Principles of Geology Part 5

Whether our investigation of the earth's history and structure will eventually be productive of as great practical benefits to mankind as a knowledge of the distant heavens, must remain for the decision of posterity. It was not till astronomy had been enriched by the observations of many centuries, and had made its way against popular prejudices to the establishment of a sound theory, that its application to the useful arts was most conspicuous. The cultivation of geology began at a later period; and in every step which it has. .h.i.therto made towards sound theoretical principles, it had to contend against more violent prepossessions. The practical advantages already derived from it have not been inconsiderable; but our generalizations are yet imperfect, and they who come after us may be expected to reap the most valuable fruits of our labor. Meanwhile, the charm of first discovery is our own; and, as we explore this magnificent field of inquiry, the sentiment of a great historian of our times may continually be present to our minds, that "he who calls what has vanished back again into being, enjoys a bliss like that of creating."[122]

CHAPTER V.

PREJUDICES WHICH HAVE r.e.t.a.r.dED THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY

Prepossessions in regard to the duration of past time--Prejudices arising from our peculiar position as inhabitants of the land--Of those occasioned by our not seeing subterranean changes now in progress--All these causes combine to make the former course of Nature appear different from the present--Objections to the doctrine, that causes similar in kind and energy to those now acting, have produced the former changes of the earth's surface, considered.

If we reflect on the history of the progress of geology, as explained in the preceding chapters, we perceive that there have been great fluctuations of opinion respecting the nature of the causes to which all former changes of the earth's surface are referable. The first observers conceived the monuments which the geologist endeavors to decipher to relate to an original state of the earth, or to a period when there were causes in activity, distinct, in kind and degree, from those now const.i.tuting the economy of nature. These views were gradually modified, and some of them entirely abandoned, in proportion as observations were multiplied, and the signs of former mutations more skilfully interpreted. Many appearances, which had for a long time been regarded as indicating mysterious and extraordinary agency, were finally recognized as the necessary result of the laws now governing the material world; and the discovery of this unlooked-for conformity has at length induced some philosophers to infer, that, during the ages contemplated in geology, there has never been any interruption to the agency of the same uniform laws of change. The same a.s.semblage of general causes, they conceive, may have been sufficient to produce, by their various combinations, the endless diversity of effects, of which the sh.e.l.l of the earth has preserved the memorials; and, consistently with these principles, the recurrence of a.n.a.logous changes is expected by them in time to come.

Whether we coincide or not in this doctrine, we must admit that the gradual progress of opinion concerning the succession of phenomena in very remote eras, resembles, in a singular manner, that which has accompanied the growing intelligence of every people, in regard to the economy of nature in their own times. In an early state of advancement, when a great number of natural appearances are unintelligible, an eclipse, an earthquake, a flood, or the approach of a comet, with many other occurrences afterwards found to belong to the regular course of events, are regarded as prodigies. The same delusion prevails as to moral phenomena, and many of these are ascribed to the intervention of demons, ghosts, witches, and other immaterial and supernatural agents.

By degrees, many of the enigmas of the moral and physical world are explained, and, instead of being due to extrinsic and irregular causes, they are found to depend on fixed and invariable laws. The philosopher at last becomes convinced of the undeviating uniformity of secondary causes; and, guided by his faith in this principle, he determines the probability of accounts transmitted to him of former occurrences, and often rejects the fabulous tales of former times, on the ground of their being irreconcilable with the experience of more enlightened ages.

