Principles of Geology Part 2

The cosmological opinions expressed in the Koran are few, and merely introduced incidentally: so that it is not easy to understand how they could have interfered so seriously with free discussion on the former changes of the globe. The Prophet declares that the earth was created in two days, and the mountains were then placed on it; and during these, and two additional days, the inhabitants of the earth were formed; and in two more the seven heavens.[35] There is no more detail of circ.u.mstances; and the deluge, which is also mentioned, is discussed with equal brevity. The waters are represented to have poured out of an oven; a strange fable, said to be borrowed from the Persian Magi, who represented them as issuing from the oven of an old woman.[36] All men were drowned, save Noah and his family; and then G.o.d said, "O earth, swallow up thy waters; and thou, O heaven, withhold thy rain;" and immediately the waters abated.[37]

We may suppose Omar to have represented the desertion of the land by the sea to have been gradual, and that his hypothesis required a greater lapse of ages than was consistent with Moslem orthodoxy; for it is to be inferred from the Koran, that man and this planet were created at the same time; and although Mahomet did not limit expressly the antiquity of the human race, yet he gave an implied sanction to the Mosaic chronology, by the veneration expressed by him for the Hebrew Patriarchs.[38]

A ma.n.u.script work, ent.i.tled the "Wonders of Nature," is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris, by an Arabian writer, Mohammed Kazwini, who flourished in the seventh century of the Hegira, or at the close of the thirteenth century of our era.[39] Besides several curious remarks on aerolites, earthquakes, and the successive changes of position which the land and sea have undergone, we meet with the following beautiful pa.s.sage which is given as the narrative of Kidhz, an allegorical personage:--"I pa.s.sed one day by a very ancient and wonderfully populous city, and asked one of its inhabitants how long it had been founded. 'It is indeed a mighty city,' replied he; 'we know not how long it has existed, and our ancestors were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves.' Five centuries afterwards, as I pa.s.sed by the same place, I could not perceive the slightest vestige of the city. I demanded of a peasant, who was gathering herbs upon its former site, how long it had been destroyed. 'In sooth a strange question!' replied he. 'The ground here has never been different from what you now behold it.'--'Was there not of old,' said I, 'a splendid city here?'--'Never,' answered he, 'so far as we have seen, and never did our fathers speak to us of any such.'

On my return there 500 years afterwards, _I found the sea in the same place_, and on its sh.o.r.es were a party of fishermen, of whom I inquired how long the land had been covered by the waters? 'Is this a question,'

said they, 'for a man like you? this spot has always been what it is now.' I again returned, 500 years afterwards, and the sea had disappeared; I inquired of a man who stood alone upon the spot, how long ago this change had taken place, and he gave me the same answer as I had received before. Lastly, on coming back again after an equal lapse of time, I found there a flouris.h.i.+ng city, more populous and more rich in beautiful buildings, than the city I had seen the first time, and when I would fain have informed myself concerning its origin, the inhabitants answered me, 'Its rise is lost in remote antiquity: we are ignorant how long it has existed, and our fathers were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves.'"

_Early Italian writers._--It was not till the earlier part of the sixteenth century that geological phenomena began to attract the attention of the Christian nations. At that period a very animated controversy sprang up in Italy, concerning the true nature and origin of marine sh.e.l.ls, and other organized fossils, found abundantly in the strata of the peninsula. The celebrated painter Leonardo da Vinci, who in his youth had planned and executed some navigable ca.n.a.ls in the north of Italy, was one of the first who applied sound reasoning to these subjects. The mud of rivers, he said, had covered and penetrated into the interior of fossil sh.e.l.ls at a time when these were still at the bottom of the sea near the coast. "They tell us that these sh.e.l.ls were formed in the hills by the influence of the stars; but I ask where in the hills are the stars now forming sh.e.l.ls of distinct ages and species?

and how can the stars explain the origin of gravel, occurring at different heights and composed of pebbles rounded as if by the motion of running water; or in what manner can such a cause account for the petrifaction in the same places of various leaves, sea-weeds, and marine-crabs?"[40]

