The Testimony of the Rocks Part 20

[34]

1. The sun Occident.

2. The sun orient.

3. The Heavens.

4. Great mountain behind which the sun is hidden when it is night.

5. The Mediterranean Sea.

6. Red Sea.

7. Persian Gulf.

8. Garden of Eden.

9. Great surrounding ocean 10. The Creator looking down upon his work, and seeing that all was good.

[35] The very different terms which Mr. Powell employs in characterizing the anti-geologists, from those which he makes use of in denouncing the men honestly bent on reconciling the enunciations of revelation with the findings of geologic science,--a cla.s.s which included in the past, divines such as Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith, and comprises divines such as. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k and the Archbishop of Canterbury now,--is worthy of being noted. In two sermons, "Christianity without Judaism," written by this clergyman of the Church of England, to show that all days of the week are alike, and the Christian Sabbath a mere blunder, I find the following pa.s.sage:--"Some divines have consistently rejected all geology and all science as profane and carnal; and some even, when pretending to call themselves men of science, have stooped to the miserable policy, of tampering with the truth, investing the real facts in false disguises, to cringe to the prejudices of the many, and to pervert science into a seeming accordance with popular prepossessions." I cannot believe that this will be regarded as justifiable language: it seems scarce worthy of a man of science; and will, I fear, only be accepted as good in evidence that the _odium theologic.u.m_ is not restricted to what is termed the orthodox side of the Church.

[36] The gentleman here referred to lectured no later than October, 1853, against the doctrines of the geologists; and modestly chose as the scene of his labors the city of Hutton and Playfair. What he set himself specially to "demonstrate" was, as he said, that the geologic "theories as to antiquity of the earth, successive eras, &c., were not only fallacious and unphilosophical, but rendered nugatory the authority of the sacred Scriptures." Not only, however, did he exert himself in demolishing the geologists as infidel, but he denounced also as unsound the theology of good old Isaac Watts. The lines taught us in our infancy,--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, For G.o.d hath made them so,"

were, he remarked, decidedly heterodox. They ought to have run instead,--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite, _Satan_ hath made them so"!!!

[37] "A Brief and Complete Refutation of the Anti-Scriptural Theory of Geologists." By a Clergyman of the Church of England. London: Wertheim & Macintosh. 1853.

[38] Newspaper Report of Meeting of the British a.s.sociation held at York in September, 1844.

[39] See "Primary and Present State of the Solar System, particularly of our own Planet;" and "Exposure of the Principles of Modern Geology." By P. M'Farlane, Author of the "Primary and Present State of the Solar System." Edinburgh: Thomas Grant.

[40] One of the more brilliant writers of the present day,--a native of the picturesque village in which this anti-geologist resides,--describes in a recent work, with the enthusiasm of the poet, the n.o.ble mountains which rise around it. I know not, however, whether my admiration of the pa.s.sage was not in some degree dashed by a few comic notions suggestive of an "imaginary conversation," in the style of Landor, between this popular author and his anti-geologic townsman, on the merits of hills in general, and in especial on the claims of those which encircle Comrie "as the mountains are round about Jerusalem." The two gentlemen would, I suspect, experience considerable difficulty in laying down, in such a discussion, their common principles.

[41] "Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies." By Granville Penn, Esq. London, 1825.

[42] "Statesman and Record," October 6th, 1846.

[43] Sir Charles Lyell's statement is by no means so express or definite as it is represented to be in this pa.s.sage, in which I have taken the evidence of his opponents regarding it. What he really says (see his "Principles," second edition, 1832) is what follows:--"_If_ the ratio of recession had never exceeded fifty yards in forty years, it must have required nearly ten thousand years for the excavation of the whole ravine; but no probable conjecture can be offered as to the quant.i.ty of time consumed in such an operation, because the retrograde movement may have been much more rapid when the whole current was confined within a s.p.a.ce not exceeding a fourth or fifth of that which the Falls now occupy." In the eighth edition of the same work, however, published in 1850, after he had examined the Falls, there occurs the following re-statement of the case:--"After the most careful inquiries I was able to make during my visit to the spot in 1841-42, I came to the conclusion that the average [recession] of one foot a year would be a much more probable conjecture than that of one and a quarter yards. In that case it would have required _thirty-five thousand years_ for the retreat of the Falls from the escarpment of Queenston to their present site. It seems by no means improbable that such a result would be no exaggeration of the truth, although we cannot a.s.sume that the retrograde movement has been uniform. At some points it may have receded much faster than at present; but in general its progress was probably slower, because the cataract, when it began to recede, must have been nearly twice its present height."

