Principles of Geology Part 60

A lofty range of mountains, which is so ancient as to date from a period when the species of animals and plants differed from those now living, will naturally form a barrier between contiguous provinces; but a chain which has been raised, in great part, within the epoch of existing species, and around which new lands have arisen from the sea within that period, will be a centre of peculiar vegetation.

"In France," observes De Candolle, "the Alps and Cevennes prevent a great number of the plants of the south from spreading themselves to the northward; but it has been remarked that some species have made their way through the gorges of these chains, and are found on their northern sides, princ.i.p.ally in those places where they are lower and more interrupted."[991] Now the chains here alluded to have probably been of considerable height ever since the era when the existing vegetation began to appear, and were it not for the deep fissures which divide them, they might have caused much more abrupt terminations to the extension of distinct a.s.semblages of species.

Parts of the Italian peninsula, on the other hand, have gained a considerable portion of their present height since a majority of the marine species now inhabiting the Mediterranean, and probably, also, since the terrestrial plants of the same region were in being. Large tracts of land have been added, both on the Adriatic and Mediterranean side, to what originally const.i.tuted a much narrower range of mountains, if not a chain of islands running nearly north and south, like Corsica and Sardinia. It may therefore be presumed that the Apennines have been a centre whence species have diffused themselves over the contiguous _lower_ and _newer_ regions. In this and all a.n.a.logous situations, the doctrine of Wildenow, that species have radiated from the mountains as from centres, may be well founded.

_Introduction of New Species._

If the reader should infer, from the facts laid before him in the preceding chapters, that the successive extinction of animals and plants may be part of the constant and regular course of nature, he will naturally inquire whether there are any means provided for the repair of these losses? Is it part of the economy of our system that the habitable globe should, to a certain extent, become depopulated both in the ocean and on the land; or that the variety of species should diminish until some new era arrives when a new and extraordinary effort of creative energy is to be displayed? Or is it possible that new species can be called into being from time to time, and yet that so astonishing a phenomenon can escape the observation of naturalists?

Humboldt has characterized these subjects as among the mysteries which natural science cannot reach; and he observes that the investigation of the origin of beings does not belong to zoological or botanical geography. To geology, however, these topics do strictly appertain; and this science is chiefly interested in inquiries into the state of the animate creation as it now exists, with a view of pointing out its relations to antecedent periods when its condition was different.

Before offering any hypothesis towards the solution of so difficult a problem, let us consider what kind of evidence we ought to expect, in the present state of science, of the first appearance of new animals or plants, if we could imagine the successive creation of species to const.i.tute, like their gradual extinction, a regular part of the economy of nature.

In the first place it is obviously more easy to prove that a species, once numerously represented in a given district, has ceased to be, than that some other which did not pre-exist has made its appearance--a.s.suming always, for reasons before stated, that single stocks only of each animal and plant are originally created, and that individuals of new species do not suddenly start up in many different places at once.

So imperfect has the science of natural history remained down to our own times, that, within the memory of persons now living, the numbers of known animals and plants have been doubled, or even quadrupled, in many cla.s.ses. New and often conspicuous species are annually discovered in parts of the old continent, long inhabited by the most civilized nations. Conscious, therefore, of the limited extent of our information, we always infer, when such discoveries are made, that the beings in question had previously eluded our research; or had at least existed elsewhere, and only migrated at a recent period into the territories where we now find them. It is difficult, even in contemplation, to antic.i.p.ate the time when we shall be ent.i.tled to make any other hypothesis in regard to all the marine tribes, and to by far the greater number of the terrestrial;--such as birds, which possess such unlimited powers of migration; insects, which, besides the variability of each species in number, are also so capable of being diffused to vast distances; and cryptogamous plants, to which, as to many other cla.s.ses, both of the animal and vegetable kingdom, similar observations are applicable.

_What kind of evidence of new creations could be expected?_--What kind of proofs, therefore, could we reasonably expect to find of the origin at a particular period of a new species?