The excavations made in 1517, for repairing the city of Verona, brought to light a mult.i.tude of curious petrifactions, and furnished matter for speculation to different authors, and among the rest to Fracastoro,[41]

who declared his opinion, that fossil sh.e.l.ls had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly lived and multiplied where there exuviae are now found. He exposed the absurdity of having recourse to a certain "plastic force," which it was said had power to fas.h.i.+on stones into organic forms; and with no less cogent arguments, demonstrated the futility of attributing the situation of the sh.e.l.ls in question to the Mosaic deluge, a theory obstinately defended by some. That inundation, he observed, was too transient; it consisted princ.i.p.ally of fluviatile waters; and if it had transported sh.e.l.ls to great distances, must have strewed them over the surface, not buried them at vast depths in the interior of mountains. His clear exposition of the evidence would have terminated the discussion forever, if the pa.s.sions of mankind had not been enlisted in the dispute; and even though doubts should for a time have remained in some minds, they would speedily have been removed by the fresh information obtained almost immediately afterwards, respecting the structure of fossil remains, and of their living a.n.a.logues.

But the clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: first, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and, secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could not be explained by the deluge of Noah. It had been the general belief of the Christian world down to the period now under consideration, that the origin of this planet was not more remote than a few thousand years; and that since the creation the deluge was the only great catastrophe by which considerable change had been wrought on the earth's surface. On the other hand, the opinion was scarcely less general, that the final dissolution of our system was an event to be looked for at no distant period. The era, it is true, of the expected millennium had pa.s.sed away; and for five hundred years after the fatal hour when the annihilation of the planet had been looked for, the monks remained in undisturbed enjoyment of rich grants of land bequeathed to them by pious donors, who, in the preamble of deeds beginning "appropinquante mundi termino"----"appropinquante magno judicii die,"

left lasting monuments of the popular delusion.[42]

But although in the sixteenth century it had become necessary to interpret certain prophecies respecting the millennium more liberally, and to a.s.sign a more distant date to the future conflagration of the world, we find, in the speculations of the early geologists, perpetual allusion to such an approaching catastrophe; while in all that regarded the antiquity of the earth, no modification whatever of the opinions of the dark ages had been effected. Considerable alarm was at first excited when the attempt was made to invalidate, by physical proofs, an article of faith so generally received; but there was sufficient spirit of toleration and candor amongst the Italian ecclesiastics, to allow the subject to be canva.s.sed with much freedom. They even entered warmly into the controversy themselves, often favoring different sides of the question; and however much we may deplore the loss of time and labor devoted to the defence of untenable positions, it must be conceded that they displayed far less polemic bitterness than certain writers who followed them "beyond the Alps," two centuries and a half later.

CONTROVERSY AS TO THE REAL NATURE OF FOSSIL ORGANIC REMAINS.

_Mattioli--Falloppio._--The system of scholastic disputations, encouraged in the universities of the middle ages, had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation; and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater skill was required to maintain them; the end and object of these intellectual combats being victory, and not truth. No theory could be so far-fetched or fantastical as not to attract some followers, provided it fell in with popular notions; and as cosmogonists were not at all restricted, in building their systems, to the agency of known causes, the opponents of Fracastoro met his arguments by feigning imaginary causes, which differed from each other rather in name than in substance. Andrea Mattioli, for instance, an eminent botanist, the ill.u.s.trator of Dioscorides, embraced the notion of Agricola, a skilful German miner, that a certain "materia pinguis," or "fatty matter," set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes. Yet Mattioli had come to the conclusion, from his own observations, that porous bodies, such as bones and sh.e.l.ls, might be converted into stone, as being permeable to what he termed the "lapidifying juice." In like manner, Falloppio of Padua conceived that petrified sh.e.l.ls were generated by fermentation in the spots where they are found, or that they had in some cases acquired their form from "the tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations." Although celebrated as a professor of anatomy, he taught that certain tusks of elephants, dug up in his time in Apulia, were mere earthy concretions; and, consistently with these principles, he even went so far as to consider it probable, that the vases of Monte Testaceo at Rome were natural impressions stamped in the soil.[43] In the same spirit, Mercati, who published, in 1574, faithful figures of the fossil sh.e.l.ls preserved by Pope Sixtus V.

in the Museum of the Vatican, expressed an opinion that they were mere stones, which had a.s.sumed their peculiar configuration from the influence of the heavenly bodies; and Olivi of Cremona, who described the fossil remains of a rich museum at Verona, was satisfied with considering them as mere "sports of nature."

