Principles of Geology Part 14

First, in regard to the vicissitudes of the living creation, all are agreed that the sedimentary strata found in the earth's crust are divisible into a variety of groups, more or less dissimilar in their organic remains and mineral composition. The conclusion universally drawn from the study and comparison of these fossiliferous groups is this, that at successive periods distinct tribes of animals and plants have inhabited the land and waters, and that the organic types of the newer formations are more a.n.a.logous to species now existing, than those of more ancient rocks. If we then turn to the present state of the animate creation, and inquire whether it has now become fixed and stationary, we discover that, on the contrary, it is in a state of continual flux--that there are many causes in action which tend to the extinction of species, and which are conclusive against the doctrine of their unlimited durability. But natural history has been successfully cultivated for so short a period, that a few examples only of local, and perhaps but one or two of absolute, extirpation can as yet be proved, and these only where the interference of man has been conspicuous. It will nevertheless appear evident, from the facts and arguments detailed in the third book (from the thirty-seventh to the forty-second chapters, inclusive) that man is not the only exterminating agent; and that, independently of his intervention, the annihilation of species is promoted by the multiplication and gradual diffusion of every animal or plant. It will also appear, that every alteration in the physical geography and climate of the globe cannot fail to have the same tendency. If we proceed still farther, and inquire whether new species are subst.i.tuted from time to time for those which die out, and whether there are certain laws appointed by the Author of Nature to regulate such new creations, we find that the period of human observation is as yet too short to afford data for determining so weighty a question. All that can be done is to show that the successive introduction of new species may be a constant part of the economy of the terrestrial system, without our having any right to expect that we should be in possession of direct proof of the fact. The appearance again and again of new species may easily have escaped detection, since the numbers of known animals and plants have augmented so rapidly within the memory of persons now living, as to have doubled in some cla.s.ses, and quadrupled in others. It will also be remarked in the sequel (book iii. chap. 43), that it must always be more easy if species proceeded originally from single stocks, to prove that one which formerly abounded in a given district has ceased to be, than that another has been called into being for the first time. If, therefore, there be as yet only one or two unequivocal instances of extinction, namely, those of the dodo and solitaire (see ch. 41), it is scarcely reasonable as yet to hope that we should be cognizant of a single instance of the first appearance of a new species.

_Recent origin of man, and gradual approach in the tertiary fossils of successive periods from an extinct to the recent fauna._--The geologist, however, if required to advance some fact which may lend countenance to the opinion that in the most modern times, that is to say, after the greater part of the existing fauna and flora were established on the earth, there has still been a new species superadded, may point to man himself as furnis.h.i.+ng the required ill.u.s.tration--for man must be regarded by the geologist as a creature of yesterday, not merely in reference to the past history of the organic world, but also in relation to that particular state of the animate creation of which he forms a part. The comparatively modern introduction of the human race is proved by the absence of the remains of man and his works, not only from all strata containing a certain proportion of fossil sh.e.l.ls of extinct species, but even from a large part of the newest strata, in which all the fossil individuals are referable to species still living.

To enable the reader to appreciate the full force of this evidence, I shall give a slight sketch of the information obtained from the newer strata, respecting fluctuations in the animate world, in times immediately antecedent to the appearance of man.

In tracing the series of fossiliferous formations from the more ancient to the more modern, the first deposits in which we meet with a.s.semblages of organic remains, having a near a.n.a.logy to the fauna of certain parts of the globe in our own time, are those commonly called tertiary. Even in the Eocene, or oldest subdivision of these tertiary formations, some few of the testacea belong to existing species, although almost all of them, and apparently all the a.s.sociated vertebrata, are now extinct.

These Eocene strata are succeeded by a great number of more modern deposits, which depart gradually in the character of their fossils from the Eocene type, and approach more and more to that of the living creation. In the present state of science, it is chiefly by the aid of sh.e.l.ls that we are enabled to arrive at these results, for of all cla.s.ses the testacea are the most generally diffused in a fossil state, and may be called the medals princ.i.p.ally employed by nature, in recording the chronology of past events. In the Miocene deposits, which are next in succession to the Eocene, we begin to find a considerable number, although still a minority, of recent species, intermixed with some fossils common to the preceding epoch. We then arrive at the Pliocene strata, in which species now contemporary with man begin to preponderate, and in the newest of which nine-tenths of the fossils agree with species still inhabiting the neighboring sea.