_Prepossessions in regard to the duration of past time._--As a belief in the want of conformity in the causes by which the earth's crust has been modified in ancient and modern periods was, for a long time, universally prevalent, and that, too, amongst men who were convinced that the order of nature had been uniform for the last several thousand years, every circ.u.mstance which could have influenced their minds and given an undue bias to their opinions deserves particular attention. Now the reader may easily satisfy himself, that, however undeviating the course of nature may have been from the earliest epochs, it was impossible for the first cultivators of geology to come to such a conclusion, so long as they were under a delusion as to the age of the world, and the date of the first creation of animate beings. However fantastical some theories of the sixteenth century may now appear to us,--however unworthy of men of great talent and sound judgment,--we may rest a.s.sured that, if the same misconception now prevailed in regard to the memorials of human transactions, it would give rise to a similar train of absurdities. Let us imagine, for example, that Champollion, and the French and Tuscan literati lately engaged in exploring the antiquities of Egypt, had visited that country with a firm belief that the banks of the Nile were never peopled by the human race before the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that their faith in this dogma was as difficult to shake as the opinion of our ancestors that the earth was never the abode of living beings until the creation of the present continents, and of the species now existing,--it is easy to perceive what extravagant systems they would frame, while under the influence of this delusion, to account for the monuments discovered in Egypt. The sight of the pyramids, obelisks, colossal statues, and ruined temples, would fill them with such astonishment, that for a time they would be as men spell-bound--wholly incapable of reasoning with sobriety. They might incline at first to refer the construction of such stupendous works to some superhuman powers of a primeval world. A system might be invented resembling that so gravely advanced by Manetho, who relates that a dynasty of G.o.ds originally ruled in Egypt, of whom Vulcan, the first monarch, reigned nine thousand years; after whom came Hercules and other demiG.o.ds, who were at last succeeded by human kings.

When some fanciful speculations of this kind had amused their imaginations for a time, some vast repository of mummies would be discovered, and would immediately undeceive those antiquaries who enjoyed an opportunity of personally examining them; but the prejudices of others at a distance, who were not eye-witnesses of the whole phenomena, would not be so easily overcome. The concurrent report of many travellers would, indeed, render it necessary for them to accommodate ancient theories to some of the new facts, and much wit and ingenuity would be required to modify and defend their old positions.

Each new invention would violate a greater number of known a.n.a.logies; for if a theory be required to embrace some false principle, it becomes more visionary in proportion as facts are multiplied, as would be the case if geometers were now required to form an astronomical system on the a.s.sumption of the immobility of the earth.

Amongst other fanciful conjectures concerning the history of Egypt, we may suppose some of the following to be started. "As the banks of the Nile have been so recently colonized for the first time, the curious substances called mummies could never in reality have belonged to men.

They may have been generated by some _plastic virtue_ residing in the interior of the earth, or they may be abortions of Nature produced by her incipient efforts in the work of creation. For if deformed beings are sometimes born even now, when the scheme of the universe is fully developed, many more may have been 'sent before their time, scarce half made up,' when the planet itself was in the embryo state. But if these notions appear to derogate from the perfection of the Divine attributes, and if these mummies be in all their parts true representations of the human form, may we not refer them to the future rather than the past?--May we not be looking into the womb of Nature, and not her grave?

May not these images be like the shades of the unborn in Virgil's Elysium--the archetypes of men not yet called into existence?"

These speculations, if advocated by eloquent writers, would not fail to attract many zealous votaries, for they would relieve men from the painful necessity of renouncing preconceived opinions. Incredible as such skepticism may appear, it has been rivalled by many systems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and among others by that of the learned Falloppio, who regarded the tusks of fossil elephants as earthy concretions, and the pottery or fragments of vases in the Monte Testaceo, near Rome, as works of nature, and not of art. But when one generation had pa.s.sed away, and another, not compromised to the support of antiquated dogmas, had succeeded, they would review the evidence afforded by mummies more impartially, and would no longer controvert the preliminary question, that human beings had lived in Egypt before the nineteenth century: so that when a hundred years perhaps had been lost, the industry and talents of the philosopher would be at last directed to the elucidation of points of real historical importance.

But the above arguments are aimed against one only of many prejudices with which the earlier geologists had to contend. Even when they conceded that the earth had been peopled with animate beings at an earlier period than was at first supposed, they had no conception that the quant.i.ty of time bore so great a proportion to the historical era as is now generally conceded. How fatal every error as to the quant.i.ty of time must prove to the introduction of rational views concerning the state of things in former ages, may be conceived by supposing the annals of the civil and military transactions of a great nation to be perused under the impression that they occurred in a period of one hundred instead of two thousand years. Such a portion of history would immediately a.s.sume the air of a romance; the events would seem devoid of credibility, and inconsistent with the present course of human affairs.

A crowd of incidents would follow each other in thick succession. Armies and fleets would appear to be a.s.sembled only to be destroyed, and cities built merely to fall in ruins. There would be the most violent transitions from foreign or intestine war to periods of profound peace, and the works effected during the years of disorder or tranquillity would appear alike superhuman in magnitude.

