we may fancy another point of analogy in the diminution
of the monstrous reptilians that appears to have taken place after this
series of deposits. May it be inferred that these two periods enjoyed
a higher degree of temperature than has prevailed, either before or
since, generally over the earth’s surface, and more certainly in these
northern latitudes? Interred among the strata of both lie the remains of
races, vegetable and animal, which have perished: and what we describe
by kindred names are confined to climes and regions basking near the
equator, and enlightened by other constellations. Then the alternating
deposits of clay, lime, ironstone, coal, salt, gypsum, speak of lakes
and estuaries, rolling rivers and high lands no longer existing in these
parts. A few leaves of their annals are inscribed with forms of grotesque
life, and stirring activities, which are there to attest the majesty
of their revolutions. Geology, in little more than twenty years, has
made the discovery, collected the facts, arranged and systematized the
knowledge of the character and habits of the successive generations whose
domain, whether of land or water, was so different from ours, and now all
passed away.
A higher temperature, from central heat, will not explain these facts,
for that should have prevailed more in the devonian, and still more
in the silurian periods,—and of this we have no evidence. Appearances
would rather support an opposite conclusion. The sweep of the comet
again, resorted to upon occasions, may have destroyed, but could not
maintain, such a state of things. A change of the polar axis, of the
most inconsiderable extent, is demonstrated to be highly improbable, or
almost impossible. And now, in the unwearied march of science, often
baffled but never cast down, it has been announced as the probable
solution of all the changes of the past, THE PROGRESSION OF THE WHOLE
SOLAR SYSTEM, whereby the earth, and all the sister planets, are dragged
through infinite space, and brought successively within the sphere
of new constellations—now in a hotter and now in a milder efflux of
ether—combining its own with a more general movement in a universal
whirl—and thus constantly subjected, in all its parts, to ever-varying
external influences! This, at least, is the ingenious theory of M.
Poisson, which, he thinks, will account for the central heat of the
globe, dipped for a time into a burning atmosphere, and cooling off more
rapidly on the surface, and will give a no less plausible explanation as
to the extent and frequency of change effected on the surface. Geology
and astronomy become, when viewed in this light, correlative sciences,
and impart an illustrative interest to the researches of each other. The
lofty flights of the one are brought down, as it were, to more earthly
things; while the geologist, on the other hand, is lifted from his miry
pit and downward studies, to meditate on the “sweet influences and bands”
that harmonize and link all the planets in their orbits, and rejoices to
see his own earth taking part in the eternal music of the spheres. He is
pleased to believe, according to the view of the astronomer, that this
ball of stone and clay enjoys at times a vitality all over, which warms
and cherishes into life natant forms, and creeping things, and flying
dragons, whose development of powers could not have been sustained, on so
great a scale, in the lower and less favored regions.
But while the cause may be adequate to the effect—and in the
approximation to the truth there is a feeling of satisfaction, an
elevation of vision and elasticity of thought, as
“Rays divine dart round the globe,”
—still the speculation referred to belongs rather to the poetry than
to the philosophy of science, influencing the imagination more than
the judgment, and trenching on relations that lie beyond the field of
legitimate research.
CHAPTER V.
THE CRETACEOUS SYSTEM.
The history of our globe during the deposition of the CHALK FORMATION,
and the changes therewith connected, have now to be considered. By
whatever causes effected—from whatever sources derived the materials—the
line of demarkation is here complete. The sands of Africa, suddenly
converted into or drifted over by the snows of the Alps, would not
present a greater diversity of outline than is the transition to the
geologist, when for the first time he steps into a chalk district,
and marks the obvious contrast with all the surrounding scenery. From
Gloucester into Wiltshire we pass, as it were, into a new zone of
latitude.
The details contained in the two last chapters are in strict conformity
with the laws of nature: the animals connected with the epoch possessed
functions of life and an external adaptation of things suited to each
other. Similar arrangements exist at present under nearly similar
circumstances: the tropical animals bear a close affinity to the extinct
races; and show that, however nature may contrive to display her
exhaustless powers of invention in her forms of living creatures, she
still conforms to a type, and has her limits of divergence. The past and
the present so agree in all essential points as clearly to demonstrate
a wise and controlling agency, a measure of enjoyment combined with
an adjustment of figure, which, though approaching the marvelous, has
resulted from design and the profoundest intelligence. Accordingly,
the symptoms of the change we now witness are cotemporaneous. With the
cretaceous system are introduced new mineral conditions, and along with
these there are new forms of existence.
The animals of the chalk and oolite periods are essentially
different—still generically shading, indeed, into each other—but so
differing in species, and the appearance for the first time of new
creations, as again to announce to us that we tread on sacred ground, and
witness in its arrangement and contents the direct agency of Omnipotence.
We can form no opinion, no notion whatever, in these changes, of the
_modus operandi_. We remark simply the effects; and science, amidst all
its otherwise barren and useless details, then achieves its loftiest
purposes when it thus traces the footsteps and actings of the Great First
Cause.
1. RANGE AND STRUCTURE OF THE CHALK FORMATION. Considered
mineralogically, this rock can never fail to arrest attention or
inquiries, even among the least observant, as to its nature and origin.
There is no trace of it in the northern portion of the island; and when
one for the first time sees whole mountains of it, his sensations are not
a little exciting. For our own part, we felt as if we entered a new world
when we gazed upon hills, and their long-furrowed escarpments, of this
calcareous snow-drift. Our acquaintance with the mineral had hitherto
been limited to the fragments with which we were wont to trace the lines
of our schoolboy pastimes. We got no deeper into its mysteries when, on
a higher scale of action, we saw it delineate the diagram, or run over
the fluxional problem on the black-board in academy and college-hall. But
here! and half an island is covered with these stores of knowledge and of
industry. Nine or ten counties on a stretch, from Dorset to Flamborough
Head, and from Bridport to Deal, are covered over, and for hundreds of
feet in depth, with the milk-white earth; and, whichever way you turn and
bend toward the Capital, there are ample opportunities for the study of
this curious page of geological history.
The chalk beds are not composed of one uniform compact mass of the
useful mineral itself, which consists of nearly pure carbonate of
lime, of soft earthy texture. Geologically considered, the cretaceous
system comprises a series of green and ferruginous sands, clays, marls,
gray and white limestones; and these again are arranged under three
leading groups—chalk, gault, and green sand. The _chalk_—properly so
called—is subdivided into the upper and lower,—containing in the upper
numerous veins and nodules of flint, and varies in color through several
intermediate hues, until, in its contact with trap, it assumes a deep
red. The _gault_ is an argillaceous deposit of stiff, dark blue clays,
highly calcareous, and effervesces freely with acids. The _green sand_ is
a triple alternation of sands, cherty limestone, and friable sandstone,
with beds, in some places of ocher and Fuller’s earth. The whole series
may be estimated at nearly two thousand feet in thickness, formed in
a deep sea basin, the materials floating in very still waters, and
aggregated successively through the combined influence of mechanical,
chemical, and organic agencies.
The _mechanical_ influence is very apparent in the sands and marls,
which are evidently the spoils of islands and continents, washed down by
currents and floods of fresh water, and deposited over an ancient ocean
bed. The _chemical_ composition of the flints or concretionary nodules,
which give such a remarkable character and appearance often to the chalk,
is equally demonstrable; from fifty to a hundred beds of chalk, pure
and beautifully white, will sometimes be seen alternating with as many
bands of dark-colored flints, all regularly arranged as cannon-shot of
all sizes on a floor, and presenting, for miles along the cliffs of the
sea-shore, lines of beautifully defined fortifications. The _organic_
agent is visible in the nucleus of these round masses, which consists
of an animal or vegetable substance, as a coral, a shell, a piece of
flustra, or sponge. The nodules assume various shapes, that seem to
be molded according to the cavities of the matrix in which they are
imbedded, but are actually the forms of the bodies or organic substances
to which they are attached. The explanation given is, that a chemical
attraction has taken place between the vegetable or animal remains,
strewed abundantly through the waters, and the silicious matter held
in solution. The silex in solution gradually incrusts, or incorporates
with, the organized substance,—and thus were produced at once the flinty
concretions and the wonderful petrifactions contained in them. Break
any one of these nodular masses, and minute drops of moisture will, if
immediately inspected, be seen to ooze out from its pores: thus clearly
furnishing a proof of the state of solution in which it originally
existed, and the watery menstruum in which it was produced.
The mineralogical history and arrangement of the chalk group of rocks
are therefore in many respects very interesting. The chalk overlies
the wealden, which was a mere delta at the river’s mouth. The bed of
the river suddenly disappears, and now there rests upon it a deep sea
formation. How stupendous and overwhelming the forces of nature through
all her operations! How vast her affluence and prodigality, which could
so thoroughly alter all her exterior and interior arrangements, and fill
the seas with this new matter.
II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS display the boundless profusion of animal life
which prevailed during the cretaceous period. The wealden furnishes no
grounds of comparison, as that is simply a local fresh water deposit,
and consequently can furnish no test of the general condition of life
upon the surface of the globe. But when we go back to the oolitic period
we obtain a standard by which to measure the doings of nature in the
interval, what new creations started into being, and what provisions
were made for their subsistence. The state of the temperature cannot be
determined, as the products, with the rarest possible exceptions, are
wholly marine, and therefore affected by atmospheric influences in a
very small degree. Neither can much be conjectured concerning the state
of the land, as scarcely a fragment of true terrestrial life has been
detected in the deposit; and yet, from the stillness and comparatively
small dimensions of sea-basins into which the earthy ingredients were
floated, the probability is that the land was both lofty and widely
extended. One mammalian, and the remains of a solitary bird, and a meager
sprinkling of vegetables, constitute the whole, and even dubious, amount
of contributions from this department of nature. To Neptune, therefore,
the palæontologist turns his undivided attention; and, comparing one
period with another, he finds the following results:
The cretaceous deposits all lie WITHIN THE AREA of the oolites. They
are _conformable_ generally in position, and display, in proportion to
their extent, a like superabundance of calcareous earth. Hence a return
to polyp and shelly types of life, which we find so characteristic and
diversified in both epochs.
Thus of the first order, Amorphozoa, the oolitic age produced only one
genus; in the cretaceous we find thirteen genera, in the list Spongia,
which is common to both. Of Zoophytes, there are twenty-three genera in
the former, and seventeen in the latter—of which nine are common to both
periods. The Echinodermata number eighteen in the oolite, and twenty-five
in the chalk—five only common. The genus Foraminifera is entirely new
in the latter formation, and consists of twelve ascertained genera, and
nearly double the number of species. Of Annelida there are four genera in
the oolite, and six in the chalk, in which the new order of Cirrhipeda
occurs likewise. The Astacus is the only crustacean in the oolitic group:
this and three new genera are found in the chalk. The Conchifera are
very numerous in both deposits; forty-six in the older, and thirty-eight
genera in the newer, of which eight are peculiar to the chalk. Monymaria
are nearly in the same relative proportions. _Rudistes_ occurs, as a new
order, for the first time in the chalk, while again the Brachiopods,
Gasteropods, and Cephalopods, are about equally abundant in both
formations, with additions in the chalk to the generic models. And here
too the new order Pteropoda, of a single genus and species, is introduced
to our contemplation. Ammonites and Belemnites do not pass this age.
[Illustration:
1. Pecten quinque-costatus.
2. Plagiostoma Spinosum.
3. Hamites intermedius.
4. Spatangus cor-anguinum.
5. Galerites albogalerus.
6. Scaphites Striatus.
7. Belemnites mucronatus.]
The fishes of the two periods are equally striking in their contrasts;
the two orders of Ganoids and Placoids are common to both, while the
Ctenoids and Cycloids appear for the first time in the history of
our planet, and which were afterward to contribute so largely to the
sustenance and comforts of man. The Reptilians show a declension in
the latter period in numbers, with the introduction, however, of four
new genera—one of which (the Iguanodon Mantelli), is also found in the
wealden.
The Cimoliornis Diomedeus, described by Professor Owen, is the only
specimen of the order Aves or bird-tribe that as yet appears over this
waste of waters. The term _cimoliornis_ means simply the chalk-bird,
and is allied, in some of its osseous processes, to the albatross, but
also differs in too many points to be regarded as the ancestor of that
courageous storm-braving animal. The claims of this fossil, indeed, to
its true place in the system, have not yet been fully established. “Of
the few actually fossilized remains of birds,” says Professor Owen, “that
have been discovered in England, the most complete and characteristic
are those from the London clay. Some fragmentary Ornitholites have been
discovered in the older pliocene crag, and in the newer pliocene fresh
water deposits and bone caves. Extremely scanty have hitherto been the
recognizable remains of birds from the chalk formations. The fossil from
the wealden, which I formerly believed, with Cuvier and Dr. Mantell, to
belong to a wading bird, I have since adduced reasons for referring to
the extinct genus of flying reptiles called Pterodactyle.” The fossil
bones of the Cimoliornis were obtained by the Earl of Enniskillen from
the chalk beds near Maidstone, and resemble the humerus of the albatross
in form, proportions and size; there are no distinct traces of the
attachments of the quill-feathers in any of the fragments; but in other
points there are analogies to the osseous structure of birds; and there
are bones so gigantic as will assign them a place, if the proofs are
completed, among the enormous foot-print class of the permian age, and go
almost to realize the fabulous “roc” of the Arabian romance.
Our attention in this group of deposits, however, is riveted more by
the little than the great—by the microscopic than the gigantic forms of
life. It is astounding, indeed, to contemplate the myriads of creatures
which swarmed in the seas during this period. A fragment of chalk, the
size of a garden pea, contains thousands of perfect shells; these shells
inclose still, in many instances, the pulpy animal matter; and consist
of a series of distinct well-defined chambers. In a cubic inch of the
rock it is calculated that there are upward of a million of infusorial
animalcules. Yet their orders are determined, their genera fixed,
their very species are described, so perfect is the structure, and so
thoroughly preserved all the parts of their minute shelly coverlets. The
microscope has restored, under the action of certain dilute acids, the
contour and shape of entire hosts of these creatures. Some specimens,
so positively can it speak of them, appear to consist of tubes placed
edgewise,—one projecting sometimes beyond another. Others are seen to
possess a series of tubular organs placed parallel, and disposed in long
lines of fragile reticulated riband. Some are oblong figures. Others
are complicated, exhibiting numerous projecting processes, and of every
variety of shape. Some resemble the shell of the nautilus; others are
still detected with the skin adhering to the skeleton; while in the
stomachs and digestive sacs of others the more minute infusoria, which
the diminutive monster had swallowed, are made palpable to the sight.
All this may be called trifling, a misapplication of talent, a waste of
ingenuity. What terms too grand to describe the lofty speculations of
the astronomer, who points his telescope to some dark point in the blue
sky, and descries in its infinite depths a cluster of closely aggregated
shining particles, minute as the motes in the sunbeam, and hails it as
the discovery of a new system of worlds. He cannot count them, for they
are innumerable. He cannot measure them, for they have no dimensions. He
cannot tell their relations, nor describe their orbits of motion, for
a sparkling heap of star-dust is all that flits before the reflector.
But the boundaries of knowledge are enlarged, and though man nor any of
the arts may ever be benefited thereby, the fortunate discoverer will
have his name inscribed in that distant region of the universe, and
transmitted from generation to generation with increasing luster.
The discoveries of the geologist may be inferior in grandeur, but
are they practically less illustrative in their bearings on existing
arrangements? He sees the past in the present, the near and the distant
in time brought together. A charm is thereby thrown over studies and
speculations which would otherwise be useless. Thus, in the mineral
structures resulting from the agencies of these invisible organic bodies,
the mind is struck with the resemblance to similar processes that may
be now going forward in the ocean: it sees in the discoloration of
the waves, as the voyager steers his vessel over the main, a light by
which to decipher the story of an age; and, while no voice issues from
the countless myriads of animals which thicken the waters, rocks are
elaborating and depositions made that will yet be raised into islands or
continents. “On the coast of Chili, a few leagues north of Conception,
the Beagle,” says Dr. Darwin, “one day passed through great bands of
muddy water, which, when taken up in a glass, was found to be slightly
stained as if by red dust, and after leaving it for some time quiet, a
cloud collected at the bottom. With a lens of one-fourth of an inch focal
distance, small hyaline points could be seen, darting about with great
rapidity, and frequently exploding. Examined with a much higher power,
their shape was found to be oval, and contracted by a ring round the
middle, from which line curved little setæ proceeded on all sides; and
these were the organs of motion. The animals move with the narrow apex
forward, by the aid of their vibratory cilia, and generally by rapid
starts. Their numbers were infinite, and in one day we passed through two
spaces of water thus stained, one of which alone must have extended over
several square miles. The color of the water, as seen at some distance,
was like that of a river which has flowed through a red clay district;
but under the shade of the vessel’s side, it was quite as dark as
chocolate.”
These are the foundation-builders of future islands, of the very color
and size, it may be, as those which piled up these masses of the
brick-red chalk. In an ounce of sea-sand, from three to four millions
of these minute bodies have been enumerated. Twenty-two thousand can be
placed side by side on a linear inch of surface. One single individual,
in the course of a month in summer, will produce as many as 800,000,000.
In a globule of water, a cubic inch contains more inhabitants than are
now existing of the human family on the face of the globe. The skeletons
of the animalcula are transported through the air in the form of a
fine impalpable dust, covering the decks of vessels, and darkening the
atmosphere many hundred miles distant at sea. The eye can trace nothing
of structure—not even of granular form—and while clothes, rigging, and
every crevice is filled and discolored with the organic nebulæ, it is
not until the highest microscopic powers are applied, that it becomes
resolvable and demonstrated to be a system of living creatures, moving
through space, and fulfilling their destiny!
The views of nature thus opened up are boundless and infinite, in either
terms of the scale, ascending or descending. The immensity of things
on the one side, and their minuteness on the other, carry them equally
beyond the reach of direct observation, and the intervention of means
must in both cases be provided, ere they can become the subjects of human
perception and examination. But what is it to me, some will reason, if
there lie within the depths of space myriads of rolling worlds, when I
see them not, and whose revolutions can in no way affect my condition
on earth? These rocks around are but obstacles in my way, or stones for
which I have no regard, as I can apply them to no useful purpose. I
know that every blade of grass, every leaf in the forest, every drop of
water, every grain of sand, teem with living creatures. And, in the air
I breathe, systems more, beyond the ken of human view “both when we wake
and when we sleep,” revel in the irresponsible enjoyment of sentient
existence. Science, viewed in this light, and calculated upon the rule of
mere statistical enumeration, may be reckoned as utterly valueless, and
knowledge as but a term for MATERIALISM.
But neither astronomy nor geology will permit our speculations thus to
terminate. A principle of causation is involved in both, and to trace
this through a chain of sequences and effects, whether in the great or
little, in the remote or near, is the one grand aim of philosophy. If
I can perceive no bounds to the vast expanse in which natural causes
operate, and can fix no border or termination of the universe; and if
I am equally at a loss to discern things in their elements, and to
discover the limits which terminate the subdivisions of organic matter,
my inquiries will not here cease. The mind will not be satisfied so to
close and to shut up the thesis propounded. I am compelled to advance
onward, even as the objects recede from the view, or expand in magnitude
beyond the grasp of comprehension. The soul is filled with the idea
of immensity, as it familiarizes itself to the thought of the highest
mountains of the earth being but specks on its surface—the terraqueous
globe as an atom compared with the sun—the sun itself dwindling to a
star from some point in the distant fields of space—and even all the
systems that sparkle in the clearest sky only as faint streaks of light,
or not discernible even for millions of years after their creation,
in the systems that replenish and shine in the still remoter void.
Speculations, lofty as these, do leave something behind—something nobler
than arithmetical calculation—and knowledge becomes SPIRITUALIZED by them.
The same result follows, when we descend in the scale of nature toward
the other limit, when we perceive a like gradation from minute bodies to
others incomprehensibly more minute, and are led as far below sensible
measures of perception, as we were before carried beyond them, until
vision is lost in utter vacuity and obliteration of all organic form. But
the more attenuated and fragile the structure, the more the manifestation
of Omnipotence and superintending care. If from microscopical observation
we discover animals, thousands of which scarce form an atom perceptible
to unassisted sense—each of which are endowed with a system of vessels,
and fluids circulating in those vessels—if we can trace the propagation,
nourishment, and growth of these animals—observe their motions,
capacities of action, limits and conditions of existence—all this through
countless millions and multiplications of tribes and generations—and,
finally, after their term of being ended, now find them entombed in
rocks, and elaborated into useful minerals;—knowledge thus pursued
becomes again the handmaid of RELIGION, and terminates in the conviction,
that we live in a universe over which the eye of Omniscience and love has
been ever wakeful and predominant. The telescope leads to one verge of
infinity, the microscope brings us to another; and in the discoveries of
both there is the firmest assurance, that as nothing is too distant and
vast for the Creator’s control, so nothing is too minute for His wise and
fatherly care.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TERTIARY SYSTEM.
The Tertiary System forms the last great subdivision of the rocky
strata of the earth—the last in the creative, as well as geographical,
distribution of organic and inorganic matter—antecedent to the human
epoch. All the European and partly Asiatic chains of mountains were again
farther elevated toward the close of the preceding period. Europe itself
assumed a more distinctive shape and contour, a bolder coast-line, higher
plateaux, deeper and more extensive lakes. Great Britain was rounded into
form, settled upon new foundations, and already stood out, in her western
and northern belt of granitic and primary rocks, the empress of the ocean.
In thus recalling the features of the old world, and marking the
configuration of a newer state of things, geology furnishes indubitable
evidence upon which to establish these and other more general
conclusions. The physical geography of the globe is inseparably connected
with the series of changes we have been contemplating. The elevation,
small and isolated as it appears, of the formation termed the wealden,
supplies a key by which to measure the rivers and deltas of our own
island. The chalk, forming at the time the bed of the ocean, remained for
a period in undisturbed repose, as evidenced by the hollows and erosive
action seen on its surface. Then a series of convulsive movements, over
a vast area, are indicated by the disrupted and altered position of the
strata, when the bottom of the sea was lifted up, and its whole marine
fauna completely changed. The secondary era passed away: the new tertiary
arrangements, animate and inanimate, from henceforth commence.
Thus rolls on the mighty course of time. A continent is the gift of one
age: half a globe is shattered and wasted in the next. All living things
become extinct and entombed in this quarter: in that, there are new
and more abundant creations. The face of nature is again redolent with
beauty: life, profusion, and enjoyment are everywhere abounding.
“Look down on earth. What seest thou? Wondrous things,
Terrestrial wonders that eclipse the skies.
Nor can the eternal rocks His will withstand—
What leveled mountains, and what lifted vales!
High through mid air, here streams are taught to flow—
Whole rivers there, laid by in basins, sleep—
Here plains turn oceans; there vast oceans join,
Through kingdoms, channel’d deep from shore to shore.”
The geological district upon which we now enter, embraces London as
nearly the center of its range, from which in every direction, along
every line of railway, sections of the tertiary deposits are laid open:
cabinets of conchology are to be met with in every pit for forty miles
around; and what facilities to visit and examine them all with the speed
of the wind. Not a spot but may be reached at a wish, sections more than
can be numbered are in every locality, and in half the time one makes the
ascent of Schehalion, he has taken the circuit of several counties.
London! what can it be likened or compared to? Nothing is so unlike as a
simile, and we need not try to describe this emporium of the world by a
comparison. It is not Rome nor Thebes, nor Nineveh, nor Babylon, but more
than them all in the stirring activities of mere animal existence—more
boundless in wealth—more dominant in conquests—more all-embracing in
commerce; as deep in its sins, arrogant in its pride, haughty in its
supremacy, as Queen City of the nations. About twelve hundred souls are
every week added to that dense mass of human beings. As many, nearly, are
every week blotted from the sum of mortal existence. No metropolis on
this mundane scene ever stood in a similar relation to all other nations
and cities of the world, whose every wish, for weal or woe, so affected
the destinies of all the families of men. A part of every one of them
is therein concentrated. Not a tribe but has its representative. Not a
specimen or production of human skill but is borne thither. Genius, wit,
industry, ingenuity, are in all their most beautiful creative efforts
indelibly embalmed; and were that mighty pile to be ingulfed in the bosom
of the waters, out of which its foundations were recently lifted up, the
_genus homo_ would, in all its entireness, be conserved together—the type
and wonder of our own geological epoch.
This city, too, contains everything else that the world contains. A
specimen of every living thing is here; and things which cannot live,
but pine and die away from their native haunts, have been carefully
preserved and skillfully arranged for the inspection of the curious.
The kaleidoscope, in all its phantasmagoria of change and infinite
diversity of hues, can display nothing half so various as the realities
of nature; and types of the entire modern era, from the extinct Dodo to
the recently-discovered Moas of Wanganui, are before you in all their
diversified forms, from the misshapen and fantastic to the loveliest of
earthly creations. When Adam gave names to the creatures of the field,
they are simply said to have been “brought unto him to see what he would
call them;” every tree pleasant to the sight grew out of the ground; and
Eve, Milton beautifully represents
“went forth among her fruits and flowers,
To visit how they prosper’d, bud and bloom,
Her nursery; they at her coming sprung.”
Here are all things once more assembled, and as the tree of knowledge no
longer bars from the tree of life, we can innocently search into all the
mysteries, and see all the qualities and shapes, of every earthly object.
Nor is London less privileged and distinguished by its geological
treasures and multifarious condition of things beneath. The capital
stands on the tertiary _Eocene_ strata, or last of the rocky series of
the island. The pre-Adamic arrangements all here cease, the boundaries
betwixt the old and the new world are here drawn. The age of HUMANITY
dawns. And, interred in the deposits immediately below, lie the last
of a series of monsters which preceded man’s introduction upon the
stage, and between whom and all his race an unequal war of merciless
extermination must have prevailed. The reasoning animal, indeed, at once
the most helpless and most potent of nature’s offspring, could but ill
have existed under a constitution of the elements which fostered the
Palæotheriums and Chæropotami of the tertiary age.
Neither the romance of geology nor the era of prodigies, therefore,
are yet over. The curtain once more requires to be lifted from the
dark regions of the past, ere we approach the arrangements, forms, and
distribution of animal and vegetable life, of the epoch in which our own
lot has been cast.
I. THE TERTIARY GROUP consists of a series of well-marked and closely
connected beds of clays, sands, gravel, brecciated conglomerate, marls,
and limestones; some of which are of marine, and some of fresh water
origin—points only to be determined by their respective fossil remains.
Some lithological distinctions may also be established; the marine
deposits are less minutely laminated than those of the fresh water;
and also, in general, the beds are thicker, and their sediments more
confused in their arrangement. “Limestones, and fine light-colored
clays,” says Mr. Phillips, “constitute the principal mass of the fresh
water sediments; while sands, and blue and variously-colored clays, more
particularly mark the marine depositions. The latter appear like the
products of littoral agitation, as if the wearing of cliffs of older
strata had furnished the materials of these newer rocks; while the
former resemble the accumulations from the wasting surface of chalky and
argillaceous countries.”
These deposits lie in hollows and depressions of the chalk formation, and
constitute what is termed the London basin. A similar series of materials
occur in Hampshire, separated from the former by the upraised edges of
the subjacent strata, which, cropping out in like manner on the south,
inclose them also in a basin-shaped area. The same arrangement prevails
across the channel, where a suite of rocks referable to the same age lie
_within_ the chalks, and constitute the well-known Paris basin, whose
remarkable remains were first brought to light from their tomb of ages
in Montmartre by M. Brongniart and Cuvier, upward of thirty years ago.
The Auvergne basins, in central France, are equally well characterized.
And, stretching onward through southern Europe, the tertiary deposits
occupy positions nearly similar; and all composed, with slight local
variations, of kindred fossils and sediments.
Geology has been compared to history. We also see how it embraces the
whole range of physical geography, restoring the land-marks of the past,
and presenting pictures of the earth’s surface which the mere traveler
can no longer detect. The rolling Thames, with town, spire, and villa
nestling in every slope, and tunnel, bridges, and
“Crowded ports,
Where rising masts an endless prospect yield,”—
we seek in vain for on the geological map of the period. There were
spice islands, with aromatic gales, palm trees, dates, turtles lazily
pacing the sands, and crocodiles heavily climbing the banks, or plunging
and gamboling in the deeper pools. A Polynesia, with a tropical climate
and corresponding luxuriance of vegetable and animal life, occupied
the intermediate regions of Europe and Western Asia. On the south and
west a vast continent loomed over the main, whence, in part at least,
the detrital matter of the several basins alluded to was derived; and
there, too, in all probability, the source of the spasmodic action which
successively elevated and depressed the bed of the sea on which were
accumulating the tertiary deposits, and whose throes finally terminated
in its own submergence, and upheaval of the south-east coast of Britain,
and the whole of central Europe. Gulliver returned with a report of
strange people, flying islands, and fertile descriptions of impossible
monstrosities. Geology deals in a simple shifting of the scenes, new
arrangements in the drama of creation, and is entitled to credit in its
boldest assumptions, furnishing proof, as it abundantly does, from the
existing wreck of those vanished realities to which it now assigns local
habitation and name. London occupies the bottom of an ancient sea, whose
spoils, six or seven hundred feet in thickness, are there to attest
the fact; and for miles around, every excavation into the marine mass
multiplies the evidence, and repeats the story of its existence.
The plastic and London clays constitute the lower beds of the series
immediately above the chalk, and are nearly co-extensive in their range.
From Reading on the west, these sediments stretch eastward through the
valley of the Thames along the right bank to Margate; on the left,
they cover the entire district to Ipswich; and constitute a very large
part of the soil of the adjacent counties from Norfolk to Hampshire,
prevailing more especially through the central and eastern districts.
Mr. Prestwick has recently shown, that the lower English tertiaries form
several distinct subdivisions, each marked by different conditions, and
these conditions indicating ancient hydrographical and palæontological
changes of importance. A conglomerate bed of round flint pebbles, mixed
with yellow, green, or ferruginous sands, extends almost uninterruptedly
from the Isle of Wight to Woodbridge, in Suffolk; this bed underlies the
London clay, intercalated betwixt it and the plastic clay, and forms
a well-marked geological horizon, dividing this formation from the
older Eocene deposits. It contains thirty known, and eight or ten still
undescribed species of testacea, twenty of which are not found in the
lower deposits, while all are nearly identical with those of the superior
and London clay beds. The plastic formation thus embraces the London
clay, as the chalk does both, which again in its turn is embraced by the
oolites; whence the older and _inferior systems_ all widen, and extend
successively as the bed of the sea was elevated; and hence the basins
were gradually narrowed and contracted as they approached the last and
closing ante-human epoch.
A kind of convergency in all this can be distinctly traced in the
superficies of the earth to the state which it has now assumed. A similar
approximation in its living inhabitants, as will immediately appear, can
as clearly be pointed out to its present occupants. Intelligent will and
design are equally manifest in the arrangements; for, however great the
amount of change, the restraining hand of foresight is visibly present
in them all, and, in every successive advance to the present order of
things, a purpose is discernible in making the more effectual provision
for the permanent stability of the human system.
II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS of the tertiary deposits, if they possess not
so much of antiquity as those which have already passed in review, are
all the more interesting and worthy of attention, as they admit of a
closer comparison with the established order of things, and the laws now
regulating the distribution of animal and vegetable life. The locality
most fertile in the organic remains of this period is the small island
of Sheppey, situated near the mouth of the Thames, which is not more
welcomely descried by the home-bound mariner as a Pharos of light and
safety from the howling waste of waters, than it has proved to the
palæontologist a repository and beacon-light for determining the most
recondite mysteries connected with almost every living thing, in sea or
land, during the Eocene age. It consists entirely of the London clay
deposit, of an average thickness of five hundred feet, and displaying
in the cliffs vertical faces two hundred feet high. The fossils in both
localities are almost identical; in the isle of Sheppey they are more
abundant, as well as accessible; and, in consequence, they have been more
minutely and generally described.
1. The shells are very abundant. A few genera have survived the changes
and disturbances succeeding the upheaval of the chalk, and a single
species of Gasteropodes (Actæon elongatus), is common to both formations.
The Belemnites and Ammonites, swarming in the seas of the secondary
period, are now entirely withdrawn. The Nautilus is but sparingly
represented. The new genus Cerithium is introduced, a long, tapering,
spiral-formed shell, and apparently of strong predaceous habits. Lobsters
resembling existing species are very abundant. The Nummulites, of which
entire rocks were formed during the secondary age, still survive. And,
as an index to the state of temperature, it requires to be mentioned,
that many species, now found only in tropical seas, are mixed with the
testaceous fossils of these localities.
2. The fishes are equally peculiar and characteristic of the era upon
which we enter. Nothing can more strikingly show the violence and
universality of the change that was cotemporaneous with the tertiary
arrangements, than the total disappearance of the old tribes of fishes,
and their replacement by entirely new specific, and a large infusion
likewise of new generic, types. The change is no less remarkable when
viewed in its relation to existing races, every one of which, with the
solitary exception of the salmon family, have here their representatives.
Perch, cod, herring, mackerel, eels, had all become occupants of the seas
of this period, and their remains deposited in the clays of Sheppey
are in the greatest profusion. “The number of fossil fish from the
London clay,” says Agassiz, “amounts to ninety-two in the one single
locality of Sheppey, without counting ten species to which I have not yet
assigned names, not having hitherto been able to characterize them in a
satisfactory manner.” The difficulty arises from two causes—the imperfect
and fragmentary state of the fossils themselves, and the new principle
adopted by him for their classification.
Most of the fishes belonging to the tertiary era are of the Cycloid and
Ctenoid orders, with thin fragile scales, which, unlike the Ganoids whose
cuirassed bodies were protected by a thick covering of plates, have
been unable to preserve the integrity of their form and outline. The
greater number of these interesting remains, accordingly, have rotted
in the matrix, their bones separating, and the soft parts all replaced
by clay. The scales are _disaggregated_ (leur sécailles désagrégées),
and the cranium alone of the osseous structure remaining entire, owing
to the soldering of the pieces composing it, the ingenious naturalist
has adopted this single organ as the basis of the new system. “The
characteristic features of the skulls of the mammalia and reptilia are
known; the variations which such a bone, such a crest, such a groove
may undergo in such and such a family are understood; and already, at
the first glance, it is possible to ascertain whether the animal under
consideration is carnivorous, ruminant, or solipedal. But nothing is
more variable than the forms of the cranium and of the heads of fish.
The multitude of bones and of spines which serve for the attachment of
the muscles, the infinite variety of forms in the families themselves,
impart such a diversity to the crania of the fish, that the ichthyologist
frequently despairs of being able to reduce them to their respective
types, and in fact a comparative craniology of fish does not exist. There
is no one, that I know, who can tell at first sight, whether such and
such a cranium belongs to a percoid, to a sparoid, or to a chetodontal
type.”[8]
Isolated crania and detached vertebræ are nearly all that remain of the
Sheppey fossils, and the conclusions established from them by M. Agassiz,
are as follows, throwing new and important light upon the two last great
and approximating geological epochs.
The English coasts, at present, are inhabited by one hundred and
sixty-three species of fish, of which there are eighty-one genera,
divided among six predominant families, while two or three are only
occasionally domiciled. Sixty species belong to the order of Ctenoids,
fifty to that of the Cycloids, and eleven to the Ganoids. The fossil
distribution establishes the following results: of Ctenoids twelve
species, eleven genera, and three families, of which the perch tribe is
the most numerous; three genera of the Teuthiæ, a family essentially
meridional, and occurring only in southern seas, a fact which shows
a higher climatic condition of temperature than now exists in this
latitude; thirty-two species of the Cycloid order, twenty-six genera,
and eleven families—of these the cod and mackerel tribes are the most
numerous. While no trace of the family Salmonidæ has been detected in
the tertiary deposit, a family exclusively tropical, the Characidæ,
is found to have had congeners of very considerable size in the more
ancient epoch. The haddock, cod, and ling races are very abundant—a fact,
says Agassiz, which proves that, notwithstanding the more meridional
physiognomy of the Sheppey deposit as a whole, there is nevertheless
already an approximation in the fish of this interesting locality toward
the actual character of the ichthyological fauna of England.
The living representatives of most of these fossils are, if anywhere, to
be looked for in southern and tropical latitudes; for, notwithstanding
of an approximation, there is not much of real identity of type between
the existing and extinct races of the British seas. In fact, there are
but four genera, _Megalops_, _Cybium_, _Tetrapterus_, and _Myripristis_,
whose families are still known in the current epoch; and but very few
species, from the rich prolific beds of Sheppey, have been as yet
rendered into living forms.—The fishes most nearly related to the present
inhabitants of warmer climes are those which are obtained from the fossil
tertiary deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy, and in the little
explored region of Mount Lebanon. Much remains to be done, therefore,
before wider generalizations can be fully established. The knowledge
already acquired in this department of ichthyology confirms every
previous inference relating to periodic physical changes of the globe,
and their convergency to the order and arrangements of nature which now
prevail over the earth.
3. The reptiles and semi-natants of the tertiary period lead to the same
general conclusions. The intercourse now so closely established betwixt
this country and Borneo throws new light, every day more and more, upon
the ancient condition of our island. The resemblance, both in the fauna
and flora of these remote places, is striking throughout; when, for
_space_ on the one hand we substitute _time_ on the other, we have nearly
a transcript of their respective conditions. The northern swarmed with
the crocodiles of the southern hemisphere: the boa constrictor has his
representatives in the serpents of the London clay; and turtles, both of
marine and fresh water characters, are equally abundant. The Pythonic
monster is also there, represented by reptilians which now only inhabit
tropical countries, and prey on quadrupeds and birds, both of which
became abundant during the tertiary age.
4. The mammalia consisted of large pachyderms or thick-skinned animals,
now represented by the rhinoceros, tapir, and elephant. Wolves, foxes,
and raccoons, mice, rats, rabbits, hogs, even monkeys, began also to flit
over the stage of stirring life. The existence of the order Quadrumana
and the ape genus Macacus, during the earlier tertiary period, was
determined by the discovery of the fragment of a lower jaw, including
the socket of the last molar tooth, in a stratum of blue clay in
Suffolk, and described in the “Magazine of Natural History,” for 1839,
by Professor Owen. Other remains have been detected of the same animal
in France, the East Indies, and South America, establishing beyond a
doubt the co-existence of four different genera of apes and monkeys
with the extinct mammalians of the English tertiary deposits.—That
these creatures were anterior to MAN, in point of creation, is in
accordance with all geological evidence regarding the animal kingdom.
The progressive development theory avails itself of the fact, but can
establish less upon it than if it took the example of the bat—which,
in anatomical structure, resembles the human family scarcely less than
the monkey! But geographically considered, it furnishes a striking
instance of the wonderful revolution which this island has undergone
since the comparatively recent epoch of the tertiary formation. Images
and pictures of life are thus called up in the vista of the past, which
at once transport the mind into the bosom of the wilderness or remote
Afric forest; and long ere man had betaken himself to cities, or a stone
of all that huge capital had been dug out of the earth, or a sail of
all its vast commercial greatness had been wafted over the waters, the
very spot on which he has developed the greatest resources of his power,
enterprise, and genius, was tenanted by those tribes which approach
him nearest in form, which philosophers have mistaken for his type,
but in which the semblance of external figure is lamentably contrasted
by the absence of all that moral framework, mind, and spirit, which
pre-eminently distinguish and glorify the human race!
A remarkable peculiarity in the mammalian remains of the tertiary period
is the total absence of the ruminating animals, which do not appear
until the modern epoch, when we recognize them at once as the companions
and useful contributors to the comforts of man. These still retain “the
names” which Adam bestowed upon them. The more ancient creations rejoice
in the mythical nomenclature of science, of which between fifty and sixty
species have been determined. The greater proportion are from the Paris
basin; but the district under review contains, in its lower and middle
divisions, the remains of some of the more remarkable of the group—as
the _Palæotherium_, _Anoplotherium_, _Lophiodon_, _Chœropotamus_,
_Didelphis_, _Balœenodon_, and the huge _Mastodon_.—These animals are
specifically different from everything now in existence; even Macacus
Eocenus will find no lineal descendant in Ceylon, Madagascar, or the
Cape; and no Celtic pedigree will meet the case. The race have left our
island, and departed from the earth; and to restore them in imagination,
we must seek their nearest analogies in the impenetrable fastnesses and
prairies of unreclaimed nature.
