The Antiquity of Man Part 39

Among the h.o.m.ologous plants alluded to are forty species, of which both the leaves and fruits are preserved, and thirty others, known at present by their leaves only. In the first list we find many American types, such as the tulip tree (Liriodendron), the deciduous cypress (Taxodium), the red maple and others, together with j.a.panese forms, such as a cinnamon, which is very abundant. And what is worthy of notice, some of these fossils so closely allied to living plants occur not only in the Upper, but even some few of them as far back in time as the Lower Miocene formations of Switzerland and Germany, which are probably as distant from the Upper Miocene or Oeningen beds as are the latter from our own era.

Some of the fossil plants to which Professor Heer has given new names have been regarded as Recent species by other eminent naturalists. Thus, one of the trees allied to the elm Unger had called Planera Richardi, a species which now flourishes in the Caucasus and Crete. Professor Heer had attempted to distinguish it from the living tree by the greater size of its fruit, but this character he confessed did not hold good, when he had an opportunity (1861) of comparing all the varieties of the living Planera Richardi which Dr. Hooker laid before him in the rich herbarium of Kew.

As to the "h.o.m.ologous insects" of the Upper Miocene period in Switzerland, we find among them, mingled with genera now wholly foreign to Europe, some very familiar forms, such as the common glowworm, Lampyris noctiluca, Linn., the dung-beetle, Geotrupes stercorarius, Linn., the ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata, Linn., the ear-wig, Forficula auricularia, Linn., some of our common dragon-flies, as Libellula depressa, Linn., the honey-bee, Apis mellifera, Linn., the cuckoo spittle insect, Aphrophora spumaria, Linn., and a long catalogue of others, to all of which Professor Heer had given new names, but which some entomologists may regard as mere varieties until some stronger reasons are adduced for coming to a contrary opinion.

Several of the insects above enumerated, like the common ladybird, are well known at present to have a very wide range over nearly the whole of the Old World, for example, without varying, and might therefore be expected to have been persistent throughout many successive changes of the earth's surface and climate. Yet we may fairly antic.i.p.ate that even the most constant types will have undergone some modifications in pa.s.sing from the Miocene to the Recent epoch, since in the former period the geography and climate of Europe, the height of the Alps, and the general fauna and flora were so different from what they now are. But the deviation may not exceed that which would generally be expressed by what is called a well-marked variety.

Before I pa.s.s on to another topic, it may be well to answer a question which may have occurred to the reader; how it happens that we remained so long ignorant of the vegetation and insects of the Upper Miocene period in Europe? The answer may be instructive to those who are in the habit of underrating the former richness of the organic world wherever they happen to have no evidence of its condition. A large part of the Upper Miocene insects and plants alluded to have been met with at Oeningen, near the Lake of Constance, in two or three spots embedded in thinly laminated marls, the entire thickness of which scarcely exceeds 3 or 4 feet, and in two quarries of very limited dimensions. The rare combination of causes which seems to have led to the faithful preservation of so many treasures of a perishable nature in so small an area, appear to have been the following: first, a river flowing into a lake; secondly, storms of wind, by which leaves and sometimes the boughs of trees were torn off and floated by the stream into the lake; thirdly, mephitic gases rising from the lake, by which insects flying over its surface were occasionally killed: and fourthly, a constant supply of carbonate of lime in solution from mineral springs, the calcareous matter when precipitated to the bottom mingling with fine mud and thus forming the fossiliferous marls.

SPECIES OF INSECTS IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA, REPRESENTED BY DISTINCT VARIETIES.

If we compare the living British insects with those of the American continent, we frequently find that even those species which are considered to be identical, are nevertheless varieties of the European types. I have noticed this fact when speaking of the common English b.u.t.terfly, Vanessa atalanta, or "red admiral," which I saw flying about the woods of Alabama in mid-winter. I was unable to detect any difference myself, but all the American specimens which I took to the British Museum were observed by Mr. Doubleday to exhibit a slight peculiarity in the colouring of a minute part of the anterior wing,* a character first detected by Mr. T.F. Stephens, who has also discovered that similar slight, but equally constant variations, distinguish other Lepidoptera now inhabiting the opposite sides of the Atlantic, insects which, nevertheless, he and Mr. Westwood and the late Mr. Kirby, have always agreed to regard as mere varieties of the same species.