He who should study the monuments of the natural world under the influence of a similar infatuation, must draw a no less exaggerated picture of the energy and violence of causes, and must experience the same insurmountable difficulty in reconciling the former and present state of nature. If we could behold in one view all the volcanic cones thrown up in Iceland, Italy, Sicily, and other parts of Europe, during the last five thousand years, and could see the lavas which have flowed during the same period; the dislocations, subsidences, and elevations caused during earthquakes; the lands added to various deltas, or devoured by the sea, together with the effects of devastation by floods, and imagine that all these events had happened in one year, we must form most exalted ideas of the activity of the agents, and the suddenness of the revolutions. Were an equal amount of change to pa.s.s before our eyes in the next year, could we avoid the conclusion that some great crisis of nature was at hand? If geologists, therefore, have misinterpreted the signs of a succession of events, so as to conclude that centuries were implied where the characters imported thousands of years, and thousands of years where the language of Nature signified millions, they could not, if they reasoned logically from such false premises, come to any other conclusion than that the system of the natural world had undergone a complete revolution.

We should be warranted in ascribing the erection of the great pyramid to superhuman power, if we were convinced that it was raised in one day; and if we imagine, in the same manner, a continent or mountain-chain to have been elevated during an equally small fraction of the time which was really occupied in upheaving it, we might then be justified in inferring, that the subterranean movements were once far more energetic than in our own times. We know that during one earthquake the coast of Chili may be raised for a hundred miles to the average height of about three feet. A repet.i.tion of two thousand shocks, of equal violence, might produce a mountain-chain one hundred miles long, and six thousand feet high. Now, should one or two only of these convulsions happen in a century, it would be consistent with the order of events experienced by the Chilians from the earliest times; but if the whole of them were to occur in the next hundred years, the entire district must be depopulated, scarcely any animals or plants could survive, and the surface would be one confused heap of ruin and desolation.

One consequence of undervaluing greatly the quant.i.ty of past time, is the apparent coincidence which it occasions of events necessarily disconnected, or which are so unusual, that it would be inconsistent with all calculation of chances to suppose them to happen at one and the same time. When the unlooked-for a.s.sociation of such rare phenomena is witnessed in the present course of nature, it scarcely ever fails to excite a suspicion of the preternatural in those minds which are not firmly convinced of the uniform agency of secondary causes;--as if the death of some individual in whose fate they are interested happens to be accompanied by the appearance of a luminous meteor, or a comet, or the shock of an earthquake. It would be only necessary to multiply such coincidences indefinitely, and the mind of every philosopher would be disturbed. Now it would be difficult to exaggerate the number of physical events, many of them most rare and unconnected in their nature, which were imagined by the Woodwardian hypothesis to have happened in the course of a few months; and numerous other examples might be found of popular geological theories, which require us to imagine that a long succession of events happened in a brief and almost momentary period.

Another liability to error, very nearly allied to the former, arises from the frequent contact of geological monuments referring to very distant periods of time. We often behold, at one glance, the effects of causes which have acted at times incalculably remote, and yet there may be no striking circ.u.mstances to mark the occurrence of a great chasm in the chronological series of Nature's archives. In the vast interval of time which may really have elapsed between the results of operations thus compared, the physical condition of the earth may, by slow and insensible modifications, have become entirely altered; one or more races of organic beings may have pa.s.sed away, and yet have left behind, in the particular region under contemplation, no trace of their existence.

To a mind unconscious of these intermediate events, the pa.s.sage from one state of things to another must appear so violent, that the idea of revolutions in the system inevitably suggests itself. The imagination is as much perplexed by the deception, as it might be if two distant points in s.p.a.ce were suddenly brought into immediate proximity. Let us suppose, for a moment, that a philosopher should lie down to sleep in some arctic wilderness, and then be transferred by a power, such as we read of in tales of enchantment, to a valley in a tropical country, where, on awaking, he might find himself surrounded by birds of brilliant plumage, and all the luxuriance of animal and vegetable forms of which Nature is so prodigal in those regions. The most reasonable supposition, perhaps, which he could make, if by the necromancer's art he were placed in such a situation, would be, that he was dreaming; and if a geologist form theories under a similar delusion, we cannot expect him to preserve more consistency in his speculations than in the train of ideas in an ordinary dream.

