Principles of Geology Part 1

Principles of Geology.

by Charles Lyell.

PREFACE.

The Principles of Geology in the first five editions embraced not only a view of the _modern changes_ of the earth and its inhabitants, as set forth in the present work, but also some account of those monuments of a.n.a.logous changes of _ancient_ date, both in the organic and inorganic world, which it is the business of the geologist to interpret. The subject last mentioned, or "geology proper," const.i.tuted originally a fourth book, now omitted, the same having been enlarged into a separate treatise, first published in 1838, in one volume 12mo., and called "The Elements of Geology," afterwards recast in two volumes 12mo. in 1842, and again re-edited under the t.i.tle of "Manual of Elementary Geology,"

in one volume 8vo. in 1851. The "Principles" and "Manual" thus divided, occupy, with one exception, to which I shall presently allude, very different ground. The "Principles" treat of such portions of the economy of existing nature, animate and inanimate, as are ill.u.s.trative of Geology, so as to comprise an investigation of the permanent effects of causes now in action, which may serve as records to after ages of the present condition of the globe and its inhabitants. Such effects are the enduring monuments of the ever-varying state of the physical geography of the globe, the lasting signs of its destruction and renovation, and the memorials of the equally fluctuating condition of the organic world.

They may be regarded, in short, as a symbolical language, in which the earth's autobiography is written.

In the "Manual of Elementary Geology," on the other hand, I have treated briefly of the component materials of the earth's crust, their arrangement and relative position, and their organic contents, which, when deciphered by aid of the key supplied by the study of the modern changes above alluded to, reveal to us the annals of a grand succession of past events--a series of revolutions which the solid exterior of the globe, and its living inhabitants, have experienced in times antecedent to the creation of man.

In thus separating the two works, however, I have retained in the "Principles" (book i.) the discussion of some matters which might fairly be regarded as common to both treatises; as for example, an historical sketch of the early progress of geology, followed by a series of preliminary essays to explain the facts and arguments which lead me to believe that the forces now operating upon and beneath the earth's surface may be the same, both in kind and degree, as those which at remote epochs have worked out geological changes. (See a.n.a.lysis of Contents of this work, p. ix.)

If I am asked whether the "Principles" or the "Manual" should be studied first, I feel much the same difficulty in answering the question as if a student should inquire whether he ought to take up first a treatise on Chemistry, or one on Natural Philosophy, subjects sufficiently distinct, yet inseparably connected. On the whole, while I have endeavored to make each of the two treatises, in their present form, quite independent of the other, I would recommend the reader to study first the modern changes of the earth and its inhabitants as they are discussed in the present volume, proceeding afterwards to the cla.s.sification and interpretation of the monuments of more remote ages.

CHARLES LYELL.

_11 Harley Street, London_, May 24, 1853.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

Geology defined--Compared to History--Its relation to other Physical Sciences--Not to be confounded with Cosmogony.

Geology is the science which investigates the successive changes that have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature; it inquires into the causes of these changes, and the influence which they have exerted in modifying the surface and external structure of our planet.

By these researches into the state of the earth and its inhabitants at former periods, we acquire a more perfect knowledge of its present condition, and more comprehensive views concerning the laws now governing its animate and inanimate productions. When we study history, we obtain a more profound insight into human nature, by inst.i.tuting a comparison between the present and former states of society. We trace the long series of events which have gradually led to the actual posture of affairs; and by connecting effects with their causes, we are enabled to cla.s.sify and retain in the memory a mult.i.tude of complicated relations--the various peculiarities of national character--the different degrees of moral and intellectual refinement, and numerous other circ.u.mstances, which, without historical a.s.sociations, would be uninteresting or imperfectly understood. As the present condition of nations is the result of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote, and others recent, some gradual, others sudden and violent; so the state, of the natural world is the result of a long succession of events; and if we would enlarge our experience of the present economy of nature, we must investigate the effects of her operations in former epochs.

We often discover with surprise, on looking back into the chronicles of nations, how the fortune of some battle has influenced the fate of millions of our contemporaries, when it has long been forgotten by the ma.s.s of the population. With this remote event we may find inseparably connected the geographical boundaries of a great state, the language now spoken by the inhabitants, their peculiar manners, laws, and religious opinions. But far more astonishing and unexpected are the connections brought to light, when we carry back our researches into the history of nature. The form of a coast, the configuration of the interior of a country, the existence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains, can often be traced to the former prevalence of earthquakes and volcanoes in regions which have long been undisturbed. To these remote convulsions the present fertility of some districts, the sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various peculiarities, may be distinctly referred. On the other hand, many distinguishing features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation, at a remote era, of slow and tranquil causes--to the gradual deposition of sediment in a lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals.