5. BIRDS are distinctly traceable in this formation. The Eocene clays of
the Isle of Sheppey have produced materials sufficiently indicative of
the class, in which the true affinities of the aerial inhabitants are
detected, and a new genus completely established. The specimens found
bear a resemblance to the osteology of the smaller kinds of vultures,
and one has been designated Lithornis Vulturinus. The ‘Icones fossilium
sectiles’ of Kœnig contains a description of some other ornitholites
found in the same locality, considered by the author as belonging to a
natatorial or long-toed bird, and denominated Bucklandium Diluvii. The
Paris basin is more fruitful in these fossils than the London; from these
several species have been determined—more or less allied to the pelican,
the sea-lark, curlew, woodcock, buzzard, owl, and quail; thus clearly
establishing the link in the chain of being, but still at a wide interval
from the gay choristers and domesticated tribes which minister so much to
the solace and happiness of man. The geologist traces the connection, and
sees in the expanse of ages, as race after race emerge upon the scene, a
gradual preparation and tendency of all things to a final result; sea,
earth, and air successively possessed by creatures approximating as they
advance to those of the human epoch; and man proudly or presumptuously
concludes, that all has been “worked solely for his good.” But as the
poet has sung—may we not ask, and ask concerning the humblest life which
man often despises and as often terribly destroys, but which is never
overlooked by Him who made man and all things, and whose tender care is
over all his works?—
“Is it for thee, the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee, the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own, and raptures swell the note.
Is thine alone, the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of Heaven shall vindicate their grain.”
6. And in the Flora which then decked the plains, fringed the marshes, or
clothed the heights, “the birds of heaven” had ample provision in seed,
fruit, and herbage for all their wants. Remarkable indeed the adaptation
of the animal tribes referred to in the previous section to the
lacustrine condition of the surface which still so generally prevailed.
The plants of the period are such as are now exclusively confined to warm
or tropical latitudes. The palms and cocoa-nut bearing trees are abundant
and of different kinds. One family belongs to the _Nipadites_, which
are found in Japan and the Spice Islands, generally in the estuaries of
rivers, or along the tracts of damp marshy grounds. The lovely Acacia was
here naturalized. Pepper, dates, and cucumbers added to the variety of
the sylvan banquet, which tall branching pines shaded from the scorching
heat. If we are no longer in possession of the luxurious fruits and
condiment-bearing plants of this early age, the change has led to other
and better productions. For deep lakes we have these verdant meadows and
corn plains; the stagnant marshes are drained of their mephitic vapors;
the theroid monsters are supplanted by the laboring ox and the industrial
horse; and with all the arts flourishing, and carried to the highest
pitch along her borders, the proudest achievements of science wafted on
her bosom—the “fruitful Thame” may challenge the nations of the earth for
every product which climate yields or genial suns ripen.
Such was the dawn or introduction to the present order of things. In the
language of geology it is called the EOCENE AGE of the world, because it
approaches in its organic productions to those which are now existing,
and containing a very few recent species, not more than three or four
per cent. Nature did not all at once leap from one epoch to another. In
the tertiary deposits there is evidence of successive creations, rests
and pauses, as it were, before the final and crowning consummation of
her works. More and more analogies begin to manifest themselves in the
ascending series of the group. The Miocene, or middle period, develops a
yet larger proportion, though not a majority, of the present inhabitants
of the sea. The Pleiocene arrangements follow; and in the shells and
terrestrial products of this group the modern characters and types are
still more clearly discernible. When we reach the highest members, the
difficulties of separation from the modern deposits begin to multiply;
the mineral qualities and mere earthy beds are not distinguishable;
while, on the other hand, in all the animal forms and huge colossal
proportions of Mastodons and Theriums, there are the unequivocal markings
of an extinct anterior age.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MAMMOTH PERIOD.
The tertiary deposits are referable to three great divisions, containing
subdivisions, some of marine, some of fresh water origin, and severally
characterized by their fossil remains. The terms Eocene, Miocene,
and Pleiocene, are applied to them in their respective order of
superposition, as the lower, middle, and upper groups. The London basin
belongs to the first of these divisions. When these congeries of beds
were completed, and the bottom of the sea was elevated, a fresh water
occupation of the district appears to have prevailed. And during the
supremacy of this reign of the Naïads it was, that England was tenanted
by herds of large quadrupeds, tigers, hyenas, and the companions of
the untamable class, whose haunts are now in the Indian jungle, or the
forests and prairies of America.
This has been denominated the Mammoth Epoch, when the elephant race
literally swarmed over northern Europe, from Italy to the Arctic regions.
Great Britain at this era formed part of the continent, or rather of the
great series of lakes and marshy swamps which then prevailed. Hence only
can geologists account for the identity of fossils scattered over this
area. The organisms are all of a type, all of the remarkable orders now
confined to warmer climes. And when we find these fossils cast up in
every field from the same series of deposits—in Switzerland, on the banks
of the Danube, through the plains of Siberia, and northern Russia—in the
basins of the Rhine, and the whole of lower Germany—in the Netherlands,
over central and northern France, the entire south and east coasts of
England—we decipher in all this, not only the organic characters of
the same period of time, but the connecting links of one and the same
superficial portion of the globe.
This is a very remarkable chapter in the history of our island, whether
we consider the mineral or animal arrangements that prevailed, and
their relations to continental Europe. Here we contemplate the relics
of herds of the larger mammals which then ranged over a quarter of the
earth’s surface, all now extinct; while, toward the close of the epoch,
everything conspires to favor the notion, that our insular position was
then, for the first time, established.
The type of the period is the Mammoth, or the Elephas Primogenius. There
are only two existing species, namely, the Asiatic, which is limited to
within 31° north latitude, and the African, whose range extends to the
shores of the Pacific, as far south as the Cape of Good Hope. America,
through all its forests and boundless wastes, possesses not a single
individual of the modern family, while the remains of the extinct race
are to be found in every prairie, along the banks of the Missouri, and
abundantly in the great salt marshes, whither they had resorted in
vast herds in quest of the salt, and been mired, as heavy animals are
frequently at the present day. The intertropical plains of the new world,
and the polar regions of the old, were equally congenial to their habits.
Nay, so adaptive were they in their nature and tastes—these gigantic
pachyderms of the middle tertiary period—that in every intermediate
country, they have left in their huge skeletons unequivocal traces of
their sojourn or migration.
From the British strata alone, no less than three thousand and upward
of fossil teeth have been dug up belonging to this colossal animal.
These are found chiefly in the drift along the east coast of England,
from Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, to Holderness. In a period of little
more than thirteen years, the fishermen of the village of Happisburgh
have dragged up more than two thousand grinders of the mammoth. In the
valley of the Thames the relics have been discovered very numerously,
at Sheppey, Woolwich, the Isle of Dogs, Lewisham,—in the gravel beneath
the streets of London,—at Kensington, Kew, Wallingford, Oxford,—and all
around the south-east coast from Brighton to Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire.
The central counties of Stafford, Northampton, Warwick, and York, are
everywhere strewed a few feet under ground with these remains. At Stroud,
a railway section laid open a tusk, measuring nine feet in length; and
everywhere in the British Channel the fishery of the extinct quadruped is
as ardently pursued, and often is as remunerative, as the fishery of the
finny tribes themselves now existing on our shores.
These animals, once filling the plains of England with herds equaled only
by those of the buffalo race which now darken the prairies of America,
have fulfilled their destiny, and have perished from the earth. “The
difference,” says Professor Owen, “between the extinct and existing
species of elephant in regard to the structure of the teeth, has been
more or less manifested by every specimen of fossil elephant’s tooth
that I have hitherto seen from the British strata; and those now amount
to upward of three thousand. Very few of them could be mistaken, by a
comparative anatomist, for the tooth of an Asiatic elephant, and they are
all obviously distinct from the peculiar molars of the African elephant.”
Cuvier ascertained like distinctions between the extinct and the existing
Indian elephants; and concluded, from the reconstruction of the complete
framework, that the mammoth type is no longer in being.
The proof that the elephant race actually inhabited this country is as
satisfactory, and as well established, as that the species were different
from any now existing. Little, indeed, can it be wondered at, upon the
first discovery of their remains, that the accounts given by geologists
and others were received with the greatest distrust. Their appearance, in
these high latitudes, was attributed to the inroad of armies rather than
to any indigenous connection with the soil that covers them. Cæsar, it
was remembered, brought many elephants with him into Gaul. According to
Polinæus, one at least was transported across the channel into Britain:
hence an easy and ready explanation of the fossils, as Voltaire, in
his time, fancied the shells found on mountain tops to be the stray
specimens dropped by pious pilgrims or superstitious monks on their
journeyings. But as their numbers increased—some from Ireland where the
soldiers of Rome never set foot, along with the bones of the rhinoceros
and hippopotamus which could be instructed in no military tactics, and
all over the length and breadth of the land bones and entire skeletons
began to be exhumed—all grounds for skepticism against their aboriginal
national descent were forever swept away. And Britain, it was admitted,
literally and truly, had once been stocked, among its most recently
extinct families, with these monster tenants of the wilderness.
An entire carcass, it is well known, covered with long woolly hair, was
found at the mouth of the river Lena, as far north as the 74th degree of
latitude, imbedded in ice. This discovery opened up more enlarged and
correct views as to the history and habits of these animals. Subsequent
years increased prodigiously the stock of fossils, entire and perfect
in hide and fleshy muscle; and now, so abundant are the remains of the
fossil mammalia in the arctic regions, that they have not only become
an article of commercial traffic to man, but serve as an unfailing
repository of food to the present denizens of those countries, the hordes
of marauding wolves, foxes, and bears, which prey amid the polar regions
and sterility. It has farther been ascertained that, where the lichen and
the scanty moss now only grow, a rich arboreal vegetation once flourished
in these latitudes; birch trees, of large dimensions, are everywhere
imbedded in the sandy cliffs; and it is conjectured, with the greatest
probability, that herds of elephants migrated from the warm interior,
during the summer months, to the embouchures of the rivers and borders of
the arctic sea, covered as they were with sheltering forests, or shrubby
brushwood steppes. “As we advance,” says Murchison, “into the plains of
Siberia, or descend into the valleys of Tobol and the Obe, the bones
are in greater quantities, and in a better state of preservation; and
the farther the Siberian rivers are followed to their mouths, the more
do the mammalian remains increase, until at length whole skeletons, and
even carcasses, are found. The single fact of the very wide diffusion of
the mammoth bones, over enormous regions, in itself indicates that those
creatures had long been inhabitants of such countries, living and dying
there for ages; while their final destruction may have resulted from
aqueous débacles dependent on oscillations of the land, the elevation of
mountain-chains, and the formation of much local detritus.”
The same causes will account for their destruction in this
country—causes, whose effects are still traceable over the whole of
continental Europe. Doubtless, these causes extended across the channel,
and may have been cotemporaneous with the movements which resulted in
separating us from France, occasioning débacles by the alternate upheaval
and depression of the sea-bottom, which even the largest animals would be
unable to contend against. In the midst of these movements, multitudes
would resort to the higher protected grounds, in quest of food, or retire
for shelter to caves and other concealments that were elevated above the
waters. Remains, accordingly, of nearly all the quadrupeds of the period,
the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, tiger, hyena, bear, elk, are to be
found in such places, associated with bones of the elephant family, and
mixed, for the most part, with the alluvia and detrital gravel of the
district. These animals appear not to have perished simultaneously or
suddenly; but from the condition of the celebrated Kirkdale caves, when
first discovered, it would rather seem that they had long haunted these
places, the caverns being generally at a considerable elevation, with an
entrance on the side of the valley. The floors were entirely covered with
mud, teeth, bones, and stalagmitic incrustations, several feet deep—a
den of monsters that were devouring each other, while the common enemy
of destruction was approaching to seal the fate of all! The “Reliquiæ
Diluvianæ” of Buckland, which first introduced the notice of these caves
to the public, assumed the Mosaic deluge as the cause of the catastrophe:
other hypotheses have been resorted to, as that certainly would not
apply to all the circumstances of the case. Bones of a species of hare
or rabbit, the water-rat, mouse, weasel, with fragments of the skeletons
of ravens, pigeons, larks, and ducks, are also included among the relics
of the fiercer tribes; and many have supposed that these were drifted in
by subaqueous currents, or dropped through the fissures, which are both
numerous and large in the limestone in which the caverns, for the most
part, are situated.
The Mastodon, that is, the mammillary-toothed elephant, was another of
the extinct pachyderm class then inhabiting the island. Remains of this
animal have been found in the Norwich Crag; there are several species,
all of gigantic proportions, some of which have been detected in North
America only, and others in Europe. The tigers of the period were larger
than the largest of the Bengal race, as is proved by the fossil teeth and
bones of the extremities that have been discovered, both at Kirkdale and
other places. And so, generally, of all the extinct carnivora, in the
qualities of strength and size, superior to all existing types, and cast
in the mold of, as they had to contend with, the mammoths and monster
theria among which their destiny was cast.
And again, and again, will the questions recur to every curious reader
of these details—when, and how, were these huge quadrupeds exterminated,
or driven from this island, some of them now utterly extinct, and some
of them only generically allied to existing tropical races? The epoch
of their rule, according to the geological testimony, verges on the
human age, if it does not actually run into it. Terror-stricken, shall
we suppose, by the terrene and subaqueous movements which severed
Great Britain from the continent—the rush of waters—the rending of the
rocks—and the drying up of lakes, consequent on the change—they sought
a refuge above the general wreck, where the weak were preyed upon by
the strong, and a fierce carnival, for a season, was maintained? On
the continent, while similar alterations were taking place over large
superficial areas, and the tertiary deposits were being drifted up, many
of the animals, and whole families, would escape into southern and warmer
countries, and some of the species, in consequence, might long survive
the destruction of others. But here, insulated and deprived of the means
of performing their annual migrations, the races of every kind would all
more speedily perish, preying more easily upon each other, and weakened
by alteration of habits, and the great physical changes to which they
were subjected. On the Ararat of Yorkshire, and other favored heights,
they found a temporary resting-place! But, it was only temporary; for, as
the island approximated to its present condition, it proved no longer a
suitable dwelling to creatures of their mold—their course was run—and a
new creation was to occupy their place.
In closing these sketches of the geology of Great Britain, one may well
marvel at the vast changes over the face of this island and of all its
productions, as read in the varied and multiform disclosures which the
interior structure, formation upon formation, makes known to us.
1. Mark the distinct character of the geological evidence of all the
changes, organic and inorganic, to which the island and its inhabitants
have been subjected. The evidence rests upon direct observation. The
registers are graven as with a pen of iron, and in characters which to
be understood have only to be read. The historical period, beyond two
decades of centuries, is an utter blank. When Cæsar came into the island,
painted savages peopled the land, Druids immolated in thousands their
human victims, and, the brief occupation of the invaders past, we are
again involved in the darkness of barbarous annals and exterminating
wars of unknown tribes. Whence the migrations of its first inhabitants?
who were the Cymri that spoke the language of Cwm Llewelyn, and of
Cefn y Bêdd? who were the Silures, the Trinobantes, the Cantii, and
the Atribates? and whither and what the ever-conflicting lines betwixt
the territories of Picts, Celts, and Scots?—questions these that will
ever puzzle and disturb the slumbers of the unhappy wight who deals
in chronicle lore and archæological history. What now of the oldest
civilized states of the old world who gave law, literature, science, art,
language, and blood, to all the families of the earth, as the tide of
population rolled westward, and the Quadrumana and the Bimana contended
for mastery amid the dense aboriginal forests on the banks of the Danube,
the Rhine, the Rhone, the Seine, the Thames, the mountains of Cambria and
Caledonia? Rome sits in ruined majesty by the waters of the Tiber. Greece
knows not, and mourns not, the buried ashes of her mighty dead. Carthage
_has_ been blotted out. Tyre has fulfilled her destiny—“a place for the
spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.” The shepherd kings of the
pyramids have not a name even among men; and Thebes, Luxor, and Carnac,
lie as fossils in the desert. What of Babylon and her Tower on the plains
of Shinar, that was to reach unto the heavens? and of Nineveh, “a city
of three days’ journey” to be compassed? Mounds of earth and rubbish,
over which the Arab has pitched his rude tent, and into which the prying
antiquary, at the risk of his life, digs for fragments, while the Tigris
and Euphrates pursue their heedless course through the waste slimy
borders of Uz and Mesopotamia. Thus mark how many illustrious heroes,
scholars, lawgivers, who once filled the world with their fame, have,
with all their splendid or useful benefactions to their race, passed
under the thick cloud of oblivion! The very names of the most noted of
them is matter of dispute. And of the multitudes who panted after glory
in these ancient days, not an incident in the life of millions has
reached the present times.
But geology, as HISTORY, is truthful in the oldest as in the most recent
of its narrations. How generally accurate in its family genealogies:
their relations, kindreds, alliances, and individual peculiarities;
the length and strength of body, contour of face, size, structure, and
capacity of head, eye, and stomach—all as precisely determined and
described in regard to the “habitans” of the most ancient fossiliferous
rocks, as the living possessors of earth, sea, or air. Look into our
museums, cabinets, monographs, and palæontological lists, and types of
organic life are there, from which not only to number the tribes, but
to tell of their own varying states and conditions. Wonders there are
in geology. But its most seeming fables are realities. The placoids and
ganoids of the silurian and devonian age, the exuberant flora of the
carboniferous, the giant birds of the triassic, the matchless reptilian
forms of the oolite, the microscopic organisms of the chalk, the
colossal mammoths and mammalia of the tertiaries, were all as veritable
productions of the island as the most familiar grains, grasses, and
domesticated breeds which minister to our daily wants. How obscure,
uncertain, and limited the range of human history! How extensive, and
boundless, and minute the pursuits of geology, which touches on the
history of all creatures that ever lived through all their species,
genera, orders, and classes, and even remounts to the primeval condition
of the planet itself during all the periods, phases, and revolutions of
its existence! But of man there is no trace. No voice from the past,
issuing out of the solid framework of the globe, intimates the existence
of the human family anterior to the last of those great physical changes
which we have been contemplating, and over the wreck of whose organic
tribes the epoch of the tertiary sections of its crust closes.
2. The teachings of this science in physical geography are no
less definite than the astounding disclosures which it makes in
history—shadowing out, where mountain chains now rise, the seats
of ancient sea bottoms—creeks and bays by lines of mudstones and
conglomerates—continents that have been formed from islands, and islands
disrupted from continents—lakes, estuaries, and rivers displaced and
silted up, and now become the richest depositories of our mineral
treasures. The connection of Great Britain with France is a matter
almost of demonstration. A zone of primary crystalline rocks encompasses
the western coast of both countries, whence geology follows them from
Wales and Cornwall into Brittany and Normandy. The silurian, devonian,
and carboniferous systems are arranged in the same order on both
sides of the channel. Their chalk coasts are identical. A succession
of elevating movements, depressions, and dislocations, is traceable
everywhere along the southern counties of England, where the line of
disturbance, from east to west, has separated the chalk on the north and
south, and elevated the Wealden into an anticlinal axis on the Sussex
coast. The Isle of Wight has been so shaken by the convulsion, as to
have been literally tumbled over, the whole cretaceous formation, and
every inferior deposit subjacent to the tertiaries, being in an inverted
position. The existence, too, of a vast connecting stretch of land in the
Atlantic is far from being improbable, whence the rivers of the Wealden
may have issued, as well as much of the detrital matter been transported
which now constitutes, with their remarkable and varied organic exuviæ,
the basins of London, Hampshire, and Paris.
Very recently botany has come to the assistance of geology, in a manner
as remarkable as it was unsuspected. It appears that, along the coast
line of Great Britain and Ireland, there are several distinct floras or
groups of plants, and all geographically related to existing families on
the opposite coasts of the Continent. The flora of the west of Ireland
corresponds to that on the north-west of Spain—the south-west of England,
and also of Ireland, presents groups allied to those on the north-west
of France,—and, again, one is common to the north coast line of France,
and south-east of England,—while the fourth and fifth have their types
in the alpine flora developed in the Scottish and Welsh mountains,
and the mixed and diversified tribes more generally distributed over
Ireland, England, and Germany. The assumption implied in this botanic
speculation is, that these are the remains of a state of things no
longer enduring, proofs of the existence of hotter or colder climates
than now prevail, and the indications of a configuration of land and sea
when a great mountain barrier extended across the Atlantic from Ireland
to Spain. The distribution of the second and third sets of vegetation
depended on the connection of England with France and Germany, when a
sea covered a large portion of the south of Europe, and the upheaval
of whose bed, which constitutes the latest of the tertiary deposits,
gave rise to a vast continent, comprising Spain, Ireland, the north of
Africa, the Azores, and the Canaries. The alpine flora of Scotland and
Wales was effected during the glacial period—to be afterward noticed—when
the mountain summits of Britain were low islands or members of an
archipelago extending over the Frozen Ocean, and clothed with an arctic
vegetation which, in the gradual upheaval of those islands and consequent
change of climate, became limited to the summits of the still existing
mountains. Professor Edward Forbes, adopting in this curious speculation
the views of Mr. Hewet Watson, finds a corroboration of them in the
peculiar distribution of _endemic_ animals, especially of the marine
and terrestrial mollusca. And he justly concludes that all the changes
required for the events which he would connect with the distribution
of the British flora, are borne out by the geological phenomena that
prevailed during the epoch of the several tertiary deposits.
3. Geology, moreover, in deciphering the evidences of those stupendous
operations which resulted in the statical, mineral, and organic
arrangements merging in the modern epoch, inculcates some important
truths connected with the science of natural theology. The mind, indeed,
can never escape, in these investigations, from theistic conclusions.
Step by step, as we ascended through the component strata of the globe,
witnessed the modifications to which they were subjected, and observed
the successive introduction and extinction of so many types of animal
and vegetable life, we were just furnished with so many incontestable
proofs of the direct interposition of Almighty power. If, indeed, I can
read anything more clearly than another in these constantly recurring
geological phenomena, termed epochs and formations, it is that of
INTERFERENCE with the established order of things. I am conscious that
matter did not originate itself. I can see no power in what is termed
a law of matter to constitute organic bodies. The originator of matter
must be the disposer of all its forms. And when I see these forms so
repeatedly changed, assuming new shapes, and giving new scope for varied
and multiplied degrees of enjoyment, I have only the more evidences
and illustrations before me, that creation and change are, in these
instances, correlative terms. The quadrupeds of the tertiary age are
like nothing that preceded them in any of the orders or sections of
animal existence. Their size, structure, and abundance, equally rivet the
attention. And, however long or short the period assigned them on earth,
they constitute a group of organic statuary, too remarkable to have been
slid in and out by the simple operations of material law. The geological
fact, of formation after formation, and of life after life, lies at the
foundation of the sublime truth, that God is potentially in, arranging
and disposing anew, the entire series of his works: and when I see this
mundane scene shifted in all its parts, one system subverted, and another
so very different introduced; and, again, the organic and inorganic
condition of things readjusted, and in keeping as before, I at once rise
in the contemplation of the change “from nature up to nature’s God.”
Geology, I should thus conclude, admits us a step nearer than any of the
other sciences, even than astronomy itself, to the actings of the divine
Architect. The revolution of every season demonstrates a providence—the
workings of a perpetual miracle—in its sustaining energies. But geology
shows us, not the mere annual renovation of things already existing,
but the circumstances under which they BEGAN to exist. The fiat of
Omnipotence peals through the bounds of creation. The earth and the
seas obey. We see new things starting into being. We are present, as it
were, at the moment of their birth. We see the molds out of which they
are fashioned, and the first provision made to sustain them. Geology, in
a word, hangs up before us one of the brightest and most diversified
pages in the book of nature, inducing habits of thinking, and constantly
reminding us of the facts and relations, that bodily and vividly keep
before the mind the ever-active impress of the Divinity at whose bidding—
“Awakening nature hears
The new creating word, and starts to life
In every heighten’d form.”
FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND.
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF FRANCE—BASIN OF PARIS. ORGANIC REMAINS.
On the continental side of the Channel it will not be necessary to dwell,
in minute details, upon any of the systems of rocks which are here
presented. What is France? The tourist will say—A two hours’ voyage from
the sister isle—a salt lake separates them—a pleasure trip is the measure
of their estrangement. The geologist will add—And when safely landed, one
finds himself among the sights and objects, the rocks and fossils, which
engaged his attention on the coast of Albion, the cliffs and downs of
both countries being composed of the self-same materials.
I. THE PHYSICAL UNION OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND, although already adverted
to, falls again to be noticed.
The geographical distribution of the respective rocks of France and Great
Britain forms a remarkable coincidence in giving shape and contour to
their general outline. Thus, the primary systems in both stretch along
their western shores, presenting a vast barrier-wall of the oldest
and hardest rock against the incessant encroachments of the Atlantic.
Britanny and Normandy consist almost entirely of granite, gneiss,
mica-schist, and silurian rocks; on these repose the upper suites of
the secondary strata,—the lias, oolite, and chalk—training to the south
and east. On the tertiary formations rest the secondary, narrowing in
their basins, and preserving the same general line of bearing with the
English beds, and in both cases reaching their maximum of thickness and
exuberance of fossils around the capitals of Paris and London. The old
red sandstone is not indicated on the maps, nor is it clearly ascertained
to possess a habitat in the district in question. The coal-measures
are of very limited dimensions, but in their due order of position at
Hardinger, near Boulogne, and passing under the chalk and green sand,
continue in an easterly direction by Valenciennes, Mons, Namur, and
Liege, to Eschweiler, near Aix-la-Chapelle. The new red sandstone, of
both divisions, is amply developed along the eastern boundaries from
Semoy in Ardennes to Langrés and the borders of Switzerland. On the west
again, the tertiaries prevail from the mouth of the Gironde to Bayonne
on the Adour, where they are exposed to the constant tearing and erosion
of the rude surges of the Bay of Biscay, while in the interior, and over
the district of Auvergne, the granites and gneiss are widely overlaid by
the overflowings of the most recent extinct volcanoes; the oldest and the
newest plutonic rocks thus lying in immediate superposition and contact.
The rocks on this side of the channel are not indeed everywhere so well
displayed, nor do they crop out with the same successive regularity
as in Britain. Over extensive districts some disappear altogether,
while in other places patches are seen lying out of their due order of
superposition; not that in these instances the order is ever violated,
but that some of the intermediate members seem to be wanting, and the
remoter ones are in consequence found in contact. Still they conform to
each other in their great line of section, and occupy the same constant
relative position in their respective basins. Here, as in England,
the Oolitic system embraces the Cretaceous, and extends in a larger
semicircle round Paris as a common center, stretching from Ardennes
to Normandy. The Lias, again, is inferior to the Oolite, and, filling
a wider space, reposes on the transition slates of Virreville on the
western coast. The Plastic clay, London Clay, and freshwater beds emerge
in succession, and maintain each their corresponding dimensions. A
remarkable grouping of rocks, illustrative of the order of superposition,
occurs within the circuit of a few miles in the immediate vicinity of
Boulogne, where resting upon the mountain limestone the following series
may be observed: Coal, Oolitic marble, Purbeck and Portland stone,
Iron-sand, Wealden clay, Chalk marl, Green sand, and Chalk. The Plastic
clay reposes upon the chalk at Calais on the east of this group, and on
the west stretches along the coast from Etaples to Treport.
The period during which the two countries continued to be united
superficially, extended down at least to the last great upheaval of the
bed of the ocean, subsequent to the Pleiocene deposits, and probably even
after the establishment of the current epoch. The different formations we
have been tracing are geologically connected over vast tracts of country;
these tracts once formed basins or inland seas, into which their several
suites of materials were drifted; the extensive regions of the older
formations were amply fitted to inclose them; and, when the _uppermost_
or pleiocene series of the English beds were deposited, one and the same
shores and waters must have been common to the two countries—to the now
insular as well as to the continental basins of the closing tertiary age.
One feels a real and enhanced pleasure in his researches, and his
speculations assume a wider and a loftier range, as he casts a glance
back to the white shores of Britain, and around upon the aspect of the
country before him, and sees that he is still treading the same soil,
threading his way among the same rocks, ascending and descending the
slopes and valleys of the same earthy accumulations, varied only by
slight local causes. Embarked upon the Seine, and along the banks of that
lovely river, there is laid open for inspection a series of deposits,
with every one of which we are already acquainted. The resemblance is
even more striking when we examine the vast undulating plains around, and
find the depressions, elevations, hills, and general outline of surface
all of a class; and when we observe also the rocky foundations beneath
to be one and the same—extensions merely of the same series of deposits,
and forming at no very distant geological period integral portions of one
great continent.
Combined with the subterranean movements which occasioned the
dislocations, and inversions often, of the strata on both sides of
the channel, the action of oceanic currents and incessant beating of
the waves may be looked to as the instruments which produced their
severance. The proofs are ample of the encroachments of the sea upon the
eastern coast of England, the sites of towns, villages, and extensive
fields, as marked on maps, now forming sand-banks, islands, and marshy
swamps. The promontories and cliffs of Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk
are still, as they were in Pennant’s time, “perpetually preyed on by
the fury of the German sea;” the whole site of ancient Cromer is now
under its waves; the towns of Shipden, Wimpwell, and Eccles, have
entirely disappeared; large manors and even parishes have, piece after
piece, been swallowed up; nor has there been any intermission, from
time immemorial, in the inroads of the sea along a line of coast twenty
miles in length, in which these places stood.[9] The ravages, from the
same cause, have been equally if not more violent on the shores of the
channel, the Straits of Dover, and the whole south coast; where slips
of enormous magnitude are frequently recorded, cliffs undermined, and
lands of considerable extent carried into the sea. The Isle of Wight,
the peninsulas of Purbeck and Portland, the promontories of Devonshire
and Cornwall, have all received their shape from the destructive agency,
as they are still preyed upon and consumed by the tides and currents
to which they are incessantly exposed. The French coast bears similar
testimony to the inroads of the sea. From Calais to Cherbourg, with
its magnificent dock-yard, the line of shore is everywhere indented
and stripped bare, the strata undermined, and huge masses toppling
over the abyss or rising into lofty pyramids of the most grotesque and
varied forms. Britanny lies open, on every side, to the full swell of
the Atlantic, where very recent as well as more ancient history attests
the ravages of the waters in the destruction of towns and woods, the
inundation of whole parishes, the severance of the hill of St. Michael
from the main land, and, according to tradition, in the obliteration of
the south-western district, of unknown extent.
Familiarized to facts such as these, and their necessary deductions, the
mind no longer startles at the notion of the former physical union of the
two countries. The agency seen in operation is demonstrably adequate to
the effect. The straits are narrow. Their greatest depth between Dover
and Calais is twenty-nine fathoms. The bed throughout is composed of
the same stratum of chalk-rock, while a submarine chain extending from
Boulogne to Folkestone is only a few fathoms under low water. Accordingly
the wave of the mighty “ocean stream,” parted on the western coast, met
tide after tide on the opposite banks of the connecting peninsula or
narrow tongue of land, the one portion winding round by the Orcades and
rolling up the German Sea, and the other portion beating on the line
of cliffs facing to the west. The softer sedimentary deposits of the
tertiaries would rapidly yield to the constant erosive action; the harder
strata of the chalk, bared and undermined, would speedily follow; and
thus, in a period comparatively short, the entire mass would be carried
away, and the gulf of separation be irrevocably effected.
As a proof that France and England were united, and that these operations
were continued _within_ the human epoch, M. Desmarest, in his prize
essay on this subject, proposed in 1753 by a society at Amiens, adduces
the fact, that the noxious animals in both countries are identical,
creatures which were not fitted to swim across the straits, and were not
of a kind to be willingly introduced by man. But Desmarest in this only
followed the views of an older writer, and from whose work, “Restitution
of Decayed Intelligence,” all his facts and reasonings are obviously
borrowed. This curious volume is the production of Richard Verstegan,
written about two hundred and fifty years ago, and dedicated to James I.
of Great Britain. The principal object of the author is to trace out the
origin of the western nations, and more especially of “the most noble and
renowned English nation,” as discoverable in their language and other
antiquities. The fourth chapter of this quaint work is entitled, “How
the Isle of Albion is showed to have been continent or firm land with
Gallia, now named France, since the Flood of Noah.” Verstegan holds the
doctrine that “in whatever manner and form it pleased Almighty God, in
the beginning of the world, to divide the sea from the dry land, is unto
us wholly unknown; but altogether unlikely it is that there were any
_isles_ before the deluge;” and to this event he ascribes the disruption
of much of the dry land and the formation of islands. The connection of
France and England continued long after this, and their severance, he
believes, was produced by the operation of existing causes. The narrow
isthmus by which they were conjoined extended across the Straits of
Dover, just as Africa is united to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez, or North
and South America by the Isthmus of Panama. This isthmus was breached
by the action of the sea on both sides, but the sea being _lower_ on
the west side, the current swept with greater violence through this new
channel, “toward the most huge Western Ocean, the greater divider of
Europe and Africa, from the late found America.” He notices the identity
of cliffs on the opposite sides of the straits, the submarine ridge which
extends from Folkestone to Boulogne, the existence of marine shells
all over the Netherlands and adjacent countries, and their consequent
submergence before the sea was permitted to retreat through the new
course produced in the isthmus, “and no way is there else to be found or
imagined, whereby these seas might be drained or drawn away.” He refers
to the identity also of the noxious animals in England and France, when
our isle, continuing since the flood fastened by nature to the great
continent, these wicked beasts did of themselves pass over; nor is the
earthquake omitted by the writer, in his enumeration of causes whereby
the sea, first breaking through, might afterward by little and little
enlarge her passage; and the labor of man, too, had its share, when the
inhabitants of the one side or the other by occasion of war did cut it,
thereby to be sequestered and freed from their enemies.
Such is the train of illustration employed by Richard Verstegan, at a
time when the state of the science of geology could furnish him with few
helps; and but little indeed has been added by subsequent observers,
except a few additional facts and inferences, which serve to confirm his
conclusions. He remarks that such too had been the opinions of others,
as of Antonius Volscus, Marius Niger, Servius Honoratus, the French poet
Bartas, and our own countrymen, John Twin and Dr. Richard White; but
these simply held the connection of the two countries as a matter of
opinion, without laboring to find out “by sundry frequent reasons, that
so it was indeed.”[10] England long dominated in France, crowned her
princes Sovereigns of Navarre and the adjacent provinces, and Agincourt,
Cressy, and Poictiers tell where man waged war against his fellow-man,
over the remains of races long extinct, denizens of the same land, and
propelled by instincts fierce alike for mastery or destruction. What
a moral effect has been produced by the physical severance of the two
nations, not only to themselves, but to the rest of the world! Great
Britain, freed from the connection, can well afford to repose in peaceful
majesty on her own shores, improving the arts, extending her commerce,
and communicating, as the most noble and renowned nation the blessings of
religion to the remotest parts of the globe.
II. ORGANIC REMAINS. There are three districts in France which claim the
special consideration of the geologist. The first comprises the basin of
the Seine, of which Paris may be regarded as the center; the second is
the basin of the Loire, extending in the direction of the rivers Gironde
and Adour; the third is the volcanic district of Auvergue, embracing the
tertiary and lacustrine formations, which have excited much geological
speculation. The Silurian beds of Britanny are in many places absolutely
loaded with Trilobites, which have found an able expositor in M. Marie
Rouault; and the New Red Sandstone, which skirts the Vosges mountains, is
equally remarkable for the fossils, vegetable and animal, peculiar to the
Permian system.
THE BASIN OF THE SEINE. The series of rocks included in this district,
are described as the Paris basin formation, where, amidst their
fossiliferous remains, the genius of Cuvier shone forth and captivated
the world by his wonderful disclosures in the science of comparative
anatomy. The deposits occupy a depression in the chalk upon which
they rest unconformably, like those of the London basin: they agree
generally in their organisms, but differ considerably in the quality
of their respective materials. Blue clay with imbedded calcareous and
argillaceous bands characterize the London formation, while that of Paris
is distinguished by a superabundance of white limestones, marls, and
gypsum. These rocks range over a vast extent of superficial area, being
in their greatest length from N. E. to S. W. about one hundred and eighty
miles, and from E. to W. about ninety miles. They belong to the Eocene
period, consist of alternating groups of marine and fresh water strata,
and have been arranged in the following order, according to the corrected
diagram of M. Constant Prevost, who has considerably modified the earlier
tabular arrangements of Cuvier and Brongniart:—Plastic clay, Calcaire
grossier, Calcaire silicieux, Gypsum, Marls, Marine and fresh water
strata.
_The plastic clay and sand_ consist of intercalating argillaceous and
gritty beds, containing a considerable quantity of lignite and fresh
water shells. This deposit is not continuous throughout the basin, nor
is it always lowest in position. In some places it rests upon a marine
calcaire grossier, and in other places it is mixed up and imbedded in it,
clearly showing that a river charged with argillaceous sediment entered a
bay of the sea and drifted down, from time to time, wood and fresh water
shells. No remains of mammalia have been detected in the plastic clay
reposing on the chalk. _The Calcaire grossier_ is composed of a coarse
limestone, often passing into sand, and extremely rich in testacea,
a locality near Gignon alone furnishing about four hundred distinct
species. _The Calcaire silicieux_ is a compact silicious limestone,
almost destitute of organisms, and from its strong resemblance to the
precipitates of mineral springs, as well as the fact that the few fossils
contained in it are all of the land and fresh water species, it is justly
inferred that the deposit is of fresh water origin. _The Gypsum_, with
its associated _Marls_, is a saccharoid rock of considerable thickness,
and constitutes the hill of Montmartre and other elevations toward
the center of the basin. Here occur the remarkable variety as well as
abundance of those organic remains which have given so much celebrity
to the Paris basin. Fishes, reptiles, crocodiles, tortoises, birds,
bats, mice, squirrels, opossums, gigantic mammoths, Anoplotheriums, and
palm-wood, are all interred in this receptacle of the extinct dead. The
remains of about fifty species of quadrupeds alone have been detected in
the deposit, some of them, to the minutest organ, in the highest state
of preservation—all of them extinct—and nearly four-fifths belonging to
a division Pachydermata or thick-skinned animals. Immediately above the
gypseous formation is an oyster-bed, of great superficial extent; this
is succeeded by beds of sand, entirely destitute of fossils, forming a
suitable covering to the countless millions which lie interred beneath.
Reader! pause and reflect upon this enumeration of the rocky strata, and
their contents, which compose the Paris basin. What vast accumulations,
now of terrestrial floods, now of inroads from the ocean—here a deposit,
testifying to the fact of some great inland lake, with huge monsters
browsing on its banks or reposing in its shallows—there another, bearing
witness to “the strength of a mountain river,” combating with the waves
of an estuary, and each wearying of the conflict and mingling their
spoils from land and sea in one common mass. Neptune is again triumphant,
and leaves as the trophies of victory whole families and tribes of his
own domains. Silvanus now asserts and establishes his reign, and the
Genet, Raccoon, Opossom, the Squirrel, Woodcock, and Buzzard are there
to proclaim his sway. The Nereids too had their doings, and both genera
and species of seven extinct nondescript fishes show their powers. And,
last of all, come the Naïads of the streams, presenting you with their
offering in the Quail, Curlew, and Pelican, along with Tortoises and
Crocodilians. Count and enter upon your list, as found in the gypseous
formation alone, eleven or twelve species of the Palæotherium, an animal
partaking of the respective structures of the rhinoceros, the horse,
and the tapir; of the Anoplotherium five species, commingling the light
and graceful form of the gazelle with the conformation of the camel;
fifteen species of the Lophiodon, closely allied to the former, but
partaking also of the qualities of the hippopotamus; seven species of
the Anthracotherium, a creature whose dimensions through the various
members of the family swell out from the size of the hog to that of the
hippopotamus; the Chæropotamus, allied to the suidæ, and forming a link
between the Anoplotherium and the existing Peccary; and, lastly, as
closing the list of this remarkable race of thick-skinned animals, we
are presented with specimens of the Adapis, of hedgehog appearance, but
in size three times larger, and uniting in characters the insectivorous
carnivora with the Pachydermata.
It is recorded of Newton, that, toward the close of his wonderful
calculations, when it seemed that the arithmetical results were to be
in harmony with the dynamical problem to be solved, when he felt on the
verge of determining one of the most important laws ever discovered by
man, and which forever would bind the heavens to the earth—the nerves
of the calculator gave way for a time, and he was unable to finish his
task. He called in the aid of a friend, pacing the room in tumultuous
agitation while the few last terms were being added. It is impossible for
any other mind to realize the intensity of the geometer’s feelings when
the result was announced! Knowing how trifling a novelty will at times
agitate the finest minds, no wonder need be that Newton was affected by
an uncontrollable tremor, when he saw that the discovery was made and
tested, not only of the law that binds together the particles of matter
which compose our earth, but also that which unites the heavenly orbs
in all their majesty with the simplest of terrestrial phenomena; and
demonstrates that, over the descent of a leaf in the forest—the drooping
of a blade of grass—a pebble tossed upon the shore—a mote rising and
falling in the sunbeam—a drop issuing from the rain-cloud—there is the
same regulating power as that which retains the planets in their orbits,
and determines their course through infinite space. Cuvier, in simple
but eloquent words, has recorded, in the Introduction to his “Ossemens
Fossiles,” the state of _his_ feelings as he established his discoveries,
and proceeded in his task of reconstructing his singular menagerie
from the dry bones of Montmartre in the basin of Paris. “I at length,”
he says, “found myself as if placed in a charnel-house, surrounded by
mutilated fragments of many hundred skeletons, of more than twenty
kinds of animals, piled confusedly around me; and the task assigned me
was to restore them all to their original position. At the voice of
comparative anatomy, every bone and fragment of a bone resumed its place.