It may afford, perhaps, a lively ill.u.s.tration of the principle here insisted upon, if I recall to the reader's recollection the legend of the Seven Sleepers. The scene of that popular fable was placed in the two centuries which elapsed between the reign of the emperor Decius and the death of Theodosius the younger. In that interval of time (between the years 249 and 450 of our era) the union of the Roman Empire had been dissolved, and some of its fairest provinces overrun by the barbarians of the north. The seat of government had pa.s.sed from Rome to Constantinople, and the throne from a pagan persecutor to a succession of Christian and orthodox princes. The genius of the empire had been humbled in the dust, and the altars of Diana and Hercules were on the point of being transferred to Catholic saints and martyrs. The legend relates, "that when Decius was still persecuting the Christians, seven n.o.ble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a s.p.a.cious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of 187 years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice: the light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the Seven Sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger, and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth could no longer recognize the once familiar aspect of his native country, and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross triumphantly erected over the princ.i.p.al gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant."[123]

This legend was received as authentic throughout the Christian world before the end of the sixth century, and was afterwards introduced by Mahomet as a divine revelation into the Koran, and from hence was adopted and adorned by all the nations from Bengal to Africa who professed the Mahometan faith. Some vestiges even of a similar tradition have been discovered in Scandinavia. "This easy and universal belief,"

observes the philosophical historian of the Decline and Fall, "so expressive of the sense of mankind, may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We imperceptibly advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human affairs; and even, in our larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions. But if the interval between two memorable eras could be instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two hundred years, to display the new world to the eyes of a spectator who still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a philosophical romance."[124]

_Prejudices arising from our peculiar position as inhabitants of the land._--The sources of prejudice hitherto considered may be deemed peculiar for the most part to the infancy of the science, but others are common to the first cultivators of geology and to ourselves, and are all singularly calculated to produce the same deception, and to strengthen our belief that the course of nature in the earlier ages differed widely from that now established. Although these circ.u.mstances cannot be fully explained without a.s.suming some things as proved, which it will be the object of another part of this work to demonstrate, it may be well to allude to them briefly in this place.

The first and greatest difficulty, then, consists in an habitual unconsciousness that our position as observers is essentially unfavorable, when we endeavor to estimate the nature and magnitude of the changes now in progress. In consequence of our inattention to this subject, we are liable to serious mistakes in contrasting the present with former states of the globe. As dwellers on the land, we inhabit about a fourth part of the surface; and that portion is almost exclusively a theatre of decay, and not of reproduction. We know, indeed, that new deposits are annually formed in seas and lakes, and that every year some new igneous rocks are produced in the bowels of the earth, but we cannot watch the progress of their formation; and as they are only present to our minds by the aid of reflection, it requires an effort both of the reason and the imagination to appreciate duly their importance. It is, therefore, not surprising that we estimate very imperfectly the result of operations thus invisible to us; and that, when a.n.a.logous results of former epochs are presented to our inspection, we cannot immediately recognize the a.n.a.logy. He who has observed the quarrying of stone from a rock, and has seen it shipped for some distant port, and then endeavors to conceive what kind of edifice will be raised by the materials, is in the same predicament as a geologist, who, while he is confined to the land, sees the decomposition of rocks, and the transportation of matter by rivers to the sea, and then endeavors to picture to himself the new strata which Nature is building beneath the waters.

_Prejudices arising from our not seeing subterranean changes._--Nor is his position less unfavorable when, beholding a volcanic eruption, he tries to conceive what changes the column of lava has produced, in its pa.s.sage upwards, on the intersected strata; or what form the melted matter may a.s.sume at great depths on cooling; or what may be the extent of the subterranean rivers and reservoirs of liquid matter far beneath the surface. It should, therefore, be remembered, that the task imposed on those who study the earth's history requires no ordinary share of discretion; for we are precluded from collating the corresponding parts of the system of things as it exists now, and as it existed at former periods. If we were inhabitants of another element--if the great ocean were our domain, instead of the narrow limits of the land, our difficulties would be considerably lessened; while, on the other hand, there can be little doubt, although the reader may, perhaps, smile at the bare suggestion of such an idea, that an amphibious being, who should possess our faculties, would still more easily arrive at sound theoretical opinions in geology, since he might behold, on the one hand, the decomposition of rocks in the atmosphere, or the transportation of matter by running water; and, on the other, examine the deposition of sediment in the sea, and the imbedding of animal and vegetable remains in new strata. He might ascertain, by direct observation, the action of a mountain torrent, as well as of a marine current; might compare the products of volcanoes poured out upon the land with those ejected beneath the waters; and might mark, on the one hand, the growth of the forest, and, on the other, that of the coral reef. Yet, even with these advantages, he would be liable to fall into the greatest errors, when endeavoring to reason on rocks of subterranean origin. He would seek in vain, within the sphere of his observation, for any direct a.n.a.logy to the process of their formation, and would therefore be in danger of attributing them, wherever they are upraised to view, to some "primeval state of nature."