Perhaps it may be said in reply that, within the last two or three centuries, some forest tree or new quadruped might have been observed to appear suddenly in those parts, of England or France which had been most thoroughly investigated;--that naturalists might have been able to show that no such living being inhabited any other region of the globe, and that there was no tradition of anything similar having before been observed in the district where it had made its appearance.

Now, although this objection may seem plausible, yet its force will be found to depend entirely on the rate of fluctuation which we suppose to prevail in the animate world, and on the proportion which such conspicuous subjects of the animal and vegetable kingdoms bear to those which are less known and escape our observation. There are, perhaps, more than a million species of plants and animals, exclusive of the microscopic and infusory animalcules, now inhabiting the terraqueous globe. The terrestrial plants may amount, says De Candolle, to somewhere between 110,000 and 120,000;[992] but the data on which this conjecture is founded are considered by many botanists to be vague and unsatisfactory. Sprengel only enumerated, in 1827, about 31,000 known phaenogamous, and 6000 cryptogamous plants; but that naturalist omitted many, perhaps 7000 phaenogamous, and 1000 cryptogamous species. Mr.

Lindley, in a letter to the author in 1836, expressed his opinion that it would be rash to speculate on the existence of more than 80,000 phaenogamous, and 10,000 cryptogamous plants. "If we take," he says, in a letter to the author on this subject, "37,000 as the number of published phaenogamous species, and then add, for the undiscovered species in Asia and New Holland, 15,000, in Africa 10,000, and in America 18,000, we have 80,000 species; and if 7000 be the number of published cryptogamous plants, and we allow 3000 for the undiscovered species (making 10,000), there would then be, on the whole, 90,000 species." But since that period one catalogue, as I learn from Dr. J. Hooker, contains a list of the names of 78,000 phaenogamous plants which had been published before 1841.

It was supposed by Linnaeus that there were four or five species of insects in the world for each phaenogamous plant: but if we may judge from the relative proportion of the two cla.s.ses in Great Britain, the number of insects must be still greater; for the total number of British insects, "according to the last census," is about 12,500;[993] whereas there are only 1500 phaenogamous plants indigenous to our island. As the insects are much more numerous in hot countries than in our temperate lat.i.tudes, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that there are more than half a million species in the world.

The number of known mammifers, when Temminck wrote, exceeded 800, and Mr. Waterhouse informs me that more than 1200 are now (1850) ascertained to exist. Baron Cuvier estimated the amount of known fishes at 6000; and Mr. G. Gray, in his "Genera of Birds," enumerates 8000 species. We have still to add the reptiles, and all the invertebrated animals, exclusive of insects. It remains, in a great degree, mere matter of conjecture what proportion the aquatic tribes may bear to the denizens of the land; but the habitable surface beneath the waters can hardly be estimated at less than double that of the continents and islands, even admitting that a very considerable area is dest.i.tute of life, in consequence of great depth, cold, darkness, and other circ.u.mstances. In the late polar expedition it was found that, in some regions, as in Baffin's Bay, there were marine animals inhabiting the bottom at great depths, where the temperature of the water was below the freezing point. That there is life at much greater profundities in warmer regions may be confidently inferred.

The ocean teems with life--the cla.s.s of _Polyps_ alone are conjectured by Lamarck to be as strong in individuals as insects. Every tropical reef is described as covered with Corals and Sponges, and swarming with Crustacea, Echini, and Testacea; while almost every tide-washed rock in the world is carpeted with Fuci, and supports some Corallines, Actiniae, and Mollusca. There are innumerable forms in the seas of the warmer zones, which have scarcely begun to attract the attention of the naturalist; and there are parasitic animals without number, three or four of which are sometimes appropriated to one genus, as to the whale (_Balaena_), for example. Even though we concede, therefore, that the geographical range of marine species is more extensive in general than that of the terrestrial (the temperature of the sea being more uniform, and the land impeding less the migrations of the oceanic than the ocean those of the terrestrial species), yet it seems probable that the aquatic tribes far exceed in number the inhabitants of the land.