To select another example, we find in certain localities subterranean deposits of coal, consisting of vegetable matter, formerly drifted into seas and lakes. These seas and lakes have since been filled up, the lands whereon the forests grew have disappeared or changed their form, the rivers and currents which floated the vegetable ma.s.ses can no longer be traced, and the plants belonged to species which for ages have pa.s.sed away from the surface of our planet. Yet the commercial prosperity, and numerical strength of a nation, may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things.

Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes a.n.a.logous effects were referable, and they would often be enabled to supply, by inference, information concerning many events unrecorded in the defective archives of former ages. But as such extensive acquisitions are scarcely within the reach of any individual, it is necessary that men who have devoted their lives to different departments should unite their efforts; and as the historian receives a.s.sistance from the antiquary, and from those who have cultivated different branches of moral and political science, so the geologist should avail himself of the aid of many naturalists, and particularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of lost species of animals and plants.

The a.n.a.logy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those available in history, extends no farther than to one cla.s.s of historical monuments--those which may be said to be _undesignedly_ commemorative of former events. The canoes, for example, and stone hatchets found in our peat bogs, afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once occupied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defences; the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt. This cla.s.s of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it const.i.tutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently imperfect, possesses at least the advantage of being free from all intentional misrepresentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the same manner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily course of nature; but our liability to err is confined to the interpretation, and, if this be correct, our information is certain.

It was long before the distinct nature and legitimate objects of geology were fully recognized, and it was at first confounded with many other branches of inquiry, just as the limits of history, poetry, and mythology were ill-defined in the infancy of civilization. Even in Werner's time, or at the close of the eighteenth century, geology appears to have been regarded as little other than a subordinate department of mineralogy; and Desmarest included it under the head of Physical Geography. But the most common and serious source of confusion arose from the notion, that it was the business of geology to discover the mode in which the earth originated, or, as some imagined, to study the effects of those cosmological causes which were employed by the Author of Nature to bring this planet out of a nascent and chaotic state into a more perfect and habitable condition. Hutton was the first who endeavored to draw a strong line of demarcation between his favorite science and cosmogony, for he declared that geology was in nowise concerned "with questions as to the origin of things."

An attempt will be made in the sequel of this work to demonstrate that geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as speculations concerning the mode of the first creation of man differ from history. But, before entering more at large on this controverted question, it will be desirable to trace the progress of opinion on this topic, from the earliest ages to the commencement of the present century.

CHAPTER II.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY.

Oriental Cosmogony--Hymns of the Vedas--Inst.i.tutes of Menu--Doctrine of the successive destruction and renovation of the world--Origin of this doctrine--Common to the Egyptians--Adopted by the Greeks--System of Pythagoras--Of Aristotle--Dogmas concerning the extinction and reproduction of genera and species--Strabo's theory of elevation by earthquakes--Pliny--Concluding Remarks on the knowledge of the Ancients.

_Oriental Cosmogony._--The earliest doctrines of the Indian and Egyptian schools of philosophy agreed in ascribing the first creation of the world to an omnipotent and infinite Being. They concurred also in representing this Being, who had existed from all eternity, as having repeatedly destroyed and reproduced the world and all its inhabitants.

In the sacred volume of the Hindoos, called the Ordinances of Menu, comprising the Indian system of duties religious and civil, we find a preliminary chapter treating of the Creation, in which the cosmogony is known to have been derived from earlier writings and traditions; and princ.i.p.ally from certain hymns of high antiquity, called the Vedas.

These hymns were first put together, according to Mr. Colebrooke,[1] in a connected series, about thirteen centuries before the Christian era, but they appear from internal evidence to have been written at various antecedent periods. In them, as we learn from the researches of Professor Wilson, the eminent Sanscrit scholar, two distinct philosophical systems are discoverable. According to one of them, all things were originally brought into existence by the sole will of a single First Cause, which existed from eternity; according to the other, there have always existed two principles, the one material, but without form, the other spiritual and capable of compelling "inert matter to develop its sensible properties." This development of matter into "individual and visible existences" is called creation, and is a.s.signed to a subordinate agent, or the creative faculty of the Supreme Being embodied in the person of Brahma.