But if we may be allowed so far to indulge the imagination, as to suppose a being entirely confined to the nether world--some "dusky melancholy sprite," like Umbriel, who could "flit on sooty pinions to the central earth," but who was never permitted to "sully the fair face of light," and emerge into the regions of water and of air; and if this being should busy himself in investigating the structure of the globe, he might frame theories the exact converse of those usually adopted by human philosophers. He might infer that the stratified rocks, containing sh.e.l.ls and other organic remains, were the oldest of created things, belonging to some original and nascent state of the planet. "Of these ma.s.ses," he might say, "whether they consist of loose incoherent sand, soft clay, or solid stone, none have been formed in modern times. Every year some part of them are broken and shattered by earthquakes, or melted by volcanic fire; and when they cool down slowly from a state of fusion, they a.s.sume a new and more crystalline form, no longer exhibiting that stratified disposition and those curious impressions and fantastic markings, by which they were previously characterized. This process cannot have been carried on for an indefinite time, for in that case all the stratified rocks would long ere this have been fused and crystallized. It is therefore probable that the whole planet once consisted of these mysterious and curiously bedded formations at a time when the volcanic fire had not yet been brought into activity. Since that period there seems to have been a gradual development of heat; and this augmentation we may expect to continue till the whole globe shall be in a state of fluidity and incandescence."

Such might be the system of the Gnome at the very time that the followers of Leibnitz, reasoning on what they saw on the outer surface, might be teaching the opposite doctrine of gradual refrigeration, and averring that the earth had begun its career as a fiery comet, and might be destined hereafter to become a frozen ma.s.s. The tenets of the schools of the nether and of the upper world would be directly opposed to each other, for both would partake of the prejudices inevitably resulting from the continual contemplation of one cla.s.s of phenomena to the exclusion of another. Man observes the annual decomposition of crystalline and igneous rocks, and may sometimes see their conversion into stratified deposits; but he cannot witness the reconversion of the sedimentary into the crystalline by subterranean fire. He is in the habit of regarding all the sedimentary rocks as more recent than the unstratified, for the same reason that we may suppose him to fall into the opposite error if he saw the origin of the igneous cla.s.s only.

It was not an impossible contingency, that astronomers might have been placed at some period in a situation much resembling that in which the geologist seems to stand at present. If the Italians, for example, in the early part of the twelfth century, had discovered at Amalfi, instead of the pandects of Justinian, some ancient ma.n.u.scripts filled with astronomical observations relating to a period of three thousand years, and made by some ancient geometers who possessed optical instruments as perfect as any in modern Europe, they would probably, on consulting these memorials, have come to a conclusion that there had been a great revolution in the solar and sidereal systems. "Many primary and secondary planets," they might say, "are enumerated in these tables, which exist no longer. Their positions are a.s.signed with such precision that we may a.s.sure ourselves that there is nothing in their place at present but the blue ether. Where one star is visible to us, these doc.u.ments represent several thousands. Some of those which are now single consisted then of two separate bodies, often distinguished by different colors, and revolving periodically round a common centre of gravity. There is nothing a.n.a.logous to them in the universe at present; for they were neither fixed stars nor planets, but seem to have stood in the mutual relation of sun and planet to each other. We must conclude, therefore, that there has occurred, at no distant period, a tremendous catastrophe, whereby thousands of worlds have been annihilated at once, and some heavenly bodies absorbed into the substance of others."