I cannot find words to express the pleasure I experienced in seeing, as
I discovered ONE CHARACTER, how all the consequences which I predicted
from it were successively confirmed; the feet were found in accordance
with the characters announced by the teeth; the teeth in harmony with
those indicated beforehand by the feet; the bones of the legs and thighs,
and every connecting portion of the extremities, were found set together
precisely as I had arranged them before my conjectures were verified by
the discovery of the parts entire; in short, each species was, as it
were, reconstructed from a single one of its component elements.”
Cuvier proceeded upon the principle, that every organized individual
forms an entire system of its own, all the parts of which mutually
correspond, and that none of these separate parts can change their forms
without a corresponding change on the other parts of the same individual
body. Where the viscera, for example, are so constructed as only to
be fitted for the digestion of recent flesh, it is requisite that the
jaws should be so formed as to fit them for devouring prey—the claws
for seizing and tearing it to pieces—the teeth for cutting and dividing
its flesh—the limbs or organs of motion for pursuing and overtaking
it—and the organs of sense for discovering it at a distance. But under
this general principle in the structure of carnivorous animals, the
ingenious anatomist further discovered that there are several particular
modifications, depending upon the size, the manners, and the haunts
of prey for which each species is destined or fitted by nature; and
that, from each of these particular modifications, there result certain
differences in the more minute conformations of particular parts. Hence
it follows, that there will exist distinct indications in every one of
their parts, not only of the classes and orders of animals, but also of
their genera and species.
Thus, in order that the jaw may be well adapted for laying hold of
objects, it is necessary that its condyle should have a certain form;
that the resistance, the moving power, and the fulcrum, should all
have a certain relative position with respect to each other. To enable
the animal to carry off its prey when seized, a corresponding force is
requisite in the muscles which elevate the head; and this again gives
rise to a determinate form of the vertebræ to which these muscles are
attached, and of the occiput into which they are inserted. The teeth of
a carnivorous animal require to be sharp, in proportion to the greater
or less quantity of flesh that they have to cut; their roots to be solid
and strong, in proportion to the quantity and the size of the bones that
have to be broken; and these conditions of structure will necessarily
influence the development and form of the several parts that contribute
to move the jaws.
The strength of the claws, in like manner, and the mobility of the
paws and toes, have a necessary relation to the forms of the bones in
the feet, and the distribution of the muscles and tendons by which
they are moved. As the bones of the forearm are articulated with the
humerus, no change can be made in the form and structure of the former
without occasioning correspondent changes in the form of the latter.
The shoulder-blade also, or scapula, requires a correspondent degree of
strength in all carnivorous animals, while the play and action of the
several parts are dependent on the muscles which set them in motion,
and the impressions formed by these muscles still further determine the
forms of all these bones. Again, the shape and structure of the teeth
regulate the forms of the condyle, of the scapula, and of the claws,
in the same manner as the equation of a curve regulates all its other
properties;—and, as in regard to any particular curve, all its properties
may be ascertained by assuming each separate property as the foundation
of a particular equation, in the same manner a claw, a shoulder-blade,
a condyle, a leg or arm bone, or any other bone separately considered,
leads to the discovery of the characters of teeth to which they have
belonged; and reciprocally from the teeth we are enabled to discover the
structure and forms of the other bones.
Thus, conducting his investigations by a careful survey of the bones and
organs individually and separately, the skillful anatomist was enabled
to reconstruct the whole animal to which they severally had belonged.
The orders likewise and subdivisions of herbivorous, ruminant, hoofed,
and cloven-hoofed animals, he determined with equal precision, and found
to result from the same constant laws of organization. By employing the
method of observation, where theory was no longer able to direct his
views, Cuvier was furnished with other astonishing results. The smallest
fragment of bone, even the most apparently insignificant apophysis,
he found to possess a fixed and determinate character, relative to
the class, order, and genus of the animal to which it belonged;
insomuch that, when he observed merely the articulating extremity of a
well-preserved bone, he could at once ascertain the species as certainly
as if the entire animal had been before him. Proceeding after this
method, assisted by analogy and exact comparison, Cuvier has been enabled
to determine the fossil remains of seventy-eight different quadrupeds, in
the viviparous and oviparous classes. Of these, forty-nine are distinct
species hitherto unknown, twenty-seven of which are referable to seven
new genera, and the other twenty-two new species belong to sixteen
genera, or sub-genera, already known; while the whole number of genera
and sub-genera, to which the fossil remains of quadrupeds investigated
belong, are thirty-six, including those both of known and unknown
species; some hoofed animals not ruminant, and some ruminant—others
_gnawers_ and others carnivorous—two, of the sloth genus, toothless—and
two, amphibious animals, of two distinct genera.
Such are the triumphs of science, which always lead to a profounder
admiration of the works of Nature, in the immensity and constancy of
those laws that have prevailed through all time, and where her wisdom
and foresight are demonstrated by a series of systematic contrivances
and mutual adaptations to which she invariably adheres. In the remote
invisible depths of space, slight oscillations have from time to time
been detected, and following up the researches, astronomy, as announced
beforehand, is rewarded by the discovery of a new planet. The earth gives
up its dead, entombed for ages in its stony matrix. At the bidding of
science their figures are restored, their habits determined, their very
food ascertained, their characters for ferocity or otherwise brought to
light, and they are all, each after their kind, called by their names.
What a mastery in all this over the extinct forms of organic nature,
as Newton manifested in a different way in his wonderful deductions
and calculations respecting the molecules of inorganic nature and the
physical heavens!
III. The Paris basin, which consists of the lower or eocene series of
the tertiary system, is inclosed nearly on all sides by the middle or
miocene group of strata. These, however, are most fully developed along
the district of the Loire and its tributaries, as the former are chiefly
confined to the water-shed of the Seine and the environs of Paris. We
thus advance a step upward in the Course of Creation, while so far as
geology has been able to mark the progress, the last stages of the
stupendous work, prior to the introduction of its noblest inhabitant,
are to be discovered in the PLEIOCENE deposits that immediately succeed,
stretching over the western shores from Bordeaux to Bayonne.
THE BASIN OF THE LOIRE. The rocks which compose these upper layers of the
earth’s crust, have all a family resemblance to the tertiaries already
described. In the district of the Loire the _miocene_ beds consist
generally of quartzose sand, gravel, and broken shells, mostly loose and
earthy, but in many places agglutinated by a calcareous or ferruginous
cement, so as to be fit for building purposes. The “faluns,” as they are
provincially termed, resemble the crag of England, abounding in shells,
and mammiferous remains incrusted with serpulæ, flustra, and balani, The
deposit is seldom above seventy feet in its greatest thickness. Betwixt
Sologne and the sea, patches are found to rest successively upon gneiss,
clayslate, the coal-measures, Jura limestone, greenstone trap, chalk,
and the upper beds of the eocene series. The _pleiocene_ beds are not
materially different in their lithological characters from those of the
miocene group: blue clays, marls, and osseous breccias are among the
prevailing strata; and siltings of sand and gravel, only distinguishable
by their organic remains from the alluvia and superficial drifts of
the current era. Volcanic products are often largely mixed up with
these pleiocene beds, and in districts where, in addition to the fossil
evidence, they clearly establish that they belong to the class of extinct
volcanoes, as the sedimentary deposits are themselves determined to
belong to the pleiocene age.
[Illustration: Restored Form of Dinotherium.]
The interesting peculiarity connected with these two groups of the
tertiary system is, that here all animal as well as vegetable life
approaches a step nearer to the existing family types. Analogous species
of molluscs are more numerous, the testacea in many instances being
identical with those of our modern seas. The mammalia are likewise more
akin to those of our domesticated tribes, where the horse is strikingly
prefigured in the hippotherium, the dog in the agnotherium, and the
cat in feline forms as large as lions. The glutton and the bear have
also their compeers, nor are the fox, hare, and mouse, without their
representatives. But the marvel of the formation is the DINOTHERIUM
or gigantic tapir, whose dimensions in every organ and member are
stupendous. The dinotherium was seemingly possessed of powers which
enabled him at once to exercise the digging propensities of the mole and
amphibious habits of the walrus, a trunk projecting nearly as long as
that of the elephant, and two enormous tusks depending from the lower
jaw. This animal was partly terrestrial and partly aquatic, and hence,
says Dr. Buckland, the tusks may also have been applied to hook on the
head to the bank, with the nostrils sustained above the water, so as to
breathe securely during sleep, while the body remained floating at ease
beneath the surface. Thus would he repose, moored to the margin of a lake
or river—the huge body, of eighteen feet in length, with a corresponding
thickness, indolently basking in the sun-beams, or quietly cooling after
exertion in the limpid wave—and these enormous tusks, ready to release
him at a bound, when attacked by the enemy beneath. The dinotherium
existed during the miocene period, and constitutes an intermediate link
between the tapir and the mastodon. It has left abundant remains in the
basin of the Rhine, in Bavaria and Austria, and in several districts of
the formation in France.
The tertiaries have a wide geographical distribution, and cover a vast
extent of superficial area. Stretching from the Rhone to the Danube,
they are found in every part of central and southern Europe, along the
Julian Alps, and over the interior of Italy, from Ancona to Turin.
The eocene group is ascertained, from the character of its fossils,
and especially by its nummulites and echinoderms, to extend from the
Mediterranean, through Egypt, Asia-Minor, and Persia, to Hindostan, and
there to occupy large regions forming the western and northern limits of
British India. This enormous mass of tertiary strata was drifted into
lakes or estuaries, whereby the mind is carried back to a period when
Europe was chiefly lacustrine, and all these countries eastward were as
yet submerged in their waters. What explanation can geology give of their
elevation to the surface? A scene of volcanic agency, now and _before_
the modern epoch extinct, remains to be noticed, which in part at least
will furnish a probable solution of the changes then in operation or
completed.
CENTRAL FRANCE, consisting of the districts of Auvergne, Velay, and
Viverais, is universally admitted by geologists to be of volcanic
origin. The most cursory glance at the dome-shaped hills, the basalt,
trachyte, and scoriaccous ingredients of which they are composed, at
once satisfies the student of nature as to the class of rocks among
which he here treads. This region lies upon the river Rhone, nearly
in the angle formed by it with the Mediterranean, and covers an area
of forty or fifty leagues in diameter. Here are associated, perhaps,
the earliest and the latest products of Plutonic action, the primary
granites, and the basaltic lavas of comparatively recent times. The
granite is flanked on the south and west by immense overliers of gneiss.
It may be described as the highlands of the country, whence all the great
rivers, the Seine, the Loire, the Gironde, and their principal feeders,
take their rise. The mountains, though not remarkable for elevation,
now that we are approaching true Alpine peaks, reach the height of
four, five, and six thousand, and the Aurillac group to nearly seven
thousand feet above the level of the sea; but what a geological series
of events is embraced within the period of their physical history! The
great depository arrangements of the globe have, one and all, succeeded
to those paroxysmal movements that raised their tops above the primeval
seas. Race after race of living creatures have enjoyed their span of
existence, to be mixed up with the strata which during the interval have
been collected and arranged in their various systems. The crust of the
earth from time to time was disrupted. The depressions and fissures were
as repeatedly replaced with new matter. The tertiary period dawned upon
Creation, when plain, lake, and seas, were all teeming with an exuberance
of terrestrial and aquatic life,—and when again all in the region of
Central France was disturbed, and these newer molten rocks were erupted
from beneath. The subterranean fires, wherever seated, were thus, after
the lapse of geological epochs, still glowing with intense vigor. And,
just bordering on the advent of man, the two classes of rocks would
seem to have been placed in the closest proximity, as if to remind him,
that the same Omnipotent agency which created every single atom of his
earthly habitation, likewise determines every movement and advance of the
structure, and makes the near and the remote equally manifest the thunder
of his power.
There cannot exist a doubt that the district in question was the seat
of an extensive chain of lakes, imbosomed amidst the primary rocks, and
silted up during the currency of the tertiary age, partly by sedimentary
and partly by igneous matter. The unstratified masses which encircled
their waters, still stand out in bold relief from the well-defined strata
that now occupy their basins. A walk up any one of these valleys—and
they are innumerable—or among the cones, hundreds of which are scattered
over the high grounds in the vicinity of Gergovia, will present to you
in striking contrast these extremes of natural masonry. One can almost
trace, in some localities, the very fissures which opened in the sides of
the granite rocks, whence issued the molten flood that first perturbed
the waters of the pure silent lakes. No straining of the imagination is
indeed required to trace the whole progress of their silting—now in the
dark lava-current from the bowels of the earth, and now in the collected
debris from the mountain sides, hurried down by the torrent or by their
own convulsive throes—here the fine comminuted sand, gently carried in
by the stream, and there the waste of animal life forming entire beds
of calcareous marls of still unsullied freshness. In the whole range of
geology there is not, in fact, to be found anything more instructive
and interesting than is displayed in these lacustrine deposits, the
extreme thinness often of the beds, and the beautiful regularity of their
superposition. The lavas intermix, and alternate repeatedly, with the
alluvial and organic strata. A myriad of trickling rills fling themselves
from the upheaved ridges, so green and flowery to their summits; they are
collected into streams in the different ravines, and sweeping through
the deep-cut gorges, lay open the interior to the depth of many hundred
feet. Here the various igneous and aqueous groups can be read and studied
in detail, as they were quietly deposited or violently strewn upon one
another.
The hill of La Roche, in the Puy de Jussat, presents a face of a
variegated quartzose grit of nearly seven hundred feet in thickness. At
Chamalières, near Clermont, the same deposit is equally well exposed.
Green and white foliated marls are very abundant, attaining a thickness
sometimes of six to seven hundred feet, and consisting chiefly throughout
this immense depth of the shells of _Cypris_, a genus which comprises
several species, some of which are recent, and still existing in the
waters of our stagnant pools and ditches. The structure of these beds,
in this volcanic region, is as remarkable as the materials of their
composition. The strata divide into plates thin as paper, which are piled
up into laminated masses of several hundred feet, of various colors,
but the white and green prevailing, and the whole sometimes covered by
rocky currents of trachytic or basaltic lava. Gypseous marls, similar
to those of Montmartre, have also contributed to the silting up of the
lakes, where, as at St. Romain, they are worked, and extensively used
for ornamental purposes. A remarkable deposit occurs among the series,
termed the _indusial limestone_, from the circumstance of its containing
the cases or _inducia_ of a tubular-form species of insects; a creature
that not only assisted individually toward the increment of the rock,
but possessed the power, like its existing analogues, of attaching
to its body a load of shelly molluscs, in some cases no less than a
hundred of these minute shells being arranged around one tube, while
ten or twelve tubes are packed within the compass of a cubic inch. Some
beds of this limestone are six feet thick, and may be traced over a
considerable area, showing the countless number of insects and molluscs
which contributed their integuments and shells to compose this singularly
constructed rock. The fibular coralline rocks of the Keelan islands bear
some faint resemblance to these ancient organic deposits, where the
insects build from beneath, and gradually mount to the surface of the
ocean when their work is done, and they perish. The _Phryganeæ_ of the
tertiary age enjoyed their brief hour in the sunshine, fulfilled their
destiny, sank into the waters, and contributed to form rocks over their
bottom. They weaved not, like the existing races of builders, their own
shroud, though the materials in which they are entombed are mainly of
their own construction—concretionary plates of the finest texture, and
indestructible as marble.
The lacustrine deposits in the department of the Haute Loire are nearly
identical with those now described, but concealed very much by the lava
and scoriæ that have flowed out in immense quantities in the trough of
the river. The best sections are exposed near the town of Le Puy, where
the sedimentary and erupted rocks are beautifully interstratified.
The Aurillac basin, in Cantal, is filled with similar materials,
although there is a greater proportion of silicious strata mixed with
the calcareous marls. Indeed, so much in this district does the silex
predominate, that a bed of tertiary limestone is covered with nodules
of flint, and resembling in appearance the upper chalks of England. The
fossil remains, however, clearly mark the distinction, where we have the
shells of the _Planorbis_ for those of the _Echinus_, and other fresh
water testacea instead of the marine types of the Cretaceous formation.
IV. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. This district has been the theater of great
volcanic action. The epoch of its activity is clearly determined by the
undoubted tertiary character of the formations with which its porous
lavas and scoriæ are intermixed. Basalts and trachytes, of the same
age, texture, and qualities, are to be found in the various countries
through which the deposits have been traced. The granites, porphyries,
and greenstones we have seen successively employed in raising up the
symmetrical rocks of the grand palæozoic systems, and thereby giving
shape, stability, and access to the economic and gradually-augmenting
volume of the crust of the globe. Can we see in these last extinct
throes of the interior, the operations of the same great FINAL
CAUSE—the overruling hand of power, wisdom, and goodness in the mineral
arrangements and diversified ingredients of our earthly habitation?
Take a glance at the extent and geographical situation of this family of
rocks. Everywhere among the Andes and Cordilleras, there are evidences of
the elevation of large mountain-tracts, through the agency of volcanoes
now extinct, and probably of the age in question. A volcanic region in
the north of Spain, extending over twenty square leagues, from Amer to
Massanet in Catalonia, is situated among the lower beds of the system,
penetrating a nummulitic limestone and other strata, conjectured to
belong to the age of our green sand and chalk. The Drachenfels on the
Rhine and the Eifel chain of hills near Bonn, are likewise referable to
this class of volcanic ejections. The Katakekaumene tract of mountains,
in Asia-Minor, is composed of comparatively recent volcanoes, where Mr.
Hamilton conceives the great cones of Mont Dore, the Cantal, and Mont
Mezen in central France are represented by Ak Dàgh, Morad Dàgh, the
trachytic hills east of Takmak, Hassan Dàgh, and Mount Argæus. Similar
eruptive indications have been traced by Mr. Grant in the district of
Cutch, situated near the eastern branch of the Indus, and consisting of
large tracts of tertiary deposits. The elevated regions of the Tyrol,
the flanks of the Bernese and Swiss Alps, have been the scene of violent
disturbance, during and since the deposition of the tertiary formations;
and, in the peninsula of Italy, there are numerous groups of volcanic
origin, as in Tuscany the igneous rocks of Radicofani, Viterbo, and
Aquapendente, and those of the Campagna di Roma, which are of the same
chronological series, or probably not later than the pleiocene period.
The West India Islands, the Azores, Iceland, Owhyhee where the peaks of
Mauna-Roa and Mouna-Kaa rise to the height of between 15,000 and 16,000
feet above the sea, belong to the same class of phenomena. Thus in every
quarter of the globe there have existed Phlegræan fields of ancient
as well as of modern date, whose convulsions anterior to all historic
records are still traceable in the submergence and closing up of lakes,
the drainage of large tracts of land, the upheaval of mountains, and the
reduction of the earth to existing superficial arrangements.
The products of these tertiary extinct volcanoes are indeed vastly
inferior in amount to the ejections of the more ancient periods,
whose stupendous monuments are seen in the primary and secondary
mountain-chains of granite, porphyry, and greenstone; but still they
had force enough to influence very extensive tracts of country, to
convulse and move large portions of the crust of the earth. Even now it
is impossible to guess through how wide an extent, in the subterranean
regions, the shock of earthquakes is simultaneously felt. Not less than
100,000 square miles of country were permanently elevated by the Chili
earthquake of 1822, from two to six feet above its former level, and
part of the bottom of the sea remained dry at high water, with beds of
oysters, muscles, and other shells adhering to the rocks on which they
grew. The contemplation of volcanic phenomena in South America, has led
Mr. Darwin to remark that, in order to comprehend the vast surface which
was affected by the earthquake in Chili, and which destroyed Conception,
in February 1835, it had a north and south range equal in extent to the
distance between the North Sea and the Mediterranean—that we must imagine
the eastern coast of England to be permanently raised, and a train of
volcanoes to become active in the southern extremity of Norway—also
that a submarine volcano burst forth near the northern extremity of
Ireland—and that the long dormant volcanoes of the Cantal and Auvergne,
each sent up a column of smoke. It need, therefore, excite no wonder
that geologists have felt themselves warranted to ascribe the elevation
not only of the sedimentary formations in central France to the volcanic
movements of the district, but likewise those of the Paris and London
basins, as well as the general rise and dislocation of the strata along
the southern and eastern coasts of England. The cause, as compared with
recent and still daily observed phenomena, was abundantly adequate to
effect the results. Other districts would be simultaneously influenced;
the tertiary deposits in their various successive groups were all
arranged under similar circumstances and exposed to similar changes; and
hence a doubt can scarcely exist, that all these geological basins, and
this vast superficies of tertiary matter, were cotemporaneously elevated,
as well as subjected to one and the same range of subterranean convulsion.
As an approximation to the period when this district was last subject to
volcanic action, it may be noticed that the craters of Auvergne and the
Cantal had all ceased to emit fire or were just expiring, when those of
Etna and Vesuvius _began_ their operations. From whatever cause, it would
appear that the incandescent elements had here parted with their caloric
or had shifted their position, and that new vents were opened for them
in the basin of the Mediterranean. These latter volcanoes may have been
in activity _before_ the historical epoch, although the evidence must
still be regarded as inconclusive, and the violent efforts to fasten
a collision upon revelation have utterly failed. But in Auvergne, on
the contrary, little doubt exists of the priority of all the volcanic
emissions to the human epoch. When Cæsar encamped among these narrow
defiles, his Commentary is silent as to any eruptions save the irruption
of his own legions. The inhabitants, as now, were cultivating the vine
or peacefully engaged in rural occupations, as little dreaming of any
disturbances from the interior, as they were unprepared to resist the
torrent of mail-clad warriors that poured through their valleys and
devastated their fields. The poet Sidonius Apollinaris had his residence
on the borders of Lake Aidat, but he sung not of the “sublime” in these
upthroes of his native province. Nevertheless, an immense degree of
historic interest must ever attach to these volcanic rocks, inasmuch as
they are infinitely modern when compared with the primary and secondary
formations, the granites and the traps of Britain. They keep continually,
too, before our eyes the fact of a succession of igneous operations, and
remind us that plutonic agencies have prevailed through all time, and
over regions which have only recently been liberated from their ravages;
that at any moment, and at any place, they may again burst forth, when
islands will be raised, continents submerged, the fertile plain laid
waste, and lakes, estuaries, and seas converted into dry land.
Nor are there evidences wanting, in existing volcanoes, of the intensity
of the fires which still glow within the interior of our earth. There are
at present more than TWO HUNDRED volcanoes in active operation; these
are not confined to any particular zone, but are distributed like those
of the older families through the different quarters of the world. The
greater centers of action are situated in the mountain-ranges of South
America, along the western coast of North America, and in the numerous
islands of the Southern Pacific; but at the same time there is scarcely
a portion of the earth’s crust that is not subjected to the shock of
volcanic influence and the movement of earthquakes. There are two
theories by which all volcanic phenomena are attempted to be explained.
The more prevailing one among geologists is that which connects them
with one great source of central heat—interior lakes of molten stone—the
residue of that incandescent condition in which the globe originally
appeared, and out of which the primary crystalline strata were formed.
The other mode of explanation is that which supposes the internal heat
to be the result of chemical and galvanic action among the materials
composing the earth’s crust. The metallic and earthy bases, upon contact
with water, everywhere transmitted through fissures and apertures on
the surface, burn, melt, and are converted into lavaform matter, and
which acting again as fuel, serve to fuse the rocks among which they
occur. Hence various gases will be generated sufficient to occasion much
local disturbance; though certainly not upon a scale to correspond with
the magnitude, universality, and perpetuity of those changes that have
resulted in the igneous products of the primary, secondary, or even
tertiary formations.
But whatever be the source or cause, the heat and the elements of
heat have been in constant activity, volcanoes and earthquakes, like
the hurricane and disease, subserving important necessary purposes in
the economy of nature. Humboldt was the first to remark the linear
distribution of volcanic domes, which he considered as vents placed along
the edge of vast fissures, communicating with reservoirs of igneous
matter, and extending across whole continents. Lyell, considering that
the earthquake and the volcano are probably the effects of the same
subterranean process, and that the subterranean movements are least
violent in the immediate proximity of volcanic vents, observes, “that
if the fused matter has failed several times to reach the surface, the
consolidation of the lava first raised and congealed will strengthen the
earth’s crust, and become an additional obstacle to the protrusion of
other fused matter during subsequent convulsions.” Thus, needful in all
past time, these igneous phenomena are needful still—in supplying and
indurating new lands—in repairing the waste and continual encroachments
of the sea—in keeping up a salutary degree of heat over the earth’s
crust, and thereby perhaps essential toward maintaining the necessary
volume of the earth’s bulk. Nor will the fires within have fulfilled
their law and purpose of inclosure until the ordinance of Heaven in its
creation be completed, when the earth and the works therein shall be
burnt up.
CHAPTER II.
THE ALPS—MONT BLANC.
The Pennine or Western Alps constitute the loftiest group of mountains
in Europe. They consist of a vast chain of isolated peaks, all of which
are elevated above the region of perpetual snow. Mont Blanc, Mont Cervin,
and Mont Combin attain respectively to the heights of fifteen thousand
seven hundred and thirty-two feet, fourteen thousand eight hundred and
fifty-five feet, and fourteen thousand one hundred and twenty-five feet,
above the level of the sea. This group is succeeded by that of the
Bernese Alps, of which the Jungfrau is the most conspicuous, reaching
the altitude of thirteen thousand seven hundred and eighteen feet. The
Helvetian Alps lie to the east and south of these two ranges, rising in
Mont Rosa to the height of fifteen thousand one hundred and fifty feet
into the same aerial frozen regions. The rivers Rhine and Rhone spring
from the glaciers which occupy the valleys intermediate betwixt the
Bernese and Helvetian mountains, while the Po, rising among the Cottian
Alps on the south-west, derives its principal tributaries from the same
alpine sources with its larger twin-sisters.
Switzerland, thus bounded on the south, is walled in along the entire
northern frontier by the range of the Jura mountains, whose loftiest
point, the Le Reculet, is five thousand six hundred and twenty-seven feet
above the sea level. The mountains of Savoy stretch along the left bank
of the Lake of Geneva. Mont Pilatus, the Rigi, and other noted hills
of tourists, occupy the eastern central division of the country, among
which are situated the largest cluster as well as the most celebrated
of the lakes. The great valley of Switzerland, the territory proper of
the cantons Vaud, Fribourg, Berne, and Soleure—within which lie all the
principal towns, those of the old Roman and all of modern times—forms
an extended plateau or basin, inclosed by an amphitheater of mountain
land, diversified at intervals by low swelling ridges, undulating hills,
precipitous ravines, the deep-set channels of turbid streams, and lovely
lakes imbosomed in orchards, vineyards, and meadows of the most luxuriant
pasturage.
The two great rivers, embracing the entire drainage of the country and
of all the lakes, debouch through narrow gorges at opposite sides of
the Swiss territory, and pursue, nearly at right angles to each other,
their respective courses until they mingle their waters—the one in the
Mediterranean, and the other in the Northern Ocean.
The little town of Neufchâtel, so often alluded to, lies on the north
bank of the lake of the same name, the Jura mountains gently sloping up
behind. In the suburbs, forming one of a row of detached unpretending
houses, is situated the neat château of M. Agassiz in the middle of
a small garden, which rests against the hills, and is bounded on the
south by the waters of the lake. A most fitting habitation for the great
ichthyologist, surrounded as it is with the noblest scenery, and replete
in every locality with the richest treasures of his favorite study. I
visited the place in the autumn of 1846, unfortunately when M. Agassiz
had just left for America: in a beautiful evening strolled through the
garden and adjoining inclosures, and was pleased to observe numerous
traces in the rocks, and in some fossil relics lying about, of his
studies and researches.
The geology of the Alps, the last stage in our self-elected course, is
of the most complicated character. The researches of Studer, Escher,
and Brunner, natives of the country, have served to establish the
general superposition and normal arrangement of the various groups of
strata, as those of the illustrious De Saussure had long before been
directed to determine their mineral distinctions, and chiefly their
classification upon mineralogical principles, into separate crystalline
masses. The labors again of Brongniart, Deshayes, Agassiz, D’Orbigny,
and Brown, have been mainly employed upon their organic remains, with
a view to ascertain the geological epochs within which the several
suites of rocks have originated. Our own countrymen, Buckland, Lyell,
Sedgwick, and Murchison, have attempted to systematize still further
the alpine deposits, as well as those of Italy and Germany, by showing
their relations to the well-marked divisions of our British systems; and
the result is, that over all these widely-extended regions, and amidst
all the metamorphism, contortion, dislocation, and upheaval of such
lofty ranges, there is a true transition from the Silurian, Devonian,
and Carboniferous rocks existing in the eastern Alps into the higher
secondary and tertiary strata of the western or Swiss Alps.
It would be impossible within our limits to furnish even a moiety of the
details and evidences by which the intricate structure of the Alps has
been so successfully unraveled, and the arrangement of nature in the due
order of superposition so persistently maintained. We shall simply advert
to the equivalents of the English strata which have been satisfactorily
ascertained, and shall then consider some of the more interesting
phenomena connected with the age, elevation, erratic blocks, and glaciers
of this Alpine country.
I. GENERAL STRUCTURE. The great central axis of the Alpine region,
stretching from the Rhone to the Danube, consists mainly of the primary
crystalline rocks. The granite is everywhere accompanied by gneiss,
mica-schist, chlorite-schist, silicious and serpentine limestones. The
upper silurian, devonian, and carboniferous systems are distinctly
represented in the eastern Alps; but no traces of the Permian deposits
have been detected in them or in any part of southern Europe; while
again in following the central parts of the chain from Austria into
Switzerland and Savoy, all fossil evidences of the four sedimentary
systems disappear. The conclusion arrived at by geologists, therefore,
is that for these palæozoic and triassic formations there exist no
representatives among any of the vast piles of strata of the western
Alps; or, if they ever had a place in this part of the chain, that they
have been obliterated by the powerful transmuting action of metamorphism,
or plunged to inaccessible depths beneath the upraised edges of the
primary series. Coal plants, and anthracite coal itself, have both indeed
been found in the valley of the Arve in Savoy, at Tarentaise, Maurienne,
and along the base of Mont Blanc; but as they occur in connection with
belemnites, these beds have been referred by M. E. de Beaumont and others
to the Lias formation, which is clearly determined by its numerous animal
fossils to exist in this part of the chain. The remarkable picturesque
rocks of Varennes, Duron, and the Col de Balme belong to the lias
deposit—the grandest specimens, perhaps, of natural architecture anywhere
to be seen.
But, making allowance for all the uncertainties of their lithological
complement, and quitting all points of a doubtful character, it has been
satisfactorily established that the flanks of the Swiss Alps are covered
by a series of sedimentary deposits of vast thickness, which form a true
transition from the newer secondary into the older tertiary strata. The
normal arrangement of rocks within these limits is complete, beginning
with the lias and terminating in distinctly recognized beds of the
tertiary pleiocene group.
The lias formation is largely developed along the northern, eastern, and
south-western side of the chain, forming an immense belt from near the
foot of the Jungfrau, in the central district of Switzerland, to Savona
in the Gulf of Genoa. The oolitic formation succeeds, on a scale of still
greater magnitude, having a continuous stretch from the Mediterranean at
Toulon to Vienna, on the Danube; again constituting an enormous deposit
along the Jura range of mountains; and then by Ulm, Altmuhl, and Amberg,
to Beyruth, with its celebrated bone caves, in the heart of Germany. The
Oxfordian group are represented by the “Neocomian” limestones, a series
of hard subcrystalline strata, abounding in fossils of the gault and
upper green-sand. To these succeed beds of red, gray, and white marly
limestones, containing _Gryphææ_, _Inocerami_, and _Ananchytes_, and
regarded as the equivalents, as they are undoubtedly in the position,
of the white chalks of England. A supercretaceous group, consisting of
nummulitic and shelly rocks, the “flysch” of the Swiss, constitutes the
close of the secondary, and graduates conformably and insensibly upward,
by mineral and zoological passages, into the eocene system. The vast beds
of strata, which are termed the “molasse” and “nagelflue,” contain in the
_lower_ series a large proportion of living species of marine shells,
while the associated and _overlaying_ strata of terrestrial origin
are loaded with forms all of which are extinct. In this group there is
nevertheless shadowed forth a type of rocks characteristic both of a
miocene and pleiocene age; but so anomalous is their arrangement, that
the younger are often found to dip under the older rocks out of which
they have been formed. And as of these, so generally of the entire Alpine
series now referred to, the position of the various groups in particular
localities can only be unraveled in their flexures, dislocations, and
displacements, by means of the organic remains with which they severally
abound.
II. The SUPERFICIAL ACCUMULATIONS embrace a wide-spread class of
geological phenomena. These have originated in causes some of which are
still in active operation, others are dormant, and others again may be
considered as belonging to agencies which may be termed extraordinary, or
permitted only at intervals to display themselves. The effects of their
operations are visible, less or more, in every part of the surface of the
globe. They have been termed the PLEISTOCENE group, and consist of both
marine and fresh water materials. To these are referred the bowlder-clay
formation, the vast deposits of sand and gravel heaped up in valleys, the
erratic blocks spread over hill-tops, and the various kinds of detrital
matter which, although often laminated, is loose and unstratified, and
clearly distinguishable from the more indurated and subjacent beds
composing the earth’s crust. Nor in gathering up the links of this
extended field of review, will it be possible to omit all mention of
glaciers and their moraines, so intimately connected with Alpine scenery.
The sand, gravel, and drift accumulations of every kind are common to
every country where waters flow or valleys exist. They cover the great
straths of Scotland, the low steppes of Russia, the lofty gorges of the
Himalaya, the desert wastes of Africa, and the elevated plateaux of
North and South America. Among the Rocky Mountains they are of the most
varied character, and are spread over extensive areas in those sterile
regions, high up among the sources of the great American rivers. Wherever
a stream falls into another stream, a stream into a lake, a lake into
a river, or a river into the sea, bars, gravelly shoals, and deltas
are found to exist, or to be in the act of formation. Accumulations of
this class, therefore, are to be regarded as of various periods, as they
are evidently the results of causes of continual operation, ordinary as
well as extraordinary. Many of such phenomena, however, are as clearly
the indication of a state of things which no longer exists. Whether by
a subsidence in the sea-bottom, or an elevation of the land, they are
now raised far above the influence of the element within which they
were collected, and to whose abrading powers they owe their laminated
structure. Such, in particular, are those regular-shaped terraces as
well as detached hillocks of sand and gravel, several hundred feet in
depth, so common in the straths of Scotland and valleys of Switzerland,
through which arms of the sea or of great inland lakes once penetrated,
and over whose shores and bottoms the debris of the mountains gradually
accumulated. “The Sea Margins,” the work of the accomplished Robert
Chambers, contains a minute and interesting detail of these facts,
gleaned from varied sources of reading and most extensive personal
observation, and clearly warranting the inference that the sea at no very
remote period covered vast districts of country from which it has now
receded.
THE BOWLDER CLAY immediately underlies the gravelly beds which have
been noticed. Betwixt the two classes of drift there is a clear line of
demarkation, although both sand and gravel are often in considerable
masses included in the plastic mud which chiefly characterizes the
bowlder clay. This formation is of great extent, covering the whole of
the north of Europe, a large portion of northern Asia, and in America
extending from the Arctic Sea to Boston; massed up in every ravine, and
ranging from the lowest valleys to two thousand feet on the mountain
slopes, where it is often accumulated to a great depth. One striking
peculiarity of the bowlder clay is, that huge blocks of stones of all
ages are imbedded in the mass in every region and country where it is
found: hence the name. The bowlders are not always of local origin;
on the contrary, the parent rock is more generally situated at remote
distances, even from five to eight hundred miles. Thus the Scottish
Grampians furnish the greater proportion of the huge blocks which
are scattered over the lowland and midland counties of Scotland. The
Lammermuirs, the Cheviots, the Lake Mountains of Cumberland, have strewed
their wreck over the vales of the Tweed and Northumberland, through
Yorkshire and the midland plains of England. The chalks of Denmark and
Norway are spread out on every shoal and bank in the German Ocean to the
British shores; while again, through all Friesland and central Germany,
the primary rocks of Scandinavia are as distinctly to be traced. The
erratic-block family have in like manner traveled over France, those of
Britanny and Normandy penetrating to the basin of the Loire; the Cantal
down even to the shores of the Mediterranean. Switzerland, perhaps,
contains the most interesting specimens of this universal drift-wreck;
as, on the sides of the Jura, at an elevation of four thousand feet, at
Monthey, where they give a feature to the landscape, and on the east
bank of the lake of Geneva, lies the celebrated _Pierre de Gouté_, which
figures in the Huttonian controversy, measuring about ten feet in height
by fifteen to twenty in breadth and length. Mont Blanc is conjectured
to have been the source of most of these _pierres roulés_, which have
been transported across the valley of the Rhone, or lifted sheer over
the mountains of Savoy, and are now at the distance of sixty and seventy
miles, lying in all the passes and ridges of the Jura.
Various explanations have been given of the origin and deposition of
the bowlder-clay formation, as well as of the erratic block-drift, for
the two can scarcely be separated in the question of cause and effect.
The bowlders, for example, are sometimes in the mass of clay itself,
sometimes they are lying loose on the surface, in many instances they are
spread over areas where no clay exists; but in most cases maintaining
their unmistakable character of being water-worn, rounded, and covered
with striæ. Both classes of phenomena, therefore, are supposed to be
referable to the same period of time, as they probably have originated
in the same series of causes. One theory advanced in explanation of
both, is the agency of powerful currents that swept over Britain and the
adjacent continents, generally in a north and north-westerly direction,
bearing along with them soil, gravel, and the larger debris of rocks;
and as obstructions occurred, or the violence of the currents subsided,
the heterogenous materials were deposited in the various countries and
at the different elevations in which they are found. The direction of
the currents, often from different centers, is indicated clearly by the
position and lithology of the mountains from which the blocks have been
transported, no less than by the fact that the greatest accumulations of
drift and bowlders are to be observed at the south-eastern extremities
of such gorges and valleys as were open to the diluvial action. But the
hypothesis fails in giving a satisfactory account of the transport of the
larger blocks, often of sixty to a hundred tons weight, over a course of
many hundreds of miles, plunging through hollows, and now stranded on
mountain slopes several thousand feet above. The theory of icebergs, as
the transporting agency, meets this difficulty; and accordingly, in one
form or other, such a cause or agent, of widely-prevailing influence,
is almost universally adopted into the creed of geologists. This theory
implies, that those portions of Europe now covered with the bowlder-clay
formation were submerged after the deposition and consolidation of
the tertiary strata—that this submergence was the result of a change
in the earth’s axis or some extraordinary alteration in its planetary
relations—that a great arctic glacial continent subsided and disappeared
beneath the waters—and that vast floating masses of ice, inclosing
rock loosened from the sinking land, penetrated southward, grazing and
polishing the harder substances that lay in their course, or carrying
along with them the more yielding and transportable materials. Admit
all or even a limited number of such assumptions, and we know from what
is occurring in recent times, that the cause is quite adequate to the
production of the effect. Sir James Ross, in his late humane exploratory
expedition, encountered in the polar regions icebergs from a hundred
to three hundred feet in height, and from a quarter to half a mile in
length. Two-thirds of every iceberg float beneath the water. What a
carrier power, at once for erosion and transport, in every one of these
frozen floating mountains! The Polar ocean still maintains its great
southward current to the equatorial seas, modified by the headlands and
inequalities of bottom which occur in its progress; and then, as now, the
icebergs driven along this highway of waters would drop, at intervals,
portions of their stony load, to take up at other stations whatever was
prepared to adhere to them. Hence the difficulty vanishes as to the large
detached blocks so often found on the elevated sides of mountains. Hence,
too, the explanation of those collected groups which are entirely free
from any admixture of clay. And hence, upon the retreat of the waters and
the elevation of the land, it is reasonable to infer that many districts
would be swept bare again of their mud, while the bowlders would remain,
and that in other quarters ridges and the deeper accumulations would be
formed. “Both theories,” however, as stated by Mr. Page in his excellent
treatise, “Rudiments of Geology,” “are beset with difficulties; and
though the latter accounts more satisfactorily for most of the phenomena
of the erratic block group, still there are many points respecting the
distribution and extent of the deposit to be investigated before either
can be finally adopted. All that can be affirmed in the present state
of the science is the composition and nature of the clay, gravel, and
bowlders—the course of the currents concerned in their deposition—the
fact of the land having a configuration of hill and valley, not differing
much from what now exists—and the peculiar scantiness, if not total
absence, of organic remains.”