Without insisting on this point, it may be safe to a.s.sume, that, exclusive of microscopic beings, there are between one and two millions of species now inhabiting the terraqueous globe; so that if only one of these were to become extinct annually, and one new one were to be every year called into being, much more than a million of years might be required to bring about a complete revolution in organic life.

I am not hazarding at present any hypothesis as to the probable rate of change; but none will deny that when the _annual_ birth and the _annual_ death of one species on the globe is proposed as a mere speculation, this at least is to imagine no slight degree of instability in the animate creation. If we divide the surface of the earth into twenty regions of equal area, one of these might comprehend a s.p.a.ce of land and water about equal in dimensions to Europe, and might contain a twentieth part of the million of species which may be a.s.sumed to exist in the animal kingdom. In this region one species only would, according to the rate of mortality before a.s.sumed, perish in twenty years, or only five out of fifty thousand in the course of a century. But as a considerable proportion of the whole would belong to the aquatic cla.s.ses, with which we have a very imperfect acquaintance, we must exclude them from our consideration; and if they const.i.tute half of the entire number, then one species only might be lost in forty years among the terrestrial tribes. Now the Mammalia, whether terrestrial or aquatic, bear so small a proportion to other cla.s.ses of animals, forming less, perhaps, than one thousandth part of the whole, that if the longevity of species in the different orders were equal, a vast period must elapse before it would come to the turn of this conspicuous cla.s.s to lose one of their number. If one species only of the whole animal kingdom died out in forty years, no more than one mammifer might disappear in 40,000 years in a region of the dimensions of Europe.

It is easy, therefore, to see, that in a small portion of such an area, in countries, for example, of the size of England and France, periods of much greater duration must elapse before it would be possible to authenticate the first appearance of one of the larger plants and animals, a.s.suming the annual birth and death of one species to be the rate of vicissitude in the animate creation throughout the world.

The observations of naturalists upon living species may, in the course of future centuries, acc.u.mulate positive data, from which an insight into the laws which govern this part of our terrestrial system may be derived; but, in the present deficiency of historical records, we have traced up the subject to that point where geological monuments alone are capable of leading us on to the discovery of ulterior truths. To these, therefore, we must appeal, carefully examining the strata of recent formation wherein the remains of _living_ species, both animal and vegetable, are known to occur. We must study these strata in strict reference to their chronological order, as deduced from their superposition, and other relations. From these sources we may learn which of the species, now our contemporaries, have survived the greatest revolutions of the earth's surface; which of them have co-existed with the greatest number of animals and plants now extinct; and which have made their appearance only when the animate world had nearly attained its present condition.

From such data we may be enabled to infer, whether species have been called into existence in succession, or all at one period; whether singly, or by groups simultaneously; whether the antiquity of man be as high as that of any of the inferior beings which now share the planet with him, or whether the human species is one of the most recent of the whole.

To some of these questions we can even now return a satisfactory answer; and with regard to the rest, we have some data to guide conjecture, and to enable us to speculate with advantage: but in order to be fully qualified to enter upon such discussions the reader must study the ample body of materials ama.s.sed by the industry of modern geologists.

CHAPTER XLIV.

EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE POWERS OF VITALITY ON THE STATE OF THE EARTH'S SURFACE.

Modifications in physical geography caused by organic beings--Why the vegetable soil does not augment in thickness--The theory, that vegetation is an antagonist power counterbalancing the degradation caused by running water untenable--Conservative influence of vegetation--Rain diminished by felling of forests--Distribution of American forests dependent on direction of predominant winds--Influence of man in modifying the physical geography of the globe.

The second branch of our inquiry, respecting changes of the organic world, relates to the processes by which the remains of animals and plants become fossil, or, to speak still more generally, to all the effects produced by the powers of vitality on the surface and sh.e.l.l of the earth.

Before entering on the princ.i.p.al division of this subject, the imbedding and preservation of animal and vegetable remains, I shall offer a few remarks on the superficial modifications caused directly by the agency of organic beings, as when the growth of certain plants covers the slope of a mountain with peat, or converts a swamp into dry land; or when vegetation prevents the soil, in certain localities, from being washed away by running water.