When such doctrines had prevailed for ages, the discovery of some of the worlds, supposed to have been lost (the satellites of Jupiter, for example), by aid of the first rude telescope invented after the revival of science, would not dissipate the delusion, for the whole burden of proof would now be thrown on those who insisted on the stability of the system from a remote period, and these philosophers would be required to demonstrate the existence of _all_ the worlds said to have been annihilated.

Such popular prejudices would be most unfavorable to the advancement of astronomy; for, instead of persevering in the attempt to improve their instruments, and laboriously to make and record observations, the greater number would despair of verifying the continued existence of the heavenly bodies not visible to the naked eye. Instead of confessing the extent of their ignorance, and striving to remove it by bringing to light new facts, they would indulge in the more easy and indolent employment of framing imaginary theories concerning catastrophes and mighty revolutions in the system of the universe.

For more than two centuries the sh.e.l.ly strata of the Subapennine hills afforded matter of speculation to the early geologists of Italy, and few of them had any suspicion that similar deposits were then forming in the neighboring sea. They were as unconscious of the continued action of causes still producing similar effects, as the astronomers, in the case above supposed, of the existence of certain heavenly bodies still giving and reflecting light, and performing their movements as of old. Some imagined that the strata, so rich in organic remains, instead of being due to secondary agents, had been so created in the beginning of things by the fiat of the Almighty. Others, as we have seen, ascribed the imbedded fossil bodies to some plastic power which resided in the earth in the early ages of the world. In what manner were these dogmas at length exploded? The fossil relics were carefully compared with their living a.n.a.logues, and all doubts as to their organic origin were eventually dispelled. So, also, in regard to the nature of the containing beds of mud, sand, and limestone: those parts of the bottom of the sea were examined where sh.e.l.ls are now becoming annually entombed in new deposits. Donati explored the bed of the Adriatic, and found the closest resemblance between the strata there forming, and those which const.i.tuted hills above a thousand feet high in various parts of the Italian peninsula. He ascertained by dredging that living testacea were there grouped together in precisely the same manner as were their fossil a.n.a.logues in the inland strata; and while some of the recent sh.e.l.ls of the Adriatic were becoming incrusted with calcareous rock, he observed that others had been newly buried in sand and clay, precisely as fossil sh.e.l.ls occur in the Subapennine hills. This discovery of the ident.i.ty of modern and ancient submarine operations was not made without the aid of artificial instruments, which, like the telescope, brought phenomena into view not otherwise within the sphere of human observation.

In like manner, the volcanic rocks of the Vicentin had been studied in the beginning of the last century; but no geologist suspected, before the time of Arduino, that these were composed of ancient submarine lavas. During many years of controversy, the popular opinion inclined to a belief that basalt and rocks of the same cla.s.s had been precipitated from a chaotic fluid, or an ocean which rose at successive periods over the continents, charged with the component elements of the rocks in question. Few will now dispute that it would have been difficult to invent a theory more distant from the truth; yet we must cease to wonder that it gained so many proselytes, when we remember that its claims to probability arose partly from the very circ.u.mstance of its confirming the a.s.sumed want of a.n.a.logy between geological causes and those now in action. By what train of investigations were geologists induced at length to reject these views, and to a.s.sent to the igneous origin of the trappean formations? By an examination of volcanoes now active, and by comparing their structure and the composition of their lavas with the ancient trap-rocks.

The establishment, from time to time, of numerous points of identification, drew at length from geologists a reluctant admission, that there was more correspondence between the condition of the globe at remote eras and now, and more uniformity in the laws which have regulated the changes of its surface, than they at first imagined. If, in this state of the science, they still despaired of reconciling every cla.s.s of geological phenomena to the operations of ordinary causes, even by straining a.n.a.logy to the utmost limits of credibility, we might have expected, at least, that the balance of probability would now have been presumed to incline towards the close a.n.a.logy of the ancient and modern causes. But, after repeated experience of the failure of attempts to speculate on geological monuments, as belonging to a distinct order of things, new sects continued to persevere in the principles adopted by their predecessors. They still began, as each new problem presented itself, whether relating to the animate or inanimate world, to a.s.sume an original and dissimilar order of nature; and when at length they approximated, or entirely came round to an opposite opinion, it was always with the feeling, that they were conceding what they had been justified _a priori_ in deeming improbable. In a word, the same men who, as natural philosophers, would have been most incredulous respecting any extraordinary deviations from the known course of nature, if reported to have happened _in their own time_, were equally disposed, as geologists, to expect the proofs of such deviations at every period of the past.