Whether this mysterious cataclysm occurred before or within the modern
epoch is a question which, as yet, has not by any means been determined.
The few organic remains detected in the deposit are of marine origin—one
or two species of shells—but all identical with species now existing.
The presumption is that the climate which prevailed over these northern
regions during the period was extremely low. But how long it lasted, and
why there are no types preserved, in all that congeries of materials
of the _terrestrial_ fauna and flora of the period, are points both of
them of a very perplexing kind. Whether just dawning upon the advent
of man, or within the actual era of his history, certain it is that
these are the results of a chaotic condition over a large portion of
our planet, of which, if we except the deluge, we have no record nor
memorials in any of the after changes and modifications of its surface.
Shall we add, as indicative of a FINAL CAUSE appearing in and overruling
the tumultuous agitation, that to this source is to be traced great
part of the soil which covers the valleys and mountain sides of all the
submerged districts? that hereby extensive lakes were silted up, the
flinty rock concealed by fertile earth, and the steep acclivity made
accessible to the husbandman? One thing is clear, that all the latest
tertiary strata in this alpine region have, after their consolidation,
been disturbed and broken up: it is upon their inverted edges that the
superficial accumulations have been deposited and now rest: and whether
the submergence of Europe, and other parts of the globe, was simultaneous
or not with the cause of their movement and overthrow, a superintending
wisdom and purpose are unquestionably discernible in those accessions of
soil and other economic arrangements that resulted from the change.
There is another theory, however, which has been applied to the
explanation of these phenomena—namely, the THEORY OF GLACIERS, as
illustrated in the works of Venetz, Charpentier, Agassiz, and Forbes.
A glacier is a moving stream of ice formed in the transverse valleys
and furrowed gorges of alpine chains. They are of great depth and
indefinite length; and as they proceed slowly but progressively in
their courses they carry along with them all the loose and prehensible
mountain debris with which they come in contact. On their surface they
bear every falling splinter, small and great, from the overhanging
rocks. The sides and bottom of the ravines through which they pass are
stripped, polished, and striated. The avalanche breaks upon them with
its accumulated load; and every mountain rill, upon the melting of the
snows in summer, deposits over their flanks the materials with which
they are charged. Immense masses of matter are, in these various ways,
collected and transported from the higher into the lower valleys: these
at the outgoing of the glacier generally assume a ridge shaped form, and
are termed _moraines_. The underlying blocks are all rounded and grooved:
those borne on the surface are sharp and angular, until they are swept
away by the torrents into the rivers, where they are in turn subjected
to their smoothing operations. There can be no doubt, therefore, either
as to the disintegrating or transporting power of this mighty agent.
When I stood upon the Mer de Glace I saw before me, in one gorge of the
mountain, a continuous stretch of icy machinery fourteen miles in length
by two to three in breadth, and several hundred feet in depth. The whole
was in motion; and, whether we adopt as the principle of translation
the mechanical pressure of Agassiz, or the hydraulic law of Forbes, the
instrument of an incalculable carriage-power was there. And yet, upon the
first glance, it shrank into a span, or appeared but as a small lake, as
we viewed the glacier pouring down that deep gorge of Mont Blanc; a sheer
depth of dark perpendicular rocks rising on its edges many thousand feet
in height; several of the sharp-pointed Aiguilles, the Grandes Mullets,
and above all, the Peak de Dru, unrivaled in symmetrical grandeur,
penetrating still higher into the clear sky above. How many such glaciers
are dispersed through that vast alpine chain; and how immense, upon any
rule of calculation, have been the earthy and rocky materials which they
have borne downward in the lapse of time!
Familiarized to such gigantic operations among his native Alps, M.
Agassiz came to the conclusion that not only the bowlder drift of
Switzerland, but nearly all the superficial accumulations of northern
Europe, were to be ascribed to glacial action. In the straths and glens
of Scotland he fancied a moraine in every talus of a mountain, and in
every bar of a river. He saw the polishing of glaciers in the pass of
Killiecrankie, on the sides of Ben Nevis, and the steep promontories
of Morven. The parallel roads of Glenroy originated in the same cause.
From the Mediterranean to the Arctic zone a polar climate universally
prevailed, and the whole was covered with a mantle of ice; vast fields
of ice, too, depending from the mountains penetrated into the adjacent
valleys; the plains in succession were invaded, and erratic blocks were
scattered in every direction; when at last, upon a change of temperature
consequent upon other changes in the planetary relations of the earth,
all these erosive influences were for a time increased, and the glacial
power attained its maximum. Not only the upper and transverse furrows
in the Alps but all the lower and great longitudinal valleys of the
Cantons were the seats of glaciers during this period. Along the passes
of the Rhine, the Rhone, the Drance, the Doire, the Arve, and the Isêre,
the irrepressible tide of ice maintained its course, leaving portions
of the drift at different elevations, and dropping bowlders on the
intermediate hills and on the more distant and loftier barriers of the
Jura. Sir R. Murchison opposes all these speculations of Agassiz and
others. The elevation of the alpine chain, of which there is abundant
evidence in comparatively recent times, he regards as cotemporaneous
with the translation of the bowlder-drift, and considers that during the
sub-aqueous condition of northern Europe, the Alps and the Jura were from
two to three thousand feet below their present altitude. He finds that
the famous blocks of Monthey opposite Bex are composed exclusively of
the granite of Mont Blanc—that they have been transported on ice-rafts
through the gorge of St. Maurice to their present locality—and reasons
with justice that had they formed part of a moraine the debris of all the
intervening rocks, along the valley through which the glacier passed,
must have been associated with them. None of the glaciers of the Alps, he
thinks, could have been of the extent implied in the transport through
their agency of the Jura blocks, nor have ever the upper longitudinal and
flanking valleys around Mont Blanc been filled with general ice-streams.
The materials, likewise, of true glacier moraines he conceives can be
readily distinguished, on the one hand, from the more ancient alluvia,
and, on the other, from tumultuous accumulations of gravel bowlders
and far-transported erratic blocks. And, looking at the various causes
which have affected the surface, Sir Roderick concludes, that all the
chief difficulties of the bowlder-clay formation are removed, when
it is admitted that frequent and vast changes of the land and waters
have taken place since the distribution of large erratics—that a great
northern glacial continent has subsided—that the bottom of the sea over
Britain and the adjacent continent has been raised into dry land, while
the Alps and Jura, formerly at lower levels, have been considerably and
irregularly elevated.
The elevation of this stupendous chain of rocks, not by one but by a
succession of upheavals and depressions ere they assumed their present
position and grouping, is a point generally admitted, and not difficult
to demonstrate. The Alps, for example, are folded all round with
successive belts or zones of sedimentary matter, marking, as so many
milestones at different points of altitude, the measure of increment
attained during the intervals of their deposition. These belts contain
each their own peculiar class of fossils which determine their relative
ages. In succession, the several suites or families of rocks rest upon
the inverted outcrop or inclined edges of the older groups. Thus the
history of organic life upon the globe, the incoming of new races and
the extinction of old ones, as contained in these deposits, becomes a
scale of measurement of the elevations, disruptions, and ever-varying
conditions of the inorganic crust, while in the inverted, dislocated
state of the crust itself, we mark the several throes by which it was
lifted above the waters. Not one of the fossiliferous beds enveloping
the granitic and crystalline nucleus of the chain of the Alps but has
been shifted out of its original horizontal position, and the shift of
the subjacent having always preceded the deposition of the overlying
formation, it follows that, in addition to the intumescence of the chain,
there must have been a series of oscillatory and elevatory movements
before attaining its final altitude. But after the consolidation of the
whole rocky strata, and while the waters were still many thousands of
feet in depth, the superficial accumulations were being deposited—the
bowlder drift, and erratic blocks, either by icebergs or other causes,
were floated into position—and it was not until every one of these
traveled stones, fresh even now as when torn from the living rock, were
quietly settled down into the bottom of the sea, that Mont Blanc had
displayed a moiety of its massive outline, or towered to one-half of its
present colossal grandeur. The elevation of Ben-Mac-Dhui dates from the
era of the old red sandstone formation. Mont Blanc was invaded on all
sides by a sea that received the latest of the tertiary deposits. Both
were submerged during the cataclysm which produced the bowlder clay; but
as no increment to its bulk was derived from this cause, Ben-Mac-Dhui
falls geologically to be reckoned a completed, and therefore a far older,
mountain than Mont Blanc, which had not attained its full altitude and
bulk until the expiration of the Pleiocene age!
Such are the mighty agencies contemplated by the geologist in the various
later changes which have affected the surface of our globe. The rill,
the river, the torrent, the glacier, the earthquake, the volcano, are
still in operation, but only as faint images of the enormous powers which
in the more ancient times have been at work. That the earth has been
repeatedly encroached upon by the waters every principle of his science
goes to establish; but out of every convulsion he sees a better and
more stable condition of things to have emerged. If the bowlder drift
and the cold plastic clay formation point to a continuance of sunless,
lifeless seasons, he forgets not, as the products of the period, that
two-thirds of the soil of Great Britain and of the grain-bearing lands of
the continent, have been derived from these accumulations—the industrial
monuments of their invasion in every quarter of the world.
CHAPTER III.
THICKNESS OF THE EARTH’S CRUST—CENTRAL HEAT.
The question arises, since upon geological grounds it is demonstrable
that the crust of the earth has been repeatedly upheaved and broken, have
we reason to conclude that similar states of paroxysm and convulsion
may not again return? This brings us to the consideration of two very
interesting problems, namely,—THE THICKNESS OF THE EARTH’S CRUST—And THE
DOCTRINE OF CENTRAL HEAT. Have we any means of determining either of
these points? The doctrine of the igneous origin of granite and other
rocks proceeds upon the assumption of a vast reservoir of heat existing
somewhere within the interior; and the question to be solved is—What is
the thickness of the solid crust beneath which the molten rocks have
their origin? and what the cause of their fusion?
I. An opinion has long prevailed among geologists of a certain school,
that the crust of the earth is of very limited dimensions. A thin coating
of primary crystalline rock is interposed betwixt the sedimentary strata
above, and the intensely incandescent mass of which the interior is
composed. The experiments of Fourier establish a formula of increasing
temperature of the strata in a descending series, and from the rate of
this increase, it is inferred, that about one hundred miles below the
surface the entire nucleus is in a state of complete fusion. Some have
even assumed the melting point to be less than thirty miles, when “the
next contiguous matter is in a state of fusion, at a temperature probably
higher than any that man can produce by artificial means, or any natural
heat that can exist on the surface.”[11] Sir John Leslie attempted a
demonstration of the ultimate resolution of the materials into light,
as the only element capable of resisting the vast pressure of the outer
crust; and, erroneously assuming the _modulus_ of compressibility of air,
water, the metals, and all known earthy substances to be invariable,
however greatly the pressure may be increased, this ingenious philosopher
came to the conclusion, that, instead of Tartarean darkness, the
offspring of superstition, the inner chambers of the earth are filled
with luminous ether, the most pure, concentrated, and resplendent. Darwin
believes that much of the vast continent of South America is suspended
over an inner sea of liquid fire, and says, that, “daily it is forced
home on the mind of the geologist, that nothing, not even the wind that
blows, is so unstable as the level of the crust of the earth.”
With the fires of Etna and Vesuvius raging on the one side, and the
recent though extinct volcanoes of Auvergne and the Cantal seated so near
on the other side, what security is there, amidst so many undoubted facts
of the mobility of the land, that these vast piles of Alpine mountains
may not again, through mere mechanical weight, break through the film
of crust on which they rest, and sink into the abyss from which they so
lately emerged! The doctrine of central heat, it may be replied, does
not necessarily imply the universal _fluidity_ of the central mass, an
opinion supported by Lyell, Poisson, and other eminent philosophers;
while there is reason to infer, as repeatedly stated, that there is
no identity of scale and mechanism between volcanoes now active, and
the igneous causes which gave birth to these and other stupendous
mountain-chains.
But astronomy gives a different and more comfortable solution of the
problem. The influence of the moon alone, it would appear, acting upon
our planet, requires a thickness of crust of at least ONE THOUSAND MILES,
to prevent the fabric of the globe from being severed into fragments. The
earth, considered in connection with its own planetary system, has three
distinct motions in space, a fact in science usually illustrated by the
movements of the common spinning-top. A more striking illustration may be
seen in the steam-vapor which has aided you onward, that living cloud of
light and heat which towers and floats away in these beautifully curling
wreaths. Like the trail of the comet, how gracefully it sweeps over the
plains in its forward movement: then it turns to the right or left in the
direction of the wind: and then, in a third convolution, every globule
of the airy mass is twirling on an axis of its own. Equally buoyant is
the earth, hung upon nothing, and cleaving the liquid firmament. It
turns on its axis, causing the vicissitude of day and night; it moves
through its orbit, making the circuit of the sun and the diversity of
the seasons; and, in addition, there is an oscillatory motion like the
unsteady zig-zag twistings of the carriage-train, occasioned by the
excess of the equatorial over the polar diameter. This excess amounts
to about a three-hundredth part. But, small as it is, it exerts an
assignable influence over the cohesion or attraction of the solid
framework. Now, by a nice mathematical demonstration, resting on the sun
and moon’s attraction, Mr. Hopkins infers, as indicated by the phenomena
of _precession and nutation_, that the minimum thickness of the earth’s
crust cannot be less than one-fourth or one-fifth of the earth’s radius.
The theorem is of too abstract a nature to be here introduced; but it
appears from it that the observed amount of _precession_ requires this
degree of solid matter, which gives a clear depth of solid arch over
either vacuum, resplendent light, or fiery fluid, of from eight hundred
to a thousand miles. This may well allay the fears of the most timid as
to the stability of the ground beneath his feet, whatever be the state of
the interior, or under whatever modifications the materials therein may
exist.
II. But if this thickness of crust is required now, it must have been
equally required in all past time: hence, it may be argued, no security
is thereby afforded against the bursting out of the pent-up fires, or
disruption of the outer crust? Now, it has been questioned whether there
be such a thing as a CENTRAL fluid heat at all, while the solidity of
the earth throughout has been maintained as more in unison with the
principles of established science.
The doctrine of a central heat is as old as the days of Bishop Burnet,
who imagined that the internal fire, pre-existent in the bowels of the
earth, was the agent employed in breaking up the fountains of the deep
for the production of the deluge. Leibnitz and Buffon regarded the
earth as an extinguished sun or vitrified globe, which, according to
the calculations of the latter, required seventy-five thousand years
to cool down to its present temperature; and that, in ninety-eight
thousand years more, the heat will be utterly exhausted, and productive
nature extinguished. Whiston fancied that the earth was created from
the atmosphere of one blazing comet, and deluged by the humid tail
of another. And Whitehurst, one of the oldest of modern geologists,
regarded all the strata of every formation, as concentrically arranged
over the surface of the globe, and then employed the expansive agency of
internal fire to account for their upheaved disrupted condition. These
cosmogonies, it is needless to remark, all now rank with the speculations
of the alchemists, and that Behmen and their authors are considered as of
equal authority in the sciences of chemistry and geology.
The searching tests of experiment, as already noticed, have been
brought to illustrate the subject of internal heat, but the results
have not been decisive, nor very satisfactory. It has been stated, as
a general rule in the mines examined, that, in proportion to their
depth, the heat increases as we descend; and the mean result of all the
best observations, as given by Cordier, amounts to one degree of heat
for every forty-five feet of depth. Different mines, however, it has
been ascertained, vary in their degrees of downward temperature; as in
the Durham and Newcastle coal-pits, the increase is estimated at one
degree for every forty-four feet,—in the Cornwall iron-mines at one in
seventy-five feet,—and in Saxony some of the mines give an increase of
only one degree in one hundred and eighty or one hundred and ninety feet
of perpendicular descent. Much of this difference may, indeed, be readily
accounted for by the nature of the contents of the mines themselves,
their position in the system, and the quality of the rocks among which
they are situated. But a difficulty will remain, how to dispose of the
increasing ratio of temperature, and the changes that must necessarily
result from it in the bowels of the earth. Thus, assuming it to be a
uniformly increasing ratio in proportion to the depth, it will follow
from this law of increase that we reach a point, about twenty-four miles
down, hot enough to melt iron: at double that distance, such a heat as
will fuse every substance with which we are acquainted: and at a hundred
miles, that a temperature will exist, of whose resolving powers we have
no experience, and cannot even conjecture. The astronomical theory of
a thousand miles of crust melts into airy nothing in its presence, and
the formula of Fourier, before it has reached the required hundred, will
have found a nucleus in complete fusion, acting intensely upon the thin
external crust, and seeking through every crevice of these “flagrantia
mœnia mundi,” to issue forth in torrents of fire.
It has been farther objected to a central fluidity, that such a fluid
must be in constant circulation by the cooling of its exterior—a fact
ascertained in the case of all fused metals. Tides too, it has been
argued, would be produced in the fluid matter, however deeply seated,
through the influence of the sun and moon, and which _tides_ would
necessarily occasion such oscillatory and expansive movements as
astronomy has neither noticed nor accounted for. Again, the supposition
of a central heat of the earth, prevailing from the beginning and through
all the phases of its history, implies that its cooling is still going
on; and that, in consequence, a contraction in the mass or bulk of the
earth will follow the law observed by all other bodies in parting with
their heat. Hence this contraction might lead to the shortening of
the day and other mechanical results. But Laplace satisfied himself,
by reference to ancient astronomical records, that there had been no
alteration in the length of the day, even to the smallest calculable
degree or point of a second; and that thence, the hypothesis of a fluid,
or even primitive heat of the earth, had here no confirmation.
An objection to the theory has likewise been urged, from the well-known
property and tendency of heat to become equally diffused through all the
particles of any body in which it exists. Thus, it is an established
principle, that heat not only diffuses itself on all sides, but passes
continually from bodies in which the temperature is greater to those
in which it is less; and that if a body be placed in a medium having
a temperature different from its own, the momentary variations of its
temperature will be as the differences between the temperature of the
body and of the medium. Hence, when the heat beneath the surface of the
earth, at whatever depth, becomes of sufficient intensity to melt iron,
it cannot pass beyond this until the whole surrounding mass is heated to
the same degree of intensity. The law of increment and transmission of
caloric, it is argued, must be the same below as above; and, assuming the
nucleus of the earth to be fluid, no solid crust could thus be formed
upon the surface until every particle of the heated fluid mass was cooled
down to the point of consolidation. This principle is well understood
in the formation of a crust of ice upon water. If extendible to other
bodies, and to subterranean distances, then the simple fact of an
existing outer crust, solid and cooled down to the existing temperature,
militates against the probability of a central fire, and is utterly
repugnant to the hypothesis of a liquid central mass.
It is maintained, however, on the other hand, that the central caloric,
however intense at any depth, has long ago arrived at the point at which
the conducting power of the rocky crust has either entirely ceased or
permits no further sensible decrease; that this point was reached some
time before the creation of man, when the process of cooling had acquired
a maximum or stationary condition, and that it formed a part of the
processes by which the earth was adapted to its high destination among
the works of God. But may not the adaptation have been effected by the
gradual conduction of the heat outwardly, not by suffering it to remain
and glow in opposition to its known properties in the inner regions?
It may be maintained as a safe principle in physical science, that if
there be heat in the center of the globe, it must have the properties
of heat and none other. No geologist hesitates to admit, upon evidence
amounting to demonstration, that a vast source of heat exists in the
interior of the earth, widely spread beneath the stony pavement, and
that it has existed at all times. But whether that heat is local or
generally diffused—whether it is central or infra-superficial—whether
it is constantly maintained, or is excited at intervals by certain
combinations—are questions as yet of mere speculation, and for the
solution of which we have no data to lead us, beyond probable inferences.
Upon the whole, as the known density of the earth is considerably
greater than that of a solid sphere, composed of any such rocks as we
are acquainted with, the presumption is, that heavier materials, in an
increasing ratio, than any constituting the superficial crust, enter
into the composition and structure of the central parts. All the great
mountain systems in the different zones of the globe are the product
of palæozoic times. The fires which cast them out have gradually
diminished by every succeeding effort. A steadier equilibrium betwixt
the conflicting elements of the upper and the lower world, appears
to have taken place—once only disturbed, at the deluge, since man’s
occupation—and for the repetition of which there exists no preparation
in the established course of nature. The very convulsions which have
shattered the earth to its foundations, while they are evidences of
benevolent wisdom, furnish, at the same time, the best guarantee against
blind fortuitous derangements to come; the result, as they are, of
periodical causes, acting in a way and with an intensity of which we have
no experience, and for which, indeed, we have no expression in any of the
sciences.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
PART IV.
CHAPTER I.
RÉSUMÉ.
Geology, as will be seen from the preceding details, is among the most
comprehensive of the sciences. It invades the province of every one
of them, and lays them all under contribution while following out its
own peculiar researches. A dry description of rocks, in their simple
mineral qualities, does not limit or exhaust its ample resources. Botany,
zoology, meteorology—a part, in short, of every branch of natural
history, as well as chemistry, physics, and astronomy, are severally
enlisted in its service, and all give interest and importance to its
discursive investigations. And thus, receiving gifts from every walk of
science, geology gives back in turn, and imparts to each, illustrations
new and rare, from its own wonderful storehouse.
Geology, considered in itself, may be pursued in three different ways, as
it resolves into three great leading branches of investigation. Observing
the arrangement and superposition of rocks, as exhibited in the crust of
the earth, along with their mineral distinctions and fossil contents,
we embrace all the objects included in _descriptive_ or _phenomenal_
geology. The exposition, again, of the general principles by which such
phenomena can be produced, constitutes what has been termed _geological
dynamics_,—by which are traced the laws of action of known causes, and
their relation to such changes as those which geology considers. The
last branch leads to a consideration of the causes in which the phenomena
have originated and the doctrines deducible from them. This has been
called _physical geology_, and embraces all that is theoretic in the
science. These three branches, while thus definitively distinct in
themselves, are yet frequently combined in the works of writers on the
subject; nor is it easy, or even possible, in practice, to separate them,
as few will be content to describe without attempting also to explain.
It has been no part of our vocation in these investigations to inquire
into the _origin_ of a material universe;—what was its pre-existent
state, and by what process this globe at first was brought into an
earthy concrete form. Astronomy has tried various solutions. But
whether by the splintering of other worlds, or the evolution of matter
from a Saturnian ring, or by the condensation of gaseous star-dust
diffused through infinite space, no astronomical hypothesis has proved
satisfactory. Geology is better employed when she assumes a beginning
to her researches upon the visible crust of the globe. The mystery of
_creation_ is not within the range of her legitimate territory; and,
while the investigation of laws and of the influence of secondary causes
falls within the province of both, it may be safely admitted that neither
astronomy nor geology are, of themselves, capable of giving us any real
or precise account of the origin of the universe, or of any of its parts.
That we have begun with the primary rocks of the Grampians, as the most
ancient division of systematic lithology, was more with a view to have
some ‘principia’ for description than assumptions for theory, and because
no geological research has penetrated deeper. The crust of the earth,
as far as observation extends, is proved to consist in its lower parts
of a series of crystalline rocks, some of which are stratified, and
others unstratified, intercalating one with another, and maintaining the
same relative position, each to each, as a system, in every region of
the globe. Granite, gneiss, micha-schist, quartz-rock, and limestone,
constitute these first outwork courses of creation; one uniform cause
acting simultaneously over the earth, appears to have placed them all
in position; and as no breathing animal or blossoming plant witnessed
this morn-dawn of nature, the rocks belonging to the period are termed
the primary or azoic series. The fossiliferous deposits follow in their
due order of superposition, arranged into groups and systems according
to the organic remains by which they are respectively characterized,
and preserving, in their geographical distribution, the same uniform
and persistent vertical arrangement as the former. Amorphous rocks, of
all ages and extent, are distributed among the stratified portions of
the crust, whether crystalline or sedimentary, whereby the latter are
dislocated and upheaved, and the inequalities of the surface, and all the
pleasing diversity of plain, hill, and mountain have been produced. It
is the special object of descriptive or phenomenal geology to note all
the facts connected with these appearances and changes, to collate and
compare them one with another, and finally, to systematize them according
to their natural affinities and relations.
Dynamical and theoretical geology, again, inquires into the supposed
principles and causes in which all these arrangements have originated,
and by which they have been modified. The agencies, processes, and
changes which we now observe in the existing course of nature, furnish
the grounds and analogies by which alone we can speculate respecting the
past condition of things, subject always to the consideration that, in
proportion to the difference of effects and changes in the two periods,
so are the causes and agencies which produced them, as well in relation
to time as to force. The enormous magnitude of the results witnessed
during the more ancient geological epochs, demonstrates the intensity of
the causes then in operation; and, admitting these causes to be the same
in kind with such as prevail at present, we are yet warranted to infer
their more violent activity, as likewise to assume a more rapid increment
in their effects. Thus the geologist, from observation of the laws of
crystallization now manifested in the aggregation of the elementary
particles of bodies, reverts to the existence of similar forces, whatever
they be, which produced the crystalline texture of the primary rocks,
their fissile structure, and the separation of all those materials which
exist among them in the form of gems, agates and metalliferous veins.
Igneous causes he still finds in operation, as volcanoes, earthquakes,
and chemical agencies closely connected with both; and the same forces
he hesitates not to connect with the elevation of mountain-chains, the
vast masses of plutonic matter everywhere diffused through the earth’s
crust, and the disturbance, dislocation, and other changes produced upon
all the stratified rocks through which this matter has penetrated. A
mighty power in continual action, he further perceives in the waters of
the ocean, of the atmosphere, of the rills and rivers that issue from
the mountains’ side: and to such aqueous causes, operative in the past
as in the present day, he refers the transport, lamination, and detrital
structure of the materials of all the sedimentary deposits. Nor does he
leave out of estimation the effect of assumed cosmical changes upon the
temperature of the planet, and the laws that regulate the distribution of
heat over the surface: causes such as these the geologist sees greatly to
influence, at present, the conditions of organic life in every quarter of
the globe; and hence, he justly calls for their assistance in explaining
the history of those remarkable organic remains which characterize the
several geological epochs.
When the geologist proceeds systematically to trace the series of these
phenomena, to ascertain their causes, and to connect together all the
indications of change that are found in the organic and inorganic
kingdoms of nature, he attempts the structure of a THEORY OF CREATION,
which shall embrace the whole course of the world, from the earliest to
the present times; and which, it may reasonably be concluded, may be
resolved into one great cycle, yet unfinished. But for this the materials
of the science are by no means prepared, nor is its progress sufficiently
advanced.
The history of organic remains forms an interesting branch of descriptive
geology, where, it may be said, we find the medal-stamps of creation in
the first forms of organic life that came from the hands of the Creator.
The fact is all important, and the science is prepared to announce
it, that in the lowest fossiliferous strata of the earth, VEGETABLES
appear among the first of all living things: the impressions of plants,
and entire beds of carbonaceous matter, are found in the most ancient
strata of the Silurian group of rocks. Nor less important is the fact,
that the fossils which next arrest the attention are the remains of
marine animals, myriads of shells, and vast numbers of fishes. Then,
in the ascending series of strata, the foot-prints of birds are lower
down than the impressions of the beasts of the earth. The sea, it is
next discovered, swarmed with huge reptilian bodies, before mammalian
quadrupeds and cattle had yet a place on dry land; and man, the noblest
specimen of organic structure, the crowning apex of the pyramid of
terrestrial being, is, according to the geological narrative, precisely
in his place—no bone nor fragment of his kind, having been detected in
the solid frame of the globe.
Such is the vista into the past opened up through these rocky
entablatures of the globe. Compared with other branches of knowledge,
in point of mere exciting topics of interest, geology occupies a
distinguished position. Nay, the truth here, to those not conversant
with the science, is even more incredible than fiction. As a study into
the records of creation, geology has disclosed views, and elicited
discoveries, of the works of the Divine Architect of the world, which
the religious inquirer will as cordially embrace, as ignorance only
can overlook or misapprehend.—Newton imagined, so porous is all earthy
matter, that this terrene globe could be crushed into the size of two
or three cubic inches of solid substance. Geology now shows that the
most concrete rocks, chains of hills and even of mountains, the soft
clays of Virginia, and loose floating deserts of sand, are many of
them composed of the shields and skeletons of animalcules; evidences,
through all past time, of the wondrous prodigality of nature, and of
the superabundant goodness of its Author. Nothing, indeed, at first
sight can appear more barren of every point of interesting illustration
than the rocky masses of the earth. Tear off the grassy covering which
conceals, while it freshens, the outer crust of the globe, and to mere
disorder and confusion there seems to be superadded the more repulsive
features of sterility and death. But examine a little deeper, and you
will see order, symmetry, and beauty; what is now frigid and motionless,
was once animated with the breath of life; these stony chambers beneath,
the necropolis of a buried world. The study of the Course of Creation,
therefore, when read aright—whether in its organic or inorganic
lessons—cannot fail to present the most varied and sublime illustrations
of the power, wisdom, and goodness of Him who reared the stupendous
fabric, and made our earth one of the bright rolling planets of the
universe.
There are many points, however, and questions of the deepest importance,
that are far from being satisfactorily determined.—The progress of
vegetable and animal life, for example, is supposed to correspond with
the varying conditions and changes of the earth’s surface, when the races
are summoned into existence, not at once, nor after short intervals, but
successively, and after ages of unfathomable extent. The record, even as
a chronicle of mere life and death, is a marvelous one, full of singular
revelations, and disclosing types of organized being that have long been
obliterated. But when as yet there was no rational head in this mundane
scene, the assumption is, that the inferior tribes were for MILLIONS
of years the sole living occupants of the planet! Can all the data be
sound, rightly understood, and properly interpreted, that lead to such
conclusions? The epic of this lengthened series of events is yet, it may
be said, without a hero. The tragedy of wild revolution and carnage lacks
romance in the very monotony of its devastation. And destitute alike of a
_moral_, and of a fitting audience, the brilliancy of the representation
loses half its attractions in losing all its humanity.
One established principle of the science connected with this point is,
that there are certain groups of animal species found fossil in the
different sets of strata which compose the earth’s crust, and that these
demonstrate something like a series of distinct faunas corresponding
to the number of formations. Seven or eight sets of rocks, at least,
are as distinctly characterized by particular sets of fossils. But the
exceptions to the law are likewise very numerous, inasmuch as both
species and genera have been carried forward, and are identically the
same, from one formation and epoch into another. Hence, points neither
of difference nor of resemblance, from age to age, are absolute, and
cannot very minutely be applied as regards the several formations and
their organic contents. The types of one formation are repeatedly mingled
with those of another. And the value of all the evidence collected from
fossil remains, while it establishes undeniably a succession in the
mineral deposits, leaves the question as to the limits of the epochs, and
their relation to Time, still partially undetermined. The theory too
of progressive development, or that of independent acts of creation—the
causes of the extinction of old, and the introduction of new races—the
extent of time implied or indicated in the whole series of events—and
the all-important point involved in this chronology, whether all or
any of the geological series are alluded to in the Mosaic account of
creation—are questions that necessarily press upon the attention, as
we would solve or not the inquiries suggested. The sounding-line of
geology is not to be despised, or cast at once aside, should it fail in
furnishing a just estimate and measure of such profound investigations.
Every failure will only prove a stimulus to renewed exertion, as every
discovered path of error leads one step in advance toward the path of
truth, and that in turn to harmony with the Book of ALL TRUTH.
CHAPTER II.
THEORIES OF ORGANIC LIFE.
After inquiring into their _order_ of succession, the _relation_ which
organic fossils have to each other, as genera and species, falls
naturally to be considered. How have these various families of creatures,
brought to light by geology, been formed? In what manner have they become
extinct? Have they all proceeded from a few original types, which have
been modified by circumstances, increased in variety, and perfected in
form, as they advance from the older to the newer formations? And does
geology furnish any data on which to build a theory of their extinction
as the higher and succeeding kinds emerged into being? A learned author,
Professor Pictet of Geneva, has spoken of these speculations in terms of
a rule or law, as follows:—“_The faunas of the most ancient formations
are made up of the less perfectly organized animals, and the degree of
perfection increases as we approach the more recent epochs._”
This was long held as a favorite dogma among geologists, when, in
proportion to the scantiness of facts, there was an increasing
eagerness to magnify their value, and to build upon them the widest
generalizations. But now, since accurate observations are more and more
multiplied, and the principles of palæontology are better understood,
the doctrine of a gradual advance of animal organization toward higher
and more perfect forms as we ascend through the successive deposits of
the earth’s crust, is daily losing ground among the cultivators of the
science. The notion is based upon the theory of _a scale of beings_, in
which all animals are supposed to form a series, or to constitute links
of an unbroken chain, whereof each species is more perfect than that
which precedes it, and the varying degrees of perfection constantly
increasing until they reach their maximum in man, the highest link in the
chain. M. Pictet himself regards this theory as vague and unsupported
by facts, as well in the organization of the extinct as of the existing
races of animals. These beings, he says, are divided into a certain
number of groups, each of which exhibits a peculiar type; but while some
of the groups are manifestly superior to others when we consider their
organization generally, it happens also that the result of a comparison
sometimes fails to establish any real superiority. The faunas of the
more ancient formations he holds to be far less imperfect than has been
often supposed, where the vertebrate type is represented by the fishes,
and whose structure is as complicated and finished as the most recent of
their kind; while the invertebrate again furnishes numerous examples of
fossilized gasteropoda and cephalopoda, the most perfect orders of the
molluscous class. As with these, so with the relics of every succeeding
epoch, in which all the types, the genera, and species of every family of
the animal kingdom, are represented by organic structures as perfect as
those of the present day.
We quote the following important cautionary remark by the same
author:—“We ought not,” says Professor Pictet, “to be too hasty in
assuming the absence of certain more perfect types in the older faunas,
merely because we have not yet discovered any remains of them. We
hardly know anything of these faunas, except with regard to some of
the inhabitants of the sea; and it is well known, that in the present
condition of the globe, those animals living on land exhibit the higher
forms of structure. Is it not possible that in these first ages of the
world, terrestrial animals also existed, more highly organized than
their marine cotemporaries, although their remains either have not been
preserved, or are still to be discovered? The existence of didelphine
mammals in the oolites has been made out by the discovery of a very small
number of fragments; and the remains of land animals generally are hardly
fossilized, except by sudden deluges and inundations, which are always
trifling in their results, compared with the slow but unceasing deposits
from the water of the sea. May we not yet expect new discoveries in these
ancient strata, revealing to us the existence of primeval animals at
present little suspected?”
The same mode of reasoning may be extended to the ancient floras, or
terrestrial plants of the primeval ages. What a revelation, for instance,
is made in the recently discovered coal deposits of Oporto and the Upper
Douro, where, along with the orthides, trilobites, and graptolites of the
lower silurian rocks, are found vegetable impressions strongly resembling
the ferns of the carboniferous age? The Cromarty fossil pine, from the
lower old red sandstone, has been already noticed. While these pages
have been passing through the press we have to record the discovery of a
specimen, nearly two feet in length and half a foot in thickness, from
the beds of the middle old red and immediately underlying the yellow
sandstone of Dura Den. This fossil is considerably flattened and furred
with the scars or markings so characteristic of the decorticated trees
belonging to the coal formation. Does not this warrant the expectation
of a richer harvest to be yet gleaned in these ancient fields than the
marine fuci and algæ that have hitherto been mainly gathered in by the
geological sickle?
Another mode of accounting for the succession of organized beings on the
surface of the globe, and consequently also their successive extinction
and outgoing, as seen in the fossiliferous rocks, is that which is
termed THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT, or the doctrine of the transmutation
of species. The same has been a very ancient and favorite notion among
mankind. Early in this century it assumed the form of a system, under
the adaptive principle of Lamarck, who conceived that animals, according
to the circumstances in which they are placed, by the use or disuse of
certain organs, the frequency and degree of exertion or strain upon
particular parts of the body, were themselves the agents in inducing
all the variety of structures by which they are distinguished into so
many orders and families. The aquatic fowl, for example, is attracted
to the waters in quest of food, and so in time becomes web-footed. The
heron dislikes to plunge into the flood, or will only venture into the
shoals, and hence he becomes a wader, and is equipped with long legs. The
woodpecker rejoices in those little aphides and creatures that nestle
under the bark of trees, and thus, from constant exercise, acquires his
strength of bill. The eagle seeks the blaze of the sun, and soars to
the gates of heaven, and hence his penetrating eye and speed of descent
upon his all-unconscious victim beneath. And, in like manner, through
the whole range of animated nature, and in all past ages, genera and
species have all acquired their adaptive powers, and distinctive forms
of organization, arising from a certain plastic character in their
different constitutions, and their own voluntary attempts to supply
their constantly increasing wants. There were a few great leading stamps
or dies of nature’s own molding; but all the rest—even man himself—are
merely offsets from the primitive type, with such extension of organs and
modification of excrescences as were required in each particular case;
succeeding races always retaining a strong affinity to their immediate
predecessors, and a tendency to impress their own features on their
kindred which succeed them. There is a limit of divergence; but within
that limit, the human family have their place assigned them among the
monkeys and wild men of the woods.
It is the same extravagant idea, _that of a constant progression toward
animal perfection_, which has become so popularized in “The Vestiges
of the Natural History of Creation.” This author, indeed, has taken a
wider and bolder flight than even the French philosopher, M. Lamarck.
He brings the rudimentary elements and molecular forms of all creation
before him. He expatiates through infinite space, and amidst the original
fire-mist of the astral worlds. He finds but one grand law pervading the
whole universe of being, operating in the self-same way in the production
of planets and suns, as in the germination of insects and animalcules,
the life-impregnating principle in the one being only a modification of
the aggregating and rotary tendencies that rule in the other—the blind
and casual evolution of some agency of a material system, substituted
for the creative will of an intelligent ever-active First Cause. “A
nucleated vesicle” is the fundamental form of all organization, as nuclei
of luminous matter are the sources of the stars; this is the meeting
point between the organic and the inorganic, the end of the mineral and
beginning of the vegetable and animal kingdoms; whence they start in
different directions, but in a general parallelism and analogy. Assuming
the vast indefinite periods of the geological epochs to be correct,
the author makes great account of time, and the mighty changes which
will be produced in the lapse of countless ages, and thus rebuts the
argument against his theory that is so obviously furnished from the fixed
unaltered characters of organization that have prevailed throughout the
entire modern epoch. This he argues is merely a point, an infinitesimal
fraction, when compared with the epochs of geology. The eye detects
not the changes which all specific forms are slowly but unceasingly
undergoing within limited portions of time, even as the nicest
instruments cannot always enable the astronomer to note the changes of
position among the heavenly bodies. Hence the _appearance_ of so many of
the stars as unchangingly fixed in their relations to each other. The
whole solar system, too, upon the ground of imperfect unrecording vision,
_seems_ to be anchored in one portion of space. And hence likewise the
argument against the motion of the earth itself, which so long prevailed,
derived from the fact of there being no sensible parallax, and now so
easily accounted for by the insignificant smallness of its orbit, as
compared with the remoteness of the stars. Limited, in like manner, to
the narrow field of observation afforded within the human period, the
modifications of species and their transmutations into the higher grades
of animals are not appreciable, _because_ its six thousand years are as a
moment, in comparison with those incalculable ages of geology which have
been concerned in the phenomenon!
Thus does the author of the “Vestiges” revel amidst the sublimities and
copious materials of his subject. Time and space, the elements of the
astral heavens and the earth, are alike indefinitely in his grasp. That
he has failed to frame a better system of things than the one we see
actually around us, is a necessary consequence of the restraints imposed
on human investigation. Facts will not be supplanted by any heights, or
depths, or ingenuities of speculation. And as existing nature is all
against the doctrine of transmutation and development, so the discoveries
of geology through all its formations are equally opposed to such views
of creation. A short sketch of both will abundantly illustrate this.
As to the course of living nature, the development theory is there at
once repudiated in the now clearly established fact, that the first
germinal vesicles are different in the different tribes of animals.
A non-identity of type is discoverable in the minutest microscopical
beginnings of organic life. And “by no change of conditions can two
ova of animals of the same species be developed into different animal
species; neither by any provision of identical conditions can two ova
of different species be developed into animals of the same kind.”
Corresponding to these differences in their fœtal forms, there are in all
the stages toward parturition a similarity of progress in the various
organs and appendages in the same kinds of animals. Fishes, birds,
quadrupeds, all manifest a divergence from each other in the first action
of the respirating organs—in the nervous system—and in all the apparatus
connected with the movements of the heart and blood-vessels. There is
no structural interchange, in the minutest part, that distinguishes the
orders of the perfect animal in any of the antecedent fœtal conditions;
the organic contrivances within the egg being as complete and as
thoroughly prospective to the future use and habits of the bird, as are
the petals of the flower inclosed within the bud, the arms of the giant
oak within the acorn, or man in his evolving capacity toward intellectual
being.