Some of the fanciful notions of those times were deemed less unreasonable, as being somewhat in harmony with the Aristotelian theory of spontaneous generation, then taught in all the schools.[44] For men who had been taught in early youth, that a large proportion of living animals and plants was formed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or had sprung from the corruption of organic matter, might easily persuade themselves that organic shapes, often imperfectly preserved in the interior of solid rocks, owed their existence to causes equally obscure and mysterious.

_Cardano_, 1552.--But there were not wanting some who, during the progress of this century, expressed more sound and sober opinions. The t.i.tle of a work of Cardano's, published in 1552, "De Subtilitate"

(corresponding to what would now be called Transcendental Philosophy), would lead us to expect, in the chapter on minerals, many far-fetched theories characteristic of that age; but when treating of petrified sh.e.l.ls, he decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the sea upon the mountains.[45]

_Cesalpino--Majoli_, 1597.--Cesalpino, a celebrated botanist, conceived that fossil sh.e.l.ls had been left on the land by the retiring sea, and had concreted into stone during the consolidation of the soil;[46] and in the following year (1597), Simeone Majoli[47] went still farther; and, coinciding for the most part with the views of Cesalpino, suggested that the sh.e.l.ls and submarine matter of the Veronese, and other districts, might have been cast up upon the land by volcanic explosions, like those which gave rise, in 1538, to Monte Nuovo, near Puzzuoli. This hint seems to have been the first imperfect attempt to connect the position of fossil sh.e.l.ls with the agency of volcanoes, a system afterwards more fully developed by Hooke, Lazzaro Moro, Hutton, and other writers.

Two years afterwards, Imperati advocated the animal origin of fossilized sh.e.l.ls, yet admitted that stones could vegetate by force of "an internal principle;" and, as evidence of this, he referred to the teeth of fish and spines of echini found petrified.[48]

_Palissy_, 1580.--Palissy, a French writer on "The Origin of Springs from Rain-water," and of other scientific works, undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, that petrified sh.e.l.ls had all been deposited by the universal deluge. "He was the first," said Fontenelle, when, in the French Academy, he p.r.o.nounced his eulogy, nearly a century and a half later, "who dared a.s.sert," in Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once belonged to marine animals.

_Fabio Colonna._--To enumerate the mult.i.tude of Italian writers, who advanced various hypotheses, all equally fantastical, in the early part of the seventeenth century, would be unprofitably tedious; but Fabio Colonna deserves to be distinguished; for, although he gave way to the dogma, that all fossil remains were to be referred to the deluge of Noah, he resisted the absurd theory of Stelluti, who taught that fossil wood and ammonites were mere clay, altered into such forms by sulphureous waters and subterranean heat; and he pointed out the different states of sh.e.l.ls buried in the strata, distinguis.h.i.+ng between, first, the mere mould or impression; second, the cast or nucleus; and, thirdly, the remains of the sh.e.l.l itself. He had also the merit of being the first to point out that some of the fossils had belonged to marine and some to terrestrial testacea.[49]

_Steno_, 1669.--But the most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno, a Dane, once professor of anatomy at Padua, and who afterwards resided many years at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