I shall proceed in the following chapters to enumerate some of the princ.i.p.al difficulties still opposed to the theory of the uniform nature and energy of the causes which have worked successive changes in the crust of the earth, and in the condition of its living inhabitants. The discussion of so important a question on the present occasion may appear premature, but it is one which naturally arises out of a review of the former history of the science. It is, of course, impossible to enter into such speculative topics, without occasionally carrying the novice beyond his depth, and appealing to facts and conclusions with which he will be unacquainted, until he has studied some elementary work on geology, but it may be useful to excite his curiosity, and lead him to study such works by calling his attention at once to some of the princ.i.p.al points of controversy.[125]

CHAPTER VI.

DOCTRINE OF THE DISCORDANCE OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN CAUSES OF CHANGE CONTROVERTED.

Climate of the Northern Hemisphere formerly different--Direct proofs from the organic remains of the Italian strata--Proofs from a.n.a.logy derived from extinct quadrupeds--Imbedding of animals in icebergs--Siberian mammoths--Evidence in regard to temperature, from the fossils of tertiary and secondary rocks--From the plants of the coal formation--Northern limit of these fossils--Whether such plants could endure the long continuance of an arctic night.

_Climate of the Northern hemisphere formerly different._--Proofs of former revolutions in climate, as deduced from fossil remains, have afforded one of the most popular objections to the theory which endeavors to explain all geological changes by reference to those now in progress on the earth. The probable causes, therefore, of fluctuations in climate, may first be treated of.

That the climate of the Northern hemisphere has undergone an important change, and that its mean annual temperature must once have more nearly resembled that now experienced within the tropics, was the opinion of some of the first naturalists who investigated the contents of the ancient strata. Their conjecture became more probable when the sh.e.l.ls and corals of the older tertiary and many secondary rocks were carefully examined; for the organic remains of these formations were found to be intimately connected by generic affinity with species now living in warmer lat.i.tudes. At a later period, many reptiles, such as turtles, tortoises, and large saurian animals, were discovered in European formations in great abundance; and they supplied new and powerful arguments, from a.n.a.logy, in support of the doctrine, that the heat of the climate had been great when our secondary strata were deposited.

Lastly, when the botanist turned his attention to the specific determination of fossil plants, the evidence acquired still fuller confirmation; for the flora of a country is peculiarly influenced by temperature: and the ancient vegetation of the earth might have been expected more readily than the forms of animals, to have afforded conflicting proofs, had the popular theory been without foundation. When the examination of fossil remains was extended to rocks in the most northern parts of Europe and North America, and even to the Arctic regions, indications of the same revolution in climate were discovered.

It cannot be said, that in this, as in many other departments of geology, we have investigated the phenomena of former eras, and neglected those of the present state of things. On the contrary, since the first agitation of this interesting question, the accessions to our knowledge of living animals and plants have been immense, and have far surpa.s.sed all the data previously obtained for generalizing on the relation of certain types of organization to particular climates. The tropical and temperate zones of South America and of Australia have been explored; and, on close comparison, it has been found that scarcely any of the species of the animate creation in these extensive continents are identical with those inhabiting the old world. Yet the zoologist and botanist, well acquainted with the geographical distribution of organic beings in other parts of the globe, would have been able, if distinct groups of species had been presented to them from these regions, to recognize those which had been collected from lat.i.tudes within, and those which were brought from without the tropics.

Before I attempt to explain the probable causes of great vicissitudes of temperature on the earth's surface, I shall take a rapid view of some of the princ.i.p.al data which appear to support the popular opinions now entertained on the subject. To insist on the soundness of these inferences, is the more necessary, because some zoologists have undertaken to vindicate the uniformity of the laws of nature, not by accounting for former fluctuations in climate, but by denying the value of the evidence in their favor.[126]