In the first chapter of the Ordinances of Menu above alluded to, we meet with the following pa.s.sages relating to former destructions and renovations of the world:--

"The Being, whose powers are incomprehensible, having created me (Menu) and this universe, again became absorbed in the supreme spirit, changing the time of energy for the hour of repose.

"When that Power awakes, then has this world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away..... For while he reposes, as it were, embodied spirits endowed with principles of action depart from their several acts, and the mind itself becomes inert."

The absorption of all beings into the Supreme essence is then described, and the Divine soul itself is said to slumber, and to remain for a time immersed in "the first idea, or in darkness." After which the text thus proceeds (verse fifty-seven), "Thus that immutable power by waking and reposing alternately, revivifies and destroys, in eternal succession, this whole a.s.semblage of locomotive and immovable creatures."

It is then declared that there has been a long succession of _manwantaras_, or periods, each of the duration of many thousand ages, and--

"There are creations also, and destructions of worlds innumerable: the Being, supremely exalted, performs all this with as much ease as if in sport, again and again, for the sake of conferring happiness."[2]

No part of the Eastern cosmogony, from which these extracts are made, is more interesting to the geologist than the doctrine, so frequently alluded to, of the reiterated submersion of the land beneath the waters of a universal ocean. In the beginning of things, we are told, the First Sole Cause "with a thought created the waters," and then moved upon their surface in the form of Brahma the creator, by whose agency the emergence of the dry land was effected, and the peopling of the earth with plants, animals, celestial creatures, and man. Afterwards, as often as a general conflagration at the close of each manwantara had annihilated every visible and existing thing, Brahma, on awaking from his sleep, finds the whole world a shapeless ocean. Accordingly, in the legendary poems called the Puranas, composed at a later date than the Vedas, the three first Avatars or descents of the Deity upon earth have for their object to recover the land from the waters. For this purpose Vishnu is made successively to a.s.sume the form of a fish, a tortoise, and a boar.

Extravagant as may be some of the conceits and fictions which disfigure these pretended revelations, we can by no means look upon them as a pure effort of the una.s.sisted imagination, or believe them to have been composed without regard to opinions and theories founded on the observation of Nature. In astronomy, for instance, it is declared that, at the North Pole, the year was divided into a long day and night, and that their long day was the northern, and their night the southern course of the sun; and to the inhabitants of the moon, it is said one day is equal in length to one month of mortals.[3] If such statements cannot be resolved into mere conjectures, we have no right to refer to mere chance the prevailing notion that the earth and its inhabitants had formerly undergone a succession of revolutions and aqueous catastrophes interrupted by long intervals of tranquillity.

Now there are two sources in which such a theory may have originated.

The marks of former convulsions on every part of the surface of our planet are obvious and striking. The remains of marine animals imbedded in the solid strata are so abundant, that they may be expected to force themselves on the attention of every people who have made some progress in refinement; and especially where one cla.s.s of men are expressly set apart from the rest, like the ancient priesthoods of India and Egypt, for study and contemplation. If these appearances are once recognized, it seems natural that the mind should conclude in favor, not only of mighty changes in past ages, but of alternate periods of repose and disorder;--of repose, when the animals now fossil lived, grew, and multiplied--of disorder, when the strata in which they were buried became transferred from the sea to the interior of continents, and were uplifted so as to form part of high mountain-chains. Those modern writers, who are disposed to disparage the former intellectual advancement and civilization of Eastern nations, may concede some foundation of observed facts for the curious theories now under consideration, without indulging in exaggerated opinions of the progress of science; especially as universal catastrophes of the world, and exterminations of organic beings, in the sense in which they were understood by the Brahmins, are untenable doctrines.

We know that the Egyptian priests were aware, not only that the soil beneath the plains of the Nile, but that also the hills bounding the great valley, contained marine sh.e.l.ls; and Herodotus inferred from these facts, that all lower Egypt, and even the high lands above Memphis, had once been covered by the sea.[4] As similar fossil remains occur in all parts of Asia hitherto explored, far in the interior of the continent as well as near the sea, they could hardly have escaped detection by some Eastern sages not less capable than the Greek historian of reasoning philosophically on natural phenomena.