(* Lyell's "Second Visit to the United States" volume 2 page 293.)

Mr. T.V. Wollaston, in treating of the variation of insects in maritime situations and small islands, has shown how the colour, growth of the wings, and many other characters, undergo modification under the influence of local conditions, continued for long periods of time;* and Mr. Brown has lately called our attention to the fact that the insects of the Shetland Isles present slight deviations from the corresponding types occurring in Great Britain, but far less marked than those which distinguish the American from the European varieties.** In the case of Shetland, Mr. Brown remarks, a land communication may well be supposed to have prevailed with Scotland at a more modern era than that between Europe and America. In fact, we have seen that Shetland can hardly fail to have been united with Scotland after the commencement of the glacial period (see map, Figure 41); whereas a communication between the north of Europe by Iceland and Greenland (which, as before stated, once enjoyed a genial climate) must have been anterior to the glacial epoch.

A much larger isolation, and the impossibility of varieties formed in the two separated areas crossing with each other, would account, according to Mr. Darwin's theory, for the much wider divergence observed in the specific types of the two regions.

(* Wollaston, "On the Variation of Species" etc. London 1856.)

(** "Transactions of Northern Entomological Society" 1862.)

The reader will remember that at the commencement of the Glacial period there was scarcely any appreciable difference between the molluscous fauna and that now living. When therefore the events of the Glacial period, as described in the earlier part of this volume, are duly pondered on, and when we reflect that in the Upper Miocene period the living species of mollusca const.i.tute only one-third of the whole fauna, we see clearly by how high a figure we must multiply the time in order to express the distance between the Miocene period and our own days.

SPECIES OF MAMMALIA RECENT AND FOSSIL--PROBOSCIDIANS.

But it may perhaps be said that the mammalia afford more conspicuous examples than do the mollusca, insects, or plants of the wide gaps which separate species and genera, and that if in this higher cla.s.s such a mult.i.tude of transitional forms had ever existed as would be required to unite the Tertiary and Recent species into one series or net-work of allied or transitional forms, they could not so entirely have escaped observation whether in the fossil or living fauna. A zoologist who entertains such an opinion would do well to devote himself to the study of some one genus of mammalia, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bear, horse, ox, or deer; and after collecting all the materials he can get together respecting the extinct and Recent species, decide for himself whether the present state of science justifies his a.s.suming that the chain could never have been continuous, the number of the missing links being so great.

Among the extinct species formerly contemporary with man, no fossil quadruped has so often been alluded to in this work as the mammoth, Elephas primigenius. From a monograph on the proboscidians by Dr.

Falconer, it appears that this species represents one extreme of a type of which the Pliocene Mastodon borsoni represents the other. Between these extremes there are already enumerated by Dr. Falconer no less than twenty-six species, some of them ranging as far back in time as the Miocene period, others still living, like the Indian and African forms.

Two of these species, however, he has always considered as doubtful, SteG.o.don ganesa, probably a mere variety of one of the others, and Elephas priscus of Goldfuss, founded partly on specimens of the African elephant, a.s.sumed by mistake to be fossil, and partly on some aberrant forms of E. antiquus.

The first effect of the intercalation of so many intermediate forms between the two most divergent types, has been to break down almost entirely the generic distinction between Mastodon and Elephas. Dr.

Falconer, indeed, observes that SteG.o.don (one of several subgenera which he has founded) const.i.tutes an intermediate group, from which the other species diverge through their dental characters, on the one side into the mastodons, and on the other into the Elephants.*

(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 13 1857 page 314.)

The next result is to diminish the distance between the several members of each of these groups.