What is thus true in all the rudimentary stages of organic development is
strikingly confirmed by the unalterable condition of all living nature.
Plants and animals never diverge, beyond small ascertained limits, from
the fixed characters of their families, resisting the effects of every
kind of influence, whether proceeding from natural causes or human
interference. The lapse of three thousand years has left the embalmed
carcasses of men and animals, in Egypt, wrapped and swathed in a material
woven from the same species of plants which still flourish on the banks
of the Nile. The crocodile and the ibis still drink of its waters.
Nothing changed in form or appearance, the swarthy Arab repairs to its
cooling fountains to quench his thirst. Nature has been tortured in a
thousand ways, to cause her to depart from her long beaten paths; but she
is obdurate on every point. Man would improve her kinds, and hybrids are
produced; but there the variety ends. Crosses are constantly attempted;
but “the hitherto and no farther” is soon approached. Our fruit-bearing
trees are coaxed with all the appliances of horticultural skill; and
yet in all their seminal and floral organs, the texture of their leaves
and bark, the structure of their roots and stem, the rudimentary stock
remains one and the same. Domestication has, indeed, wrought wonderful
changes and improvements in the breed of many creatures. Horses, oxen,
sheep, pigs, dogs, and poultry of all sorts, are increased in bulk,
tamed, ameliorated in habit and disposition. But the skeletons of all
continue essentially as they were in their natural state; and even
the individuals the most widely removed from the primitive type, as
exemplified in the canine race, never present any real difference of form
in the important organs.—When again abandoned to their own guidance, and
the restraints imposed by man are removed, the domesticated animals,
one and all, return to their former condition, and speedily resume the
instincts and appearance of the jungle and the forest.
If such are the unvarying laws of physiology now, the presumption is that
they have been the same in all past ages. Creatures are brought from the
extremities of the earth—the polar, temperate, and tropical denizens,
all mixed up and crossed with each other—food, climate, and treatment,
all changed—and, through all, the type of every species continues as
before—no transmutation of one kind into another under all the violent
tutoring agencies to which they have been subjected. For thousands of
years such has been the unswerving course of nature. Would it not clearly
be a solecism in reasoning to argue differently over the geological
epochs, however indefinite in extent, because, in the far-off regions of
space, our eyes can note no change in the relative position of the stars?
The things will not compare. Time and space are not co-ordinate terms.
And an appeal from positive knowledge to supposed, assumed ignorance does
not meet the question.
Meanwhile, the amplitude of the current epoch, if we may so speak, gives
scope and verge enough for all the requirements of the problem to be
solved, the conditions of the argument to be established, the process
of reasoning to be employed. An experience not merely of six thousand
years, but an experience embracing a uniformity of results in all the
hundreds of thousands of instances into which animate nature is divided,
in all the countless species of plants and animals which have existed
successively throughout the whole of that period, furnishes proof of
such a cumulative kind as approaches, if not to demonstration, at least
to the nearest possible degree of certainty. There is no instance of a
single transmutation of a vegetable species into another species, of
algæ into fuci or conversely, of grasses into cereals, of endogens into
exogens, of the pine into the oak; and the same of animal species, where,
through all the living tribes, the fixity of family law has maintained
its steady, unchanging course since Adam gave names to them, down to the
present hour. What link in the chain is wanting? The course of creation
is verified and complete. The exception would be a miracle. And we are
not at liberty, upon just principles of ratiocination, to refuse our
assent, where all the facts, indefinite as to number, are exclusively on
one side, and none upon the other. Our belief in the case is defined and
restrained by the absolute uniformity of stubborn, unbending nature; and
an appeal from the known to the unknown, from the human to the geological
epochs, is just to relinquish reason for the dominion of imagination, the
evidences of the senses for the visions of fancy. The shark, rapacious as
ever, holds the empire of the seas—the lion, the domain of the forest—the
eagle, the region of the air—and man, progressive man, alone looks unto
the heavens and blesses his Maker.
Hume was so impressed with the force of this argument, as to maintain,
upon the ground of it, the absolute impossibility of establishing the
truth of a single _miraculous_ event, or of any event that did not
harmonize with the existing course of nature. The Laws of Nature have
been so uniform, within the entire range of human experience, as that
no testimony or reasoning of man, says that subtile dialectitian, can
invalidate their authority, or render credible any alleged case of
discrepancy or of deviation.—The author of the “Vestiges,” for the first
time, has cast the whole weight of this evidence aside, or holds it as
even scarcely relevant in a question of proof. And thus outstripping, as
he does, both the measure and the requirements of the Christian’s faith,
he may be safely left to the logic of its most merciless adversary in
dealing with the phenomenal or imaginary transmutations of the geological
epochs.
But the facts of geology, from its remotest periods, are in themselves
no less strongly opposed to this extravagant, untenable hypothesis. This
might be presumed from the distinct teachings of geology, as already
stated, against the theory of a scale of beings becoming more perfect as
we ascend from the faunas of the older to those of the newer formations.
The families of the various formations are distinct, and consist of real
non-interchanging forms of structure, whether they die out and disappear
with a particular formation, or are carried forward and intermixed
with the fossils of another. The fishes of the silurian rocks, are as
perfect after their kind as those of the Devonian, Carboniferous, or
Cretaceous deposits; and not less perfect than they are genuine types
of all their successors. The _sauroids_ of the old red sandstone have
reptilian resemblances, but yet the _saurians_ of the oolite age have no
affinities of true kindred descent; while, again, of all the mammalia of
the tertiary period, there is not one that boasts a likeness, in habit or
organization, to a single creature of an antecedent or posterior epoch.
“Thus between the _palæotherium_ and the species of our own days,” says
Cuvier, “we should be able to discover some intermediate forms: and yet
no such discovery has ever been made. Since the bowels of the earth have
not preserved monuments of this strange genealogy, we have a right to
conclude, that the ancient and now extinct species were as permanent in
their forms and characters as those which exist at present: or at least,
that the catastrophe which destroyed them did not leave sufficient time
for the production of the changes that are alleged to have taken place.”
Agassiz, in his own department of fishes, is equally opposed in all
his deductions to the transformation of species from one formation to
another, which he asserts, “the imagination invents with as much facility
as the reason refutes.” Professor Owen, after minutely examining the
organic structure of the nine orders of fossil reptiles, declares no less
strongly against the theory, and adds—“The nearest approximation to the
organization of fishes is made by the _Ichthyosaurus_, an extinct genus
which appears to have been introduced into the ancient seas subsequent
to the deposition of the strata inclosing the remains of the thecodont
lizards. But by no known forms of the fossil animals can we diminish
the wide interval which divides the most sauroid of fishes from an
_Ichthyosaurus_.”[12]
The development theory is not more at fault in the rudimentary structure
and primitive size of animals, as brought to light by the deepest
researches of geology, than it is in the perfection and complication
of the several organs with which they were endowed. These organs in
the earlier types ought, upon the principles of this theory, to have
all partaken of the simplicity and sameness of the germinal vesicles;
varying, indeed, in their complexity, as in their completeness, in
proportion as we ascend among the fossiliferous strata. But the facts
are not so. Nay, so far otherwise, that in the very earliest specimens
of Nature’s workmanship we find the mechanism of the parts as minute,
varied, and multiplied, as in those of her most recent productions.
Examine the eye of the Trilobite, the oldest of crustaceans, and the
distinguishing type of the lowest of the fossiliferous rocks. These
creatures swarmed in the Silurian seas. Their destiny was not fulfilled
by the close of the tertiary periods, for they still exist. But in none
of her subsequent creations has Nature displayed greater elaboration in
the parts, or more skillful adaptive contrivance in their arrangement,
than in the visual organ of this palæozoic family. The eye of the
trilobite is formed of four hundred spherical lenses, arranged in
distinct compartments on the surface of the cornea, which again projects
conically upward, so as to enable the animal while resting, or seeking
its food at the bottom of the waters, to take in the largest possible
field of view—this, as it might require, either for the purpose of
defense or attack. Fishes, birds, and mammals, have all, it is well
known, an optical apparatus precisely adjusted to their respective habits
and the element in which they live. Fishes and fowls have their eyes
differently constructed.—The bat, which preys in the dark,—the eagle,
which soars in the blaze of the sun,—and the mole, which burrows in the
earth, have each peculiar and appropriate organisms. But in none is there
greater complication or perfection, than what is manifested in the eye of
these earliest and still living tribes of the waters.
The number of plates or cylinders which compose the eyes of insects, a
higher and more gifted class, differs in different species, amounting
in the ant, so provident and wise, to only fifty, in the house-fly to
eight thousand, and in the mordella to the amazing number of twenty-five
thousand and eighty-eight. And yet how much is all this surpassed by
the astounding mechanism displayed in the eye of the cod-fish, in whose
crystalline lens there have been detected about five million fibers,
every fiber containing about twelve thousand five hundred teeth; and
the total number of these teeth or processes reaching the numerical,
though to us utterly inconceivable, amount of sixty-two billions five
hundred thousand millions! But more than all this. Look at the multiplied
appliances furnished to the humblest and lowest of all living creatures
for performing the functions of an existence scarcely removed above the
vegetable. “The tentacula of polypi,” says Dr. Roget, “are exquisitely
sensible, and are frequently seen, either singly or altogether, bending
their extremities toward the mouth, when any minute floating body comes
in contact with them. When a polypi is expanded, a constant current
of water is observed to take place, directed toward the mouth. These
currents are never produced by the motions of the tentacula themselves;
but are invariably the effects of the rapid vibrations of the cilia
placed on the tentacula. Now, of these organs a single _flustra foliacæa_
has been calculated to possess about 400,000,000.” Thus much for the
Zoophyte class of animals—placed on the extreme verge of organized
bodies—and members of a system of being, according to the development
theory, whose primitive productions are of the simplest kind, the monads
of a germinating vesicle!
Nor will the development theory do better, when it would account for
the diversity of instincts which prevail in the animal kingdom. The
instincts, indeed, it assumes as the cause of all their diversity of
structural organization. But this is to beg the whole question. Geology
carries us back to the beginnings of organic life, when animals, each
after their kind, were already perfected, and endowed with a ready-made
apparatus for the particular sphere of existence assigned them. The
polypi are still a distinct race, unvarying in their instincts, not the
least improved in the building art, still piling up reefs, and doing the
same thing which they did when first created. The nautilus has lived
through all time, swimming his fragile bark as dextrously over the
Silurian seas as he now does amidst the breakers of the Pacific. The
cephalopoda and the finny tribes then warred against each other, and
ever since they meet in mortal conflict. The same with all the great
families which were successively brought upon the stage: species and
genera have changed, the old withdrawn, and new ones introduced; but in
their respective orders—reptiles, insects, birds, and quadrupeds—the
type ever continues, and the instincts remain; and there is no nearer an
approximation to or crossing of each other’s domains now, than when first
summoned into being. Were the development theory true in nature, and the
epochs of geology the myriads of ages assumed, the presumption would
be, that the old primitive forms would have been all obliterated and
figures of creatures substituted, all of the most remote and indistinct
analogies. The _monodal_ races, why have they not all passed away? Had
the reptiles sprung from fishes, why, upon the principle of progression,
should there be fishes still? Had man derived his parentage from the
monkey, why are there so many species of the one class, and only a single
great family of the other? The vegetable tribes have been equally true
to their kind—the fucoids and algæ, still abundant in the seas—the pines
of Mar forest, rivaling in coniferous qualities the most gigantic of the
oldest relics—and the palms and fern trees of Australia maintaining the
very types that flourished in the carboniferous era.
The scheme of creation, moreover, implied in the development theory,
proceeds, as it appears to us, upon an inconsistency of assumption that
is completely at variance with its own leading cardinal principle,
namely, a continuous progression from the less to the more perfect forms
of organic existence. If this be true with the _particulars_, why not
also in the _generals_ of all that is endowed with the mystery of life?
Every great type or class of being, whose remains are detected in
the most ancient rocks of the earth, has still its representatives in
living nature. The two ends of the chain, the infusorial and mammalian
families, are still produced distinct, and each perfect after its kind.
The course of creation is thus always, through indefinite time, returning
upon itself like the fallacy in dialectics of reasoning in a circle,
instead of advancing from the successively higher standards of the
perfected models to still more varied and perfect degrees of excellence.
The circumstances and conditions, too, of the planet are different from
what they were in the palæozoic times, and yet the tribes developed then
are all developed still; different in the species and genera, but of
the same forms and families; not larger, but more frequently less, in
size, and not of better or more complex workmanship. The principle is,
therefore, inconsistent with itself, while it leaves unexplained its own
assumption of progression in _one_ particular direction only, instead,
as it ought to be, in all the primitive types of organic existence.
The theory is imperfect beside, in attempting no explanation of the
inorganic structures of creation; for the original molecules of matter
which assimilated, aggregated, and produced the primary rocks of granite,
gneiss, schist, limestone, should have had their law in this direction as
well as in the other, of progressive perfection. But these rocks, in no
such sense as this, have been repeated or reproduced: matter, essentially
the same, according to the theory of the “Vestiges,” whether organic or
inorganic, has here retrograded rather than progressed; and if we would
contemplate its most elaborate and beautiful forms, either igneous or
sedimentary, we must go, not to the secondary and tertiary formations for
our specimens, but to the crystalline groups of the primary epoch.
Whatever it may have been with Lamarck, it is certain, in the case of
the author of the “Vestiges,” that the speculations originating in
the nebular hypothesis lie at the foundation of all his philosophy.
This Essay would never have been executed, as it could not even have
been imagined, but for the data so abundantly supplied by a universal
star-dust lettering, filling all space and inscribed over all time.
But change the names, and it is only the atoms of Democritus and the
vortices of Descartes that constitute the elements, one and all, of
the modern cosmogony. Cicero in his first and second books “De Natura
Deorum,” has given a full and ample refutation of the former; and his
merit is the greater, when it is considered that the inductive methods
of philosophizing were not in use nor even guessed at in his time. The
argument, as quaintly translated in Ray’s “Wisdom of Creation,” is thus
stated—“If the works of nature are better, more exact and perfect, than
the works of art, and art effects nothing without reason, neither can
the works of nature be thought to be effected without reason; for is it
not absurd and incongruous, that when thou beholdest a statue or curious
picture, thou shouldst acknowledge that art was used to the making of it;
or, when thou seest the course of a ship upon the waters thou shouldst
not doubt but the motion of it is regulated and directed by reason
and art; or, when thou considerest a SUN-DIAL or CLOCK, thou shouldst
understand presently, that the hours are shown by art and not by chance;
and yet imagine or believe, that the world, which comprehends all these
arts and artificers, was made without counsel or reason? If one should
carry into Scythia or Britain such a sphere as our friend Posidonius
lately made, each of whose conversions did the same thing in the sun and
moon and other five planets, which we see effected every night and day in
the heavens, who among those barbarians would doubt that that sphere was
composed by reason and art?”
The inhabitants of this island are no longer the “barbarians.” The
Scythians still are so, and have ever been. Upon the development
hypothesis, might we not pause to ask, has our intellectual, and moral,
and social progress affected our physical condition so as in aught to
change the organic relation of the two nations, barbarous both in the
time of Cicero?
But we proceed:—“A wonder then it must needs be,” continues the
philosopher, “that there should be any man found so stupid and forsaken
of reason, as to persuade himself that this most beautiful and adorned
world was or could be produced by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. He
that can prevail with himself to believe this, I do not see why he may
not as well admit, that if there were made innumerable figures of the
one-and-twenty letters,—in gold suppose or any other metal,—and these
well shaken and mixed together, and thrown down from some high place to
the ground, they, when they lighted upon the earth, would be so disposed
and ranked, that a man might see and read in them Ennius’s Annals;
whereas, it were a great chance if he should find one verse thereof among
them all: for if this concourse of atoms could make a WHOLE WORLD, why
may it not sometimes make, and hath it not somewhere or other in the
earth made, a temple, or a gallery, or a portico, or a house, or a city?
which yet it is so far from doing, and every man so far from believing,
that should any one of us be cast, suppose upon a desolate island, and
find there a magnificent palace, artificially contrived according to the
exactest rules of architecture, and curiously adorned and furnished, it
would never once enter into his head that this was done by an earthquake,
or the fortuitous shuffling together of its component materials, or that
it had stood there ever since the construction of the world, or first
cohesion of atoms; but would presently conclude that there had been some
intelligent architect there, the effect of whose art and skill it was.
Or, should he find there but one single sheet of parchment or paper, an
epistle or oration written full of profound sense, expressed in proper
and significant words, illustrated and adorned with elegant phrase,—it
were beyond the possibility of the wit of man to persuade him that this
was done by the temerarious dashes of an unguided pen, or by the rude
scattering of ink upon the paper, or by the lucky projection of so many
letters at all adventures; but he would be convinced, by the evidence of
the thing at first sight, that there had been not only some man, but some
scholar, there.”
Now, here let there be but the substitution of a few terms—“fortuitous
concourse” for the “nucleated vesicle”—“atoms” that whirl in mazy dance
through indefinite time, for the “stardust” revolving through infinite
space—“transmutation of species” for “the lucky projection of so many
letters”—and the overthrow of the one hypothesis is as ruinously complete
as the demolition of the other.
Thus geology, while it reveals a succession of animal types, pronounces
each after its kind perfect in its own degree and measure of organic
development. The oldest known fossil fish (the Onchus Murchisoni, and
inhumed in the lowest fossiliferous beds), belongs to the highest type
of the Cestraciont division of the vertebrata. What they were made at
first, they all vindicate their capacity of continuing to the end. The
various tribes and orders had their own limits of organization, their
own sphere within which the functions of each were to be performed, and
adapted to the condition in which they were placed, each reaped the full
enjoyment that divine benevolence had appointed. Man was the last in the
course of successive creation, endowed with the highest and most enlarged
capacities, and, allied to none, was constituted the priest of nature,
that he might collect the silent praises of the universe, and offer them
to the Creator in intelligent devotion.
But here it is, when we have reached this link of the chain, that the
most vitiating element in the whole doctrine of progressive development
is manifested. The anti-theism and materialism, involved inevitably and
undisguisedly in the noxious dogma, are brought out in bold relief.
This dogma implies, that the cosmical arrangements and all the organic
transmutations of living types, are none of them directly the result of
any personal, immediate creative actings on the part of Deity. These
arrangements, from the beginning, are all dependent on one unchanging
law, applicable alike to organic and inorganic bodies, to the mysterious
principle of life, and to things inanimate,—to mind as to matter. The
simple effect of this may appear to be, the removal of the Creator merely
a step farther from his own works, which he can still hold in the hollow
of his hand, and bend whither He will. But the statement goes a great
deal farther. It strikes directly at the root of all moral distinctions
as well as of all revealed truth. The creature man, upon this hypothesis,
the last link in the terrestrial chain, comes not from his Maker’s
hands “made in his own likeness.” He too is the product of a natural
law, evolved after a long series of metamorphoses, to whose operation
the moral and the physical are equally subject,—the soul and the body
alike the result of its rigid inflexible agency. Front the fire-mist and
electro-nebulous matter, which is assumed to have originally filled all
space, Man, along with suns and stars, and all planetary bodies, derived
the first germ of his being. At first gaseous, it became in process of
time concrete. There was no life until the electric spark, struck in some
mysterious way from the dance of atoms and wild whirl of the elements,
vivified the germ with this newly-developed principle. Then the germinal
vesicle became a self-moving, self-acting thing—not at first, but after a
series of changes, adapted into the type of the human family, whose life
was but the life for ages of the animals that have perished, and are now
fossilized in their various formations. THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, in short,
as implied in this account of its origin, is the same essentially with
the light and heat that sparkle and glow in the rolling orbs which deck
the firmament!
Much of the development theory is built upon the influence of the
instincts as manifested in the lower tribes. Let its abettors listen to
the indignant cry of THE WHOLE FAMILY OF MAN against this theory of his
origin; and say, if there is not an instinct here, peculiar and distinct,
to vindicate his claim to a separate and distinct position in the great
system of being. “Quanta ad eam rem vis,” says Cicero, “ut in suo quoque
genere permaneat.”
The continental philosophy, at no time for the last century, has partaken
of a religious, healthy tone. It has been profoundly subtile in its
speculations and analysis, but never truly spiritual. The author of the
“Vestiges,” from his own turn of mind, has been all the more enamored of
it, and, unwittingly dragged into its vortex, has been carried far beyond
the ken of all rightful philosophies. These are not the subjects of
legitimate investigation. Man has no plummet-line, in all his armory of
science, wherewith to sound them. Grant that in the manner now described,
the human race originated, and became living creatures—destined, it may
be, to undergo new changes and to ascend into new orders of being—the
animal nature to be perfected in the progressive modifications of his
type. But the divine ethereal spark, as men vulgarly dream of themselves,
what account is given of this? The soul, what? and whence derived? The
thinking principle of mind,—where its place, and what provision made
for its efflux, in the nebulous ether? The inference unquestionably
is, that if such be its source, the human UNDERSTANDING must be of the
essence of matter out of which it evolved,—glorious as the sun and fair
as the moon,—but not the heavenly element, animate with the immaterial,
incorruptible being of Divinity. But this is not the teaching of geology.
Through all the story of its undefinable epochs, and in the myriad
sarcophagi of its extinct generations, there is no record, no trace of
man. He stands, utterly and far apart, from every fossilized thing, while—
“The most distant star’s invisible beam,
Or comet on his farthest journeyings,
Or all the extent which philosophic ken
Has given to infinite space, the elastic soul
Springs over”——
and claims kindred with the image of the heavenly, whence it came, and
whither it seeks and aspires to return.
While, therefore, to wild speculations like these nature and geology
give no countenance, but demonstrate the reverse to have been the course
of creation in all the present, and in every past epoch,—that races,
like individuals, have their terms of existence,—that all die out or are
violently exterminated,—and that new families are created, adapted to
the changes which have taken place, and organically distinct from all
that preceded them,—there is, at the same time, a theory of progression
and development distinctly traceable in all the divine actings in this
world. This view of things is in every stage of it visibly dependent upon
His will, as it emanates directly from His appointment, and stands in
pleasing contrast to the rationalist phasis of creation.
“Wisdom’s artful aim
Disposing every part, and gaining still
By means proportioned, her benignant end.”
CHAPTER III.
ANALOGICAL ORDER—PHYSICAL AND MORAL—OF PROGRESSION.
The author of the “Vestiges” devotes two chapters to what he terms
general and particular considerations respecting the origin of the
animated tribes. He regards it as a thing completely demonstrated,
or as requiring so little proof as to be taken for granted, that the
inorganic elements all took together by a process of natural law,
which Deity was not required to superintend, but simply to begin. He
supposes, hypothetically, that this also would be the case with the
organic structures, that, in the originating of the first tribes, God
supplied the materials, and that natural law assimilated and fashioned
them into their different orders and families. This might be predicated
of the Creator, he fancies, as the mode in which he _would_ act; and
by removing him a step away from his own works, and allowing all the
subsequent genera and species of the epochs of geology to go out and to
come in according to the same process, his special interference in such
arrangements is rendered unnecessary; and the greater honor is reflected
upon operations in themselves so complicated and vast, and yet all so
minutely, orderly, and prospectively ordained.
We need not employ more than a sentence in reply to this mode of
reasoning. Hypothetically I would say, if God was to create a world at
all, and to store it with living creatures, he would do all these things
_directly_ of Himself. He created every individual particle of the
original matter, in all their infinitesimally minute and myriad atoms. We
do not know how, nor the manner thereof. But every one of them required
his _special_ interference singly, as in combination and a whole; and had
not Deity so specially acted with the parts as with the mass in willing
them into being, none of them, of any kind or quality, would have been
in existence.—Why not the same _manner_ of creating as to the species,
genera, and orders of the animated tribes? These required not less His
direct personal interference than the elementary particles and minims
out of which they were formed; and superintendence in the one case is
as dignified, if the term may be so applied, as in the other. Admit the
omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Deity—and the author admits
them all—and any other mode of reasoning is wholly nugatory—as useless in
science as it is inadmissible in fact—as inconsistent with the subtilties
of the profoundest analysis as with the conclusions of the most confiding
theology.
But the creation of the world by God being admitted, it is no less true,
and it is equally a necessary truth, that the arrangement and disposition
of its parts, the order and succession of its events, are each
immediately an effect of the great First Cause. As no material substance
could originate itself, so neither could it impart the principle of life,
or construct the organization through which that principle is manifested
and maintained in the exercise of its functions. Equally impossible is
it for the course of events, the motion of the elements, the growth of
plants and animals, and all those subtile processes in nature by which
objects are produced and distinguished, each after their kind, to be the
results of chance, or of any inherent, underived properties existing
in the things themselves. Whether God acts _mediately_ by a course of
nature originally established, or _immediately_ and _constantly_, by the
same divine agency which produced all things at first, and impressed
upon each its peculiar properties, may be a question in philosophy,
but none in theology. We indeed may speculate respecting the manner of
the Divine acting, and may speak of that manner as the laws according
to which the system of nature proceeds; but we cannot doubt the source
whence the chain of events takes its rise, or wherefore it is that
there are order and regularity in the arrangements of the universe. And
while everything is of God, and the course of nature precisely such
as He intends upon whom the whole is dependent, it is interesting to
find the closest analogy subsisting between the actings of the Divine
Being in every department of his supreme and universal government.
The scheme of revelation manifests itself to be of God, not only by
the peculiar testimony of prophesy and miracle to which it appeals,
but by the resemblance which it bears, in the order and character of
its dispensations, to the established constitution of creation and
providence;—so intimate and striking as, in fact, to leave no doubt, in
every impartial mind, that the author of the one must be the author of
both.
We have already stated that a progression is manifested in the order
and arrangement of the rocky masses which compose the earth’s crust—in
the nature and qualities of its mineral contents—and in the various
revolutions which are indicated by the fossil organic remains that lie
entombed in the strata of the interior. Take the most useful of all
the sections of the earth’s crust, namely, what is denominated the
carboniferous or coal formation, here we have a regular sequence or
series of beds resting one upon another, and all so disposed, from the
lowest to the highest, as to be most suitably adapted for reaching and
bringing to the surface the inclosed treasure. Nor did nature all at once
bring to maturity those prodigious masses of plants and vegetables of
which this wonderful deposit is composed. Her flora seems to have been
upon a limited scale at first, until the earth, being prepared for its
accumulation and preservation, throws from its teeming bosom, with a
profusion unknown before or since, the vegetable matter out of which our
coal is formed. Consider, again, the dip and dislocation of the strata
connected with it, and you have a proof of a new order of causes being
brought, subsequently, into operation, before coal could be available for
man’s use. Examine, next, the vast accumulations which repose upon the
coal—the curious relics which are imbedded in them—the evidences thereby
afforded of relative changes in the sea and land—of the elevation of
mountains, the denudation and formation of valleys—and you cannot fail to
infer, from all this, that the surface of the earth was not always as it
now is; that there was a period when man could not have existed on it;
and that for him who was the last in the order of all God’s creations, it
was gradually and progressively prepared as a suitable habitation.
When, again, we advert to the _course_ of creation, there is a gradual
progression from the little to the great, from the insignificant, if
we may apply such a term comparatively to any of the works of God, to
the noble and the grand. Each of the links that compose the mighty chain
is perfect in its kind; each serves to connect and illustrate the link
that borders next to it; each is adapted to its place in the system, so
that the lowest could not be exalted, nor could the highest be brought
down, to answer the purposes of any inferior member of the series. A
pebble has more attraction to the eye than any of the colorless particles
which compose the soil; but from the pebble the fruits of the earth
can derive no nourishment. The lichen or the moss which adheres to the
solid rock may be inferior in beauty and attraction to the lily of the
valley, or the lofty cedars of Lebanon; but the latter will not grow in
the barren regions of the north, and without the former, hundreds of
insect and animal tribes would perish. Man constitutes the principal link
in the chain of visible creation; he is higher than the highest of the
animal race; and do not the superior endowments and blessings of man,
however eminent in themselves, appear still more eminent and valuable
by contrasting them with the inferior powers, the ruder enjoyments, the
meaner and more sordid passions, of the lower creatures? which yet amply
display the wisdom and goodness of their Author, both in their frame and
state, in the relation which they have, and the connection which they
hold with the orders above and below them. Looking upward, again, what
is man but a lower link of that chain of beings which, like its Author,
reacheth through immensity? Thousands, nay, millions of spiritual orders
may possibly fill up the chasm, if that be possible, between the human
and Divine nature, and who, by the very contrast with man’s estate, may
have a juster knowledge and a more grateful relish of their own refined
and spiritual natures. Take away, indeed, “the human face divine,” and
there would be one note of praise less in the great temple of Jehovah;
but, while angels could not fulfill the purposes of man in the order of
creation, the perfections of the Godhead are infinitely more exalted
by their activity in a purer sphere—their keener visions and juster
apprehensions—their unclouded faculties—and their sublime and lofty
contemplations, all corresponding with the clearer manifestations of
divine truth, light, and glory, vouchsafed to them.
Descend, in short, as low, or rise as high as we may, in the scale of
being, we will still find something inferior, something superior; and
not more remote from each other in the extreme points are the minims of
nature intimated to us by the microscope, and the magnificent systems
above which the telescope has disclosed to view, than are the wonderful
differences and infinite range subsisting among living organized
substances, from the vegetable to the animal, from the irrational to the
intellectual, and from the intellectual to the spiritual and divine. But
one class cannot complain of the superior advantages of the class above
it. The constitutions of all are precisely adapted to their respective
places in the scheme of things, and the desires of all, according to
their various capacities, are suitably gratified. Each is happy in its
sphere, and still subservient to the higher happiness of others. The
garden is the insect’s paradise, man is lord of the brute creation,
angels are principalities and powers when compared to the knowledge and
the happiness of man. “Consider,” says the author of “Paradise Lost,”
“that great
Or bright infers not excellence: the earth
Though, in comparison of heaven, so small,
Nor glistering, may of solid good contain
More plenty than the sun that barren shines:
Whose virtue on itself works no effect,
But on the fruitful earth.”
When we turn to the _dispensations of providence_, we find the same
principle prevailing in the communication of all its gifts—of them
all, whether evolved in the natural or moral course of events. The
many blessings which the mere diffusion of the solar rays imparts are
not obtained all at once; the early dawn, the meridian splendor, the
softening shades of twilight, are each accompanied with distinct and
peculiar enjoyments to man and beast. Observe the course of the seasons:
after winter come the gentle zephyrs of spring, the glowing heat of
summer, to be again succeeded by the rich though milder beams of autumn.
The seed which is deposited in the ground scarcely at first exhibits
signs of life; but from that seed the green stalk gradually ascends,
the ear is formed, the corn is produced in the ear, and man gathers from
it his daily bread. Behold the new-born infant—the most helpless and
imbecile of all nature’s productions—what labor, watchfulness, and care,
before he comes to the maturity of manhood! how slowly do the powers
of intellect expand! what diligence requisite for the moral culture of
the heart! how gradual and progressive the whole steps by which he has
been trained for the business and enterprises of life! Look now into
the crowded city, where thousands and tens of thousands of rational
beings have passed, and are all passing, through a similar process of
discipline; consider how many generations have passed away before it
attained to its present greatness; its wealth, its buildings, its schools
of instruction, its temples of solemn worship; its philosophers, poets,
orators, and statesmen; its laws, manners, sciences, and fine arts, are
the accumulation, the work, and the growth of centuries. It is the same
with nations as with individuals, and with all nations and countries as
with one; the blessings of civilization are gradually diffused, sometimes
retarded, and often buried for ages beneath the inroads of barbarism; but
again emerging in greater abundance, taking a firmer step, and advancing
onward and wider than before. And at last, from the favored position on
which we have been placed, we see before us the certain prospect, in the
increased facilities and means of communication which are now opened
up, that they will be still more universally imparted, until truth,
righteousness, and peace, cover the face of the whole earth.
Consider now, under the same progressive aspect, the _scheme of
revelation_. Here we find the same analogy prevailing from the less to
the greater, from the smallest tokens of the Divine favor, to the full
and boundless manifestations of inexhaustible love and mercy.
From the fall to the restoration of man, the expressions of God’s
interest in our condition are limited and obscure; but the plan is
defined and the means arranged in the only way that was proper to
display his goodness and make us sensible of his mercies. The blessings
conferred upon the people of God, before the law and under the law,
were chiefly temporal. Hence the rites and ceremonies of their worship
were purposely of such a nature, and so multiplied, as principally to
operate through the medium of the senses. Hence the various symbols of
the Divine presence, when God personally, as it were, descended among
them, and over-awed them by his visible glory. Hence the giving of the
law amidst thunders, and lightnings, and shakings of the mountains, when
external nature under its most appalling aspects bore testimony to the
severe justice of the Divine character, and seemed to intimate, in a way
which even the most hardened sinners would understand, how dreadful must
be the judgments of their incensed and supreme Lawgiver. The Israelites
were not sufficiently removed from their natural state to be as yet
capable of a religion purely spiritual, like the Christian; and hence it
was, that every later dispensation of God excelled the former, even as
the trumpet on Mount Sinai “waxed louder and louder,” every succeeding
blast transcending those that went before. The prophets rose above the
ritual law, and showed men a more excellent way of worshiping God than by
external performances, thereby preparing their minds for the reception of
the Gospel. The tabernacle was no longer used after Solomon’s temple was
built, but was laid aside, as the temple itself was “when the fullness
of the time was come;” and as the sanctuary and tabernacle preceded the
temple, so the glory of the latter was to be greater than that of the
former, by the appearance of Him who was greater than the temple, whose
mission was distinguished by more numerous miracles, and by sublimer
and more important truths than had been before manifested to the world.
Behold a higher dispensation still, when, after the state of grace ends,
the state of glory shall commence; where all knowledge shall be imparted
and all truth unvailed, where imperfection and sin shall no more adhere
to us, and where, after the experience of millions of ages spent in the
enjoyment of heavenly happiness, we shall be still advancing in glory and
felicity, and attaining to higher measures of the increasing strength and
ever-growing splendor of the sons of God.
These analogies may be extended. The wisdom and goodness of a God,
for example, equally appear in the late and partial promulgation of
Christianity, which is sometimes considered an objection against its
truth, but which, in fact, is in perfect accordance with the same
principle of progression which we have been illustrating in the general
economy and arrangements of all God’s proceedings.
The gifts of nature are not imparted universally, nor in the same
measure to all. The discoveries of science are the result of long
and patient investigation. Herbs have been allowed to run waste for
centuries upon centuries, of which the medicinal virtues have only
recently been discovered. Through how many ages had mankind been left
in ignorance of the properties of the magnet, and the simple apparatus
of the compass-box, braving all the perils, and tossed about on the
unknown wastes of the ocean? How much did the progress of knowledge and
education suffer, during the lapse of so many generations, for want of
the printing-press? What oppressions and cruelties have been practiced
upon the different nations of the earth, through means of bad laws and
bad government, of which even yet many are learning but the elements? And
how is it that of one and all these things—the truths of science, the art
of healing, the principles of navigation, the discipline of wholesome
instruction, the enactment of good laws, and the various blessings of
civilized life—more than two-thirds of the human race are in these latter
ages still entirely destitute? God governs both in the kingdom of nature
and in the kingdom of grace, and any objection, therefore, against the
truth of revelation that may be built upon these grounds, goes equally
to dethrone the Almighty from any share of interest in the government of
the universe. But the Gospel, in fact, would have been premature before
the actual time of its appearance; the history of providence in former
ages could not have been appealed to, the sacrifice of the Redeemer
had not been understood without the legal sacrifices preceding, the
prophesies would have been unfulfilled, and the world would have been
unprepared for a worship so pure and spiritual, a morality so searching
and uncompromising, and a faith so lofty and exalted, had there not been
much previous training and discipline, through the instrumentality of
patriarchs, prophets, and legislators. One of the most striking proofs,
in short, of the Divine wisdom in the dispensation of grace, is its
harmonizing so exactly with the established course of nature. This is
manifested more especially in the manner in which the heavenly blessings
with which it is fraught have been communicated—slowly, gradually,
and partially at first, more fully and generally diffused as men were
prepared to receive them, and, when “the fullness of the time” had
arrived, imparted freely and in the richest abundance unto all; light
after light, truth after truth, and mercy upon mercy, all in such order
of succession, that the former illustrate and recommend the latter, while
the last are only a preparation for future and still greater mercies.
And so it has been with the whole Course of Creation—the succession of
strata, of animal and vegetable tribes, and with man and the adaptive
provision for his higher destiny. This is a doctrine of development and
of progression, widely different from that of the “Vestiges,” more in
unison with the Creator’s wisdom and the Creator’s care:—a speculation
worthy of a separate treatise, namely, the progress and development of
man’s intelligent, moral, and spiritual being as indicated in THE COURSE
OF REVELATION.
CHAPTER IV.
CAUSES OF EXTINCTION OF ORGANIC LIFE.
When the palæontologist has completely established his position, that
all the organic phenomena of primeval times have resulted from the
impress of original structure, in opposition to the theory of progressive
development and transmutation of species; and when he can trace, also,
corresponding changes in the mineral formations in which the fossil
remains are imbedded, the important inquiry has still to be made into the
causes of the extinction of so many races of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms. Introduced successively upon the surface of the earth, was
there always a physical and necessary relation betwixt the living tribes
and the varying conditions of the surrounding media in which their lot
was cast? And do the differences in the one explain the changes in the
organic functions of the other?
When we look back to the earliest of the fossiliferous rocks we can
discover something in the nature of their materials themselves which
would cause the destruction of their organic tribes. The Silurian strata
have been violently disturbed, and much molten matter, during the period
of their deposition, injected among them; and by causes such as these,
life would suffer greatly, and whole races be suddenly destroyed. Even
the strong incased ganoids and placoids of the Devonian period could not
always be able to subsist and bear up against the spasmodic throes that
produced the conglomerates. Animals preyed likewise upon each other, and
by this means kept up then, as now, the general average and balance of
life. But in none of these modes can anything like a LAW be inferred,
any stated provision be detected, for the outgoing and the incoming of
the different genera and species which successively peopled the globe.
The rocks differ, as the organisms differ, age to age, from each other:
but the series of changes traced in the one class of phenomena, furnish
only a few data by which to determine as to the alterations that would be
produced in the class cotemporaneous.
No land animals have been found in any of the formations beneath the
new red sandstone. No quadrupeds existed before the tertiary age. And
the monster lizards which so exuberantly sprang into existence during
the middle secondary epoch, had all disappeared when these terrestrials
occupied the stage. Wisdom we can trace in all the arrangements; care
and goodness are everywhere apparent. The seas swarmed with marine
animals, while the terrestrials could scarcely have subsisted on an
upheaving earth and new forming land. Quadrupeds roamed not over fields
so diversified by the lakes and slimy lagoons in which the Saurians found
their convenient habitation. And beyond the simple fact, that Divine will
so ordained that such things should be, both in the animal and mineral
changes in the history of our planet, we have only a ray of light to
guide us in interpreting the revolutions and destructions which are
therein so indelibly recorded.
The mollusca and shell families appear and depart along with the
calcareous deposits which inclose their remains; but we know as much
of the source of the one as of the range and limit of, or the causes
which destroyed, the other. Orthoceræ and nautili have survived all
changes, and have maintained in the types by which they are represented
their old instincts and predaceous propensities. The holoptychii and
dipteri perished, just as the materials of the new red sandstone were
being deposited, and whose identity, in all essential mineral qualities,
differs in nothing from the old red in which they are entombed. The flora
of the carboniferous age came and went with the suddenness and entireness
of an eastern dynasty, the gorgeous spoils of which are all that remain
to attest its former greatness. The mammoths, dinotheriums, and kindred
pachyderms of the tertiary groups had all left the earth on the dawn of
the human epoch. And now, since the commencement of that epoch, we find
that entire families have become extirpated, that species of others have
been driven from their former localities, and that generally, both of
vegetables and animals, the geographical distribution is being, year by
year, greatly modified. During the last century, the introduction into
Germany of some new species of insects, and their multiplication, utterly
destroyed forests of vast extent; and every year, in some quarter of the
globe, we hear of equally mighty catastrophes produced by equally minute
insidious causes.
The organic things of earth, it would thus appear, have their terms of
existence of longer and shorter duration, and the race at last dies out
equally with the individuals which compose it. No better reason for this
can be assigned, than that such is, and has always been, the course of
nature. Particular families of plants and animals are cotemporaneous
with particular groups of rocks: with these they are observed for the
first time; at the close of the deposit, all farther traces of their
remains are lost; and, in so far, there is ground for arguing that the
same general causes were concerned in effecting the successive changes,
organic as well as inorganic, of the periods and formations in question.