In considering alterations of this kind, brought about in the physical geography of particular tracts, we are too apt to think exclusively of that part of the earth's surface which has emerged from beneath the waters, and with which alone, as terrestrial beings, we are familiar.

Here the direct power of animals and plants to cause any important variation is, of necessity, very limited, except in checking the progress of that decay of which the land is the chief theatre. But if we extend our views, and instead of contemplating the dry land, consider that larger portion which is a.s.signed to the aquatic tribes, we discover the great influence of the living creation, in imparting varieties of conformation to the solid exterior which the agency of inanimate causes alone could not produce.

Thus, when timber is floated into the sea, it is often drifted to vast distances, and subsides in spots where there might have been no deposit, at that time and place, if the earth had not been tenanted by living beings. If, therefore, in the course of ages, a hill of wood, or lignite, be thus formed in the subaqueous regions, a change in the submarine geography may be said to have resulted from the action of organic powers. So in regard to the growth of coral reefs; it is probable that a large portion of the matter of which they are composed is supplied by mineral springs, which often rise up at the bottom of the sea, and which, on land, abound throughout volcanic regions hundreds of leagues in extent. The matter thus constantly given out could not go on acc.u.mulating for ever in the waters, but would be precipitated in the abysses of the sea, even if there were no polyps and testacea; but these animals arrest and secrete the carbonate of lime on the summits of submarine mountains, and form reefs many hundred feet in thickness, and hundreds of miles in length, where, but for them, none might ever have existed.

_Why the vegetable soil does not augment in thickness._--If no such voluminous ma.s.ses are formed on the land, it is not from the want of solid matter in the structure of terrestrial animals and plants; but merely because, as I have so often stated, the continents are those parts of the globe where accessions of matter can scarcely ever take place--where, on the contrary, the most solid parts already formed are, each in their turn, exposed to gradual degradation. The quant.i.ty of timber and vegetable matter which grows in a tropical forest in the course of a century is enormous, and mult.i.tudes of animal skeletons are scattered there during the same period, besides innumerable land sh.e.l.ls and other organic substances. The aggregate of these materials, therefore, might const.i.tute a ma.s.s greater in volume than that which is produced in any coral-reef during the same lapse of years; but, although this process should continue on the land for ever, no mountains of wood or bone would be seen stretching far and wide over the country, or pushing out bold promontories into the sea. The whole solid ma.s.s is either devoured by animals, or decomposes, as does a portion of the rock and soil on which the animals and plants are supported.

The waste of the strata themselves, accompanied by the decomposition of their organic remains, and the setting free of their alkaline ingredients, is one source from whence running water and the atmosphere may derive the materials which are absorbed by the roots and leaves of plants. Another source is the pa.s.sage into a gaseous form of even the hardest parts of animals and plants which die and putrefy in the air, where they are soon resolved into the elements of which they are composed: and while a portion of these const.i.tuents is volatilized, the rest is taken up by rain-water, and sinks into the earth, or flows towards the sea; so that they enter again and again into the composition of different organic beings.

The princ.i.p.al elements found in plants are hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen; so that water and the atmosphere contain all of them, either in their own composition or in solution.[994] The constant supply of these elements is maintained not only by the putrefaction of animal and vegetable substances, and the decay of rocks, but also by the copious evolution of carbonic acid and other gases from volcanoes and mineral springs, and by the effects of ordinary evaporation, whereby aqueous vapors are made to rise from the ocean, and to circulate round the globe.

It is well known, that when two gases of different specific gravity are brought into contact, even though the heavier be the lowermost, they soon become uniformly diffused by mutual absorption through the whole s.p.a.ce which they occupy. By virtue of this law, the heavy carbonic acid finds its way upwards through the lighter air of the atmosphere, and conveys nourishment to the lichen which covers the mountain top.

If the quant.i.ty of food consumed by terrestrial animals, and the elements imbibed by the roots and leaves of plants, were derived entirely from that supply of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements, given out into the atmosphere and the waters by the putrescence of organic substances, then we might imagine that the vegetable mould would, after a series of years, neither gain nor lose a single particle by the action of organic beings; and this conclusion is not far from the truth; but the operation which renovates the vegetable and animal mould is by no means so simple as that here supposed.