His treatise bears the quaint t.i.tle of "De Solido intra Solidum naturaltier contento (1669)," by which the author intended to express, "On Gems, Crystals, and organic Petrifactions inclosed within solid Rocks." This work attests the priority of the Italian school in geological research; exemplifying at the same time the powerful obstacles opposed, in that age, to the general reception of enlarged views in the science. It was still a favorite dogma, that the fossil remains of sh.e.l.ls and marine creatures were not of animal origin; an opinion adhered to by many from their extreme reluctance to believe, that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings before a great part of the existing mountains were formed. In reference to this controversy, Steno had dissected a shark recently taken from the Mediterranean, and had demonstrated that its teeth and bones were identical with many fossils found in Tuscany. He had also compared the sh.e.l.ls discovered in the Italian strata with living species, pointed out their resemblance, and traced the various gradations from sh.e.l.ls merely calcined, or which had only lost their animal gluten, to those petrifactions in which there was a perfect subst.i.tution of stony matter.

In his division of mineral ma.s.ses, he insisted on the secondary origin of those deposits in which the spoils of animals or fragments of older rocks were inclosed. He distinguished between marine formations and those of a fluviatile character, the last containing reeds, gra.s.ses, or the trunks and branches of trees. He argued in favor of the original horizontality of sedimentary deposits, attributing their present inclined and vertical position sometimes to the escape of subterranean vapors heaving the crust of the earth from below upwards, and sometimes to the falling in of ma.s.ses overlying subterranean cavities.

He declared that he had obtained proof that Tuscany must successively have acquired six distinct configurations, having been twice covered by water, twice laid dry with a level, and twice with an irregular and uneven surface.[50] He displayed great anxiety to reconcile his new views with Scripture, for which purpose he pointed to certain rocks as having been formed before the existence of animals and plants: selecting unfortunately as examples certain formations of limestone and sandstone in his own country, now known to contain, though sparingly, the remains of animals and plants,--strata which do not even rank as the oldest part of our secondary series. Steno suggested that Moses, when speaking of the loftiest mountains as having been covered by the deluge, meant merely the loftiest of the hills then existing, which may not have been very high. The diluvian waters, he supposed, may have issued from the interior of the earth into which they had retired, when in the beginning the land was separated from the sea. These, and other hypotheses on the same subject, are not calculated to enhance the value of the treatise, and could scarcely fail to detract from the authority of those opinions which were sound and legitimate deductions from fact and observation.

They have served, nevertheless, as the germs of many popular theories of later times, and in an expanded form have been put forth as original inventions by some of our contemporaries.

_Scilla_, 1670.--Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published, in 1670, a treatise, in Latin, on the fossils of Calabria, ill.u.s.trated by good engravings. This work proves the continued ascendancy of dogmas often refuted; for we find the wit and eloquence of the author chiefly directed against the obstinate incredulity of naturalists as to the organic nature of fossil sh.e.l.ls.[51] Like many eminent naturalists of his day, Scilla gave way to the popular persuasion, that all fossil sh.e.l.ls were the effects and proofs of the Mosaic deluge. It may be doubted whether he was perfectly sincere, and some of his contemporaries who took the same course were certainly not so. But so eager were they to root out what they justly considered an absurd prejudice respecting the nature of organized fossils, that they seem to have been ready to make any concessions, in order to establish this preliminary point. Such a compromising policy was short-sighted, since it was to little purpose that the nature of the doc.u.ments should at length be correctly understood, if men were to be prevented from deducing fair conclusions from them.

_Diluvial Theory._--The theologians who now entered the field in Italy, Germany, France, and England, were innumerable; and henceforward, they who refused to subscribe to the position, that all marine organic remains were proofs of the Mosaic deluge, were exposed to the imputation of disbelieving the whole of the sacred writings. Scarcely any step had been made in approximating to sound theories since the time of Fracastoro, more than a hundred years having been lost, in writing down the dogma that organized fossils were mere sports of nature. An additional period of a century and a half was now destined to be consumed in exploding the hypothesis, that organized fossils had all been buried in the solid strata by Noah's flood. Never did a theoretical fallacy, in any branch of science, interfere more seriously with accurate observation and the systematic cla.s.sification of facts. In recent times, we may attribute our rapid progress chiefly to the careful determination of the order of succession in mineral ma.s.ses, by means of their different organic contents, and their regular superposition. But the old diluvialists were induced by their system to confound all the groups of strata together instead of discriminating,--to refer all appearances to one cause and to one brief period, not to a variety of causes acting throughout a long succession of epochs. They saw the phenomena only as they desired to see them, sometimes misrepresenting facts, and at other times deducing false conclusions from correct data.