Dr. Falconer has discovered that no less than four species of elephant were formerly confounded together under the t.i.tle of Elephas primigenius, whence its supposed ubiquity in Pleistocene times, or its wide range over half the habitable globe. But even when this form has been thus restricted in its specific characters, it has still its geographical varieties; for the mammoth's teeth brought from America may in most instances, according to Dr. Falconer, be distinguished from those proper to Europe. On this American variety Dr. Leidy has conferred the name of E. america.n.u.s. Another race of the same mammoth (as determined by Dr. Falconer) existed, as we have seen, before the Glacial period, or at the time when the buried forest of Cromer and the Norfolk cliffs was deposited; and the Swiss geologists have lately found remains of the mammoth in their country, both in pre-glacial and post-glacial formations.

Since the publication of Dr. Falconer's monograph, two other species of elephant, F. mirificus, Leidy, and F. imperator, have been obtained from the Pliocene formations of the Niobrara Valley in Nebraska, one of which, however, may possibly be found hereafter to be the same as E.

columbi, Falc. A remarkable dwarf species also (Elephas melitensis) has been discovered, belonging, like the existing E. africa.n.u.s, to the group Loxodon. This species has been established by Dr. Falconer on remains found by Captain Spratt R.N. in a cave in Malta.*

(* "Proceedings of the Geological Society" London 1862.)

How much the difficulty of discriminating between the fossil representatives of this genus may hereafter augment, when all the species with their respective geographical varieties are known, may be inferred from the following fact--Professor H. Schlegel, in a recently published memoir, endeavours to show that the living elephant of Sumatra agrees with that of Ceylon, but is a distinct species from that of Continental India, being distinguishable by the number of its dorsal vertebrae and ribs, the form of its teeth, and other characteristics.*

(* Schlegel, "Natural History Review" Number 5 1862 page 72.)

Dr. Falconer, on the other hand, considers these two living species as mere geographical varieties, the characters referred to not being constant, as he has ascertained, on comparing different individuals of E. indicus in different parts of Bengal in which the ribs vary from nineteen to twenty, and different varieties of E. africa.n.u.s in which they vary from twenty to twenty-one.

An inquiry into the various species of the genus Rhinoceros, recent and fossil, has led Dr. Falconer to a.n.a.logous results, as might be inferred from what was said in Chapter 10, and as a forthcoming memoir by the same writer will soon more fully demonstrate.

Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from the Niobrara Valley, Dr. Leidy describes a rhinoceros so like the Asiatic species, R. indicus, that he at first referred it to the same, and, what is most singular, he remarks generally of the Pliocene fauna of that part of North America that it is far more related in character to the Pleistocene and Recent fauna of Europe than to that now inhabiting the American continent.

It seems indeed more and more evident that when we speculate in future on the pedigree of any extinct quadruped which abounds in the drift or caverns of Europe, we shall have to look to North and South America as a princ.i.p.al source of information. Thirty years ago, if we had been searching for fossil types which might fill up a gap between two species or genera of the horse tribe (or great family of the Solipedes), we might have thought it sufficient to have got together as ample materials as we could obtain from the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

We might have presumed that as no living representative of the equine family, whether horse, a.s.s, zebra, or quagga, had been furnished by North or South America when those regions were first explored by Europeans, a search in the transatlantic world for fossil species might be dispensed with. But how different is the prospect now opening before us! Mr. Darwin first detected the remains of a fossil horse during his visit to South America, since which two other species have been met with on the same continent, while in North America, in the valley of the Nebraska alone, Mr. Hayden, besides a species not distinguishable from the domestic horse, has obtained, according to Dr. Leidy, representatives of five other fossil genera of Solipedes. These he names, Hipparion, Protohippus, Merychippus, Hypohippus, and Parahippus.

On the whole, no less than twelve equine species, belonging to seven genera (including the Miocene Anchitherium of Nebraska), being already detected in the Tertiary and Post-Tertiary formations of the United States.*

(* "Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science"

Philadelphia for 1858 page 89.)

Professors Unger* and Heer** have advocated, on botanical grounds, the former existence of an Atlantic continent during some part of the Tertiary period, as affording the only plausible explanation that can be imagined, of the a.n.a.logy between the Miocene flora of Central Europe and the existing flora of Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after showing how many of the American types found fossil in Europe are common to j.a.pan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of types in the eastern states of North America and the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from America to eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of lat.i.tude, or south of Behring Straits, following the direction of the Aleutian islands.*** By this course they may have made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene, antecedently to the glacial epoch, to Mongolia, on the east coast of northern Asia.