_Proofs from fossil sh.e.l.ls in tertiary strata._--In Sicily, Calabria, and in the neighborhood of Naples, the fossil testacea of the most modern tertiary formations belong almost entirely to species now inhabiting the Mediterranean; but as we proceed northwards in the Italian peninsula we find in the strata called Subapennine an a.s.semblage of fossil sh.e.l.ls departing somewhat more widely from the type of the neighboring seas. The proportion of species identifiable with those now living in the Mediterranean is still considerable; but it no longer predominates, as in the South of Italy and part of Sicily, over the unknown species. Although occurring in localities which are removed several degrees farther from the equator (as at Sienna, Parma, Asti, &c.), the sh.e.l.ls yield clear indications of a warmer climate. This evidence is of great weight, and is not neutralized by any facts of a conflicting character; such, for instance, as the a.s.sociation, in the same group, of individuals referable to species now confined to arctic regions. Whenever any of the fossil sh.e.l.ls are identified with living species foreign to the Mediterranean, it is not in the Northern Ocean, but nearer the tropics, that they must be sought: on the other hand, the a.s.sociated unknown species belong, for the most part, to _genera_ which are now most largely developed in equinoctial regions, as, for example, the genera Cancellaria, Ca.s.sidaria, Pleurotoma, Conus, and Cypraea.

On comparing the fossils of the tertiary deposits of Paris and London with those of Bourdeaux, and these again with the more modern strata of Sicily, we should at first expect that they would each indicate a higher temperature in proportion as they are situated farther to the south.

But the contrary is true; of the sh.e.l.ls belonging to these several groups, whether freshwater or marine, some are of extinct, others of living species. Those found in the older, or Eocene, deposits of Paris and London, although six or seven degrees to the north of the Miocene strata at Bourdeaux, afford evidence of a warmer climate; while those of Bourdeaux imply that the sea in which they lived was of a higher temperature than that of Sicily, where the sh.e.l.ly strata were formed six or seven degrees nearer to the equator. In these cases the greater antiquity of the several formations (the Parisian being the oldest and the Sicilian the newest) has more than counterbalanced the influence which lat.i.tude would otherwise exert, and this phenomenon clearly points to a gradual and successive refrigeration of climate.

_Siberian Mammoths._--It will naturally be asked, whether some recent geological discoveries bringing evidence to light of a colder, or as it has been termed "glacial epoch," towards the close of the tertiary periods throughout the northern hemisphere, does not conflict with the theory above alluded to, of a warmer temperature having prevailed in the eras of the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene formations. In answer to this inquiry, it may certainly be affirmed, that an oscillation of climate has occurred in times immediately antecedent to the peopling of the earth by man; but proof of the intercalation of a less genial climate at an era when nearly all the marine and terrestrial testacea had already become specifically the same as those now living, by no means rebuts the conclusion previously drawn, in favor of a warmer condition of the globe, during the ages which elapsed while the tertiary strata were deposited. In some of the most superficial patches of sand, gravel, and loam, scattered very generally over Europe, and containing recent sh.e.l.ls, the remains of extinct species of land quadrupeds have been found, especially in places where the alluvial matter appears to have been washed into small lakes, or into depressions in the plains bordering ancient rivers. Similar deposits have also been lodged in rents and caverns of rocks, where they may have been swept in by land floods, or introduced by engulphed rivers during changes in the physical geography of these countries. The various circ.u.mstances under which the bones of animals have been thus preserved, will be more fully considered hereafter;[127] I shall only state here, that among the extinct mammalia thus entombed, we find species of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bear, hyaena, lion, tiger, monkey (macacus[128]), and many others; consisting partly of genera now confined to warmer regions.

It is certainly probable that when some of these quadrupeds abounded in Europe, the climate was milder than that now experienced. The hippopotamus, for example, is now only met with where the temperature of the water is warm and nearly uniform throughout the year, and where the rivers are never frozen over. Yet when the great fossil species (_Hippopotamus major_, Cuv.) inhabited England, the testacea of our country were nearly the same as those now existing, and the climate cannot be supposed to have been very hot. The bones of this animal have lately been found by Mr. Strickland, together with those of a bear and other mammalia, at Cropthorn, near Evesham, in Worcestershire, in alluvial sand, together with twenty-three species of terrestrial and freshwater sh.e.l.ls, all, with two exceptions, of British species. The bed of sand, containing the sh.e.l.ls and bones, reposes on lias, and is covered with alternating strata of gravel, sand, and loam.[129]