In this pa.s.sing from the older to the newer members of the tertiary system we meet with many chasms, but none which separate entirely, by a broad line of demarcation, one state of the organic world from another.

There are no signs of an abrupt termination of one fauna and flora, and the starting into life of new and wholly distinct forms. Although we are far from being able to demonstrate geologically an insensible transition from the Eocene to the Miocene, or even from the latter to the recent fauna, yet the more we enlarge and perfect our general survey, the more nearly do we approximate to such a continuous series, and the more gradually are we conducted from times when many of the genera and nearly all the species were extinct, to those in which scarcely a single species flourished which we do not know to exist at present. Dr. A.

Philippi, indeed, after an elaborate comparison of the fossil tertiary sh.e.l.ls of Sicily with those now living in the Mediterranean, announces as the result of his examination that there are strata in that island, which attest a very gradual pa.s.sage from a period, when only thirteen in a hundred of the sh.e.l.ls were like the species now living in the sea, to an era when the recent species had attained a proportion of ninety-five in a hundred. There is therefore evidence, he says, in Sicily of this revolution in the animate world having been effected "without the intervention of any convulsion or abrupt changes, certain species having from time to time died out, and others having been introduced, until at length the existing fauna was elaborated."

It had often been objected that the evidence of fossil species occurring in two consecutive formations, was confined to the testacea or zoophytes, the characters of which are less marked and decisive than those afforded by the vertebrate animals. But Mr. Owen has lately insisted on the important fact, that not a few of the quadrupeds which now inhabit our island, and among others the horse, the a.s.s, the hog, the smaller wild ox, the goat, the red deer, the roe, the beaver, and many of the diminutive rodents, are the same as those which once coexisted with the mammoth, the great northern hippopotamus, two kinds of rhinoceros, and other mammalia long since extinct. "A part," he observes, "and not the whole of the modern tertiary fauna has perished, and hence we may conclude that the cause of their destruction has not been a violent and universal catastrophe from which none could escape."[257]

Had we discovered evidence that man had come into the earth at a period as early as that when a large number of the fossil quadrupeds now living, and almost all the recent species of land, freshwater, and marine sh.e.l.ls were in existence, we should have been compelled to ascribe a much higher antiquity to our species, than even the boldest speculations of the ethnologist require, for no small part of the great physical revolution depicted on the map of Europe (Pl. 3), before described, took place very gradually after the recent testacea abounded almost to the exclusion of the extinct. Thus, for example, in the deposits called the "northern drift," or the glacial formation of Europe and North America, the fossil marine sh.e.l.ls can easily be identified with species either now inhabiting the neighboring sea, or living in the seas of higher lat.i.tudes. Yet they exhibit no memorials of the human race, or of articles fabricated by the hand of man. Some of the newest of these strata pa.s.sing by the name of "raised beaches," occur at moderate elevations on the coast of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Other examples are met with on a more extended scale in Scandinavia, as at the height of 200 feet at Uddevalla in Sweden, and at twice that elevation, near Christiana, in Norway, also at an alt.i.tude of 600 or 700 feet in places farther north. They consist of beds of sand and clay, filling hollows in a district of granite and gneiss, and they must closely resemble the acc.u.mulations of sh.e.l.ly matter now in progress at the bottom of the Norwegian fiords. The rate at which the land is now rising in Scandinavia, is far too irregular in different places to afford a safe standard for estimating the minimum of time required for the upheaval of the fundamental granite, and its marine sh.e.l.ly covering, to the height of so many hundred feet; but according to the greatest average, of five or six feet in a century, the period required would be very considerable, and nearly the whole of it, as well as the antecedent epoch of submergence, seems to have preceded the introduction of man into these parts of the earth.

There are other post-tertiary formations of fluviatile origin, in the centre of Europe, in which the absence of human remains is perhaps still more striking, because, when formed, they must have been surrounded by dry land. I allude to the silt or _loess_ of the basin of the Rhine, which must have gradually filled up the great valley of that river since the time when its waters, and the contiguous lands, were inhabited by the existing species of freshwater and terrestrial mollusks. Showers of ashes, thrown out by some of the last eruptions of the Eifel volcanoes, fell during the deposition of this fluviatile silt, and were interstratified with it. But these volcanoes became exhausted, the valley was re-excavated through the silt, and again reduced to its present form before the period of human history. The study, therefore, of this sh.e.l.ly silt reveals to us the history of a long series of events, which occurred after the testacea now living inhabited the land and rivers of Europe, and the whole terminated without any signs of the coming of man into that part of the globe.