What these causes were, it may never be permitted to science fully to
determine. It was indeed, the opinion of Cuvier, that in the mammoth
epoch a change of climate effected the destruction of this giant family
of pachyderms. This change of climate has been accounted for by Murchison
and others, especially in Siberia, where so many remains are found, by an
elevation of the country to the height of one or two hundred-feet above
its former level. And doubtless, by such a change, animal as well as
vegetable life must, in many specific forms, have been greatly affected.
There can be little doubt, however, of the most perfect adaptive
arrangements prevailing through all the geological epochs, some of which
have been plausibly conjectured. As reptiles, for instance, differ from
birds and mammals, in having a lower and simpler structure of the lungs
and heart, and therefore a less active performance of the respiratory
functions, they become less dependent on the atmosphere or oxygen for
existence. “Hence,” says Professor Owen, “from their extraordinary
prevalence in the secondary periods, under varied modifications of size
and structure, severally adapting them to the performance of those
tasks in the economy of organic nature which are now assigned to the
warm-blooded and quick-breathing classes, the physiologist is led to
conjecture that the atmosphere had not undergone those changes, which
the consolidation and concentration of certain of its elements in
subsequent additions to the earth’s crust may have occasioned during the
long lapse of ages during which the extinction of so large a proportion
of the reptilian class took place. And if the chemist, by wide and
extended views of his science in relation to geology, and mineralogy,
should demonstrate, as the botanist from considerations of the peculiar
features of the extinct flora has been led to suspect, that the
atmosphere of this globe formerly contained more carbon and less oxygen
than at present, then the anatomist might, _à priori_, have concluded
that the highest classes of animals suited to the respiration of such a
medium must have been the cold-blooded fishes and reptiles. And beside,
the probability of such a condition of the zoological series being
connected with the chemical modifications of the air, the terrestrial
reptiles, from the inferior energy of their muscular contractions, and
still more from the greater irritability of the fibers and power of
continuing their actions, would constitute the highest organized species,
best adapted to exist under greater atmospheric pressure than operates on
the surface of the earth at the present time.”
By parity of reasoning it may be inferred, that as great changes would
be effected in the waters of the globe as in the constituents of the
atmosphere; and, while thus preparing for the introduction of new
families of animals, the destruction of already existing tribes may
be as conclusively imagined. The various calcareous deposits in the
mountain limestone, magnesian, oolite, and chalk periods, would imply
very different qualities in the condition of the ocean; an infusion or
abstraction of ingredients as favorable to the existence of one kind of
animal life as they would be destructive of another. A period of great
plutonic action, too, when vast masses of melted matter, charged with
metallic and other substances, were poured over the bed of the sea, could
not fail to have considerable influence upon many of the inhabitants of
the deep; and while providence was making arrangements for an increase,
or diversity, or for higher types of animal life, the existence of other
forms and classes was ordained to terminate.
The introduction of new and higher races upon the earth has thus been
accounted for. “Through such a medium as the air,” says the authority
quoted above, “approaching in a corresponding degree to the physical
properties of water, a cold-blooded animal might even rise above the
surface, and wing its heavy flight, since this would demand less
energetic muscular actions than are now requisite for such a kind of
locomotion: and thus we may conceive why the atmosphere of our planet,
during the earlier oolite periods, may have been traversed by creatures
of no higher organization than saurians. If we may presume to conjecture
that atmospheric pressure has been diminished, by a change in the
composition, as well as by a diminution of the general mass of the air,
the beautiful adaptation of the structure of birds to a medium thus
rendered both lighter and more invigorating, by the abstraction of carbon
and an increase of oxygen, must be appreciable by every physiologist. And
it is not without interest to observe, that the period when such change
would be thus indicated by the first appearance of birds in the Wealden
strata, is likewise characterized by the prevalence of those dinosaurian
reptiles, which in structure most nearly approach mammalia, and which in
all probability, from their correspondence with crocodiles in the anatomy
of the thorax, enjoyed a circulation as complete as that of the crocodile
when breathing freely on dry land.”
Again, it is conjectured—“The first indications of the warm-blooded
classes would appear, if introduced into the reptilian era, under the
form of such small insectivorous mammals as are known at the present day
to have a lower amount of respiration than the rest of the class; and the
earliest discovered remains of mammalia,—as, for example, those in the
Stonesfield oolite,—are actually the jaws of such species, with which are
combined the characters of that order, Marsupialia, which is most nearly
related to the oviparous vertebrata.”
It has been seen that igneous and aqueous agents have remodeled, from
time to time, the physical geography of the globe. Can it admit of a
doubt that changes in the physical structure of the earth’s surface
will be accompanied with other changes in the organic productions of
extensive areas? Species, it is well known, both of plants and animals,
are limited to particular localities of variable, and often of no great,
extent. If marine, an alteration in the sea bottom will prove fatal to
many. If terrestrial, an increase of altitude, the conversion of dry land
into marshes and lakes, or of lakes and marshes into meadow and arid
loamy soil, will completely alter the flora and fauna of the district
in question. Look into any estuary or rocky pool along the shore of the
ocean, swarming with testacea, and crustacea; every bowlder incrusted
with corallines; the rocks carpeted all over with fuci, waving with
every ripple their long graceful branches, or smoothing and polishing
their sides in the violent currents; creeping things, too, innumerable
shy stealthy creatures, darting amid the shingle, or burrowing in the
sands; and the finny tribes, of all forms, glancing and sparkling like
living gems in the dark green thickets. This is one description only of
tens of thousands of such phenomena around the islands of Great Britain.
An elevation of a few feet, and what myriads of animals, whose only
habitat are these ocean caves, would perish, and their races be forever
blotted from the things that were! These shores have witnessed many such
upheavals. Not a plain, hill, or rock, in the whole continent of Europe,
but once formed the bed of the sea. Even now, what a vast influence does
mineralogical structure alone exercise over the economy of life, both as
to the number of individuals and the character of species frequenting
particular localities. Trees as well as plants have an adaptation to
certain kinds of soil, and once firmly rooted, birds, insects, and
creeping things, will also resort thither in quest of shelter or of food.
Aquatic fowl, the waders and swimmers of our sea-shores, have their
favorite haunt among the breakers or calm bays, whose submarine rocks
furnish pasturage and shelter to molluscs, crustaceans, and fishes;
while, again, over the marshy, the oozy, the sandy, the gravelly, or the
rocky beach, other families, both terrestrial and marine, maintain their
respective ascendency.
M. Agassiz is just now pursuing his favorite researches in exploring
the lakes and rivers of America, where he has already detected many
things new and old to enlighten the western _savans_ in the boundless
riches of their mighty dominions. He has succeeded in capturing, on Lake
Superior, species of fishes hitherto unnamed. He has likewise been
able to dredge up from the same deep waters, specimens of the garpike
(_Lepidosteus_), whose representatives have been found in the oldest
palæozoic deposits, and in the deposits of all succeeding times. Suppose
these lakes to be suddenly drained of their waters—and which, according
to the chronometrical details of Niagara, must one day come to pass—and
many species of animals and plants would cease to exist, not merely by
the violence of the action, but by the simple alteration of the aqueous
character of the districts. Many animals, indeed, will be able to escape,
and to betake themselves to other localities amidst slow or even rapid
superficial changes. The camels and antelopes of the desert may sink
under the sirocco and be buried in the sand; but, in other circumstances,
they will be able to bear up and carry themselves to fertile lands, as
the steady, irresistible march of the sand-flood invades their former
pastures. The Sahara of Africa has been gradually extending and widening
in its desolating sterility, until it now covers a region of about
582,000 square miles; how many, in consequence, of the vegetable and
animal races, have thus been deprived of their appropriate nutriment,
and become extinct? How many examples of similar devastations, but upon
a far greater scale, does almost every one of the geological epochs
furnish? The central region of France abounded with lakes, attracting to
their arborescent banks the huge pachyderms of the tertiary age, when the
Auvergne cones blazed out, pouring floods of lava over lake, marsh, and
plain; and thus obliterating and silting up entire races, the great and
the small, terrestrial and lacustrine, and now constituting the pictorial
wonders of the age that produced, and the convulsions that destroyed them.
There is reason to believe that species in the ancient world were
possessed of a wider geographical range than in after periods. But the
causes of extirpation were also of wider operation. The old formations
are all greater than the new, receding in extent as they descend in
time. And if we are to regard alterations of climate, changes in the
constituents of the atmosphere, subsidence of land and elevation of
sea-bottom, intrusion of igneous rocks, the escape and circulation of
noxious gaseous matter, as among the _causes_ which have led to the
extinction of the successive organic tribes in the several geological
epochs, so do we find the _effects_ approximating to a scale of
corresponding magnitude. But the real terms and boundaries of all are in
the hands of Him who made them. We see but a part, and know only in part,
of the secondary means of destruction.
CHAPTER V.
TIME, AND THE GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS.
The speculations of geology respecting the arrangement and position
of the mineral masses of the earth are matters of direct observation,
falling immediately under the cognizance of the senses, and whose
verifications are both numerous and conclusive. But a question thereupon
arises which is not so easily dealt with, namely, as to the periods of
time that have elapsed during the various successive epochs or formations
described. Looking at the current operations of the laws of nature, and
supposing their uniformity in past ages, a scale of increment is laid
down for the several deposits of which the earth’s crust is composed. An
approximation is made as to the number of years required for each, and
the result is, that the geological estimate embraces an inconceivably
lengthened and bewildering series. The calculation proceeds not by
hundreds, or thousands, but by millions of the terms of our numerical
notation: and, as the fossiliferous strata alone are reckoned at about
seven or eight miles in thickness, the time that has elapsed since the
first appearance of life upon the planet, has also been made a matter of
measurement. Accuracy as to any precise definite amount, is not, indeed,
pretended; but no estimate, it is said, made upon purely geological data,
falls short of vast enormous periods, which will only bear to be compared
with the cycles of astronomical phenomena, and not with the brief
fleeting days of man’s existence.
What account, then, is to be made of this reckoning according to the
popular opinions respecting the origin of the world? Will it be accepted
by the Christian, who confides in the Mosaic chronology of the work of
creation? What is that chronology? Can the geological and the sacred be
compared or reconciled with one another?
I. There is one important deduction to be established from these
investigations which meets us at the threshold of the inquiry, namely,
that geology clearly and distinctly shows there is a BEGINNING to the
course of creation as respects the crust of the earth and its organic
forms of life. The stratified rocks all manifest succession in their
order of deposition, and, therefore, also succession in time. Some are
prior to and older in formation than others; and all of every class
and quality, demonstrate principles of arrangement in conformity with
law and design. We never, for example, get back to a period, however
deep we go into the interior, in which we find the matter of the earth
assuming, as it were, different modes of existence, or arranging itself
according to affinities of which we have no experience. Over every
material substance, the rocks of the oldest as of the newest formation,
the same physical forces are seen to be operative. The granites, with all
the molten amorphous masses of every age, are composed of ingredients
brought together and aggregated in proportional quantities, and according
to definite principles of attraction. But throughout the whole series
and succession of deposits, we never come to a point at which matter has
been formless, or free from the operation of law, endlessly quiescent, or
when no controlling designing hand was rendering it plastic and obedient
to its will.—As with the arrangements of matter, therefore, so likewise
with its origin. We revert in both cases to a necessarily prior cause.
And geology, vast and inconceivably great as may be its cycles, proclaims
over all its past antecedents and depths of accumulation, that TIME, not
eternity, is indelibly recorded.
This truth is rendered still more apparent and intelligible, when we
consider the various families of plants and animals of which the earth
has been the theater. These organic structures at once speak to the
mind of creative interference. No principle that we know of inherent in
nature could, of itself, originate these forms. The first thing of life
indicates an intelligent Creator. But epoch after epoch passes away,
and along with them their living tribes generally perish. Succeeding
races, of different characters and habits, are called into existence.
The earth is again peopled—again to be swept of all its garniture—the
land and ocean to change places—creatures of another mold, suited to
both, again to be brought into existence. These phenomena all speak, not
only of a beginning, of successive periods of time, but also of direct
superintendence over the course of events from age to age.
It is the same with the formations themselves in which the organic
things are imbedded. The course of creation progresses, but always under
such breaks and renewals as clearly to manifest, that the same power
which watches over the organic, is operative also in respect of the
inorganic structures of the earth. Various are the genera and species of
once animate forms, imbedded in the different strata beneath our feet;
but equally various are the strata themselves; as a new race arises,
so are there new forms of rocks produced along with them. And when we
compare the two extremes of the fossiliferous strata, the silurian and
the tertiary, or any of the intermediate—the old red sandstone and the
oolites, the carboniferous and the chalk—we find that the rocks are just
as various in quality, structure, and appearance, as are the animals
which existed and perished during their respective epochs. The lines of
demarkation are distinct. They may sometimes run into each other, so as
to leave it doubtful where the one series ends and the other begins; but
so it is with the organic remains themselves, a few of an antecedent
epoch living into and invading the province of another, when the limit
is reached, and the family altogether disappears. The same law holds in
the great mineral masses of the earth’s crust. Rocks are of different
families, even as plants and animals are; and over the entire surface
of the globe, they display in their various suites such changes and
diversities as demonstrate an interfering hand and a new creative energy.
Indeed, there is, it may be avowed, a much greater diversity of type in
the mineral groups themselves than in their organisms, the living genera
and species of one formation differing, often, less from each other than
do the rocky matrices in which their remains are imbedded.
II. But, in estimating _the time_ that elapsed during the formation of
the various sedimentary strata, are geologists warranted in assuming such
principles of calculation as have been adopted?—There are two aspects
under which the subject may be approached—the one, as respects the
formative process of rocks—the other, the probable duration of life in
the different epochs, or rather, as connected with the formations which
indicate the epochs.
1. OF THE FORMATIVE PROCESS. How long the earth existed before being
brought into a habitable condition for either vegetable or animal bodies,
geology has no means of determining. The primary crystalline beds are
the oldest rocks of which we have any knowledge: we can penetrate at
least to no antecedent matter, bearing the record of its own age, out
of which these rocks were produced. We are warranted, therefore, in
accounting for their origin, to remount at once to the initial creative
act which called them into being, and the presumption is, that no
great length of time was occupied in this arrangement. The Divine will
commanded, every particle obeyed, and all took their places. The eruptive
rocks are of comparatively sudden growth: they are not the result of a
gradual deposition, but of igneous fusion in the interior of the earth,
and elevated to the surface through the operation of forces of rapid
activity. How long our planet was in thus assuming form, and the dry land
appearing, we have no certain means of judging, except by looking to
the end of its creation, and assuming that the “void” was not permitted
indefinitely to continue. The occupancy of life at once exalts the work
and illustrates its purpose.
The fossiliferous strata were formed in different circumstances and under
different conditions, when the course of nature, if we may so speak,
was fully established, and the train of events under the operation of
physical law commenced its onward march. The oldest of the fossiliferous
deposits is the Silurian. It likewise constitutes one of the greatest
depth, as well as of extent, on the surface of the globe. The position,
generally, of the silurian beds, is along the line of the great
mountain-chains, except in Russia, where they spread over the interior,
and thin out into smaller dimensions, and where, from the absence of
the intrusive rocks, they are only semi-indurated. This system of rocks
was, therefore, formed in circumstances the most favorable for rapid
accumulation, amidst such primal operations of nature as have never
been repeated upon the same scale of magnitude. The first shaping-out,
if we may so speak, of the earth’s surface, in the elevation of its
mountain-ranges and corresponding depressions of the sea-bottom, bears
all the marks of a single cotemporaneous act, not completed in a moment
of time indeed, but continued through a period of unparalleled spasmodic
agency. Every region shared in the convulsive movements, and the whole
earth, in one and the same age, was begirt with mountains. These violent
throes were accompanied everywhere with violent action upon the already
consolidated masses. Disintegration would keep pace upon them with the
rate of uprise. And as the bare jagged rocks unprotected with herbage,
friable and just rending from the fire, were lifted suddenly above the
waters, the waters in turn would dash violently upon their sides and
broken serrated crests, and so become as rapidly filled again with all
the waste and spoils of the period. The changes now going on, and the
rate of increment of the land above sea-level, the occasional appearance
and disappearance of an island, the slow but constant action of the waves
upon the coast, and the detrital matter borne down by the rivers, can be
no measure of the effects of forces and agencies such as were then in
operation. The Mississippi, within a quarter of a century, it has been
ascertained, brings down little more than a half of its former spoils.
The organic remains, accordingly, which have survived the silurian
period, belong chiefly to the molluscous classes, and thin filmy fucoid
vegetables; the structures, in short, which were best calculated to live
during the period in question, and to remain undestroyed throughout its
agitations.
The old red sandstone series is likewise of vast extent, both in depth
and superficial area. The scale of its mass corresponds with the scale
of the forces which produced it—the magnificent operations amidst which
it was accumulated. This was a period of great and frequent trappean
eruption. Hence the conglomerate red offers a splendid specimen of rapid
formation. This member of the devonian suite consists of large masses of
gneiss, quartz, mica-slate, and hornblende rock, cemented in a paste of
silicious sand, probably the debris of dissolved granite. The included
portions bear all the marks of attrition, of violent tossing about in a
troubled sea. Estimate the thickness of the whole deposit at its maximum
of nearly ten thousand feet—consider what vast agencies were still at
work, in tearing up and carrying off the spoils of the mountains—probably
with but little pause or intermission in the violence of the action—and
thus, not so much in the light of remote antecedents as of comparatively
associated formations, will we be warranted in regarding these early
courses in the work of creation. The fishes of the period all speak of
its spasmodic character, mailed, plated, and completely inclosed in
strong horny integuments; their heads, some of them, of entire uncovered
bone, and their caudal fins propelling with the whole force of the
vertebral column,—conditions of structure which give indications of
the stormy seas whose waves they had to buffet, and of the conserving
properties by which their forms and outlines have been transmitted to us
so wonderfully entire.
The carboniferous class of rocks have all the marks of a very peculiar
formation, constructed for a special purpose, and elaborated amidst an
extraordinary state of things. Here we meet with vast accumulations of
vegetable, calcareous, and metallic substances, for which we detect no
anterior preparations. The coming on and the outgoing of the whole coal
series are as distinct as they are surprising. To what are we to compare
them? By what scale of time are we to adjust the terms of their growth?
Proceeding upon the existing laws of nature, calculations have been
made as to the rate of increase, for a year, of pure vegetable matter,
over a given area. The Ganges, Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, La Plata, and
the other mighty rivers of the earth, have been appealed to as to the
quantities with which they are annually charged. The forests, with their
load of every revolving season, have been weighed, when their decadence
of leaves, fruits, branches, and all the gatherings from the flood and
storm have been duly taken into account. The result is, according to this
method of solving the problem, that about six hundred thousand years
were occupied in the production of the whole coal series.—It must be
admitted, in any attempt to reduce this number, that the violent forces
of the antecedent periods cannot be admitted as data of circulation;
throughout the whole of the carboniferous era, a state of repose seems
to have universally prevailed. But then all the living productive
powers of nature were just as violently in operation as the others were
quiescent, and the result in the one case bears a proportion to the
result in the other. If inorganic matter was rapidly collected by the
action of violent causes, so under an extraordinary state of things, of
climate, moisture, atmosphere, and other physical arrangements, organized
bodies, vegetable and animal, would multiply as rapidly. A condition of
nature that produced uniformity of vegetation over the entire surface of
the globe, as the coal deposit everywhere manifests, and all of gigantic
dimensions in every family of plants, is not merely to be denominated
_tropical_, and its results calculated by a scale of existing weights
and measures. In many places of the earth, even now, several harvests
are reaped within the year. Who can set bounds to their number, or guess
the prodigious increase, when the whole earth was covered with a flora,
not only of unrivaled exuberance, but of uniform distribution nearly
on every part of its surface? But a test of indisputable value, for
ascertaining the rate of increase in the sandstones and shales embraced
within the coal-measures, occurs in the case of those fossil trees which
are so frequently found in an upright position, or but little inclined
to the plane of stratification. These are numerous in every coal-field,
and are often traced through several layers or beds of rock. The fossil
trees of Craigleith and Granton were about fifty feet in length, and
lying at an angle of scarcely twenty degrees to the strata in which
they were imbedded. Their passage through the solid rock, therefore,
cannot be estimated at less than fifteen to twenty feet, that is, a
mass of sandstone of corresponding depth must have been formed, during
the comparatively short period that trees of lofty stature were able
to resist the destroying action of the elements, to say nothing of the
chances of currents, hurricanes, and other agents breaking them in
pieces. This _instantia crucis_ may be extended to every sandstone bed
of the formation, and thus serve to exercise a salutary restraint upon
the mind in its imaginary conceptions of the enormous periods of time
required for the accumulation of the whole series.
The carboniferous epoch was immediately succeeded by a period of great
violence and of vast disturbance in the solid crust of the earth. Hence
the broken inclined position of the coal strata, and the injection of
so much igneous matter, forming often ridges and hills of considerable
elevation. The new red sandstone, the overlying deposits, would share in
all the activity of the time. A celerity of increase, on a scale of more
rapid accumulation than existing causes could produce, must consequently
fall to be admitted to the rocks of this family: so much, indeed, was
the plutonic agency then in force, that the rock-salt and gypseous
beds are ascribed to its influence. From this period downward, the
formations are all of more contracted dimensions, the basins narrowing in
superficial area to the upper tertiaries, which partake of the character
of local rather than of universal deposits; while the evidences here are
innumerable that, until the globe settled into its present form, and
assumed its present arrangement of seas, continents, and mountains, the
land and water were continually changing places, the crust and framework
subject to constant upheaval. The Cordilleras and Himalaya constituted,
in those days, the bed of the ocean. What law of nature was not in
violent activity ere they attained their sublime altitudes! How many
rivers changed their courses! how many mountains were washed to their
summits! how many hills melted like wax at the voice of their Creator,
amidst convulsions which swept the earth so repeatedly of its living
tribes, and bared as often the bosom of the great deep!
We have not, in this enumeration of the mineral strata of the earth’s
crust, as yet spoken of any of the calcareous deposits. They are very
numerous, some of them of prodigious thickness, and belong to the
formations of every epoch. There is not one, but many, alternations of
limestone connected with every such formation. Whence the source of
all this material? The primary beds are not in sufficient mass to have
furnished supplies for every succeeding age. The mountain limestone
alone, of the middle secondary epoch, contains more calcareous matter
than is to be found in the three antecedent periods. The lias, oolites,
and chalks are likewise of vast thickness. The beds of the tertiary
group are less considerable; but in the gypseous marls, and numerous
alternating bands throughout the clays and sands of the formation, there
is the clearest evidence that the stores of nature were still abundant.
Nor are they yet exhausted. What supplies in every river, sea, and
ocean of the world! What countless myriads of living animals are now
employed in elaborating the material! And when we again inquire, whence
is it all? the answer is, that throughout all time, a wise and bountiful
Providence has thereby provided the pabulum for its successive creations
of organized bodies—the law of their nature is to pile up rocks—and in
all the monuments of the past, we discern the style and architecture of
the builders of the present. Look, then, to your still active, living,
working chronometer. With what incredible swiftness do these minute
creatures ply their labors! how many fathoms of coral reef will they
rear in a season! When the hapless mariner returns, after a brief short
interval, what hazards to run from structures which now for the first
time appall him with their formidable barriers! Millions of years! Not
even thousands are needed to construct islands, and to pillar the floor
of the ocean, over vast expanded areas, with broad, massive, indurated
rock.[13]
2. THE PROBABLE DURATION OF LIFE IN THE DIFFERENT EPOCHS. The geologist
will tell us not to look at one but at the various families, of all
kinds and of all habits, which his science has brought to light, and so
many of whose remains he has disinterred from the earth. Every formation
abounds with them. They flourished through every epoch. The epochs are
many. The tribes which existed and perished in them are many. To allow
time for the coming in and the going out, and the fulfillment of their
various destinies, what an untold, incalculable amount of ages must
have elapsed! Now, give the millions of years supposed, and the wonder
some may not hesitate to confess is, that there are so few, and not
so many, of the former creatures of the earth which have re-appeared
in our geological catalogues. The fossil regions of Great Britain, an
epitome of the world, have been well explored, and the statement of fact
stands nearly as follows:—Leaving out of consideration all the shelly
and lime-building tribes, the numbers of the other families of animals
hitherto found and described are, in the various groups of the silurian
system, eight genera of only one order of fishes; in the devonian, of
two orders, there are under forty genera, and not many more species of
fishes, in the carboniferous, of three orders, there are about fifty
genera, and a hundred species of fishes; in the permian and triassic, of
three orders, there are twenty genera, and fifty species of fishes and
reptiles; in the oolitic, of four orders, there are sixty genera, and
two hundred and twenty species of fishes, reptiles, and mammals; in the
wealden, there are, of three orders, twenty-five genera, and thirty-eight
species of fishes and reptiles; in the cretaceous, of six orders, there
are fifty genera, and eighty species of fishes, reptiles, and birds; in
the tertiaries, of seven orders, the genera are about one hundred and
fifty, and two hundred and twenty species of fishes, reptiles, birds, and
mammals: thus making in all about four hundred genera, and seven hundred
species of the larger families of living creatures during the whole
currency of the geological epochs. The current epoch contains, exclusive
of microscopic organisms, nearly two millions of species of vegetable and
animal bodies existing on the terraqueous globe; and of which there are
about eight thousand species of fish alone existing in our present seas.
When we take, instead of Great Britain, the whole explored geological
field of the world, the result, so far as the argument is concerned,
will be strengthened, not weakened. The formations of other lands are
simply, with slight variations, a repetition of our own. The same genera
of animals are everywhere prevalent. The specific types are likewise in
many instances identical. The silurian organisms of Russia are so like
those in our own island, that “no English geologist,” says Murchison,
“acquainted with the organic contents of the Wenlock limestone, can
view the Calymena Blumenbachii, C. macrophthalma, C. variolaria, and
other Trilobites associated with the Leptœna depressa, L. euglypha,
Terebratula reticularis, and many corals most familiar to him, without
at once recognizing in the upper strata the distinct representative of
that British formation.” Various other fossiliferous identities are
farther alluded to, when it is added—“In taking leave of Scandinavia,
we must specially advert to the close relations which exist between its
lower and upper silurian groups, and those of Great Britain and distant
parts of the world. Of 133 silurian fossils which we brought back or
noted on the spot, at least eighty-four are British, and from twenty-five
to twenty-seven are North American species. In this comparison the
identity of the upper silurian groups of the Baltic and Great Britain
is, indeed, most surprising; for, among seventy-four Scandinavian
species, upward of sixty are common to the strata of this age in both
countries, and of these, fifteen to sixteen species are also found in
the upper silurian rocks of America.” The devonian fossils are equally
striking in their resemblances and extensive geographical distribution.
Similar representatives are detected, and still more abundantly, in the
carboniferous formation—universal specific types of the fauna of the
epoch. One remarkable instance has been stated—upon the authority of M.
L. Von Buch—that the _Leptœna lata_, so typical of the silurian rocks of
Britain, is specifically the same with the _Leptœna sarcinulata_, which
is no less prevalent in the Russian carboniferous strata, and continued
even throughout its uppermost members. Our field of review, therefore,
contains a fair proportion of the various fossils of the world, specific
and generic. The formations lying before us throughout our base-line,
give a true indication of the state and conditions of life during the
several epochs, while in number and variety of individual forms they are
above the average.
Need it then be urged, that no such incalculable cycles of ages would be
required for the whole of this catalogue of animals fulfilling in their
several epochs their allotted destiny upon the earth? Compared with the
mass of inorganic matter in which they are entombed, their relics are
literally as nothing. Only here and there, of certain classes, at remote
intervals often, there is a fossil or its impression. And so entire and
well-preserved are these organisms, that we have reason to presume there
has been no great obliteration, absorption, or utter waste of the races
to which they belonged. On the contrary, as their distribution is so
persistent in their respective formations throughout the globe,—the same
genera and species being common to the four quarters of the world,—the
presumption is, that specimens of nearly all the tribes that ever dwelt
on the earth or swarmed in its waters have been handed down to us;
and thus the number of the actual relics found becomes, as it were, a
chronometer or measure of the ages during which they subsisted.
Look again at the demands of geology. Upward of SIXTEEN MILLIONS OF
YEARS[14] are supposed to have elapsed since the creation of life upon
the earth. The lowest of the rocks, in which that life has found its
grave, have been reached. Their contents, upward, have been examined and
catalogued. How many generations of animals must have subsisted within
that period? How many individual skeletons must have been entombed
and preserved, seeing that things of the filmiest texture, plants and
animals, have been inclosed and handed down to us entire? Quadruple
the ages of every one of the existing denizens of sea and land, and
still, what countless millions of generations, succeeding each other,
have lived and died during the eras that were to run? Geology presents
us with her list, her whole lengthened organic roll, of scarcely four
hundred generic, and less than eight hundred specific forms, gathered
out of all the past cemeteries of the dead. The cemeteries themselves,
of such vast walls and dimensions, may, according to the present mordant
powers of the elements and the capacity of rivers for the transport of
mud, have required the calculations usually assigned for their erection.
But where, the question will ever recur, where is there anything like a
corresponding amount of animal exuviæ apart from the calcareous supplies,
to be found in the successive formations, conforming in any approximation
to the existing powers and capacities of parturient nature? The fossil
remains, inclosed from the beginning to the end of the inconceivable
cycles of time, are the remains only of a few great families: their
skeletons are admirably preserved, or their casts are minutely and
accurately engraven on the rock; and do they not look as if they were the
_identical individuals_ which rose in the dawn and were buried in the
setting of their own geological epoch!
If we go still farther into details, the results will be found startling
enough. Let us select one of the periods, the old red sandstone, for
illustrating our views. The period assigned for this formation embraces a
term of about, we shall suppose, according to the geological distribution
of time, a million or two of years. This formation consists of three
great subdivisions, every one of which contains their distinct specific
forms, and hence their separation into the lower, middle, and upper
groups. This was pre-eminently the fish epoch—finners which roamed in
undisturbed possession of every sea on the surface of the globe. Dropping
into the waters, and speedily silted up in the sands, the skeletons
were in the best of all possible circumstances for preservation; and
accordingly, the specimens of the period constitute the wonder of the
geologist, for their enameled freshness and perfect outline of figure.
The productiveness of fish is prodigious, the cod-fish multiplying at the
rate of three millions and a-half, mackerel at about half a million, and
most of the other tribes at a corresponding high ratio. Count now how
many generations, of every one of the species of the separate groups of
the old red sandstone series, would exist and multiply during a period
of so many hundred thousand years. The modern epoch and its breeders
have scarcely reached their six thousand. When six times six have been
added, and sixty times more have been added to these, they will still be
a third short of the term allotted to the favored denizens of the olden
time. And where, amidst the well-protected few that have yielded up their
remains, are the traces of the myriads upon myriads that perished and
were buried along with them? To the genus Homo, the head of creation, few
think of the earth, as it now is, being the abode for periods reckoned
by millions of years. Nay, within his as yet brief period, how many of
his cotemporaries have already passed from the stage, extirpated, many
of them, by his own direct agency? The dodo, and his fellow islander the
solitaire, and other brevipennate birds,—probably, too, the elk and the
urus,—certainly from this island the beaver, the wolf, and the bear, and
just as certainly, at no distant day, the extinction of many other races
will follow in the onward progress of civilization. But as now, so in all
past ages, superior power, or a more dextrous instinct, have led to their
extirpation. Their destiny was fulfilled, and the race perished. And as
we are reasoning upon the known laws of nature, whence the geologist only
seeks a footing for his vast cycles of time, so, we venture to affirm, is
he bound to abide by the test of his own selection, and to read therein
the terms of life granted to the families of earth. The modern epoch
shows the outgoing of genera as well as of species within the limited
compass of a few thousand years—gives reasonable indications of the
probable extinction, speedily and at no distant period, of hundreds of
others,—these families possessed, all of them, of as enduring structures,
and of higher types of existence, than those of the older epochs,—and,
therefore, upon every fair ground of analogy, are we justified in
concluding that there can be no such diversity of ages, under one and the
same system of nature, as that of hundreds of thousands of years to the
living tribes of earth.
When such premises are made the grounds of such inferences, and, again,
when the geologist reiterates the statement that these great periods of
time correspond wonderfully with the gradual increase of animal life, and
the successive creation and extinction of numberless orders of being,
and with the incredible quantity of organic remains buried in the crust
of the earth, we have just to remind him that betwixt _great_ periods of
time, and the _gradual_ increase of animal life, there is no necessary
connection. However long and indefinite the time connected with the
rocky formations, certain it is that the successive organic tribes were
created within a period that admits, and can admit, of no calculation
whatever, not even of any analogical illustration from experience or the
known laws of nature. The species, however numerous, of every epoch were
called at once into being, not gradually but instantly, by the fiat of
an all-creative act. Their multiplication and increase depended upon the
law of their nature; but how long they were to be privileged to multiply,
in one unvarying specific form, according to that law, is a point that
comes legitimately within the range of experience and the calculations
of existing life. Let not things which differ, therefore, be mixed
together. The organic and the inorganic types, in the act of formation,
cannot be compared. And no argument can be adduced from the fact of the
mere numbers of animal species, or of their individual increase, in
support of the assumed length of any geological epoch. Species as well as
individuals have perished, and gone out within the narrow limits of our
own epoch, and yet have multiplied in progeny through countless myriads.
The same course of argument applies to every one of the formations, to
some of them of vast thickness, even more conclusively, where we find
the same species persistent throughout the group, and the same genus
often extending over two or three entire formations, embracing periods
of geological time of as many millions of years. Thus the _Leptœna
lata_ of the Silurian age lives on to the close of the Carboniferous;
the _trilobite_, earliest of living creatures, has its representatives
still in our modern seas; the mail-clad _holoptychius_ existed through
the whole of the Devonian and Carboniferous eras; and equally remarkable
is the fact that the _Onchus Marchisoni_, the oldest fish yet detected
in the rocks of the earth, is a creature more allied to the existing
genus _Spinax_ (the dog-fish) than to any other family of relics
inclosed in all the intermediate ascending series of deposits. Among
the infusoria it is ascertained that there’ are two kinds of living
_Gallionellæ_ identical with the fossil species in the Richmond clays of
Virginia; while again, in geological botany, we have all the types of
the coal formation still flourishing with the sane gigantic forms in the
continents and islands washed by the Pacific.
3. THE SUPERFICIAL ACCUMULATIONS. The argument of the geologists, for
their indefinite periods of time, proceeds mainly upon the assumption
that the present and the past operations of the laws of nature are nearly
uniform; or, in other words, that the existing rate of increment of
detrital and alluvial matter, in seas, deltas, and rivers, is to be taken
as the standard throughout the various geological epochs. Tried by the
test of the superficial accumulations, the subject is brought within a
manageable compass, the definite is substituted for the indefinite, and
the scale of accumulative power in the ancient will be in the ratio of
its erosive and transporting agency in the modern epoch. The products of
volcanoes also fall to be considered in estimating the effects of causes
now in operation.
The _bowlder clay_ comes first and legitimately within the scope of this
estimate; for, whatever theory of its formation be adopted, whether
by the sudden submergence of a vast arctic continent and consequent
upbreaking of the icy regions of the polar seas, by the sweep of a
universal deluge, or a violent upheaval of the bed of the ocean, certain
it is that the materials were brought together by rapid spasmodic action.
This deposit covers the whole of Northern Europe, much of Asia, and
extends over the vast continent of North America, as far as the 42° of
latitude: it varies from a hundred to several hundred feet in depth: and
thus, so far as quantity and extent of superficial area are concerned,
the bowlder clay formation may be compared with any of the older rocky
formations of the interior. But no geologist has ventured to speculate
about an indefinite cycle of years, as the condition of the planet during
the drift and accumulation of these rude and plastic materials.
The _sands_ and _gravels_ which succeed are likewise of great depth,
spread over extensive valleys, and rise on the acclivities of hills
five and six hundred feet above the level of the sea. This may be
regarded, all of it, as the collect of the current epoch; and within the
period of civilization and history and the arts, what sand-floods have
been carried to every quarter of the globe, covering entire regions,
devastating cities, and obliterating the very traces of man’s dominion
over countries once subject to his use. Nor would fossils be wanting to
complete the analogy, as the _dunes_ along the shores of every continent,
and especially on the coast of the North Sea in Norway, Denmark, Holland
and Belgium, only require consolidation in order to represent with living
instead of extinct species, the fossiliferous deposits of anterior times;
more particularly the Molasse and Nagelflue of the Swiss Alps. Near
Tours, in France, there is a bed of oyster-shells which is twenty-seven
miles long, with a corresponding breadth, and twenty feet thick. And in
the United States there are beds far exceeding this: a stratum, nearly
continuous, has been traced from the Eutaw Springs in South Carolina,
to the Chickasaw country—being six hundred miles in length by ten to a
hundred miles in breadth.
When we descend from the land to _the sea_ we find equally extensive
accumulations, spread over the bottom, or raised along the tide-level
in the form of bars, shoals, and banks. The whole eastern coast of the
United States[15] is bordered throughout by a line of sand-banks and
islands, of various forms and outline, but very uniform in their mineral
ingredients, being composed for the most part of a fine, white, and
quartzose sand. On the coasts of the southern states, the Carolinas
and Virginia, they form a chain of low islands, separated from the
coast by a series of lagoons; while higher up, on the southern coasts
of New England, they occur as submarine ridges, parallel to the coast,
and separated from each other by wide channels. To the north, these
arenaceous deposits are still more extensive, forming vast submarine
plateaux, such as the St. George and Newfoundland banks. And at the
bottom of all the bays and creeks of that much indented land, prodigious
_siltings_ are going forward, not under the form of narrow ridges, but
as broad connected strata or flats; consisting seaward of very fine
sand, and more inward of a coarse gravel, and in not a few instances of
_calcareous mud_, where the deposit takes place in the vicinity of coral
reefs. The same processes are in operation around every island and by
the shores of every continent where tidal action favors the deposition
of the materials—the result as now ascertained, not so much of rivers,
as of oceanic currents. The depth of these sands it is impossible to
determine; but thousands of feet may not reach their soundings. And as
to organic remains, they are most favorably situated and composed for
attracting and sustaining every kind of marine creature: it is upon the
banks that border the coast of North America that the most extensive
fisheries are carried on, because these are the abodes of those myriads
of invertebral animals—the molluscs, annelides, and zoophytes, types of
the older formations—which serve for the food of fishes, the ctenoids and
cycloids of maritime enterprise. And thus, co-extensive with the littoral
territories of the ocean, we have all the elements and ingredients of a
FORMATION, completing within the human epoch, that may almost rival the
Old Red Sandstone itself.
Nor does the analogy terminate in the production, whether of one or many
beds, of sand and gravel deposits. Simultaneously with these, there will
be siltings and accumulations of various kinds of materials arranging
themselves, at different depths, over the bottom of the ocean. The beds,
too, will have their edges slid over each other, and where maintaining
a degree of parallelism, the inclination of the more remote members of
the suite will correspond with the increasing depth of the sea bottom.
Then the imbedded remains will be as various as the different kinds,
genera, and species of animals that frequent the different localities;
nor will eruptive matter be always wanting to give diversity to the
scene, indurating, dislocating, and disarranging the relative position
of the deposits: Until we have formed, _within our present seas_, the
whole complement of a geological formation—the calcareous, muddy, sandy,
gravelly suites, cotemporaneous in origin and growth, with all their
diversity of fossils, living and imbedded at the same period—some beds
consisting entirely of microscopic or other marine bodies—some composed
of vegetable and other mixed materials—some where the land and waters
have mingled their spoils together—and all to be united and agglutinated
into one great composite system by the dykes and eruptions of submarine
volcanoes.
These processes are all now in active operation; and, without straining
the argument, the clear undeniable inference is, that, as the amount of
materials accumulated and arranged in the modern, so will be the ratio
of increase in the more ancient periods of the earth’s history and
revolutions. And hence thousands, not millions of years, would, upon such
inductions, be the scale of reckoning as to time.
