Principles of Geology Part 9

_Changes during the tertiary periods._--The secondary and tertiary formations of Europe, when considered separately, may be contrasted as having very different characters; the secondary appearing to have been deposited in open seas, the tertiary in regions where dry land, lakes, bays, and perhaps inland seas, abounded. The secondary series is almost exclusively marine; the tertiary, even the oldest part, contains lacustrine strata, and not unfrequently freshwater and marine beds alternating. In fact there is evidence of important geographical changes having occurred between the deposition of the cretaceous system, or uppermost of the secondary series, and that of the oldest tertiary group, and still more between the era of the latter and that of the newer tertiary formations. This change in the physical geography of Europe and North America was accompanied by an alteration no less remarkable in organic life, scarcely any _species_ being common both to the secondary and tertiary rocks, and the fossils of the latter affording evidence of a different climate.

On the other hand, when we compare the tertiary formations of successive ages, we trace a gradual approximation in the imbedded fossils, from an a.s.semblage in which extinct species predominate, to one where the species agree for the most part with those now existing. In other words, we find a gradual increase of animals and plants fitted for our present climates, in proportion as the strata which we examine are more modern.

Now, during all these successive tertiary periods, there are signs of a great increase of land in European and North American lat.i.tudes. By reference to the map (Pl. 1), and its description, p. 121, the reader will see that about two-thirds of the present European lands have emerged since the earliest tertiary group originated. Nor is this the only revolution which the same region has undergone within the period alluded to, some tracts which were previously land having gained in alt.i.tude, others, on the contrary, having sunk below their former level.

That the existing lands were not all upheaved at once into their present position is proved by the most striking evidence. Several Italian geologists, even before the time of Brocchi, had justly inferred that the Apennines were elevated several thousand feet above the level of the Mediterranean before the deposition of the modern Subapennine beds which flank them on either side. What now const.i.tutes the central calcareous chain of the Apennines must for a long time have been a narrow ridgy peninsula, branching off, at its northern extremity, from the Alps near Savona. This peninsula has since been raised from one to two thousand feet, by which movement the ancient sh.o.r.es, and, for a certain extent, the bed of the contiguous sea, have been laid dry, both on the side of the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7.]

The nature of these vicissitudes will be explained by the accompanying diagram, which represents a transverse section across the Italian peninsula. The inclined strata A are the disturbed formations of the Apennines, into which the ancient igneous rocks a are supposed to have intruded themselves. At a lower level on each flank of the chain are the more recent sh.e.l.ly beds _b b_, which often contain rounded pebbles derived from the waste of contiguous parts of the older Apennine limestone. These, it will be seen, are horizontal, and lie in what is termed "unconformable stratification" on the more ancient series. They now const.i.tute a line of hills of moderate elevation between the sea and the Apennines, but never penetrate to the higher and more ancient valleys of that chain.

The same phenomena are exhibited in the Alps on a much grander scale; those mountains being composed in some even of their higher regions of the newer secondary and oldest tertiary formations, while they are encircled by a great zone of more modern tertiary rocks both on their southern flank towards the plains of the Po, and on the side of Switzerland and Austria, and at their eastern termination towards Styria and Hungary.[198] This newer tertiary zone marks the position of former seas or gulfs, like the Adriatic, wherein ma.s.ses of strata acc.u.mulated, some single groups of which are not inferior in thickness to the most voluminous of our secondary formations in England. Some even of these newer groups have been raised to the height of three or four thousand feet, and in proportion to their antiquity, they generally rise to greater heights, the older of them forming interior zones nearest to the central ridges of the Alps. We have already ascertained that the Alps gained accessions to their height and width at several successive periods, and that the last series of improvements occurred when the seas were inhabited by many existing species of animals.

We may imagine some future series of convulsions once more to heave up this stupendous chain, together with the adjoining bed of the sea, so that the mountains of Europe may rival the Andes in elevation; in which case the deltas of the Po, Adige, and Brenta, now encroaching upon the Adriatic, might be uplifted so as to form another exterior belt of considerable height around the southeastern flank of the Alps.

The Pyrenees, also, have acquired their present alt.i.tude, which in Mont Perdu exceeds eleven thousand feet, since the deposition of the nummulitic or Eocene division of the tertiary series. Some of the tertiary strata at the base of the chain are raised to the height of only a few hundred feet above the sea, and retain a horizontal position, without partaking in general in the disturbance to which the older series has been subjected; so that the great barrier between France and Spain was almost entirely upheaved in the interval between the deposition of certain groups of tertiary strata.

The remarkable break between the most modern of the known secondary rocks and the oldest tertiary, may be apparent only, and ascribable to the present deficiency of our information. Already the marles and green sand of Heers near Tongres, in Belgium, observed by M. Dumont, and the "pisolitic limestone" of the neighborhood of Paris, both intermediate in age between the Maestricht chalk and the lower Eocene strata, begin to afford us signs of a pa.s.sage from one state of things to another.