To cite a still more remarkable example, we observe in Sicily a lofty table-land and hills, sometimes rising to the height of 3000 feet, capped with a limestone, in which from 70 to 85 per cent. of the fossil testacea are specifically identical with those now inhabiting the Mediterranean. These calcareous and other argillaceous strata of the same age are intersected by deep valleys which have been gradually formed by denudation, but have not varied materially in width or depth since Sicily was first colonized by the Greeks. The limestone, moreover, which is of so late a date in geological chronology, was quarried for building those ancient temples of Girgenti and Syracuse, of which the ruins carry us back to a remote era in human history. If we are lost in conjectures when speculating on the ages required to lift up these formations to the height of several thousand feet above the sea, how much more remote must be the era when the same rocks were gradually formed beneath the waters!

To conclude, it appears that, in going back from the recent to the Eocene period, we are carried by many successive steps from the fauna now contemporary with man to an a.s.semblage of fossil species wholly different from those now living. In this retrospect we have not yet succeeded in tracing back a perfect transition from the recent to an extinct fauna; but there are usually so many species in common to the groups which stand next in succession as to show that there is no great chasm, no signs of a crisis when one cla.s.s of organic beings was annihilated to give place suddenly to another. This a.n.a.logy, therefore, derived from a period of the earth's history which can best be compared with the present state of things, and more thoroughly investigated than any other, leads to the conclusion that the extinction and creation of species, has been and is the result of a slow and gradual change in the organic world.

UNIFORMITY OF CHANGE CONSIDERED, SECONDLY, IN REFERENCE TO SUBTERRANEAN MOVEMENTS.

To pa.s.s on to another of the three topics before proposed for discussion, the reader will find, in the account given in the second book of the earthquakes recorded in history, that certain countries have, from time immemorial, been rudely shaken again and again, while others, comprising by far the largest part of the globe, have remained to all appearance motionless. In the regions of convulsion rocks have been rent asunder, the surface has been forced up into ridges, chasms have opened, or the ground throughout large s.p.a.ces has been permanently lifted up above or let down below its former level. In the regions of tranquillity some areas have remained at rest, but others have been ascertained by a comparison of measurements, made at different periods, to have risen by an insensible motion, as in Sweden, or to have subsided very slowly, as in Greenland. That these same movements, whether ascending or descending, have continued for ages in the same direction has been established by geological evidence. Thus, we find both on the east and west coast of Sweden, that ground which formerly const.i.tuted the bottom of the Baltic and of the ocean has been lifted up to an elevation of several hundred feet above high-water mark. The rise within the historical period has not amounted to many yards, but the greater extent of antecedent upheaval is proved by the occurrence in inland spots, several hundred feet high, of deposits filled with fossil sh.e.l.ls of species now living either in the ocean or the Baltic.

To detect proofs of slow and gradual subsidence must in general be more difficult; but the theory which accounts for the form of circular coral reefs and lagoon islands, and which will be explained in the last chapter of the third book, will satisfy the reader that there are s.p.a.ces on the globe, several thousand miles in circ.u.mference, throughout which the downward movement has predominated for ages, and yet the land has never, in a single instance, gone down suddenly for several hundred feet at once. Yet geology demonstrates that the persistency of subterranean movements in one direction has not been perpetual throughout all past time. There have been great oscillations of level by which a surface of dry land has been submerged to a depth of several thousand feet, and then at a period long subsequent raised again and made to emerge. Nor have the regions now motionless been always at rest; and some of those which are at present the theatres of reiterated earthquakes have formerly enjoyed a long continuance of tranquillity. But although disturbances have ceased after having long prevailed, or have recommenced after a suspension for ages, there has been no universal disruption of the earth's crust or desolation of the surface since times the most remote. The non-occurrence of such a general convulsion is proved by the perfect horizontally now retained by some of the most ancient fossiliferous strata throughout wide areas.

_Inferences derived from unconformable strata._--That the subterranean forces have visited different parts of the globe at successive periods, is inferred chiefly from the unconformability of strata belonging to groups of different ages. Thus, for example, on the borders of Wales and Shrops.h.i.+re we find the slaty beds of the ancient Silurian system curved and vertical, while the beds of the overlying carboniferous shale and sandstone are horizontal. All are agreed, that in such a case the older set of strata had suffered great dislocation before the deposition of the newer or carboniferous beds, and that these last have never since been convulsed by any movements of excessive violence. But the strata of the inferior group suffered only a local derangement, and rocks of the same age are by no means found everywhere in a curved or vertical position. In various parts of Europe, and particularly near Lake Wener in the south of Sweden, and in many parts of Russia, beds of the same Silurian system maintain the most perfect horizontality; and a similar observation may be made respecting limestones and shales of the like antiquity in the great lake district of Canada and the United States.