[44] "Scottish Christian Herald," 1838, vol. iii., p. 766.

[45] The substance of this and the following lecture was originally given in a single paper, before the Geological Section of the British a.s.sociation, held at Glasgow in September 1855. So considerable have been the additions, however, that the one paper has swelled into two lectures. Most of the added matter was at first thrown into the form of Notes; but it was found, that from their length and frequency, they would have embarra.s.sed the printer, mayhap the reader also; and so most of the larger ones have been introduced into the text within brackets.

[46] A curious set of these, with specimens of the smooth-stemmed fucoid collected by Mr. John Miller of Thurso,--a meritorious laborer in the geologic field,--were exhibited at Glasgow to the a.s.sociation. The larger stems were thickly traversed in Mr. J. Miller's specimens by diagonal lines, which seemed, however, to be merely lines of rhomboidal fracture in the gla.s.sy coal into which the plants were converted, and not one of their original characters.

[47] I must, however, add, that there was found in the neighborhood of Stromness about fifteen years ago, by Dr. John Fleming, a curious nondescript vegetable organism, which, though equivocal in character and appearance, was in all probability a plant of the sea. It consisted of a flattened cylinder, in some of the specimens exceeding a foot in length by an inch in breadth, and traversed on both the upper and under sides by a mesial groove extending to the extremities. It bore no external markings, and the section exhibited but an indistinct fibrous structure, sufficient, however, to indicate its vegetable origin. I have not hitherto succeeded in finding for myself specimens of this organism, which has been named provisionally, by Dr. Fleming, _Stroma obscura_; but it seems not improbable that certain supposed fragments of wood, detected by Mr. Charles Peach in the Caithness Flagstones, but which do not exhibit the woody structure, may have belonged to it.

[48] I figured this species from an imperfect Cromarty specimen fifteen years ago. (See "Old Red Sandstone," first edition, 1841, Plate VII.

Fig. 4). Of the greatly better specimens now figured I owe the larger one (Fig. 120) to Mrs. Mill, Thurso, who detected it in the richly fossiliferous flagstones of the locality in which she resides, and kindly made it over to me; and the specimen of which I have given a magnificent representation (Fig. 12, p. 55) to my friend Mr. Robert d.i.c.k. I have, besides, seen several specimens of the same organism, in a better or worse state of keeping, in the interesting collection of the Rev. Charles Clouston, Sandwick, near Stromness.

[49] "Frogsp.a.w.n is full of eyes [that is, black eye-like points], and every eye is a tadpole."

[50] Mr. Page figures, in his "Advanced Text Book of Geology" (p. 127), a few circular markings from the Forfarshire beds, which he still regards as sp.a.w.n, probably that of a Crustacean, and which certainly differ greatly in appearance from the markings found enclosed in the apparent spathes.