Under the influence of such prejudices, three centuries were of as little avail as a few years in our own times, when we are no longer required to propel the vessel against the force of an adverse current.

It may be well, therefore, to forewarn the reader, that in tracing the history of geology from the close of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, he must expect to be occupied with accounts of the r.e.t.a.r.dation, as well as of the advance, of the science. It will be necessary to point out the frequent revival of exploded errors, and the relapse from sound to the most absurd opinions; and to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis, because some of the most extravagant systems were invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent. In short, a sketch of the progress of geology is the history of a constant and violent struggle of new opinions against doctrines sanctioned by the implicit faith of many generations, and supposed to rest on scriptural authority. The inquiry, therefore, although highly interesting to one who studies the philosophy of the human mind, is too often barren of instruction to him who searches for truths in physical science.

_Quirini_, 1676.--Quirini, in 1676,[52] contended, in opposition to Scilla, that the diluvian waters could not have conveyed heavy bodies to the summit of mountains, since the agitation of the sea never (as Boyle had demonstrated) extended to great depths;[53] and still less could the testacea, as some pretended, have lived in these diluvian waters; for "the duration of the flood was brief, and _the heavy rains must have destroyed the saltness of the sea!_" He was the first writer who ventured to maintain that the universality of the Mosaic cataclysm ought not to be insisted upon. As to the nature of petrified sh.e.l.ls, he conceived that as earthy particles united in the sea to form the sh.e.l.ls of mollusca, the same crystallizing process might be effected on the land; and that, in the latter case, the germs of the animals might have been disseminated through the substance of the rocks, and afterwards developed by virtue of humidity. Visionary as was this doctrine, it gained many proselytes even amongst the more sober reasoners of Italy and Germany; for it conceded that the position of fossil bodies could not be accounted for by the diluvial theory.

_Plot--Lister_, 1678.--In the mean time, the doctrine that fossil sh.e.l.ls had never belonged to real animals maintained its ground in England, where the agitation of the question began at a much later period. Dr.

Plot, in his "Natural History of Oxfords.h.i.+re" (1677), attributed to a "plastic virtue latent in the earth" the origin of fossil sh.e.l.ls and fishes; and Lister, to his accurate account of British sh.e.l.ls, in 1678, added the fossil species, under the appellation of _turbinated and bivalve stones_. "Either," said he, "these were terriginous, or, if otherwise, the animals they so exactly represent _have become extinct_."

This writer appears to have been the first who was aware of the continuity over large districts of the princ.i.p.al groups of strata in the British series, and who proposed the construction of regular geological maps.[54]

_Leibnitz_, 1680.--The great mathematician Leibnitz published his "Protogoea" in 1680. He imagined this planet to have been originally a burning luminous ma.s.s, which ever since its creation has been undergoing refrigeration. When the outer crust had cooled down sufficiently to allow the vapors to be condensed, they fell, and formed a universal ocean, covering the loftiest mountains, and investing the whole globe.

The crust, as it consolidated from a state of fusion, a.s.sumed a vesicular and cavernous structure; and being rent in some places, allowed the water to rush into the subterranean hollows, whereby the level of the primeval ocean was lowered. The breaking in of these vast caverns is supposed to have given rise to the dislocated and deranged position of the strata "which Steno had described," and the same disruptions communicated violent movements to the inc.u.mbent waters, whence great inundations ensued. The waters, after they had been thus agitated, deposited their sedimentary matter during intervals of quiescence, and hence the various stony and earthy strata. "We may recognize, therefore," says Leibnitz, "a double origin of primitive ma.s.ses, the one by refrigeration from igneous fusion, the other by concretion from aqueous solution."[55] By the repet.i.tion of similar causes (the disruption of the crust and consequent floods), alternations of new strata were produced, until at length these causes were reduced to a condition of quiescent equilibrium, and a more permanent state of things was established.[56]