(* "Die versunkene Insel Atlantis.")

(** "Flora tertiaria Helvetiae.")

(*** Oliver, Lecture at the Royal Inst.i.tution, March 7, 1862.)

We have already seen that a large proportion of the living quadrupeds of Mongolia (34 out of 48) are specifically identical with those at present inhabiting the continent of Western Europe and the British Isles.

A monograph on the hippopotamus, bear, ox, stag, or any other genus of mammalia common in the European drift or caverns, might equally well ill.u.s.trate the defective state of the materials at present at our command. We are rarely in possession of one perfect skeleton of any extinct species, still less of skeletons of both s.e.xes, and of different ages. We usually know nothing of the geographical varieties of the Pleistocene and Pliocene species, least of all, those successive changes of form which they must have undergone in the preglacial epoch between the Upper Miocene and Pleistocene eras. Such being the poverty of our palaeontological data, we cannot wonder that osteologists are at variance as to whether certain remains found in caverns are of the same species as those now living; whether, for example, the Talpa fossilis is really the common mole, the Meles morreni the common badger, Lutra antiqua the otter of Europe, Sciurus priscus the squirrel, Arctomys primigenia the marmot, Myoxus fossilis the dormouse, Schmerling's Felis engihoulensis the European lynx, or whether Ursus spelaeus and Ursus priscus are not extinct races of the living brown bear (Ursus arctos).

If at some future period all the above-mentioned species should be united with their allied congeners, it cannot fail to enlarge our conception of the modifications which a species is capable of undergoing in the course of time, although the same form may appear absolutely immutable within the narrow range of our experience.

LONGEVITY OF SPECIES IN THE MAMMALIA.

In the "Principles of Geology," in 1833,* I stated that the longevity of species in the cla.s.s mollusca exceeded that in the mammalia. It has been since found that this generalisation can be carried much farther, and that in fact the law which governs the changes in organic being is such that the lower their place in a graduated scale, or the simpler their structure, the more persistent are they in form and organisation. I soon became aware of the force of this rule in the cla.s.s mollusca, when I first attempted to calculate the numerical proportion of Recent species in the Newer Pliocene formations as compared to the Older Pliocene, and of them again as contrasted with the Miocene; for it appeared invariably that a greater number of the lamellibranchs could be identified with living species than of the gasteropods, and of these last a greater number in the lower division, that of entire-mouthed univalves, than in that of the siphonated. In whatever manner the changes have been brought about, whether by variation and natural selection, or by any other causes, the rate of change has been greater where the grade of organisation is higher.

(* 1st edition volume 3 pages 48 and 140.)

It is only, therefore, where there is a full representation of all the princ.i.p.al orders of mollusca, or when we compare those of corresponding grade, that we can fully rely on the percentage test, or on the proportion of Recent to extinct species as indicating the relation of two groups to the existing fauna.

The foraminifera which exemplify the lowest stage of animal existence exhibit, as we learn from the researches of Dr. Carpenter and of Messrs.

Jones and Parker, extreme variability in their specific forms, and yet these same forms are persistent throughout vast periods of time, exceeding, in that respect, even the brachiopods before mentioned.

Dr. Hooker observes, in regard to plants of complex floral structure, that they manifest their physical superiority in a greater extent of variation and in thus better securing a succession of race, an attribute which in some senses he regards as of a higher order than that indicated by mere complexity or specialisation of organ.*

(* "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia" page 7.)

As one of the consequences of this law, he says that species, genera, and orders are, on the whole, best limited in plants of higher grade, the dicotyledons better than the monocotyledons, and the Dichlamydeae better than the Achlamydeae.

Mr. Darwin remarks, "We can, perhaps, understand the apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial, and in more highly organised productions, compared with marine and lower productions, by the more complex relations of the higher beings to their organic and inorganic conditions of life."*

(* "Origin of Species" 3rd edition page 340.)