But to state the argument in this form is vastly to underrate the
forces of nature in the primeval times. There are, on the contrary, the
strongest reasons for believing that the two classes of phenomena can
bear no proportion to each other, either as to the manner of or the
periods occupied in their formation. The bulk of dry land, compared with
water, was then, as all geological appearances testify, perhaps only a
twentieth instead of a third part, as now, of the supermarine area of
the globe. How infinitely greater, therefore, would be the action of the
waters over all the materials subject to their disintegrating power,
whether upon the islands and continents already raised above their waves,
or upon the immense submarine tracks of rock just lifting up their peaks
and waiting to be elevated into air? Nor in alluding to volcanic products
can we fail to perceive how immensely inferior are the modern to those of
the palæozoic ages, when all the great mountain-ranges were bursting into
position; the American continent, not as now with a few isolated eruptive
centers, but rending all over, as the mighty Andes and Cordilleras were
rising above the deep and assuming outline; and in every quarter of the
globe the plutonic, erosive, and denuding agencies were upon a scale
of corresponding magnitude. Leibnitz, in his “Protogæa,” has long ago
anticipated these views, where, in the masterly sketch of his leading
geological canons, he distinctly refers to the more intensive energy with
which physical causes must have acted in primordial times; and considers
that these disruptions of the earth’s crust, from the disturbances
communicated to the incumbent waters, must have been attended with
diluvial action on the largest scale. The _maximæ secutæ inundationes_,
thereby occasioned, had produced their natural effects, when the period
of repose succeeded—the _quiescentibus causis, atque aequilibratis,
consistentior emergeret rerum status_, as he so beautifully describes one
out of many recurring stages of paroxysm and repose during the Course of
Creation.
Whatever views may be adopted on this momentous question, I shall
conclude by observing that it is not necessary, in support of the one
here advocated, to assume that the secondary causes which have produced
the geological phenomena referred to, were different in kind from those
in operation at the present day. But it is asserted that such physical
causes must have been immensely increased, in the degree and intensity
of their action, by the very different condition of the planet, and the
circumstances under which, in consequence, they began to operate. As
to the _millionade doctrine_, if I may so term it, there are in every
view the greatest difficulties in the way of its adoption,—errors of
calculation somewhere to be corrected, inconsistencies to be reconciled,
conditions of organic life gratuitously assumed and to be rectified.
It matters not, indeed, whether we take the organic or the inorganic
structures of the several periods as the gauge of their probable
duration—the living tribes that existed throughout such periods, and
whose relative ages we can approximate to—or the dead rock in which the
remains are interred, and in the accumulation and arrangement of which
so many extraordinary agencies have been demonstratively concerned. The
laws of nature, in the one case, are nearly uniform; species as well
as individuals have their limited terms of existence; and experience
establishes the fact, that the living tribes of the modern epoch have,
in several instances, become extinct within a comparatively short period
of time. The operations of nature, in the other case, are subject to
vast diversity, great and sudden changes, and apparently limited by no
ascertained maximum of development. And thus combined, so far as our
present state of knowledge extends, the inference is warrantable, that
in the geological register the error may be one—of MILLIONS of years’
reckoning!
CHAPTER VI.
THE MOSAIC RECORD—ACCOUNT OF CREATION.
The conclusion attempted to be established by the preceding mode
of reasoning, is not of the kind, nor will it be so satisfactory
as, many desiderate. The sacred chronology, according to the common
interpretation, remains as it was; and no harmony can thus be established
betwixt it and the deductions of geology. Bring down the epochs to
thousands instead of millions of years, and still the DAYS of Scripture
are not explained. The historical and the scientific accounts of the
course of creation are just where they were, the one based on the word
of its Author, the other resting on rash or doubtful interpretations
of the phenomena of nature. Leave us, says the geologist, to grope our
own way: mystical as our records are, we disturb no established truth,
and imagination delights to lose itself in the far-distant past. Let
not, says the divine, the speculations of a new science—a science of
yesterday—be mixed up with more important matters of religion: we are
within the sacred precincts of revelation, and our oracles give forth no
dubious meanings—no isoteric doctrines for the initiated only.
The marvels of geology certainly are, in every view that can be taken
of them, deeply interesting to the mind. The volume of creation, read
in the light of its discoveries, is traced back through pages which
have been long hid from day; and these now make known to us a story
of life and death, of activities and enjoyments, of catastrophes and
revolutions, which surpass in wonder the inventions of the mere romance
writer, or all that regulated genius can pour “from pictured urn” of her
most fascinating lore. But be the time occupied in the elaboration of
these records what it may, the records themselves have an actual being,
and a language of intelligence indelibly impressed upon them. They are
genuine, authentic documents of their author. They may be misinterpreted.
Inferences may be deduced from them for which there is no warrant;
constructions put upon passages which they will not legitimately bear;
or the true key of the volume, in its great leading truths, may not as
yet have been found. Still the work is of God, wholly and entirely the
writing of his own hand.
Revelation is also His work; and, claiming to be from the same authority
as the other, rests its pretensions to be received as an authentic
document upon the ground of creation. It gives details, and enters into
explanations of the nature and origin of creation; and it declares that
the same Divine Being who made the heavens and the earth, has also
recorded their history and revealed his will to man. It is by no mere
casualty, therefore, or as a matter of indifference, that the Bible
commences its narrative by an account of creation. That account is there
as the foundation of one of its own claims to belief, testifying to its
credibility that it is of God; that He placed it there, not as a skillful
writer would do his preface, but because of the fact, that the invisible
things of his nature are to be seen and understood by the things which
are made.—What is thus declared upon the subject of creation, is likewise
liable to misinterpretation. It may not be read aright. But of the
account itself there can be no question,—that it is given as a real, as
it ever must be regarded a true one, of the Divine operations.
In order, therefore, to arrive at any just conclusions respecting the
comparison to be instituted betwixt the geological and the revealed
account of creation, we shall first inquire into the kind, as well as
amount, of information contained in the Mosaic record. The rendering of
the term “day” will then fall to be considered in relation to the order
of events indicated in both accounts.
I. The narrative proceeds with a fullness and minuteness of detail, which
clearly show a purpose in the writer. Did Moses actually mean to trace
the whole of creation in its primordial course and outline? Assuming
that he did, the phraseology is pointed and admirably suited to its
subject. Admitted into the presence-chamber of the Creator, he sees the
instruments with which he works, the rapidity with which he executes, the
subserviency of all being to his will, the arrangement and disposition
of all things at his pleasure. Knowing, as we now do from the highest
authority, _what_ was the work of creation, and _whence_ it originated,
the intelligent mind discerns also the suitableness of the description,
and the Divine selection of words employed to record it. There is
inspiration in the pencil, as well as omnipotence in the hand, which
traced out the plan of creation, and brought it into existence. The Cause
willed, and the effect immediately was,—IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE
HEAVEN AND THE EARTH.
Here, betwixt God and his work there are no intermediate agencies,—no
pause or rest in the act of coming into being. A material universe is
designed, and the substance of it is instantly produced. The inspired
historian proves that he was inspired, by the brevity of the history of
the event, by the employment of words so perfectly adapted to the nature
of the act. He proves farther, that we have here indicated the precise
course of creation, and that he meant so to represent it—that the heavens
and the earth are of one and the same act—that the physical universe,
through all its dominions and remotest spheres, started at one and the
same time into being. The sun, moon, and stars were now all formed, as
well as our own planet. The stellar systems were everywhere arranged;
and the worlds of matter had their places all assigned them through
infinite space. This part of the Divine actings must not be confounded
with the farther evolution of creation as described in the work of the
fourth day, which has reference manifestly to the division of time and
the appointment of the seasons, through the revolution of the planetary
worlds.
The condition of the earth as it first came from the hand of its framer
is next alluded to. It was “without form and void,” and involved in
darkness; that is, the arrangements necessary to constitute a habitable
globe, were not completed. There was no diversity of surface—no division
into hill and valley, into seas and rivers; the air, the dry land, and
the waters, had not yet assumed their respective places. Form was not
yet stamped upon the matter of the globe. Consequently it was also
VOID, or without inhabitants. Neither vegetables nor animals were
there. They could not exist before these necessary adaptations for life
were adjusted. Let the reader note this stage of the work. Marking the
precise, definite phraseology of the inspired writer, let him seriously
reflect whether he has here before him the first state of the new world,
or the shapeless ruined aspect of one of its subsequent geological
transformations? None of the elements, he will not fail to observe, have
been described as yet existing in separation. The course of creation has
not advanced so far; and, if it had done so, no geologist pretends to
assert, that at the close of any one of his epochs, the laws of nature
were abolished, and all things reverted to their pristine formless
condition. With what propriety, then, may it be asked, can an opening
be made in this part of the narrative wide enough to embrace, or to
have intercalated into it, all the phases of an archaic earth under his
numerous formations, and the vast cycles of time in which they had been
evolving? The language employed admirably represents what we can well
suppose the original physical state of the planet to have been; and that
state accords better with the first than with the last, or any of the
intermediate series of the geological changes. And the earth was without
form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters; and thus gave shape and outline
to the planetary mass.
The light was thereupon produced. We are not told whence, nor out of
what. Like all the matter of the universe, it started into being at the
call of the Creator, suddenly, as its own brilliant flashing emanations
over the darkness at this hour. Then came day and night; and this
implies, that there came along with them the revolution of the globe
and the commencement of motion in the astral universe. The production
of a firmament or atmosphere is next alluded to, and in immediate
connection with this part of the work, whereby a medium was provided for
the diffusion of the light and the play of all that beauty and variety
of coloring by which the earth was to be adorned. “And God said, Let
there be light: and there was light; and God divided the light from the
darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and
let it divide the waters from the waters.”
Light, the subtilest and fleetest of all elements, has nearly eluded
every effort of man to detect or analyze its essence. It travels swift as
thought through infinite space. It spreads its ethereal force over every
opposing obstacle. It gives brilliancy to the gem, form to the crystal,
color to the flower, health to animal life, and is so indispensable to
every existing condition of existing physical nature, that, were the
mandate of its creation revoked, we know just as much of its principle
as to see in its annihilation a relapse into that state of chaos when
all things were without form and void. Not only the beauty of organic
structure, but the molecular arrangement of the mineral mountain masses
of the earth, would, in all probability, have been an impossible
condition of matter without the existence and agency of light. And
light, whether glowing in the solar disc, gleaming in remotest stars, or
breaking and sparkling in the rain-drop, what revelation has science made
of it beyond its properties of luster and activity?—We trace its effects;
we discern its influence upon all bodies; but when we would go deeper,
and seek to know it essentially and in itself, we can only speak of it as
the utterance of Him who said,—LET THERE BE LIGHT.
Nor has science made any attempt, at least no successful one, to
account for the origin of the atmosphere. Its constituent elements
are known. They are every day made the subject of direct experiment.
The solution and ascent of water in the air is also a matter of daily
visible occurrence. But by what process this great mass of impalpable
fluid was brought together, enveloping the entire earth, and suspended
as a curtain over our heads, no ingenuity or dexterity of man has been
able to determine. There is no evidence by which to explain it upon the
principles of natural law, slowly elaborating the materials, and piling
them high in the starry vault. The atmosphere, indeed, must ever stand in
the original formation, the result of the immediate creative act, brought
together in all its volume and vast incredible capacity of receiving
and holding in its grasp the gaseous residue of all earthly things. And
what of its electricity, its magnetism, the aurora and its streaming
meteors,—its thunder, lightning, clouds, and rain,—all, shall we say,
the instantaneous effect of the authoritative command? AND GOD SAID, LET
THERE BE A FIRMAMENT IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS!
We every day see the conversion of water into steam, and steam into air;
and the air, like the ocean, receiving every substance into itself.
But, nevertheless, it is not inferred that there is any augmentation
to the volume of the atmosphere, any increase or essential change upon
its original mass. Without the existence of this fluid, the earth would
have been no suitable place for any of its living inhabitants, vegetable
or animal. Therefore was it created; therefore does the account of its
creation stand in the order in which we find it in the Mosaic narrative;
and, therefore, from this very circumstance, are we not warranted to
infer that we have before us a description of the actual genesis of
things—that it is not a remodeling or transformation of the old, but
the veritable course under which all creation was at first brought into
being, form, and parts, that the inspired writer intends to record?
We cannot refuse, by parity of reasoning, to conclude the same as to the
immediately succeeding act in the Divine operations. The arrangement of
the surface of the earth was now to be effected; and, just as one portion
of the waters was lifted and expanded into air, so, in consequence of a
different proportion in the elements, and evolution of new principles,
the seas were formed and gathered into the depressions occasioned by the
raising up of the dry land, its consolidation into rocks and mountains.
This is the starting point of geology. The science can get no deeper. It
begins all its researches, and builds all its calculations, upon that
crystalline crust which is termed primary, which is co-extensive with
the superficial area of the globe, which is found in every region, and
beneath which no explorations have anywhere been made. And wherefore
not assume this as an immediate formation, as a direct preparatory
arrangement, like the seas and atmosphere, for the life that was just to
be provided with a habitation upon it? A beginning for organic bodies
is demonstrable upon geological evidence. The lowest fossiliferous
rocks have been reached, and everywhere they are found to maintain the
same relative position. The inference, therefore, is legitimate, nay,
probable, that the primary formations of geologists constituted the
first dry land, as herein described; and that Time, calculated according
to the operations of natural mechanical laws, can enter in no way into
our speculations as to their origin. “And God said, Let the waters under
the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land
appear: and it was so.”
The course of creation proceeds. “And God called the dry land earth, and
the gathering together of the waters called he seas.” The globe was thus
divided into land and ocean. An atmosphere embraces the whole, tempering
the heat and cold of the one, receiving the exhalations of the other,
and both prepared for the ministrations required of them. The dry earth
is represented as being first the seat of organic life. The new and bare
surface is covered with herbage. The grasses, shrubs, and trees all start
into being, prepared each for the diffusion and continuance of their
kind, by yielding seed and fruit. And then commenced on the theater of
our globe the successive evolution of the _principle of life_, subtile,
active, prolific, in all the boundless prodigality of nature, and
mysterious still as the essence and fount of all-creative Being.
At this part of the narrative it is generally supposed, according to the
common reading, that there is a retrograde step, as it were, introduced.
The day and night have been made to precede the creation of the sun and
moon; and now to supply the deficiency we are told of the appointment of
these luminaries in the heavens “to give light upon the earth.” But three
days and three nights have already revolved. Doubtless they have, but not
without light, for light has been created; and not without a provision
for the night, for the light has been divided from the darkness.
The earth has been revolving upon its own axis; that occasioned the
succession of day and night then as now. Another motion is communicated,
whereby it revolves in its orbit and circles round the sun; that causes
the variety of the seasons, and the divisions of the year. The luminous
matter diffused through space, and equally shining upon all bodies, has
been assembled into the great central orbs, to be the dispensers each of
light and heat to their respective systems; and upon these arrangements
being established, both days and nights, seasons and years, are all
dependent upon, as they all arise from, the revolution of the planets
round the central luminary. “And God said, Let there be lights in the
firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them
be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years.”
“And God _made_ two great lights; he _made_ the stars also.” The original
does not bear out the sense of there being in these instances an act of
creation; neither does the English term itself always imply that meaning.
Light-bearers, or the depositories of illumination, is the true rendering
of the Hebrew. The Septuagint translators have used similar relative
terms, and in our own language the expression “made” often signifies
fashioned, formed, used, constrained. And so the phrase here refers not
to the creation, but to the uses of bodies already described as being
in existence, and created along with all matter in the beginning. But
now they are invested with new properties, are arranged so as to perform
new functions, and stand in relations each to each, at the bidding of
Him who brought them into being. Next to the summoning of the universe
into existence, this was the most stupendous act of Divine power, and
we know as much of the one as of the other. Some of the properties of
matter we are acquainted with. The laws of motion we can define in some
measure, and calculate also their effects. But whence the one, and
_how_ the arbitrary appointment of the other, through all the infinite
diversity of systems and spheres—precise, harmonious, and orderly—baffles
all the ingenuity of science to determine. Mark, too, the order of the
introduction of this new class of facts, just in the due course and
regulation of nature. When life is mentioned, and the earth is clothed
with verdure, the seasons begin their round, and the divinely-instructed
historian acquaints us with the cause. “And God set them in the firmament
of the heaven to give light upon the earth; and to rule over the day and
over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness.”
The waters are now replenished with their stores of animal life, and by
the same act of creation the air receives its stock of winged tribes.
Then follows, as the work of another distinct period of time, the
introduction of the terrestrial races—the living creature after his
kind—the cattle—and creeping thing—and beast of the earth after his kind.
The description here is general. The orders, genera, and species are not
named. Still the catalogue is large and amply descriptive. The various
types of organic structure are alluded to, and each term or epithet
of the quadruple list is elastic enough to embrace one and all the
diversified families of the most methodical naturalist. “And God made the
beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, each after his kind.”
Such is the account, the order, and course of creation, as set forth
in the inspired record. The description of the various generative acts
is simple, distinctive, and consonant with the energies of the Will by
which they are performed. The whole narrative is one of many, within the
compass of the sacred volume, in which a strict adherence to the letter
leads to a sound interpretation. The wisdom of man will be confounded
when it tries to fathom the methods and devices of the divine Artificer
in originating his works. His safety will often be in distrusting his
own understanding, in not magnifying overmuch the ingenuity of his
own speculations, and in sometimes believing that even science will
be exalted by approximating to, rather than by departing from, the
literalities of Scripture.
II. Compare now the epochs of geology with the DAYS of Scripture,
and there will be observed at least a remarkable coincidence between
them. The fossiliferous systems of the one are nearly the same in
number with the descriptive paragraphs in the other. The order in the
creation of organized bodies, the progression of life upon the earth,
are also wonderfully striking in the records of both. The lowest of our
fossiliferous deposits contain the impressions of plants—these stand
at the beginning of the Mosaic list. The same groups, and the whole of
the next in succession, are characterized by the prevailing abundance
of marine tribes—the waters, according to the sacred narrative, then
received their command, and multiplied abundantly the moving creature
that hath life. Vegetables and animals, still of _the waters_, continue
to increase during the carboniferous era, when a new system succeeds, and
in this the foot-prints of birds are distinctly traced—so it was in the
same order of succession that the winged fowl is sent forth into the open
firmament of heaven. The Lias and Oolite formations immediately follow,
filled with monsters of the deep, saurians and flying lizards,—the text
speaks of the “great whales” of the period, as distinguished among the
productions of the waters. The Wealden Chalk, and Tertiaries are replete
with all kinds of reptiles, mammals, and quadrupeds—the horse, urus, and
other forms of cattle—and so, in like manner, the last in the Mosaic
list, as the highest in the geological strata, are the types of every
beast, cattle, and creeping thing.
Now, can this running parallel be accidental or intended? Did the writer
of the one record know anything of the contents of the other? Does the
course of creation, as detailed in the strata of the earth, follow as
a necessary consequence from the nature of things? or as the arbitrary
appointment of Him who made them? Would plants, fishes, reptiles, fowl,
mammals, all emerge in this precise order of succession, by any known
law of organic structure? Or could not the first and last, or any of
the intermediate kinds, have been at once, and as adaptively, brought
together in one and the same period of time? Was the writer of the
Genesis acquainted with the rich exuberant flora of the carboniferous
age? and was it meant as a true exposition of its history that there were
as yet no beasts or quadrupeds upon the earth to enjoy it? And knowing of
it, as well as of all the other superficial arrangements,—the upheaval
of the crust, the rise of mountains, the alternate shifting of sea and
land,—does he describe the progress of organic creation precisely as it
occurred, and as the changes of the planet became ADAPTIVE?
The series of creative acts terminates in the introduction of Man upon
the stage of terrestrial being. “And God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”
Here both narratives are completely at one as to man’s place in the
course as well as system of creation. No fragment of his race has been
detected in any of the rocky strata of the earth. Every other organic
thing, of every class, and order, and tribe, has its representative in
one or other of the geological epochs. Man stands apart and alone in
the geology as in the history. No mere link in the chain of organic
existence, not a being of mere earthy mold, but fashioned in the image of
his Maker, and fitted to explore, to understand, and to exercise dominion
over the works of his creation. How much, again, in all this last and
highest evolution of creative might, is the conclusion confirmed, and
arrived at from so many converging lines, that the sacred record was
INTENDED to embody an actual account of the creation of our globe, in
its various primordial arrangements as well as in all its consecutive
events, until its majestic close in the human epoch? For, looking back
and comparing the whole narrative with the facts of geology, is it not
highly probable that we have in that account distinctly shadowed forth
the progressive researches of the science, the great physical truths
of creation, as symbolized in the rocks? The brilliant vista through
millions of untold ages, and upon scenes supposed to be unnoticed and
unrecorded, vanishes indeed at the admission of this principle of
interpretation. But a more consistent view of the world’s history—of the
comparative longevity of its successive tribes—of the various changes
and alterations which its surface has undergone—and a less violence far
to the obvious import of the sacred text—form no unpleasing substitutes
on which, amidst such lures to doubt, bewilderment, and error, faith and
reason will equally incline to repose.
III. The conclusions which have been, or which may be, deduced from a
comparative examination of geology and the Mosaic record, fall to be
noticed.
1. In order to preserve the literal rendering of the six days of
creation, it is maintained that the Mosaic record takes no account
whatever of any of the geological formations described. After the
intimation, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; and
the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep”—the close of the EPOCHS, with all their complement of strata
and fossils, was accomplished; and then, as descriptive of the era of
man, with all his living cotemporaries, and the several days with the
works therein accomplished, the new order of events referred to in
the text commences with the declaration, “and the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters.” The discoveries of geology are thus all
cast back upon unrecorded anterior periods, and with regard to which
the sacred record is silent; while of the new series of events, in
precisely the same order of succession and enlarged amount of normal
organic being, there is a defined literal account. This may be regarded
as the generally received interpretation among the leading geologists as
well as of a large class of eminent divines. It was early and eagerly
adopted by Dr. Chalmers. The proof of its soundness is made to hinge
upon certain ingenious criticisms regarding the terms _bara_, _asah_,
_yatzan_, which in the common version of the Hebrew text are translated
_created_, _made_, _formed_. According to the new rendering, wherever
any of these words occur in any of the verses _after_ the second, they
are to be restricted to the simple act of fashioning, arranging, and
constructing new bodies out of pre-existing matter. Hence, all the
initial and secondary actings noticed in the narrative are in this manner
clearly distinguishable. It is farther argued, that all the secondary
class of arrangements are distinctively pointed to, and separated from
the primordial, by the formula of expression, “and God said,” which is
introduced at the commencement of each of the six days, but not prefixed
to the initial creative act of all matter in the beginning.
Now, against this mode of argument it may be objected that much of it
does not bear upon the question at issue. The discrepancy is one more
of things than of words. It is the physical solution, rather than the
critical, that is the important matter of inquiry; and this no mere
verbal emendations of the text will altogether and consistently help out.
Observe the character of the acts spoken of after the second verse and
introduction of the expression, “and God said;”—the calling light into
being, the separation of the darkness, the division of day and night, the
formation of an atmosphere, the fixed position of the firmament above
and the waters beneath, and the separation of the dry land. These are
the acts of the first and second days. But what of them _before_ this?
These elements and their arrangement were all required, and must have
all existed, during the epochs recorded in geology. That is admitted.
The light needed no renewal after any geological transposition of the
land and sea. The revolutions of the heavenly bodies would be equally
unaffected, and days, seasons, and years would remain and proceed in the
same order of succession. The firmament and atmosphere would continue to
occupy their relative positions. And so, according to the _usus loquendi_
and legitimate import of all the terms employed in the text, we are
reading of things that were neither in being nor in operation _before_,
but which now for the first time are represented as being summoned into
existence. We are equally unprepared for the admission made by some
of the friends of revelation, that Moses knew not the full amount and
nature of the knowledge conveyed in his narrative, just as “he was not
aware of the profound spiritual meaning of much of the ritual which
he was employed to institute. It was an obscure text, which awaited
the Divine commentary of the christian dispensation.”[16] There is no
analogy between the subjects. The law was confessedly a preparatory,
incompleted dispensation. The order of creation as traced by Moses
embraces substantively everything which creation contains—the elements,
disposition, and collocation of its parts—and that he saw not through the
whole of a future, unfulfilled plan, furnishes no good ground for the
assumption that he was ignorant of or purposely passes over the history
of millions of years of the very subject on which he was inspired to
write, and on which he was to build his whole system of theism and of
grace. This mode of interpretation, beside, assumes a _hiatus_ in the
text for which there is no just warrant, either in the verbal structure
of the narrative, or in the physical character and order of the events
described. It has always appeared to us to proceed upon principles of
explication which violate all the canons of a pure and severe criticism,
which indulgently gives way to new and gratuitously assumed difficulties,
and which would leave nothing in any writing except what the reader
chooses to find in it.
2. The principle of interpreting _the days_ in Genesis as periods of
indefinite time, and within which the several geological _formations_
were successively evolved. They who adopt this hypothesis can plausibly
argue that the _order_ of creative acts as revealed in the sacred record,
harmonizes in a very remarkable manner with the course of creation
as detailed in the researches of geology. Hereby a comparison can be
distinctly instituted, and a parallelism observed betwixt the peculiar
work of each day and the leading phenomena displayed in the earth’s
crust—from the first appearance of dry land, when organic bodies had
not been as yet created, and the primary rocks in which none have been
detected—up through the silurian, devonian, and carboniferous series, in
all which plants and marine organisms only are found—and onward until
we reach the tertiary strata, where, in succession, the revealed order
of animal life is so remarkably coincident. The details of the science
are not indeed to be all, and minutely, read in the narrative. But the
main truths and the leading dogmata are there; and if any departure from
the literal rendering of the text can be permitted, so as to fit in and
adjust the geological phenomena, it may be justly contended that there is
less of violence and straining by the substitution of periods for days,
than by casting aside the whole genetic description as having no bearing
whatever upon the primary cosmogony of the globe. Then the various
events, it may be farther argued, as recorded in the text—the creation
of light—the formation of a firmament—the division of day and night—the
appointment of seasons and years—the gathering together of the waters,
and the elevation of the dry land—are all so described and placed in
such juxta-position as can only be applicable to primary creative acts,
to things which were not before, and which now for the first time were
brought into being and condition.
The abettor of this view and mode of reconciliation will likewise
avail himself, in defense of its being an orthodox interpretation, of
the latitude of meaning ascribed to the term “day,” in the Scriptures
themselves. Even in the second chapter of the Divine word, and applied to
the very subject in question—the order of creation—he finds the term to
be used in an indefinite sense: “These are the generations of the heavens
and of the earth, when they were created in the DAY that the Lord God
made the earth and the heavens, and EVERY PLANT of the field.” The solemn
announcement at the close of this world’s drama will not fail also to
be adverted to—“in the last days perilous times shall come”—wherein
periods of longer or shorter duration are implied as existing in the
midst of days. Frequently too there occur the expressions: the day of
grace—the day of salvation—the day of the Lord—the day of trial—the day
of redemption—terms all of unlimited import and not to be defined by the
planetary diurnal calendar, but to be determined by the arrangements of
a dispensation in which man is viewed as a moral accountable being, and
not by any necessities in which his physical condition and the world
he inhabits are concerned. Thus by adopting this hypothesis, which
assumes the entire narrative as a consecutive description of the order
of creation, every day as bearing the initiative of its own class of
phenomena, the plan and quality of the Divine works as all delineated
and shadowed out, the progressive succession of the whole organic and
inorganic historically described, and the phenomena, and the terms
descriptive of them, are asserted to be in their proper places, and in
harmony each with each.
3. There is another mode of defending the text in consistency with the
general facts of the science, by assuming that the course of creation
indicated through the epochs was in all its characteristic features
_reproduced_, and substantially represented in the cosmogonic period of
the Mosaic account. We have noticed from time to time, in the different
stages of our description, in what the analogies consisted. In the
earliest, as well as in the last, organic fossil types, there is the
most perfect identity with all the vegetable and animal forms described
in the narrative. The order of their reappearance is likewise similar.
Moses, it is here supposed, saw the casting of the same molds, the agency
of the same hand, and the “day” to be successively the period for the
reproduction of the work.
Read now consecutively the whole account, and observe how the Historian
passes in review the entire series of the Divine acts, and runs over
again the great master-keys of this harmonious system. He is present, so
to speak, when, in the beginning, the matter of the heaven and the earth
was created. He witnesses the arrangement of the parts, which before
were without form and void. He hears the command,—LET THERE BE LIGHT.
And now, as the mighty structure expands in vision before the eye of
his mind, the firmament and the waters and the dry land separating and
drawing off to their respective places, he introduces a record of the
period within which the several operations were effected. How long is
that period? Just the division of time with which he was acquainted,
and which he knew was amply sufficient for the completion of all the
operations in question. The acts are successive. The will that performed
them is omnipotent. Everything followed in its order and in the time that
all creative power commanded it to be. Hence the days, with regard to all
the initial acts, both of creation and arrangement, were literally of the
duration assigned in the text. After the introduction of organic life on
the third day, geology speaks definitively as to the successive order of
the kinds and families of the structural forms created. But it gives no
sign, and can give none, as to the portion of time required for their
creation. It may have been an instant or a day,—a week or a period. The
revealed account speaks positively upon the point; and shows how, at the
bidding of the Divine will, the various elements—the water, the earth,
the air—were replenished with their respective tribes in the old as in
the new world, and under all the phases and epochs of their being.
The inspired narrative, it may be alleged, according to this view, is
not only consistent with itself, but becomes a sublime illustrative
introduction to the book of revelation. The matter of the heaven and the
earth was the effect of a single command. The separation of its elements
was the instantaneous effect of another.—Upon the creation of light, a
division is given to time, and the morning and the evening hours were
established. The arrangements of the second day followed, and were all
completed in the period assigned. So with the remanent days and their
respective included operations. The eye of the historian sees nothing
intervening betwixt the cause and the effect; his mind is fixed upon the
action, not the manner of its accomplishment; and knowing the whole to be
the result of the same power and the arrangement of the same providence,
he combines in one cycle or WEEK the entire series of events, one day
of which unto the Eternal is as a thousand, and a thousand, but as one
day. The work all accomplished, the immediately revolving period of time
was established as the Sabbath of the Lord. Having made man in his own
image, with knowledge to apprehend and adore the author of his being, the
divine Architect RESTED; he ceased from any farther acts of creation;
nothing of any material existence, nor of any living thing, has been
added to his works since the completion of the six days, and so the rest
has continued and will continue to the end of time—a Sabbath hallowed by
the structure of the globe and the beneficence of the Creator.
These are some of the methods by which the geologist aims in bringing
the conclusions of his science within the scope of the Mosaic record,
and in freeing his speculations from all their incumbrances and
responsibilities. There is still a great deal to be accomplished, even
with all these approximations, toward a right and full and literal
comparison with the sacred text. There is indeed no real conflict between
the discoveries of geology and the declarations of the divine oracles;
and, with so many doors of retreat from or avenues of approach into the
inviting fields of its research, no friend of the truth need be afraid
of an excursion through the most intricate depths of creation’s works.
Meanwhile, the metaphysicians have all been driven from the field, with
all their untenable dogmas about the eternity of matter. Geologists
repudiate the doctrine, and their science refutes it. But there is such
a thing as others rashly rushing to conclusions, wherever they can see
tendencies or leanings to countenance their impious materialism. In this
direction, many think that geology, however falsely, wholly inclines.
And even now it is better, infinitely better, to rest with unhesitating
confidence in the received interpretation of Scripture than be borne
away by sweeping generalizations, built most certainly somewhere upon
loose conflicting elements of calculation. Countless millions of years
are, we admit, as nothing in the records of eternity—of no account with
the Everlasting of days. Nevertheless, if the time can be reduced, as
unquestionably there are data for the reduction, the epochs and the days
approximate all the closer; the speculations of the science are brought
into better keeping with the dicta of revelation; farther discoveries
will lead to farther adjustments; until what was done for the interests
of the one by detecting the miscalculations of Hindoo astronomy, will
again be effected for the other by scanning more intelligibly the
geological horoscope.—And thus removing every ground of suspicion or
offense, will serve to bring this interesting branch of knowledge from
the outer court of the Gentiles to the innermost shrine of the TEMPLE OF
TRUTH.
The father of the Inductive Philosophy thus expresses his views: “In the
works of creation, we behold a twofold emanation of the Divine virtue; of
which the one relates to its power, the other to its wisdom. The former
is especially observed in the creating the material mass; the latter, in
the disposing the beauty of its form. This being established, it is to be
remarked, that there is nothing in the history of creation to invalidate
the fact, that the mass and substance of heaven and earth was created,
_confusa_, undistinguishable, in one moment of time; but that the six
days were assigned for disposing and adjusting it.”[17] This was emitted
at a time when geology was in its nonage; the strata of the earth and
their singular fossil contents were as yet unexplored;—still it is the
oracular voice of one who had looked through the physical universe with
the glance of science and of genius, and who knew and sought it only in
relation to the Creator and his Word.
CONCLUSION.
THE CREATOR.
The magnificent work of creation, whose course we have been tracing in
some of its primordial arrangements, in the geological phenomena of the
earth’s crust, and in its relations to the vast planetary system of
which it is a member, is the result over all of design and intelligence.
The changes wrought in the earth’s structure and framework, from period
to period, have not been brought about by merely mechanical changes of
physical conditions. There are order and method in the inorganic, no
less than in the organic forms, into which matter in any of the earth’s
revolutions has been cast. There is prospective contrivance each for
each. The alterations made in the outward surface, whether of sea or
land, have been always such as were best adapted to the habits and
requirements of successive living tribes. And the whole amount of change,
in both departments of nature, has ever been in such measure and degree
as to show, from the beginning, a persistent principle of stability
in the system, and a wise, all-controlling arm to be regulating and
directing everything. The invisible things of God, from the creation of
the world, are clearly seen; and we cannot, if we would, rid ourselves
of the thought, that somewhere and beyond, there is, not a “primitive
cause”[18] only, but a Divine Being, the master of the universe,
potentially in and present through all things.
Aristotle concludes his treatise “De Mundo,” with observing, that to
treat of the world without saying anything of its Author would be
impious, and he proceeds to show, on various grounds, the traces of an
all-governing Deity. Newton concludes his great work, the “Principia,”
by some reflections on the nature of the Supreme Cause, and infers from
the structure of the visible world, “that it is governed by one almighty
and all-wise Being, who rules the world, not as its soul, but as its
Lord, exercising an absolute sovereignty over the universe, not as over
his own body, but as over his work; and acting in it according to his
pleasure, without suffering anything from it.” Speaking of the laws by
which God governs the world, and giving his definition of the term LAW,
Boyle says, “I look upon a law as a moral, not physical cause, as being,
indeed, but a rational thing, according to which an intelligent and
free agent is bound to regulate its actions. But inanimate bodies are
utterly incapable of understanding what it is, or what it enjoins, or
when they act conformably or unconformably to it: therefore, the actions
of inanimate bodies, which cannot incite or moderate their own actions,
are produced by real power, not by laws.” “Hence,” says Whewell, in his
Bridgewater Treatise, “hence we infer that the intelligence by which the
law is ordained, the power by which it is put in action, must be present
at all times, and in all places where the effects of the law occur: that
thus the knowledge and the agency of the Divine Being pervade every
portion of the universe, producing all action and passion, all permanence
and change. The laws of nature are the laws which He, in his wisdom,
prescribes to his own acts; his universal presence is the necessary
condition of any course of events, his universal agency the only origin
of any efficient force.”
The researches of science, the deeper they go into the secrets of nature,
issue in the surest and brightest disclosures of the Divine Architect
of the universe. We are enabled, by the lights which are furnished by
the various branches of ascertained knowledge, to read in some degree
the mind and purpose of God in the creations of his hand. We see in
many instances what is actually intended by certain arrangements and
combinations,—why, and for what end, objects are constructed in a
particular way, and how it is that trains of events are made to follow in
one uniform order rather than in any other. The universe, we discover,
is not only bound by laws permanent and unchanging: the laws themselves
have an end to serve, a particular result to accomplish. Accumulations
of matter are brought together with a definite precise view; living
substances are constructed with organs suited to their conditions of
existence; relations of air, earth, and water, are established, which
nicely answer the functions to be performed; and in ten thousands of
cases are manifested the form, size, position, qualities of hardness,
softness, and cohesion in the individual parts which can best secure
their own special well-being along with the general conservation of the
framework to which they are attached. How admirably, from age to age,
do the organic as well as the inorganic structures of the geological
narrative illustrate the truth of these remarks, where the manifestations
of design are as numerous as the objects of creation, and as legible as
if God had written their import by his own finger? The oldest, equally
with the newest, book of nature, discloses the records of his will.
We read them in the varied language traced and stereotyped upon their
stony leaves. And in perusing the diversified contents of this wonderful
volume, we cannot rise without the conviction that the being, attributes,
and character of its Author, are brightly and indelibly impressed on
every page.
The argument for the existence of a DESIGNING AGENT in the creation
and arrangements of a material world, may be thus illustrated: A rude,
unshapely piece of stone—say the “stone upon the heath”—does not at once
impress the spectator with the conviction that it was made and placed
where it is, by a designing intelligent being. But let it be chiseled
into form, give it symmetry and proportion, and he immediately concludes
that this is the result of skill and intention. Look at a piece of
machinery—its framework of wood—its springs of iron—its wheels, beams and
axles, composed of different metals, and arranged in different forms—and
the inference is irresistible, that neither the forest, nor the quarry,
nor the mine, yielded the materials in their present shape, nor combined
among themselves to put them together.—Reason seeks for a different kind
of agency, and experience tells that the mind and the hand of man have
been there. We see water converted into steam, the steam brought into
contact with a piece of metal, the vapor confined within an inclosure and
acted upon by a condenser; and through means of this simple arrangement
and the application of this natural power, duly regulated and sustained,
we discern the triumph of mind over matter—the marvels which human
industry and intelligence have been able to achieve. This combination
of materials is not a thing of life.—Chance has produced none of these
arrangements. The whole is the result of design, of aiming intention,
of calculating intelligence. Examine the telescope, its apparatus of
lenses, reflectors, and mirrors: look through that narrow tube as it is
pointed in a clear starry night to the azure vault; and your shout of
astonishment, when you first behold the increased magnitude of these
orbs—their separation into systems and clusters—firmaments ascending in
gradations of brilliancy, one above another—and the infinitely remote,
studded and glowing with higher and higher galaxies—will partake of
a mingled feeling of admiration at the immensity and grandeur of the
universe—the wisdom and skill which combined to frame the instrument that
brings within your ken, and enables you to gaze on, the glorious vision.
Now, in nature, we find the same indications of design, the same
surprising combinations of skill, instruments framed with matchless
wisdom and the most exquisite contrivance. Nay, all here, in every
department of creation, leaves human ingenuity at an immeasurable
distance. No statuary can rival that which is exhibited in the rocks,
gems, and crystals of the earth. Machinery is transcendently surpassed,
in the forms of every organic thing beneath or around, in minuteness,
adaptation, and balancing of parts,—the steam-engine in energy and
power—the ship by a more refined and skillful equipment of ropes,
pulleys, and sails—and the telescope is not for a moment to be compared
with the human eye in the beauty of its construction, the power of its
movements, the amazing swiftness and variety of its glance.—But there
is design and intelligence manifested in the works of man. They could
not arrange themselves. They must have had an artificer. Draw near, look
unto the works of creation, what cumulative evidence of their intelligent
author, conclusive as the severest demonstrations of science. Man asks
for a sign from heaven. Ten thousand intimations are given—millions,
indeed, of miraculous contrivances meet him in every department of the
universe.
This earth, however, is not an isolated body in the universe; it
forms one of a system of worlds, and its geological history cannot
be regarded as complete until we have viewed it in some of its more
extended relations. The course of creation is traced in the planetary
system, a series of masses of matter assuming one form, moving in one
plane, following in one orbital path, revolving around a common center,
enlightened and warmed by a common sun, and obedient, one and all, to the
same great law of gravitation. The mighty problem of the universe has
been solved upon the simple assumption, that a piece of our earth is like
a piece of the other planets; that the properties of matter here are as
the properties of matter above; and as the laws of motion and attraction
below, so are they on high, and throughout infinite space. Astronomy thus
derives all its achievements as a science from the earth, and the cause
of the motions of the heavenly orbs is ascertained from experiments on
the matter of the earth, which first led to the knowledge of regular
dynamical laws. The field of astronomical research, in consequence, is
not only the most wonderful, but it is also that in which our knowledge
is the most accurate. Distant and infinitely remote as are the objects of
the science, there is yet in no other department of natural philosophy
results of investigation so completely satisfactory. With the precision
of geometry, and the minute accuracy of numbers, the astronomer
calculates the particular place of every one of the bodies of the solar
system, at any particular hour and moment of the day. He determines the
precise rate of their motions, and positions which they occupied in
relation to the earth, in every past period of their history however
remote, and even corrects the notations of former observers. He shows
their relative distances, weights, dimensions, and influences upon one
another; estimates the length of their days and years, eccentricities and
perturbations; and describes the orbits in which they severally move, in
their steady unwearied march through the heavens.—The undeniable effect
of results like these, is to impress deeper upon the inquiring mind the
conviction of foresight, method, and design in the vast system of which
the earth is but a part; and as the earth gives lead to, and indicates
some of the first lessons in, astronomy, so we derive in return a fuller
knowledge of its various relations and past history than its own single
geological tables can unfold.