_Hooke_, 1688.--The "Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, M. D.," well known as a great mathematician and natural philosopher, appeared in 1705, containing "A Discourse of Earthquakes," which, we are informed by his editor, was written in 1668, but revised at subsequent periods.[57]

Hooke frequently refers to the best Italian and English authors who wrote before his time on geological subjects; but there are no pa.s.sages in his works implying that he partic.i.p.ated in the enlarged views of Steno and Lister, or of his contemporary, Woodward, in regard to the geographical extent of certain groups of strata. His treatise, however, is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature.

"However trivial a thing," he says, "a rotten sh.e.l.l may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, ma.n.u.scripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised," &c.; "and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them (the records of nature) and _to raise a chronology out of them_, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible."[58]

Respecting the extinction of species, Hooke was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other sh.e.l.ls and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known; but he doubted whether the species had become extinct, observing that the knowledge of naturalists of all the marine species, especially those inhabiting the deep sea, was very deficient. In some parts of his writings, however, he leans to the opinion that species had been lost; and in speculating on this subject, he even suggests that there might be some connection between the disappearance of certain kinds of animals and plants, and the changes wrought by earthquakes in former ages. Some species, he observes, with great sagacity, are "_peculiar to certain places_, and not to be found elsewhere. If, then, such a place had been swallowed up, it is not improbable but that those animate beings may have been destroyed with it; and this may be true both of aerial and aquatic animals; for those animated bodies, whether vegetables or animals, which were naturally nourished or refreshed by the air, would be destroyed by the water," &c.[59] Turtles, he adds, and such large ammonites as are found in Portland, seem to have been the productions of hotter countries; and it is necessary to suppose that England once lay under the sea within the torrid zone! To explain this and similar phenomena, he indulges in a variety of speculations concerning changes in the position of the axis of the earth's rotation, "a s.h.i.+fting of the earth's centre of gravity, a.n.a.logous to the revolutions of the magnetic pole,"

&c. None of these conjectures, however, are proposed dogmatically, but rather in the hope of promoting fresh inquiries and experiments.

In opposition to the prejudices of his age, we find him arguing against the idea that nature had formed fossil bodies "for no other end than to play the mimic in the mineral kingdom;"--maintaining that figured stones were "really the several bodies they represent, or the mouldings of them petrified," and not, as some have imagined, 'a lusus naturae,' sporting herself in the needless formation of useless beings."[60]

It was objected to Hooke, that his doctrine of the extinction of species derogated from the wisdom and power of the omnipotent Creator; but he answered, that, as individuals die, there may be some termination to the duration of a species; and his opinions, he declared, were not repugnant to Holy Writ: for the Scriptures taught that our system was degenerating, and tending to its final dissolution; "and as, when that shall happen, all the species will be lost, why not some at one time and some at another?"[61]

But his princ.i.p.al object was to account for the manner in which sh.e.l.ls had been conveyed into the higher parts of "the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenean hills, and the interior of continents in general." These and other appearances, he said, might have been brought about by earthquakes, "which have turned plains into mountains, and mountains into plains, seas into land, and land into seas, made rivers where there were none before, and swallowed up others that formerly were, &c., &c.; and which, since the creation of the world, have wrought many great changes on the superficial parts of the earth, and have been the instruments of placing sh.e.l.ls, bones, plants, fishes, and the like, in those places where, with much astonishment, we find them."[62] This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil sh.e.l.ls in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently refers; but the revival and development of the system was an important step in the progress of modern science.