They are still as flat and horizontal as when first formed; yet since their origin not only have most of the actual mountain-chains been uplifted, but the very rocks of which those mountains are composed have been formed.

It would be easy to multiply instances of similar unconformability in formations of other ages; but a few more will suffice. The coal measures before alluded to as horizontal on the borders of Wales are vertical in the Mendip Hills in Somersets.h.i.+re, where the overlying beds of the New Red Sandstone are horizontal. Again, in the Wolds of Yorks.h.i.+re the last mentioned sandstone supports on its curved and inclined beds the horizontal Chalk. The Chalk again is vertical on the flanks of the Pyrenees, and the tertiary strata repose unconformably upon it.

_Consistency of local disturbances with general uniformity._--As almost every country supplies ill.u.s.trations of the same phenomena, they who advocate the doctrine of alternate periods of disorder and repose may appeal to the facts above described, as proving that every district has been by turns convulsed by earthquakes and then respited for ages from convulsions. But so it might with equal truth be affirmed that every part of Europe has been visited alternately by winter and summer, although it has always been winter and always summer in some part of the planet, and neither of these seasons has ever reigned simultaneously over the entire globe. They have been always s.h.i.+fting about from place to place; but the vicissitudes which recur thus annually in a single spot are never allowed to interfere with the invariable uniformity of seasons throughout the whole planet.

So, in regard to subterranean movements, the theory of the perpetual uniformity of the force which they exert on the earth's crust is quite consistent with the admission of their alternate development and suspension for indefinite periods within limited geographical areas.

UNIFORMITY OF CHANGE CONSIDERED, THIRDLY, IN REFERENCE TO SEDIMENTARY DEPOSITION.

It now remains to speak of the laws governing the deposition of new strata. If we survey the surface of the globe we immediately perceive that it is divisible into areas of deposition and non-deposition, or, in other words, at any given time there are s.p.a.ces which are the recipients, others which are not the recipients of sedimentary matter.

No new strata, for example, are thrown down on dry land, which remains the same from year to year; whereas, in many parts of the bottom of seas and lakes, mud, sand, and pebbles are annually spread out by rivers and currents. There are also great ma.s.ses of limestone growing in some seas, or in mid-ocean, chiefly composed of corals and sh.e.l.ls.

_No sediment deposited on dry land._--As to the dry land, so far from being the receptacle of fresh accessions of matter, it is exposed almost everywhere to waste away. Forests may be as dense and lofty as those of Brazil, and may swarm with quadrupeds, birds, and insects, yet at the end of ten thousand years one layer of black mould, a few inches thick, may be the sole representative of those myriads of trees, leaves, flowers, and fruits, those innumerable bones and skeletons of birds, quadrupeds, and reptiles, which tenanted the fertile region. Should this land be at length submerged, the waves of the sea may wash away in a few hours the scanty covering of mould, and it may merely impart a darker shade of color to the next stratum of marl, sand, or other matter newly thrown down. So also at the bottom of the ocean where no sediment is acc.u.mulating, sea-weed, zoophytes, fish, and even sh.e.l.ls, may multiply for ages and decompose, leaving no vestige of their form or substance behind. Their decay, in water, although more slow, is as certain and eventually as complete as in the open air. Nor can they be perpetuated for indefinite periods in a fossil state, unless imbedded in some matrix which is impervious to water, or which at least does not allow a free percolation of that fluid, impregnated as it usually is, with a slight quant.i.ty of carbonic or other acid. Such a free percolation may be prevented either by the mineral nature of the matrix itself, or by the superposition of an impermeable stratum: but if unimpeded, the fossil sh.e.l.l or bone will be dissolved and removed, particle after particle, and thus entirely effaced, unless petrifaction or the subst.i.tution of mineral for organic matter happen to take place.

That there has been land as well as sea at all former geological periods, we know from the fact, that fossil trees and terrestrial plants are imbedded in rocks of every age. Occasionally lacustrine and fluviatile sh.e.l.ls, insects, or the bones of amphibious or land reptiles, point to the same conclusion. The existence of dry land at all periods of the past implies, as before mentioned, the partial deposition of sediment, or its limitation to certain areas; and the next point to which I shall call the reader's attention, is the s.h.i.+fting of these areas from one region to another.