When we proceed to speculate about the _manner_ of Deity’s actings,
difficulties at once meet us in every quarter, partly from our utter
incapacity to comprehend and partly from the imperfections of human
language to express—even were our comprehension adequate to the task—the
essential qualities of Deity himself. As the _anima mundi_, the ancients
represented the Divine Being, as both the active and self-moving
principle in nature, and likewise as passive, and acted upon by the
external world. Newton, in order to express his idea of the Divine
omnipresence, employed the term _sensorium_, as denoting the mode in
which he was enabled to perceive whatever passed in space fully and
intimately. And while nothing was farther from the mind of the great
philosopher than the ascription of bodily organs to the Divinity, he
had to defend himself from much bitter and vehement controversy in
consequence. Equally liable to misrepresentation, and from the sane
cause—the imperfection of language—was the manner in which Newton spoke
of the eternity or infinity of the Supreme Being, as if he regarded
him as present in all parts of time and space by _diffusion_: whereas
his notion simply was, that since He is necessarily and essentially
present in all parts of space and duration, space and duration must also
necessarily exist. Durat semper, et adest ubique, et existendo semper et
ubique, durationem et spatium constituit,—is the tenet which he held.
No less difficult is it to express correctly the inference which we may
legitimately deduce of the PERSONALITY of the Godhead from the works
and course of creation. And yet the idea is immediately consequent
upon the conviction of a Divine existence, and is inseparable from it.
The conception of both is necessarily involved in the same process of
thought. Wherever we trace the actings of mind or of intelligence, the
impress of design or the operations of a discriminating, discerning
cause, reference is at one and the same instant made to a distinct
personal subsistence. Power, wisdom, and goodness, may, indeed, be
regarded in one way as abstract qualities. We can reason about them, and
hold them up to our contemplation, as something distinct or different
from the bodies in which they reside. Hence all our speculations
respecting the laws of nature, the primary and secondary qualities
of matter, the relations of cause and effect, to which principle
of abstraction in man the various sciences owe their origin. The
inductive philosophy is entirely built upon it. The creations of poetry,
the peopling of the streams, groves, and mountains, with the ideal
impersonations of fancy, are derived from the same source; while, by
lifting us above the dominion of mere sense and attention to our physical
wants, our spiritual energies are thereby awakened, and the soul enabled
by its own inner visions to hold communings with new worlds, and to
anticipate a new life.
But the principle of abstraction does not stop here. It both separates
and combines. While it deals with the inferior manifestations of
ideal qualities, it unites and embodies into one—links the universe
to its Creator—represents him as the cause of all causes, the source
of all power, and the fountain of all life; out of whose boundless,
illimitable essence is the efflux of all being and existence. The
ancients erroneously clothed their conceptions of Godhead in human shape,
and multiplied the number of divinities to accord to the varieties of
human passion, making gods many, as there were principles of good or
evil in their own hearts; but still their superstition had a reality
and foundation in nature. Their mythology had its origin in a true,
though corrupted, theism; and giving form and locality to their numerous
divinities, they but obeyed the dictates of that sentiment of the
inner man, which, in unison with the voice of all creation, proclaims
the existence of a Being whose personal subsistence and personal
superintendence we necessarily associate with the laws and management of
nature. HE is there among his works, their Director as well as author.
The UNITY of the Divine Being follows, in like manner, from an extended
observation of the course of creation. There is but one God, as there
is but one system of nature—one universe where the same law which acts
upon all terrestrial bodies pervades all space, rules over the planets,
and guides systems of worlds in their courses. Our deepest researches
into the structure of the earth show, that the same forces have been
operative there, as are still traced in passing changes on the surface.
Similar organic forms were from the earliest periods in being, endowed
with similar instincts, performing the self-same functions in the
economy of nature, with their living types of the present day. The air,
the sea, the earth; plants, animals, and man, are under one scheme of
providence. The seasons are uniformly successive. Year to year we see the
same causes in operation. Time rolls on; changes, vast and progressive,
have been effected in the moral as well as physical aspect of the world,
while bodies remain essentially what they were before, the conditions of
sentient existence unaltered, and man occupies the same high intellectual
position in the great scale of being. The same government thus maintains
over all; the parts shifting and changing, the whole stable and
collectively advancing; bound together by one invisible chain, and moving
in obedience to one great principle of destiny and superintending will.
Hence, upon the presumption that the character of the works determines
the character of their author, the intelligent power which presides
over all this must necessarily be ONE. Since creation in its elements,
arrangements, and means of general harmony, is constructed upon a
plan, and since that plan manifests the most perfect order—deviations
controlled within limits, and convulsions only contributive to its
greater stability—the inference cannot be resisted, that the Creator is
essentially one in his being, as he is undivided in his purposes and
actings.
When we narrow the field of inquiry, and look to man alone, in his
relation to the external world, and the character of his moral
constitution, the conclusion becomes still more decided and apparent.
Here we see that the last of created beings is not only the highest in
the scale, but likewise in the most perfect and extensive unison with
the general scheme of nature. He spreads himself over the whole face of
creation, is capable of enduring all climes, of deriving sustenance from
the products of all countries, conveniences and the means of improvement
from the rocks of all ages. If we cannot demonstrate that this earth
was made exclusively for man’s use, we can still clearly show that he
participates more largely in its various products than any of its other
inhabitants, while it furnishes, not only to the individual, but to the
race, generation after generation, the amplest field of mental and moral
cultivation of which their natures are capable. The God of the outward
world is also, and pre-eminently, the God of man’s inner being. He who
created the light, likewise formed the human body. The potter of the
clay fashioned and quickened the immaterial spirit. The controller of
universal nature reigns supreme in the dominion of the soul. The power
that binds the planets in their orbits, gives law to the conscience,
constraining it to acknowledge in its perception of truth and homage to
virtue the reverence that is due to the One Righteous Governor over all.
Contemplated under this latter and most important aspect of our nature,
we are brought, in fact, into immediate communication with the undivided
Author of our being. The idea of many is excluded in the conviction
that truth and duty are one and unalterable. The gravitating principle
in matter is not more universal in its operation, nor more distinct in
its constraining influence over all bodies, than is the principle of
CONSCIENCE in referring the good and evil of all actions to the standard
of rectitude and tribunal of a righteous judge. Tribes, the most remote
from each other—the most debased in ignorance—the most polluted in
guilt—agree in this common attribute of humanity. Mankind do not, indeed,
acknowledge one and the same standard of morality, and in religious
observances there is the utmost diversity of opinion and practice. But
the sense of duty, the feeling of moral and religious obligation, is
universally discriminative of the human family; the sentiment of right
and wrong is engraven indelibly on all human hearts. And, amidst all the
ignorance or misconceptions that may prevail as to the merit or demerit
of particular actions, the moral principle points but to one foundation
of truth—the One Supreme—the Lord of conscience as of creation.
The PERFECTIONS of the Supreme Being are, in like manner, as distinctly
notified in the works of creation as the fact of the mere existence of
a designing Creator. The immensity of the universe clearly demonstrates
the _power_ in which it originated, and by which all its movements are
still sustained, guiding the infinite systems of celestial bodies and
the geological revolutions of our own planet with the same ease that it
watches over and upholds the minutest objects in existence. There is
no exhausting nor wearing out of the energies of nature: the arm that
reared, still directs the stupendous fabric; and as skill and contrivance
are manifest in every part, the greatest simplicity combined with the
most exquisite adjustments, the utmost regularity prevailing in every
department, and no failure in the operations of a single law throughout
the vastness of creation, the conviction of consummate _wisdom_ and
of infinite _omniscience_ irresistibly strikes upon the mind. No less
clear and convincing are the evidences of _goodness_ in the system of
creation which we have been contemplating. The works, formed by the
Divine hand, and which now occupy the Divine care, are boundless in
extent, and of infinite variety; and they appear, to the eye of the
common observer, as well as to the searching intellect, all formed
for use, all rich in beauty, all indicative of beneficence. There is
not utility alone interwoven, but an inimitable loveliness painted on
the face and stamped on every department of nature; while creatures
innumerable, of various orders and of different structures, present
themselves to our view, which, by their creation and preservation—by
the powers they possess, and the enjoyments they attain—proclaim the
liberality of their author to be boundless. Nay, the inanimate parts of
nature bear testimony to the same truth; the sun warms and fertilizes
the earth; the earth affords nourishment, and furnishes a convenient
dwelling-place to the various living creatures that inhabit it; and thus
dead matter, in all its arrangements and under all its past changes, by
being framed in subserviency to the happiness of living and intelligent
beings, clearly evinces the goodness of its Creator. But to Man, in
addition, the inspiration of the Almighty has given understanding, and
has constituted him supreme in this lower world. Whoever considers his
nature and condition, the make of his body and the constitution of his
mind, the provision that is furnished for the supply of his animal wants,
the objects that are provided for the improvement of his intellectual
faculties, and the scope that is afforded for the exercise of his moral
affections, must acknowledge that, if the goodness of God be manifestly
displayed in the other works of his hands, it shines with peculiar luster
in the creation and preservation of man.
Thus, step by step, we rise to the loftiest conception which the human
mind can embrace—the conception of a God—the personality, unity, and
perfection of his being. How the conception of a Creator is formed, we
cannot otherwise describe than by saying, that it springs up in the mind
immediately upon the perception of an external world. It is not so much
an exercise of reason, or elaborate effort of the understanding; but is
rather a direct impression, traced at once upon the soul, as the image
of Deity reflected from his works. All men possess it, for all men are
so constituted, that they cannot look upon creation without the idea of
a Creator accompanying and flowing from the act. The conception will be
obscure, vague, and indistinct, according to the capacity, improvement,
and general knowledge of the individual. But the conception is there, as
necessarily as the effect follows the cause, the shadow the substance,
the image the object which occasioned it. The heavens DECLARE the glory
of God, the firmament SHOWS his handiwork, the earth bears the traces
of his path. And just in the degree in which we study and examine his
works—their uses and adaptations—their infinite variety, proportions,
regularity, and magnitude—are our convictions of his existence deepened,
our admiration of his being and attributes enhanced, our feeling of
security under his rule strengthened, and our sense of obligation and
responsibility increased and solemnized. Ignorance does not obliterate
the sense of Deity; it confuses and multiplies the image of his
existence: it leads to polytheism. Knowledge brightens the picture, and
represents the Creator, as reflected in his works, EXCELLENT, GLORIOUS,
AND INFINITELY PERFECT.
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Playfair.
[2] Playfair.
[3] Works, vol. i, page 189.
[4] Dr. Dieffenbach’s New Zealand.
[5] The diamonds found in the Ural chain are supposed to be connected
with the carbonaceous grits of the devonian and carboniferous periods,
which have been transmuted into metamorphic micaceous rocks, and contain
the diamonds between the flakes of mica, just as garnets occur in
mica-schist. Captain Franklin discovered diamonds in Bundelkund, imbedded
in sandstone, with coal beneath, and supposed to belong to the true
carboniferous system.
[6] Westminster Review, No. LXXIX.
[7] The strata in which these tracks occur have since been carefully
investigated by Prof. H. D. Rogers, who has ascertained that they belong
truly to the carboniferous red shale, and are, therefore, of an age
essentially later than that attributed to them. In a communication made
to the American Association, Prof. Rogers says:—They occur, indeed, in
a geological horizon, only a few hundred feet below the conglomerate
which marks the beginning of the productive coal series, in which
series similar foot-prints, attributed to batrachian reptiles, had been
previously met with in Western Pennsylvania. Instead, therefore, of
constituting a register of the antique life earlier than any hitherto
discovered, by at least a whole chapter in the geological book, they
carry back its age only by a single leaf. The surfaces upon which
these interesting foot-prints abound are the smooth, divisional plains
separating the beds of red sandstone, and are invariably coated with a
fine impalpable material of a once slimy and soft mud; and everything
in the texture of these surfaces goes to prove that they were in
contact with the air, and were the stages of rest between the alternate
depositions of the strata. Many of them are covered with ripple-lines and
water-marks, suggestive of the shelving shore, and, with few exceptions,
they are spotted over with little circular impressions, imputed to the
pattering of rain. All over the successive floors of this ancient world,
as delicate and impressible in their texture as so much wax or parchment,
are the footsteps and the trails of various creeping things,—the prints
of some unknown four-footed creature, thought to be reptilian in its
nature, but of whose true affinities the Professor expressed his doubts,
trails analogous to those of worms and molluscs, and various other marks,
written in hieroglyphics too ancient to be interpreted. The larger
foot-prints are, for the most part, five-toed, alternate in the steps,
and with the fore feet as large nearly as the hind ones; marks of the
scratching and slipping of the feet, and the half effacing passage of the
tail, or of some soft portion of the body, are often distinctly legible.
Prof. Agassiz stated his doubts as to the reptilian character of the
foot-prints noticed, and, after describing the difference in the
arrangement of the locomotive organs of the modern and the ancient
fishes, gave it as his belief, that in those early periods there were
fishes of a structure which permitted them to walk upon all fours.
[8] Rapport sur les Poissons Fossiles de l’Argile de Londres.
[9] Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. i, p. 269.
[10] Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, by Richard Verstegan. London,
8vo, 1605. Noticed in “Chambers’ Journal,” June, 1846.
[11] Dr. Pye Smith on Scripture Geology.
[12] This branch of the argument has also been minutely and ingeniously
extended in the last work of Mr. Hugh Miller, “Foot-prints of the
Creator,” where the author dwells particularly on the comparative
measurements of the different fossils found in different formations; a
masterly and felicitous addition to the side of truth.
[13] “There is no doubt that coral, under favorable conditions of growth,
increases to an enormous extent, and very rapidly: and although there
are many instances on record of reefs which have not increased for
many years, there are others telling a very different tale. The case
of Matilda Atoll, described by Captain Beechy, is quoted as an example
of this latter kind, this atoll having been converted in thirty-four
years from being a reef of rocks into a lagoon island, fourteen miles in
length, with one of its sides covered nearly all the way with high trees.
Some experiments were also mentioned, in which it has been attempted to
measure the rate of increase of different kinds of corals, and as one
result of these, is an instance of a growth of two feet thick of coral,
accumulated on the copper bottom of a vessel in the course of twenty
months.”—_Geology of the Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin._
[14] Mrs. Somerville’s Physical Geography.
[15] Mr. Davis.
[16] The Pre-Adamite Earth.
[17] 1. De Augm. Scien. L. I.
[18] La Place.
GLOSSARY OF SCIENTIFIC TERMS.
ACCRETION. Increase of size or growth by the mechanical addition of new
particles.
ACLINIC LINE. The magnetic equator.
ACOTYLEDONOUS. Plants having no seed-lobes. Mosses and ferns belong to
this division, and most of the coal plants are acotyledonous.
ACTYNOLITE. A green mineral found chiefly in primitive formations often
crystallized in six sided prisms.
AEROLITES. Stones which appear to have fallen from the higher parts of
the atmosphere. They are sometimes called Meteorites.
ALGÆ. A division of plants including the common sea-weeds.
ALUMINOUS. Containing alumina, or rather silicate of alumina, which is
the base of pure clay. Thus, aluminous means _clayey_. The word is,
however, sometimes used in the sense of containing _alum_, a sulphate of
alumina and potash.
AMMONITE. A fossil genus of many-chambered shells allied to the Nautilus,
named from their resemblance to the horns on the statues of Jupiter Ammon.
AMORPHOUS. Without regular form.
AMORPHOZOA. Animals without definite form—sponges.
AMYGDALOID. Almond-shaped. Any rock is called by this name which contains
rounded or elongated minerals imbedded in some simple mineral or base.
AMYGDALOIDAL (in mineralogy). A conglomerate.
ANALCIME is found in granite and gneiss rock—generally in cubes of
various colors.
ANANCHYTES. A genus of fossil echini or sea-urchins—in the chalk, &c.
ANCHYLOSIS. (Gr., crooked), a joint is said to be anchylosed, when so
diseased as to become, or when it becomes, stiff or immovable.
ANNELIDÆ. (Annulus, a ring)—Lamarck’s worm-shaped animals, as Serpula,
vermilia, &c.
ANOPLOTHERIUM. The name given to a characteristic genus of a group of
extinct quadrupeds found fossil in the older Tertiary deposits, and
nearly allied to the tapir and pig.
ANTICLINAL. Or _Anticlinal axis_. A saddle-shaped position of rocks, the
result of disturbance.
APIOCRINITE. Pear-shaped crinoidea—lily-shaped animals.
AQUEOUS. That which is dependent on water. Aqueous rocks are those
produced by deposit from water.
ARBORESCENT. Branching like a tree.
ARENACEOUS. Sandy.
ARGENTIFEROUS. Containing silver.
ARGILLACEOUS. Clayey.
ARTICULATA. A natural division of animals having their limbs articulated
or jointed together, like the lobster.
ASAPHUS. An obscure genus of trilobites.
ASBESTUS. A fibrous mineral of which an incombustible cloth is sometimes
made.
ASTEROLEPIS. (Gr., star scale). It is the largest fish yet found in the
_Old Red Sandstone_.
AUGITE. (Gr., luster)—a mineral.
BASALT. An igneous rock, often columnar and supposed to be ancient
volcanic lava. It is the most common of the group called _Trap-rocks_.
BED or STRATUM. A layer of material the whole of which exhibits some
common character.
BELEMNITE. A dart-shaped shell, probably the ancient representative of
some of our cuttle-fish. The shell is conical and chambered.
BELLEROPHON. A small chambered-shell like the Nautilus.
BOTRYOIDAL (in Mineralogy). Clustered like a bunch of grapes.
BRACHIOPODA. A group of shell-bearing animals having two long spiral arms
serving to assist in locomotion and for other purposes.
BREVIPENNATE. Short-winged.
CÆLACANTHUS. A fish of the Devonian formation.
CALAMITE. A fossil from the coal-measures resembling a gigantic reed.
CALAMUS. A fossil reed-like plant.
CALCAIRE GROSSIER. A coarse limestone of the Older Tertiary period, found
in the Paris basin.
CALCAIRE SILICEUX. A compact silicious limestone sometimes replacing the
calcaire grossier.
CALCAREOUS. Containing lime.
CAMBRIAN. Belonging to Wales. The “Cambrian system” in Geology, is a name
suggested by Professor Sedgwick, to designate part of the Silurian series
of North Wales.
CARAPACE. The upper shell of reptiles.
CARBONIFEROUS. Containing carbon.
CARNIVOROUS. Flesh-eating. The “Carnivora” in Zoology consist of a group
of animals eminently carnivorous.
CAUDAL. Connected with the tail.
CEPHALOPODA. A group of animals of which the Nautilus and Cuttlefish are
examples, having the locomotive apparatus immediately over the head and
stomach.
CEPHALASPIS (Buckler-head). A fish.
CESTRACION. A fish, a genus of an extinct family of sharks.
CETACEANS. The whale tribe.
CHALCEDONY. A silicious mineral, like Cornelian.
CHALYBEATE. Water holding iron in solution.
CHARA, CHARACIDÆ. An aquatic plant fossilized.
CHEIROLEPIS (Thorny scale). A fossil fish.
CHELONIA. Sea tortoise.
CHERT. A silicious mineral, resembling common flint, but of coarser
texture.
CHŒROPOTAMUS. An extinct quadruped found in the Eocene of England.
CHEIRACANTHUS (thorny hand). A fish of the Old Red Sandstone.
CIRRHIPEDA (hair feet). Balanus-Coronula; Anatifa are of this family.
CLINOMETER. An instrument for measuring the dip and determining the
strike of beds or strata.
COAL-MEASURES. The whole group of deposits, consisting chiefly of sands
and shales, with which coal is usually found.
COCCOSTEUS. (Gr., berry on bone)—a Ganoid fish.
COLEOPTERA. Beetles whose wings are covered with a hard sheath.
COLUMNAR. Arranged in columns.
CONCHIFERA. One of the great divisions of Conchology.
CONCHOIDAL. Resembling a shell. Used in Mineralogy to designate a
particular kind of fracture.
CONDYLE. A knob at the end of a bone, a joint.
CONFORMABLE. When the planes of bedding of two successive beds or strata
are parallel to each other they are said to be _conformable_; when not
parallel they are _unconformable_.
CONGENERS. Species belonging to the same genus.
CONGLOMERATE or PUDDINGSTONE. A rock made up of rounded water-worn
fragments of rock or pebbles cemented together by another mineral
substance.
CONIFERÆ. Trees that bear cones, as the pine.
COPROLITE. The fossil remains of excrement.
COSMICAL. Relating to the universe.
COSMOGONY. The word formerly applied to speculations concerning the
earth’s age and history.
COTYLEDONOUS. Plants whose seeds have but one lobe.
CRAG. The name given to certain Tertiary deposits in Norfolk and Suffolk.
CRETACEOUS. Belonging to the chalk.
CRINOID. Belonging to the encrinite family.
CROPPING OUT. The _out-crop_ of a bed is its first appearance at the
surface.
CRUSTACEANS. Belonging to the crab or lobster family, &c.
CRYPTOGAMOUS. Plants without apparent flowers.
CRYSTAL. The regular form in which a mineral is presented when that form
can be described mathematically. A mineral is said to be _crystalline_
when its atoms are arranged with reference to some definite form.
CTENACANTHUS. Belonging to the Placoids.
CTENOIDS. Fishes with comb-shaped scales.
CTENOPTYCHIUS. A fish of the chalk formation.
CULM. An impure kind of coal.
CUMBRIAN. Occurring in Cumberland. The “Cumbrian System” of Prof.
Sedgwick is a part of the Silurian series of the Lake district of
Cumberland and Westmoreland.
CYCADEÆ. Fossil plants of the coal-measures.
CYCLAS. A small bivalve shell recent and fossil.
CYCLOID. Marginated scales.
DEBRIS. The fragments of rocks removed by the action of weathering or by
water.
DECORTICATED. Stripped of bark.
DEFLECTION. Deviation from a straight course.
DEGRADATION. The wearing away of rocks, generally effected by aqueous
action.
DELIQUESCENT. Becoming fluid by the attraction of water from the
atmosphere.
DELTA. The alluvial land formed by a river at its mouth, usually expanded
in a fan shape like the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet (Δ), and
thence called _Delta_.
DENUDATION. The act of laying bare rocks formerly covered up, the removal
of the overlying masses being effected by water.
DERMAL. Belonging to the skin.
DETRITUS. Matter rubbed off by mechanical action from other rocks.
DIALLAGE. A mineral.
DIDELPHYS. A pouched animal, as the Opossum.
DINOSAURIA. Land lizards—only found fossil.
DIP (in Geology). The angle of inclination which the plane of a bed makes
with the plane of the horizon.
DIPLOPTERUS, DIPLODUS, and DIPLOCANTHUS. Fishes of the Devonian or Old
red sandstone.
DIPTERUS (having two wings). A fish of the Old red sandstone.
DODO. A large bird once found in the Isle of France, but now extinct.
DOLOMITE. Crystalline carbonate of lime and magnesia.
DYKE. A rock, generally crystalline, occupying a rent or fissure in some
other and older rock. A dyke differs from a mineral vein chiefly in its
greater magnitude and in the absence of ramifications.
DYNAMICS (Gr., power). Used in mechanics.
ECHINODERMATA. Having a skin like a hedgehog.
EFFLORESCENCE. The term used to describe the falling to powder of certain
minerals on exposure.
EMBOUCHURE. The mouth of a great river.
ENALIOSAURIA, PLESIOSAURUS and PLIOSAURUS. Marine Saurians, as the
Ichthyosaurus.
ENCRINITE. Stone lily.
ENDOGENOUS. Plants that increase from within, as lilies, grasses, and
among trees, palms.
ENTOMOSTRACEA. One of Cuvier’s sections of Crustaceans.
EOCENE. The name given by Sir C. Lyell to the lowest and oldest division
of the Tertiary series of rocks.
EQUISETUM. A plant, fossil and recent.
ESCARPMENT. The steep face of a mountain chain or a ridge of high land.
EXOGENOUS. Plants which increase their wood by external additions or
rings of growth.
EXUVIÆ. A name sometimes given to all fossil remains found in the earth’s
crust.
FAUNA. The whole group of animals peculiar to a country or natural region
at some one period.
FELDSPAR. A hard silicious rock.
FERRUGINOUS. Irony, or containing iron.
FERN. (Lat., Felices), a class of cryptogamous plants.
FISSILE. Capable of being split asunder.
FLUSTRA. A parasitic zoophyte or polyparia, which covers sea-weeds and
shells.
FÆCAL SEDIMENT. Dregs, excrement.
FORAMINIFERA. The name given to a group of many-chambered shells,
generally microscopic, the chambers communicating by a small open orifice
(_foramen_).
FOSSIL. A word originally applied to all substances dug out of the earth,
including therefore all minerals, but now limited in its application
to the remains of organic beings, whether vegetable or animal, buried
beneath the surface.
FOSSILIFEROUS. Containing fossils or organic remains.
FRITH. A deep and comparatively narrow arm of the sea.
FRONDS. The leaf of a fern is called a frond.
FUCOID. That which resembles a _fucus_, or seaweed:—fossil remains of
fuci are called fucoids.
FUSIFORM. Spindle-shaped.
GALENA. Sulphuret of lead.
GANOID. A group of fishes having enameled scales.
GASTEROPODA. A group of shell-bearing animals covered by one valve, and
having a fleshy foot attached to the belly.
GAULT. A bluish clay underlying the Chalk and Upper green sand in England.
GAVIAL. A species of shark found in the Ganges.
GEODES (in mineralogy) a round hollow stone whose cavity is usually
filled with crystals.
GLACIS. A gently sloping bank.
GLYPTOLEPIS. (Gr., carved scale.)
GLYPTOPOMUS. A Devonian fossil fish.
GNEISS. The name given to mixtures of quartz, feldspar, and mica, in
which there is a laminated arrangement of the different ingredients.
GONIATITES. Chambered fossil shells.
GRANITE. A rock consisting generally of crystals of feldspar and mica
imbedded in a quartzy base.
GRAMINÆ. Grasses.
GRAPTOLITES or SEA-PENS. Fossils of the lower Silurian system.
GRAUWACKE or GRAYWACKE. The name given by German geologists to some of
the older fossiliferous rocks, and generally of a gray color, sandy
composition, and fissile nature.
GRYPHIÆ. Fossil bivalve shells found in the Lias, &c.
HABITAT. The natural district to which a species of animals or vegetables
is confined in its distribution.
HEXAHEDRAL. Having six equal sides.
HETEROCERCAL. Applied to the tail of a fish, means that the upper lobe
extends farther than the under.
HETEROPODA. An order of univalve molluscs, whose feet form a kind of fin.
HOLOPTYCHIUS. A Ganoid fish of the coal-measures.
HORNBLENDE. An important mineral in the composition of some rocks.
HOMOCERCAL. Applied to fishes having equal lobed tails.
HORNSTONE. A variety of quartz found in volcanic districts.
HYALINE. Transparent like glass.
HYBODENTES. Fossil fish.
HYLÆOSAURUS. Fossil lizard of the Wealden.
HYPERSTHENE. A mineral.
HYPOGENE ROCKS. Rocks formed beneath others or which are assumed to have
obtained their present aspect underneath the earth’s surface.
ICHTHYODORULITE. The fossil spine of certain fishes resembling sharks.
ICHTHYOLITES. Fragments of the bones of fossil fishes.
ICHTHYOLOGY. The study and description of fishes.
ICHTHYOSAURUS. A marine reptile (fish-lizard), whose remains are very
abundant in rocks of the Secondary period.
IGNEOUS ROCKS. Rocks, such as lava, trap, and some others which have
been fused by volcanic heat.—Granite and other porphyritic rocks are
sometimes called crystalline.
IGNIGENOUS. Produced by fire.
IGUANODON. Extinct gigantic lizard.
IMBRICATED. Covered with scales overlapping each other like tiles on the
roof of a house.
INOCERAMUS. A bivalve of the chalk formation.
INORGANIC. Not produced by vital action.
INVERTEBRATA. Animals not furnished with a back bone.
JUNCUS (in botany). A rush.
LACERTIANS. Lizards.
LACUSTRINE. Belonging to a lake.
LAGOON. A salt-water lake, or part of a sea nearly inclosed by a strip of
land.
LAMINATED. Arranged in thin plates or _laminæ_.
LENTICULAR. Lens-shaped.
LEPIDOIDES. Extinct fish of the Oolite formation.
LLANDEILO FLAGS. A division of the lower silurian formation of Murchison.
LIAS. A provincial name now generally adopted to designate the calcareous
clay or clayey limestone occurring between the Upper new red sandstone
and the Oolite.
LIGNEOUS. Woody.
LIGNITE. Wood converted into an imperfect kind of coal.
LITHOLOGY (lithos, a stone; logos, a discourse). Description of stones.
LITTORAL. Belonging to the shore.
LOPHIODON. A fossil animal allied to the tapir.
LYCOPODIUM. A cryptogamous plant.
MACAUCO. A four-handed animal allied to the Ape family.
MAMMALIA. Animals that suckle their young.
MARL. A mixture of clay and lime.
MARSUPIAL. An animal having a pouch, as the kangaroo.
MASTODON. A gigantic extinct quadruped resembling the elephant.
MATRIX. The earthy or stony matter in which a mineral or fossil is
imbedded.
MECHANICAL ROCKS. Rocks formed by deposition from water.
MEGALOSAURUS. A gigantic extinct lizard.
MEGALICHTHYS. Megas, great; ichthus, fish.
METAMORPHIC ROCKS. Rocks that have undergone change or metamorphosis
since their original formation.
METATARSAL. The part of the foot between the ankle and toes.
METEOROLOGY. The science of the phenomena of the atmosphere.
MICA SLATE. Is the lowest stratified rock except gneiss—it is
unfossiliferous.
MIOCENE. The middle of the three divisions of tertiary rocks, according
to Sir C. Lyell.
MOLASSE. A provincial name for a sandstone associated with marl and
conglomerates, found abundantly in the great valley of Switzerland. It
belongs to the middle tertiary period.
MOLECULES. The ultimate particles or atoms of bodies.
MOLLUSCA. A division in Conchology.
MONOMYARIA. Bivalve shells having but one adductor muscle.
MORAINE. A Swiss term for the débris of rocks brought down into valleys
by glaciers.
MYRICACIÆ. Plants of the Gale family.
MYTILUS. A marine shell, the mussel.
NEUROPTERIS. A fossil fern of the coal-measures.
NODULE. A rounded irregular-shaped mass.
NUCLEUS. The solid center, about which matter is often collected to form
solids.
NUMMULITES. A group of foraminiferous shells, some of them of large size
and very abundant, occurring in rocks chiefly of the oldest tertiary
period.
OOLITE. A limestone composed of rounded particles, like the roe of a
fish. The name _Oolitic_ is applied to a considerable group of deposits
in which this limestone occurs.
ORGANIC. Exhibiting organization, or the results of vital force. _Organic
remains_, or _fossils_, are the remains of the animals and vegetables of
a former state of existence found buried in rocks.
ORNITHIC. Relating to birds.
ORNITHORHYNCHUS. A singular animal, found in New Holland, called also the
water-mole.
ORTHOCERA. A straight-chambered shell of the Silurian formation.
OSSEOUS. Bony: _Osseous breccia_ is a conglomerate made up of bones
cemented together by lime, and mixed with earthy matter.
OSTEOLEPIS (bone-scale). A fish of the Old red sandstone.
OSTEOLOGICAL. Relating to bones.
OUTCROP. The line at which a stratum first shows itself at the surface in
inclined deposits.
OVIPAROUS. Egg-laying animals.
PACHYDERMATA. A group of animals so called from the thickness of their
skin. The elephant and pig are well known examples.
PALÆONISCUS. A fossil fish of the Magnesian limestone of England.
PALÆONTOLOGY. The science which treats of fossil organic remains; it is
the zoology and botany of the ancient conditions of the earth.
PALÆOTHERIUM. A genus of Pachydermata allied to the Tapir.
PECOPTERIS. A fern of the coal-measures.
PELAGIAN. Belonging to the sea.
PENTACRINITE. A stone lily with five-sided foot-stalk.
PETROLEUM. Mineral pitch.
PHÆNOGAMOUS, or PHANEROGAMIC PLANTS. Those in which the reproductive
organs are apparent.
PHRYGANEA. A family of insects which breed in water.
PHYLLOLEPIS. Leaf-scale.
PHYSICAL. Literally _natural_, but used in scientific language in
treating of the higher and wider views of various departments with
reference to the whole external world, and not to mere human objects.
PHYTOLOGY. The department of Natural History which relates to plants.
Botany.
PLACOID. A group of fishes, so called from the structure of their scales.
PLANORBIS. A fresh water univalve. Fossil and recent.
PLATYGNATHUS. (Greek; platus, wide, and gnathos, jaw or mouth.)
PLESIOSAURUS. An extinct genus of reptiles.
PLIOCENE, OLDER AND NEWER. The upper part of the Tertiary series, so
called by Sir C. Lyell from the preponderance of recent shells in them.
PLUMBAGO (Black lead). The name commonly given to _graphite_, a form of
carbon.
PLUTONIC ROCKS. Rocks supposed to be due to igneous action at great
depths below the earth’s surface, have been thus named by older
geologists. The igneous action is not manifest in such rocks, but
presumed, as in the case of granite.
POLYPARIA. A group of animals of which the _coral animal_ is a well known
example.
PORCELLIA. The papaw, a plant now called asimina.
PORPHYRY. Any rock having crystals imbedded in a base of other mineral
composition. Thus granite is a porphyritic rock, having crystals of
feldspar and mica imbedded in a quartz base.
PREDACEUS. Preying upon other animals.
PREHNITE. A mineral.
PRIMARY, or PRIMITIVE. This name is commonly applied to the rocks which
underlie those that are manifestly of mechanical origin and contain
fossils.
PRODECTUS. A bivalve shell.
PTERICHTHYS. (Winged fish.) A fossil of the Old red sandstone.
PTERODACTYL. A remarkable genus of reptiles adapted for flight; its
remains have been found in a fossil state throughout the Secondary rocks.
PTEROPODA. Marine animals having wing-like fins.
PUDDING STONE. The name often given to coarse conglomerates in which the
fragments or pebbles are rounded.
PYRITES. A name given to the combinations of certain metals with sulphur.
QUA-QUA-VERSAL. The dip of beds in every direction from an elevated
central point. The beds on the flanks of a volcanic cone dip in this way.
QUARTZ. The common form of silica; rock-crystal and flint are examples.
RACEME (in botany). When the florets are arranged along the sides of a
general peduncle.
RADIATA. A division of the animal kingdom so called because the body is
frequently presented in a radiated form like the common star-fish.
RETICULATED. A structure of crossed fibers, like a net, is said to be
reticulated.
ROCK (in Geology). Any mass of mineral matter of considerable or
indefinite extent and nearly uniform character, is called in geological
language a rock, without regard to its hardness or compactness: thus,
loose sand and clay, as well as sandstone and limestone, are spoken of
under this name.
ROCK SALT. Common salt occurring in a crystalline state in rocks.
ROE-STONE. The name sometimes given to _Oolite_.
RUMINANTIA. An important group of quadrupeds including those which chew
the cud, as the ox, deer, &c.
SACCHAROID. Having the texture of loaf sugar.
SALIFEROUS SYSTEM. The new red sandstone system, so called from the salt
with which it is associated in parts of England.
SAURIAN (reptilian). Any animal of the lizard tribe, and many extinct
reptiles only distantly allied to these.
SAUROIDS. Marine fishes resembling lizards.
SALMONOIDES. Resembling the salmon.
SCHIST. A name often used as synonymous with slate, but more commonly,
and very conveniently, limited to those rocks which do not admit of
indefinite splitting, like slate, but are only capable of a less perfect
separation into layers or laminæ. Of this kind are gneiss, mica-schist,
&c., often more or less crystalline.
SCIRPUS (in Botany). A rush.
SCORIÆ. The name given to volcanic ashes. The word means any kind of
cinders, but its scientific use is thus limited.
SHALE. An indurated clay, less fissile than schist, but splitting with
tolerable facility in plates parallel to each other, and to the original
planes of bedding.
SHELL MARL. A deposit of clay, peat, and silt, mixed with shells, which
collects at the bottom of fresh-water lakes.
SERPULA (in Conchology). A worm-like marine shell.
SERRATED. Having points like a saw.
SIGILLARIA. Fossil plants found in the coal-measures.
SILEX, SILICA. The name given by Mineralogists to a pure earth,
more commonly spoken of as _flint_, and, when crystallized, called
rock-crystal.
SILT. The name usually given to the muddy deposit found at the bottom of
running streams.
SILURIAN. The name given by Sir R. Murchison to an important series
of fossiliferous rocks well developed in, and first described from, a
district in Wales and Shropshire formerly inhabited by the _Siluri_, a
tribe of Ancient Britons.
SIPHUNCLE. A small tube passing through an orifice in the septum of a
chambered shell.
SPHENOPTERIS. Fossilfern (leaf wedge-shaped).
SPHEROID. Having a shape nearly resembling that of a sphere or globe.
SPIRIFER. An extinct bivalve.
STALACTITE and STALAGMITE. Concretions of carbonate of lime and sometimes
of other minerals, as quartz or even malachite, deposited by water
dropping from the roof of a cavern or other vacant space.
STEATITE. Soapstone.
STIGMARIA. A coal fossil, an aquatic plant.
STRATIFICATION. The condition of rocks or accumulated minerals deposited
in layers, beds, or _strata_.
STRIKE. The line of bearing of strata, or the direction of any horizontal
line on a stratum.
SUPERPOSITION. An expression very commonly employed by Geologists to
describe the order of arrangement when one bed or stratum reposes upon
another.
SUPRA-CRETACEOUS. A term applied by Sir H. de la Bèche to rocks overlying
the chalk. The term Tertiary is now universally adopted for this group.
SYENITE. The granite of the quarries of Syene in Egypt. It is usual to
call by this name any combination of quartz, feldspar, and hornblende.
SYNCLINAL AXIS. The line of depression between two anticlinal axes.
SYNCONDROSIS. Connection of bones by cartilage.
TEREBRATULA. A fossil shell.
TERTIARY STRATA. The series of sedimentary rocks overlying the chalk, or
other representative of the Secondary period, and extending thence to the
rocks of the Recent period.
TESTACEA. Molluscous or soft animals having a shelly covering.
THECODONT. A fossil saurian or marine lizard.
THERMAL. Hot. _Thermal Springs_ are springs whose temperature is above
the mean annual temperature of the place where they break out.
TETRAPTEROUS. Four-winged.
TIBIA. The principal bone of the leg.
TOAD-STONE. The name given by miners to beds of basalt, occurring in
Derbyshire.
TRACHYTE. A feldspathic variety of lava.
TRAP. Crystalline rocks, composed chiefly of feldspar, augite and
hornblende, combined in many ways, and exhibiting great varieties of
aspect, are frequently called by this name.
TRIAS. The name given on the continent to the beds of the New red
sandstone series.
TRILOBITE. A common fossil in the Dudley limestone, so named from
the characteristic species having the body divided into three lobes.
Trilobites are the remains of a remarkable extinct family of Crustaceans,
of which the crab, lobster, &c., are modern representatives.
TRIONYX. A genus of tortoise, having three claws.
TUFACEOUS, TUFF. An Italian name for a variety of volcanic rock of earthy
texture, and made up chiefly or entirely of fragments of volcanic ashes.
TURBINATED. Shells which have a spiral or screw-like structure are thus
named.
UNCONFORMABLE SUPERPOSITION (instratification). The condition of strata
when one has been deposited horizontally upon the upturned edges of those
immediately below.
UNIO. Fresh water bivalve.
VERTEBRATA, or Vertebrated Animals. A large and most important division
of the animal kingdom, including all those animals provided with a back
bone. Each separate bone of the back is called a _vertebra_.
VERTEX. The summit or upper part of a solid.
VITREOUS. Glassy. Used in Mineralogy to designate a peculiar luster.
VIVIPAROUS. Bearing young alive.
WARP. The deposit of muddy waters.
WEALDEN. The name given to an important fresh-water formation, occurring
between the Cretaceous and Oolitic rocks, chiefly in the Wealds of Kent
and Sussex.
WHIN-STONE. A provincial term applied to some trap rocks.
ZAMIA. A plant allied to the palm, plentiful east of the Cape of Good
Hope.
ZEOLITE. A group of minerals which swell and boil up when exposed to the
blow-pipe flame.
ZOOPHYTE. The term applied to some animals of low organization, which,
during the greater part of their lives, are attached to some foreign
substance, and are incapable of locomotion.
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