Hooke enumerated all the examples known to him of subterranean disturbance, from "the sad catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah," down to the Chilian earthquake of 1646. The elevating of the bottom of the sea, the sinking and submersion of the land, and most of the inequalities of the earth's surface, might, he said, be accounted for by the agency of these subterranean causes. He mentions that the coast near Naples _was raised during the eruption of Monte Nuovo_; and that, in 1591, land rose in the island of St. Michael, during an eruption: and although it would be more difficult, he says, to prove, he does not doubt but that there had been as many earthquakes in the parts of the earth under the ocean, as in the parts of the dry land; in confirmation of which, he mentions the immeasurable depth of the sea near some volcanoes. To attest the extent of simultaneous subterranean movements, he refers to an earthquake in the West Indies, in the year 1690, where the s.p.a.ce of earth raised, or "struck upwards," by the shock, exceeded, he affirms, the length of the Alps and Pyrenees.

_Hooke's diluvial Theory._--As Hooke declared the favorite hypothesis of the day, "that marine fossil bodies were to be referred to Noah's flood," to be wholly untenable, he appears to have felt himself called upon to subst.i.tute a diluvial theory of his own, and thus he became involved in countless difficulties and contradictions. "During the great catastrophe," he said, "there might have been a changing of that part which was before dry land into sea by sinking, and of that which was sea into dry land by raising, and marine bodies might have been buried in sediment beneath the ocean, in the interval between the creation and the deluge."[63] Then follows a disquisition on the separation of the land from the waters, mentioned in Genesis; during which operation some places of the sh.e.l.l of the earth were forced outwards, and others pressed downwards or inwards, &c. His diluvial hypothesis very much resembled that of Steno, and was entirely opposed to the fundamental principles professed by him, that he would explain the former changes of the earth _in a more natural manner_ than others had done. When, in despite of this declaration, he required a former "crisis of nature,"

and taught that earthquakes had become debilitated, and that the Alps, Andes, and other chains, had been lifted up in a few months, he was compelled to a.s.sume so rapid a rate of change, that his machinery appeared scarcely less extravagant than that of his most fanciful predecessors. For this reason, perhaps, his whole theory of earthquakes met with undeserved neglect.

_Ray_, 1692.--One of his contemporaries, the celebrated naturalist, Ray, partic.i.p.ated in the same desire to explain geological phenomena by reference to causes less hypothetical than those usually resorted to.[64] In his essay on "Chaos and Creation," he proposed a system, agreeing in its outline, and in many of its details, with that of Hooke; but his knowledge of natural history enabled him to elucidate the subject with various original observations. Earthquakes, he suggested, might have been the second causes employed at the creation, in separating the land from the waters, and in gathering the waters together into one place. He mentions, like Hooke, the earthquake of 1646, which had violently shaken the Andes for some hundreds of leagues, and made many alterations therein. In a.s.signing a cause for the general deluge, he preferred a change in the earth's centre of gravity to the introduction of earthquakes. Some unknown cause, he said, might have forced the subterranean waters outwards, as was, perhaps, indicated by "the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep."

Ray was one of the first of our writers who enlarged upon the effects of running water upon the land, and of the encroachment of the sea upon the sh.o.r.es. So important did he consider the agency of these causes, that he saw in them an indication of the tendency of our system to its final dissolution; and he wondered why the earth did not proceed more rapidly towards a general submersion beneath the sea, when so much matter was carried down by rivers, or undermined in the sea-cliffs. We perceive clearly from his writings, that the gradual decline of our system, and its future consummation by fire, was held to be as necessary an article of faith by the orthodox, as was the recent origin of our planet. His discourses, like those of Hooke, are highly interesting, as attesting the familiar a.s.sociation in the minds of philosophers, in the age of Newton, of questions in physics and divinity. Ray gave an unequivocal proof of the sincerity of his mind, by sacrificing his preferment in the church, rather than take an oath against the Covenanters, which he could not reconcile with his conscience. His reputation, moreover, in the scientific world placed him high above the temptation of courting popularity, by pandering to the physico-theological taste of his age. It is, therefore, curious to meet with so many citations from the Christian fathers and prophets in his essays on physical science--to find him in one page proceeding, by the strict rules of induction, to explain the former changes of the globe, and in the next gravely entertaining the question, whether the sun and stars, and the whole heavens, shall be annihilated, together with the earth, at the era of the grand conflagration.