Thousands of carcases of terrestrial animals are floated down, every century, into the sea; and, together with forests of drift-timber, are imbedded in subaqueous deposits, where their elements are imprisoned in solid strata, and may there remain locked up throughout whole geological epochs before they again become subservient to the purposes of life.

On the other hand, fresh supplies are derived by the atmosphere and by running water, as before stated, from the disintegration of rocks and their organic contents, and through the agency of mineral springs from the interior of the earth, from whence all the elements before mentioned, which enter princ.i.p.ally into the composition of animals and vegetables, are continually evolved. Even nitrogen is found, by chemists, to be contained very generally in the waters of mineral springs.

_Vegetation not an antagonist power counterbalancing the action of running water._--If we suppose that the copious supply from the nether regions, by springs and volcanic vents, of carbonic acid and other gases, together with the decomposition of rocks, may be just sufficient to counterbalance that loss of matter which, having already served for the nourishment of animals and plants, is annually carried down in organized forms, and buried in subaqueous strata, we concede the utmost that is consistent with probability. An opinion, however, has been expressed, that the processes of vegetable life, by absorbing various gases from the atmosphere, cause so large a ma.s.s of solid matter to acc.u.mulate on the surface of the land, that this ma.s.s alone may const.i.tute a great counterpoise to all the matter transported to lower levels by the aqueous agents of decay. "Torrents and rivers," it is said--"the waves of the sea and marine currents--act upon lines only; but the power of vegetation to absorb the elastic and non-elastic fluids circulating round the earth, extends over the whole surface of the continents. By the silent but universal action of this great antagonist power, the spoliation and waste caused by running water on the land, and by the movements of the ocean, are neutralized, and even counterbalanced."[995]

In opposition to these views, I conceive that we shall form a juster estimate of the influence of vegetation, if we consider it as being in a slight degree conservative, and capable of r.e.t.a.r.ding the waste of land, but not of acting as an antagonist power. The vegetable mould is seldom more than a few feet in thickness, and frequently does not exceed a few inches; and we by no means find that its volume is more considerable on those parts of our continents which we can prove, by geological data, to have been elevated at more ancient periods, and where, consequently, there has been the greatest time for the acc.u.mulation of vegetable matter, produced throughout successive zoological epochs. On the contrary, these higher and older regions are more frequently denuded, so as to expose the bare rock to the action of the sun and air.

We find in the torrid zone, where the growth of plants is most rank and luxurious, that accessions of matter due to their agency are by no means the most conspicuous. Indeed it is in these lat.i.tudes, where the vegetation is most active, that, for reasons to be explained in the next chapter, even those superficial peat mosses are unknown which cover a large area in some parts of our temperate zone. If the operation of animal and vegetable life could restore to the general surface of the continents a portion of the elements of those disintegrated rocks of which such enormous ma.s.ses are swept down annually into the sea, the effects would long ere this have const.i.tuted one of the most striking features in the structure and composition of our continents. All the great steppes and table-lands of the world, where the action of running water is feeble, would have become the grand repositories of organic matter, acc.u.mulated without that intermixture of earthy sediment which so generally characterizes the subaqueous strata.

I have already stated that, in the known operation of the _igneous_ causes, a real antagonist power is found, which may counterbalance the levelling action of running water (p. 563); and there seems no good reason for presuming that the upheaving and depressing force of earthquakes, together with the ejection of matter by volcanoes, may not be fully adequate to restore that inequality of the surface which rivers and the waves and currents of the ocean annually tend to lessen. If a counterpoise be derived from this source, the quant.i.ty and elevation of land above the sea may for ever remain the same, in spite of the action of the aqueous causes, which, if thus counteracted, may never be able to reduce the surface of the earth more nearly to a state of equilibrium than that which it has now attained; and, on the other hand, the force of the aqueous agents themselves might thus continue for ever unimpaired.