First, then, variations in the site of sedimentary deposition are brought about independently of subterranean movements. There is always a slight change from year to year, or from century to century. The sediment of the Rhone, for example, thrown into the Lake of Geneva, is now conveyed to a spot a mile and a half distant from that where it acc.u.mulated in the tenth century, and six miles from the point where the delta began originally to form. We may look forward to the period when this lake will be filled up, and then the distribution of the transported matter will be suddenly altered, for the mud and sand brought down from the Alps will thenceforth, instead of being deposited near Geneva, be carried nearly 200 miles southwards, where the Rhone enters the Mediterranean.

In the deltas of large rivers, such as those of the Ganges and Indus, the mud is first carried down for many centuries through one arm, and on this being stopped up it is discharged by another, and may then enter the sea at a point 50 or 100 miles distant from its first receptacle.

The direction of marine currents is also liable to be changed by various accidents, as by the heaping up of new sand-banks, or the wearing away of cliffs and promontories.

But, secondly, all these causes of fluctuation in the sedimentary areas are entirely subordinate to those great upward or downward movements of land which have been already described as prevailing over large tracts of the globe. By such elevation or subsidence certain s.p.a.ces are gradually submerged, or made gradually to emerge:--in the one case sedimentary deposition may be suddenly renewed after having been suspended for ages, in the other as suddenly made to cease after having continued for an indefinite period.

_Causes of variation in mineral character of successive sedimentary groups._--If deposition be renewed after a long interval, the new strata will usually differ greatly from the sedimentary rocks previously formed in the same place, and especially if the older rocks have suffered derangement, which implies a change in the physical geography of the district since the previous conveyance of sediment to the same spot. It may happen, however, that, even when the inferior group is horizontal and conformable to the upper strata, these last may still differ entirely in mineral character, because since the origin of the older formation the geography of some distant country has been altered. In that country rocks before concealed may have become exposed by denudation; volcanoes may have burst out and covered the surface with scoriae and lava, or new lakes may have been formed by subsidence; and other fluctuations may have occurred, by which the materials brought down from thence by rivers to the sea have acquired a distinct mineral character.

It is well known that the stream of the Mississippi is charged with sediment of a different color from that of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, which are tinged with red mud, derived from rocks of porphyry in "the far west." The waters of the Uruguay, says Darwin, draining a granitic country, are clear and black, those of the Parana, red.[258] The mud with which the Indus is loaded, says Burnes, is of a clayey hue, that of the Chenab, on the other hand, is reddish, that of the Sutlej is more pale.[259] The same causes which make these several rivers, sometimes situated at no great distance the one from the other, to differ greatly in the character of their sediment, will make the waters draining the same country at different epochs, especially before and after great revolutions in physical geography, to be entirely dissimilar. It is scarcely necessary to add, that marine currents will be affected in an a.n.a.logous manner in consequence of the formation of new shoals, the emergence of new islands, the subsidence of others, the gradual waste of neighboring coasts, the growth of new deltas, the increase of coral reefs, and other changes.

_Why successive sedimentary groups contain distinct fossils._--If, in the next place, we a.s.sume, for reasons before stated, a continual extinction of species and introduction of others into the globe, it will then follow that the fossils of strata formed at two distant periods on the same spot, will differ even more certainly than the mineral composition of the same. For rocks of the same kind have sometimes been reproduced in the same district after a long interval of time, whereas there are no facts leading to the opinion that species which have once died out have ever been reproduced. The submergence then of land must be often attended by the commencement of a new cla.s.s of sedimentary deposits, characterized by a new set of fossil animals and plants, while the reconversion of the bed of the sea into land may arrest at once and for an indefinite time the formation of geological monuments. Should the land again sink, strata will again be formed; but one or many entire revolutions in animal or vegetable life may have been completed in the interval.

_Conditions requisite for the original completeness of a fossiliferous series._--If we infer, for reasons before explained, that fluctuations in the animate world are brought about by the slow and successive removal and creation of species, we shall be convinced that a rare combination of circ.u.mstances alone can give rise to such a series of strata as will bear testimony to a gradual pa.s.sage from one state of organic life to another. To produce such strata nothing less will be requisite than the fortunate coincidence of the following conditions: first, a never-failing supply of sediment in the same region throughout a period of vast duration; secondly, the fitness of the deposit in every part for the permanent preservation of imbedded fossils; and, thirdly, a gradual subsidence to prevent the sea or lake from being filled up and converted into land.