_Woodward, 1695._--Among the contemporaries of Hooke and Ray, Woodward, a professor of medicine, had acquired the most extensive information respecting the geological structure of the crust of the earth. He had examined many parts of the British strata with minute attention; and his systematic collection of specimens, bequeathed to the University of Cambridge, and still preserved there as arranged by him, shows how far he had advanced in ascertaining the order of superposition. From the great number of facts collected by him, we might have expected his theoretical views to be more sound and enlarged than those of his contemporaries; but in his anxiety to accommodate all observed phenomena to the scriptural account of the Creation and Deluge, he arrived at most erroneous results. He conceived "the whole terrestrial globe to have been taken to pieces and dissolved at the flood, and the strata to have settled down from this promiscuous ma.s.s as any earthy sediment from a fluid."[65] In corroboration of these views he insisted upon the fact, that "marine bodies are lodged in the strata according to the order of their gravity, the heavier sh.e.l.ls in stone, the lighter in chalk, and so of the rest."[66] Ray immediately exposed the unfounded nature of this a.s.sertion, remarking truly that fossil bodies "are often mingled, heavy with light, in the same stratum;" and he even went so far as to say, that Woodward "must have invented the phenomena for the sake of confirming his bold and strange hypothesis"[67]--a strong expression from the pen of a contemporary.

_Burnet, 1690._--At the same time Burnet published his "Theory of the Earth."[68] The t.i.tle is most characteristic of the age,--"The Sacred Theory of the Earth; containing an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the general Changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the Consummation of all Things." Even Milton had scarcely ventured in his poem to indulge his imagination so freely in painting scenes of the Creation and Deluge, Paradise and Chaos. He explained why the primeval earth enjoyed a perpetual spring before the flood! showed how the crust of the globe was fissured by "the sun's rays," so that it burst, and thus the diluvial waters were let loose from a supposed central abyss. Not satisfied with these themes, he derived from the books of the inspired writers, and even from heathen authorities, prophetic views of the future revolutions of the globe, gave a most terrific description of the general conflagration, and proved that a new heaven and a new earth will rise out of a _second chaos_--after which will follow the blessed millennium.

The reader should be informed, that, according to the opinion of many respectable writers of that age, there was good scriptural ground for presuming that the garden bestowed upon our first parents was not on the earth itself, but above the clouds, in the middle region between our planet and the moon. Burnet approaches with becoming gravity the discussion of so important a topic. He was willing to concede that the geographical position of Paradise was not in Mesopotamia, yet he maintained that it was upon the earth, and in the southern hemisphere, near the equinoctial line. Butler selected this conceit as a fair mark for his satire, when, amongst the numerous accomplishments of Hudibras, he says,--

"He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies; And, as he was disposed, could prove it Below the moon, or else above it."

Yet the same monarch, who is said never to have slept without Butler's poem under his pillow, was so great an admirer and patron of Burnet's book, that he ordered it to be translated from the Latin into English.

The style of the "Sacred Theory" was eloquent, and the book displayed powers of invention of no ordinary stamp. It was, in fact, a fine historical romance, as Buffon afterwards declared; but it was treated as a work of profound science in the time of its author, and was panegyrized by Addison in a Latin ode, while Steele praised it in the "Spectator."

_Whiston, 1696._--Another production of the same school, and equally characteristic of the time, was that of Whiston, ent.i.tled, "A New Theory of the Earth; wherein the Creation of the world in Six Days, the Universal Deluge, and the General Conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scriptures, are shown to be perfectly agreeable to Reason and Philosophy." He was at first a follower of Burnet; but his faith in the infallibility of that writer was shaken by the declared opinion of Newton, that there was every presumption in astronomy against any former change in the inclination of the earth's axis. This was a leading dogma in Burnet's system, though not original, for it was borrowed from an Italian, Alessandro degli Alessandri, who had suggested it in the beginning of the fifteenth century, to account for the former occupation of the present continents by the sea. La Place has since strengthened the arguments of Newton, against the probability of any former revolution of this kind.