_Conservative influence of vegetation._--If, then, vegetation cannot act as an antagonist power amid the mighty agents of change which are always modifying the surface of the globe, let us next inquire how far its influence is conservative,--how far it may r.e.t.a.r.d the levelling effects of running water, which it cannot oppose, much less counterbalance.

It is well known that a covering of herbage and shrubs may protect a loose soil from being carried away by rain, or even by the ordinary action of a river, and may prevent hills of loose sand from being blown away by the wind; for the roots bind together the separate particles into a firm ma.s.s, and the leaves intercept the rain-water, so that it dries up gradually, instead of flowing off in a ma.s.s and with great velocity. The old Italian hydrographers make frequent mention of the increased degradation which has followed the clearing away of natural woods in several parts of Italy. A remarkable example was afforded in the Upper Val d' Arno, in Tuscany, on the removal of the woods clothing the steep declivities of the hills by which that valley is bounded. When the ancient forest laws were abolished by the Grand Duke Joseph, during the last century, a considerable tract of surface in the Ca.s.sentina (the Clausentinium of the Romans) was denuded, and immediately the quant.i.ty of sand and soil washed down into the Arno increased enormously. Frisi, alluding to such occurrences, observes, that as soon as the bushes and plants were removed, the waters flowed off more rapidly, and, in the manner of floods, swept away the vegetable soil.[996]

This effect of vegetation is of high interest to the geologist, when he is considering the formation of those valleys which have been princ.i.p.ally due to the action of rivers. The s.p.a.ces intervening between valleys, whether they be flat or ridgy, when covered with vegetation, may scarcely undergo the slightest waste, as the surface may be protected by the green sward of gra.s.s; and this may be renewed, in the manner before described, from elements derived from rain-water and the atmosphere. Hence, while the river is continually bearing down matter in the alluvial plain, and undermining the cliffs on each side of every valley, the height of the intervening rising grounds may remain stationary.

In this manner, a cone of loose scoriae, sand, and ashes, such as Monte Nuovo, may, when it has once become densely clothed with herbage and shrubs, suffer scarcely any further dilapidation; and the perfect state of the cones of hundreds of extinct volcanoes in France, the Neapolitan territory, Sicily, and elsewhere, may prove nothing whatever, either as to their relative or absolute antiquity. We may be enabled to infer, from the integrity of such conical hills of incoherent materials, that no flood can have pa.s.sed over the countries where they are situated, since their formation; but the atmospheric action alone, in spots where there happen to be no torrents, and where the surface was clothed with vegetation, could scarcely in any lapse of ages have destroyed them.

During a tour in Spain, in 1830, I was surprised to see a district of gently undulating ground in Catalonia, consisting of red and gray sandstone, and in some parts of red marl, almost entirely denuded of herbage; while the roots of the pines, holm oaks, and some other trees, were half exposed, as if the soil had been washed away by a flood. Such is the state of the forests, for example, between Oristo and Vich, and near San Lorenzo. But, being overtaken by a violent thunder-storm, in the month of August, I saw the whole surface, even the highest levels of some flat-topped hills, streaming with mud, while on every declivity the devastation of torrents was terrific. The peculiarities in the physiognomy of the district were at once explained; and I was taught that, in speculating on the greater effects which the direct action of rain may once have produced on the surface of certain parts of England, we need not revert to periods when the heat of the climate was _tropical_.

In the torrid zone the degradation of land is generally more rapid; but the waste is by no means proportioned to the superior quant.i.ty of rain or the suddenness of its fall, the transporting power of water being counteracted by a greater luxuriance of vegetation. A geologist who is no stranger to tropical countries observes, that the softer rocks would speedily be washed away in such regions, if the numerous roots of plants were not matted together in such a manner as to produce considerable resistance to the destructive power of the rains. The parasitical and creeping plants also entwine in every possible direction, so as to render the forests nearly impervious, and the trees possess forms and leaves best calculated to shoot off the heavy rains; which, when they have thus been broken in their fall, are quickly absorbed by the ground beneath, or, when thrown into the drainage depressions, give rise to furious torrents.[997]

_Influence of Man in modifying the Physical Geography of the Globe._