We also know that the rulers of Asia were engaged in very remote eras in executing great national works, such as tanks and ca.n.a.ls, requiring extensive excavations. In the fourteenth century of our era (in the year 1360), the removal of soil necessary for such undertakings brought to light geological facts, which attracted the attention of a people less civilized than were many of the older nations of the East. The historian Ferishta relates that fifty thousand laborers were employed in cutting through a mound, so as to form a junction between the rivers Selima and Sutlej; and in this mound were found the bones of elephants and men, some of them petrified, and some of them resembling bone. The gigantic dimensions attributed to the human bones show them to have belonged to some of the larger pachydermata.[5]

But, although the Brahmins, like the priests of Egypt, may have been acquainted with the existence of fossil remains in the strata, it is possible that the doctrine of successive destructions and renovations of the world, merely received corroboration from such proofs; and that it may have been originally handed down, like the religious traditions of most nations, from a ruder state of society. The system may have had its source, in part at least, in exaggerated accounts of those dreadful catastrophes which are occasioned by particular combinations of natural causes. Floods and volcanic eruptions, the agency of water and fire, are the chief instruments of devastation on our globe. We shall point out in the sequel the extent of many of these calamities, recurring at distant intervals of time, in the present course of nature; and shall only observe here, that they are so peculiarly calculated to inspire a lasting terror, and are so often fatal in their consequences to great mult.i.tudes of people, that it scarcely requires the pa.s.sion for the marvellous, so characteristic of rude and half-civilized nations, still less the exuberant imagination of Eastern writers, to augment them into general cataclysms and conflagrations.

The great flood of the Chinese, which their traditions carry back to the period of Yaou, something more than 2000 years before our era, has been identified by some persons with the universal deluge described in the Old Testament; but according to Mr. Davis, who accompanied two of our emba.s.sies to China, and who has carefully examined their written accounts, the Chinese cataclysm is therein described as interrupting the business of agriculture, rather than as involving a general destruction of the human race. The great Yu was celebrated for having "opened nine channels to draw off the waters," which "covered the low hills and bathed the foot of the highest mountains." Mr. Davis suggests that a great derangement of waters of the Yellow River, one of the largest in the world, might even now cause the flood of Yaou to be repeated, and lay the most fertile and populous plains of China under water. In modern times the bursting of the banks of an artificial ca.n.a.l, into which a portion of the Yellow River has been turned, has repeatedly given rise to the most dreadful accidents, and is a source of perpetual anxiety to the government. It is easy, therefore, to imagine how much greater may have been the inundation, if this valley was ever convulsed by a violent earthquake.[6]

Humboldt relates the interesting fact that, after the annihilation of a large part of the inhabitants of c.u.mana, by an earthquake in 1766, a season of extraordinary fertility ensued, in consequence of the great rains which accompanied the subterranean convulsions. "The Indians," he says, "celebrated, after the ideas of an antique superst.i.tion, by festivals and dancing, the destruction of the world and the approaching epoch of its regeneration."[7]

The existence of such rites among the rude nations of South America is most important, as showing what effects may be produced by local catastrophes, recurring at distant intervals of time, on the minds of a barbarous and uncultivated race. I shall point out in the sequel how the tradition of a deluge among the Araucanian Indians may be explained, by reference to great earthquake-waves which have repeatedly rolled over part of Chili since the first recorded flood of 1590. (See chap. 29, Book II.) The legend also of the ancient Peruvians of an inundation many years before the reign of the Incas, in which only six persons were saved on a float, relates to a region which has more than once been overwhelmed by inroads of the ocean since the days of Pizarro. (Chap.

29, Book II.) I might refer the reader to my account of the submergence of a wide area in Cutch so lately as the year 1819, when a single tower only of the fort of Sindree appeared above the waste of waters (see Chap. 28, Book II.), if it were necessary, to prove how easily the catastrophes of modern times might give rise to traditionary narratives, among a rude people, of floods of boundless extent. Nations without written records, and who are indebted for all their knowledge of past events exclusively to oral tradition, are in the habit of confounding in one legend a series of incidents which have happened at various epochs; nor must we forget that the superst.i.tions of a savage tribe are transmitted through all the progressive stages of society, till they exert a powerful influence on the mind of the philosopher. He may find, in the monuments of former changes on the earth's surface, an apparent confirmation of tenets handed down through successive generations, from the rude hunter, whose terrified imagination drew a false picture of those awful visitations of floods and earthquakes, whereby the whole earth as known to him was simultaneously devastated.

_Egyptian Cosmogony._--Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.[8] We learn from Plutarch, that this was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in the Indian systems, a definite period a.s.signed for the duration of each successive world.[9] The returns of great catastrophes were determined by the period of the Annus Magnus, or great year,--a cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when these return together to the same sign whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to have set out. The duration of this great cycle was variously estimated. According to Orpheus, it was 120,000 years; according to others, 300,000; and by Ca.s.sander it was taken to be 360,000 years.[10]