It will appear in the chapter on coral reefs,[260] that, in certain parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, most of these conditions, if not all, are complied with, and the constant growth of coral, keeping pace with the sinking of the bottom of the sea, seems to have gone on so slowly, for such indefinite periods, that the signs of a gradual change in organic life might probably be detected in that quarter of the globe, if we could explore its submarine geology. Instead of the growth of coralline limestone, let us suppose, in some other place, the continuous deposition of fluviatile mud and sand, such as the Ganges and Brahmapootra have poured for thousands of years into the Bay of Bengal.

Part of this bay, although of considerable depth, might at length be filled up before an appreciable amount of change was effected in the fish, mollusca, and other inhabitants of the sea and neighboring land.

But, if the bottom be lowered by sinking at the same rate that it is raised by fluviatile mud, the bay can never be turned into dry land. In that case one new layer of matter may be superimposed upon another for a thickness of many thousand feet, and the fossils of the inferior beds may differ greatly from those entombed in the uppermost, yet every intermediate gradation may be indicated in the pa.s.sage from an older to a newer a.s.semblage of species. Granting, however, that such an unbroken sequence of monuments may thus be elaborated in certain parts of the sea, and that the strata happen to be all of them well adapted to preserve the included fossils from decomposition, how many accidents must still concur before these submarine formations will be laid open to our investigation! The whole deposit must first be raised several thousand feet, in order to bring into view the very foundation; and during the process of exposure the superior beds must not be entirely swept away by denudation.

In the first place, the chances are as three to one against the mere emergence of the ma.s.s above the waters, because three-fourths of the globe are covered by the ocean. But if it be upheaved and made to const.i.tute part of the dry land, it must also, before it can be available for our instruction, become part of that area already surveyed by geologists; and this area comprehends perhaps less than a tenth of the whole earth. In this small fraction of land already explored, and still very imperfectly known, we are required to find a set of strata, originally of limited extent, and probably much lessened by subsequent denudation.

Yet it is precisely because we do not encounter at every step the evidence of such gradations from one state of the organic world to another, that so many geologists embrace the doctrine of great and sudden revolutions in the history of the animate world. Not content with simply availing themselves, for the convenience of cla.s.sification, of those gaps and chasms which here and there interrupt the continuity of the chronological series, as at present known, they deduce, from the frequency of these breaks in the chain of records, an irregular mode of succession in the events themselves both in the organic and inorganic world. But, besides that some links of the chain which once existed are now clearly lost and others concealed from view, we have good reason to suspect that it was never complete originally. It may undoubtedly be said, that strata have been always forming somewhere, and therefore at every moment of past time nature has added a page to her archives; but, in reference to this subject, it should be remembered that we can never hope to compile a consecutive history by gathering together monuments which were originally detached and scattered over the globe. For as the species of organic beings contemporaneously inhabiting remote regions are distinct, the fossils of the first of several periods which may be preserved in any one country, as in America, for example, will have no connection with those of a second period found in India, and will therefore no more enable us to trace the signs of a gradual change in the living creation, than a fragment of Chinese history will fill up a blank in the political annals of Europe.

The absence of any deposits of importance containing recent sh.e.l.ls in Chili, or anywhere on the western coast of South America, naturally led Mr. Darwin to the conclusion that "where the bed of the sea is either stationary or rising, circ.u.mstances are far less favorable than where the level is sinking to the acc.u.mulation of conchiferous strata of sufficient thickness and extension to resist the average vast amount of denudation."[261] An examination of the superficial clay, sand, and gravel of the most modern date in Norway and Sweden, where the land is also rising, would incline us to admit a similar proposition. Yet in these cases there has been a supply of sediment from the waste of the coast and the interior, especially in Patagonia and Chili. Nevertheless wherever the bottom of the sea has been continually elevated, the total thickness of sedimentary matter acc.u.mulating at depths suited to the habitation of most of the species of sh.e.l.ls can never be great, nor can the deposits be thickly covered by superinc.u.mbent matter, so as to be consolidated by pressure. When they are upheaved, therefore, the waves on the beach will bear down and disperse the loose materials; whereas if the bed of the sea subsides slowly, a ma.s.s of strata containing abundance of such species as live at moderate depths may increase in thickness to any amount, and may extend over a broad area, as the water gradually encroaches on the land. If, then, at particular periods, as in the Miocene epoch, for example, both in Europe and North America, contemporaneous sh.e.l.ly deposits have originated, and have been preserved at very distant points, it may arise from the prevalence at that period of simultaneous subsidence throughout very wide areas. The absence in the same quarters of the globe of strata marking the ages which immediately succeeded, may be accounted for by supposing that the level of the bed of the sea and the adjoining land was stationary or was undergoing slow upheaval.