[51] Since these sentences were written I have seen a description of both the plants of the Upper Old Red to which they refer, in an interesting sketch of the geology of Roxburgshire by the Rev. James Duncan, which forms part of a recent publication devoted to the history and antiquities of the shire. "In the red quarry of Denholm Hill there occurs," says Mr. Duncan, "a stratum of soft yellowish sandstone, which contains impressions of an apparent fucoid in considerable quant.i.ty. One or several linear stems diverge from a point, and throw off at acute angles, as they grow upwards, branches or leaves very similar to the stem, which are in turn subdivided into others. The width of the stalks is generally about a quarter of an inch, the length often a foot. The color is brown, blackish-brown, or grayish. The same plant also occurs in the whitestone quarry [an overlying bed] in the form of Carbonaceous impressions. There can be little doubt that it is a fucoid. The general mode of growth greatly resembles that of certain seaweeds; and in some specimens we have seen the branches dilated a little at the extremities, like those of such of the living fuci as expand in order to afford s.p.a.ce for the fructification. It is deserving of remark, that the plant is seldom observed lying horizontally on the rock in a direction parallel to its stratification, but rising up through the layers, so as only to be seen when the stone is broken across; as if it had been standing erect, or kept buoyant in water, while the stony matter to which it owes its preservation was deposited around it." Mr. Duncan, after next referring to the remains of what he deems a land plant, derived from the same deposit, and which, though sadly mutilated, presents not a little of the appearance of the naked framework of a frond of Cyclopterus Hibernicus divested of the leaflets, goes on to describe the apparent calamite of the formation. "The best preserved vegetable remain yet found in Denholm Hill quarry," he says, "is the radical portion of what we cannot hesitate to call a species of calamite. The lower part is regularly and beautifully rounded, bulging and prominent, nearly four inches in diameter. About an inch from the bottom it contracts somewhat suddenly in two separate stages, and, from the uppermost sends up a stem about an inch in diameter, and nearly of the same length, where it is broken across. At the origin of this stem the small longitudinal ridges are distinctly marked; and the whole outline of the figure, though converted into stone, is as well defined as it could have been in the living plant." Mr. Duncan accompanies his description with a figure of the organism described, which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a liliaceous plant than the root of a calamite, which in all the better preserved, specimens contracts, instead of expanding, as it descends.

The apparent expansion, however, in the Old Red specimen may be simply a result of compression in its upper part: the under part certainly much resembles, in the dome-like symmetry of its outline, the radical termination of a solitary calamite.

[52] "Though the coal of Sabero is apparently included in Devonian rocks," says Sir Roderick Murchison, "M. Casiano de Prado thinks that this appearance may be do to inverted folds of the strata." On the other hand, M. Alcide D'Orbigny regards it us decidedly Old Red; and certainly its Sphenopteris and Lepidodendron bent much more the aspect of Devonian than of Carboniferous plants.

[53] Now, alas! no more. In Mr. Gourlay the energy and shrewd business habits of the accomplished merchant were added to an enlightened zeal for general science, and no inconsiderable knowledge in both the geologic and botanic provinces. The marked success, in several respects, of the brilliant meeting of the British a.s.sociation which held in Glasgow in September 1855, was owing in no small measure to the indefatigable exertions and well calculated arrangements of Mr. Gourlay.

[54] Trees must have been very abundant in what is now Scotland in these Secondary ages. Trunks of the common Scotch fir are of scarce more frequent occurrence in our mosses than the trunks of somewhat resembling trees among the shales of the Lower Oolite of Helmsdale. On examining in that neighborhood, about ten years since, a huge heap of materials which had been collected along the sea sh.o.r.e for burning into lime in a temporary kiln, I found that more than three fourths of the whole consisted of fragments of coniferous wood washed out of the shale beds by the surf, and the remainder of a ma.s.sive Isastrea. And only two years ago, after many kilnfuls had been gathered and burnt, his grace the Duke of Argyll found that fossil wood could still he collected by cartloads along the sh.o.r.e of Helmsdale. The same woods also occur at Port Gower, Kintradwell, Shandwick, and Eathie. In the Island of Eigg, too, in an Oolite deposit, locked up in trap, and whose stratigraphical relations cannot in consequence be exactly traced, great fragments of _Pinites Eiggensis_ are so abundant, that, armed with a mattock, I have dug out of the rock, in a few minutes, specimens enough to supply a dozen of museums. In short, judging from its fossiliferous remains, it seems not improbable that old Oolitic Scotland was as densely covered with coniferous trees as the Scotland of Roman times, when the great Caledonian forest stretched northwards from the wall of Antoninus to the furthest Thule.

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