How far some of the great violations of continuity which now exist in the chronological table of fossiliferous rocks, will hereafter be removed or lessened, must at present be mere matter of conjecture. The hiatus which exists in Great Britain between the fossils of the Lias and those of the Magnesian Limestone, is supplied in Germany by the rich fauna and flora of the Muschelkalk, Keuper, and Bunter Sandstein, which we know to be of a date precisely intermediate; those three formations being interposed in Germany between others which agree perfectly in their organic remains with our Lias and Magnesian Limestone. Until lately the fossils of the Coal-measures were separated from those of the antecedent Silurian group by a very abrupt and decided line of demarcation; but recent discoveries have brought to light in Devons.h.i.+re, Belgium, the Eifel, and Westphalia, the remains of a fauna of an intervening period. This connecting link is furnished by the fossil sh.e.l.ls, fish, and corals of the Devonian or Old Red Sandstone group, and some species of this newly intercalated fauna are found to be common to it and the subjacent Silurian rocks, while other species belong to it in common with the Coal-measures. We have also in like manner had some success of late years in diminis.h.i.+ng the hiatus which still separates the Cretaceous and Eocene periods in Europe. Still we must expect, for reasons before stated, that some such chasms will forever continue to occur in some parts of our sedimentary series.

_Consistency of the theory of gradual change with the existence of great breaks in the series._--To return to the general argument pursued in this chapter, it is a.s.sumed, for reasons above explained, that a slow change of species is in simultaneous operation everywhere throughout the habitable surface of sea and land; whereas the fossilization of plants and animals is confined to those areas where new strata are produced.

These areas, as we have seen, are always s.h.i.+fting their position; so that the fossilizing process, by means of which the commemoration of the particular state of the organic world, at any given time, is affected, may be said to move about, visiting and revisiting different tracts in succession.

To make still more clear the supposed working of this machinery, I shall compare it to a somewhat a.n.a.logous case that might be imagined to occur in the history of human affairs. Let the mortality of the population of a large country represent the successive extinction of species, and the births of new individuals the introduction of new species. While these fluctuations are gradually taking place everywhere, suppose commissioners to be appointed to visit each province of the country in succession, taking an exact account of the number, names, and individual peculiarities of all the inhabitants, and leaving in each district a register containing a record of this information. If, after the completion of one census, another is immediately made on the same plan, and then another, there will, at last, be a series of statistical doc.u.ments in each province. When those belonging to any one province are arranged in chronological order, the contents of such as stand next to each other will differ according to the length of the intervals of time between the taking of each census. If, for example, there are sixty provinces, and all the registers are made in a single year, and renewed annually, the number of births and deaths will be so small, in proportion to the whole of the inhabitants, during the interval between the compiling of the two consecutive doc.u.ments, that the individuals described in such doc.u.ments will be nearly identical; whereas, if the survey of each of the sixty provinces occupies all the commissioners for a whole year, so that they are unable to revisit the same place until the expiration of sixty years, there will then be an almost entire discordance between the persons enumerated in two consecutive registers in the same province. There are, undoubtedly, other causes besides the mere quant.i.ty of time, which may augment or diminish the amount of discrepancy. Thus, at some periods a pestilential disease may have lessened the average duration of human life, or a variety of circ.u.mstances may have caused the births to be unusually numerous, and the population to multiply; or, a province may be suddenly colonized by persons migrating from surrounding districts.

These exceptions may be compared to the accelerated rate of fluctuation in the fauna and flora of a particular region, in which the climate and physical geography may be undergoing an extraordinary degree of alteration.

But I must remind the reader, that the case above proposed has no pretensions to be regarded as an exact parallel to the geological phenomena which I desire to ill.u.s.trate; for the commissioners are supposed to visit the different provinces in rotation; whereas the commemorating processes by which organic remains become fossilized, although they are always s.h.i.+fting from one area to the other, are yet very irregular in their movements. They may abandon and revisit many s.p.a.ces again and again before they once approach another district; and, besides this source of irregularity, it may often happen that, while the depositing process is suspended, denudation may take place, which may be compared to the occasional destruction by fire or other causes of some of the statistical doc.u.ments before mentioned. It is evident that, where such accidents occur, the want of continuity in the series may become indefinitely great, and that the monuments which follow next in succession will by no means be equidistant from each other in point of time.

If this train of reasoning be admitted, the occasional distinctness of the fossil remains, in formations immediately in contact, would be a necessary consequence of the existing laws of sedimentary deposition and subterranean movement, accompanied by a constant mortality and renovation of species.

As all the conclusions above insisted on are directly opposed to opinions still popular, I shall add another comparison, in the hope of preventing any possible misapprehension of the argument. Suppose we had discovered two buried cities at the foot of Vesuvius, immediately superimposed upon each other, with a great ma.s.s of tuff and lava intervening, just as Portici and Resina, if now covered with ashes, would overlie Herculaneum. An antiquary might possibly be ent.i.tled to infer, from the inscriptions on public edifices, that the inhabitants of the inferior and older city were Greeks, and those of the modern towns Italians. But he would reason very hastily if he also concluded from these data that there had been a sudden change from the Greek to the Italian language in Campania. But if he afterwards found _three_ buried cities, one above the other, the intermediate one being Roman, while, as in the former example, the lowest was Greek and the uppermost Italian, he would then perceive the fallacy of his former opinion, and would begin to suspect that the catastrophes by which the cities were inhumed might have no relation whatever to the fluctuations in the language of the inhabitants; and that, as the Roman tongue had evidently intervened between the Greek and Italian, so many other dialects may have been spoken in succession, and the pa.s.sage from the Greek to the Italian may have been very gradual; some terms growing obsolete, while others were introduced from time to time.

If this antiquary could have shown that the volcanic paroxysms of Vesuvius were so governed as that cities should be buried one above the other, just as often as any variation occurred in the language of the inhabitants, then, indeed, the abrupt pa.s.sage from a Greek to a Roman, and from a Roman to an Italian city, would afford proof of fluctuations no less sudden in the language of the people.

So, in Geology, if we could a.s.sume that it is part of the plan of Nature to preserve, in every region of the globe, an unbroken series of monuments to commemorate the vicissitudes of the organic creation, we might infer the sudden extirpation of species, and the simultaneous introduction of others, as often as two formations in contact are found to include dissimilar organic fossils. But we must shut our eyes to the whole economy of the existing causes, aqueous, igneous, and organic, if we fail to perceive _that such in not the plan of Nature_.

_Concluding remarks on the ident.i.ty of the ancient and present system of terrestrial changes._--I shall now conclude the discussion of a question with which we have been occupied since the beginning of the fifth chapter; namely, whether there has been any interruption, from the remotest periods, of one uniform system of change in the animate and inanimate world. We were induced to enter into that inquiry by reflecting how much the progress of opinion in Geology had been influenced by the a.s.sumption that the a.n.a.logy was slight in kind, and still more slight in degree, between the causes which produced the former revolutions of the globe, and those now in every-day operation.

It appeared clear that the earlier geologists had not only a scanty acquaintance with existing changes, but were singularly unconscious of the amount of their ignorance. With the presumption naturally inspired by this unconsciousness, they had no hesitation in deciding at once that time could never enable the existing powers of nature to work out changes of great magnitude, still less such important revolutions as those which are brought to light by Geology. They, therefore, felt themselves at liberty to indulge their imaginations in guessing at what _might be_, rather than inquiring _what is_; in other words, they employed themselves in conjecturing what might have been the course of nature at a remote period, rather than in the investigation of what was the course of nature in their own times.

It appeared to them more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past, than patiently to explore the realities of the present; and having invented theories under the influence of such maxims, they were consistently unwilling to test their validity by the criterion of their accordance with the ordinary operations of nature. On the contrary, the claims of each new hypothesis to credibility appeared enhanced by the great contrast, in kind or intensity, of the causes referred to, and those now in operation.

Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than this a.s.sumption of the discordance between the ancient and existing causes of change. It produced a state of mind unfavorable in the highest degree to the candid reception of the evidence of those minute but incessant alterations which every part of the earth's surface is undergoing, and by which the condition of its living inhabitants is continually made to vary. The student, instead of being encouraged with the hope of interpreting the enigmas presented to him in the earth's structure,--instead of being prompted to undertake laborious inquiries into the natural history of the organic world, and the complicated effects of the igneous and aqueous causes now in operation, was taught to despond from the first.