Nevertheless, it is far from impossible that the interval between the chalk and tertiary formations const.i.tuted an era in the earth's history, when the transition from one cla.s.s of organic beings to another was, comparatively speaking, rapid. For if the doctrines above explained in regard to vicissitudes of temperature are sound, it will follow that changes of equal magnitude in the geographical features of the globe may at different periods produce very unequal effects on climate; and, so far as the existence of certain animals and plants depends on climate, the duration of species would be shortened or protracted, according to the rate at which the change of temperature proceeded.

For even if we a.s.sume that the intensity of the subterranean disturbing forces is uniform and capable of producing nearly equal amounts of alteration on the surface of the planet, during equal periods of time, still the rate of alteration in climate would be by no means uniform.

Let us imagine the quant.i.ty of land between the equator and the tropic in one hemisphere to be to that in the other as thirteen to one, which, as before stated, represents the unequal proportion of the extra-tropical lands in the two hemispheres at present. (See figs. 3 and 4, p. 110.) Then let the first geographical change consist in the s.h.i.+fting of this preponderance of land from one side of the line to the other; from the southern hemisphere, for example, to the northern. Now this need not affect the general temperature of the earth. But if, at another epoch, we suppose a continuance of the same agency to transfer an equal volume of land from the torrid zone to the temperate and arctic regions of the northern and southern hemispheres, or into one of them, there might be so great a refrigeration of the mean temperature _in all lat.i.tudes_, that scarcely any of the pre-existing races of animals would survive; and, unless it pleased the Author of Nature that the planet should be uninhabited, new species, and probably of widely different forms, would then be subst.i.tuted in the room of the extinct. We ought not, therefore, to infer that equal periods of time are always attended by an equal amount of change in organic life, since a great fluctuation in the mean temperature of the earth, the most influential cause which can be conceived in exterminating whole races of animals and plants, must, in different epochs, require unequal portions of time for its completion.

[PLATE I. _Map showing the extent of surface in Europe which has at one period or another been covered by the sea since the commencement of the deposition of the older or Eocene Tertiary strata._]

This map will enable the reader to perceive at a glance the great extent of change in the physical geography of Europe, which can be proved to have taken place since some of the older tertiary strata began to be deposited. The proofs of submergence, during some part or other of this period, in all the districts distinguished by ruled lines, are of a most unequivocal character; for the area thus described is now covered by deposits containing the fossil remains of animals which could only have lived in salt water. The most ancient part of the period referred to cannot be deemed very remote, considered geologically; because the deposits of the Paris and London basins, and many other districts belonging to the older tertiary epoch, are newer than the greater part of the sedimentary rocks (those commonly called secondary and primary fossiliferous or paleozoic) of which the crust of the globe is composed.

The species, moreover, of marine testacea, of which the remains are found in these older tertiary formations, are not entirely distinct from such as now live. Yet, notwithstanding the comparatively recent epoch to which this retrospect is carried, the variations in the distribution of land and sea depicted on the map form only a part of those which must have taken place during the period under consideration. Some approximation has merely been made to an estimate of the amount of _sea converted into land_ in parts of Europe best known to geologists; but we cannot determine how much land has become sea during the same period; and there may have been repeated interchanges of land and water in the same places, changes of which no account is taken in the map, and respecting the amount of which little accurate information can ever be obtained.

I have extended the sea in some instances beyond the limits of the land now covered by tertiary formations, and marine drift, because other geological data have been obtained for inferring the submergence of these tracts after the deposition of the Eocene strata had begun. Thus, for example, there are good reasons for concluding that part of the chalk of England (the North and South Downs, for example, together with the intervening secondary tracts) continued beneath the sea until the oldest tertiary beds had begun to acc.u.mulate.

A strait of the sea separating England and Wales has also been introduced, on the evidence afforded by sh.e.l.ls of existing species found in a deposit of gravel, sand, loam, and clay, called the northern drift, by Sir R. Murchison.[199] And Mr. Trimmer has discovered similar recent marine sh.e.l.ls on the northern coast of North Wales, and on Moel Tryfane, near the Menai Straits, at the height of 1392 feet above the level of the sea!

Some raised sea-beaches, and drift containing marine sh.e.l.ls, which I examined in 1843, between Limerick and Dublin, and which have been traced over other parts of Ireland by different geologists, have required an extension of the dark lines so as to divide that island into several. In improving this part of my map I have been especially indebted to the a.s.sistance of Mr. Oldham, who in 1843 announced to the British a.s.sociation at Cork the fact that at the period when the drift or glacial beds were deposited, Ireland must have formed an archipelago such as is here depicted. A considerable part of Scotland might also have been represented in a similar manner as under water when the drift originated.

A portion of Brittany is divided into islands, because it is known to be covered with patches of marine tertiary strata chiefly miocene. When I examined these in 1830 and 1843, I convinced myself that the sea must have covered much larger areas than are now occupied by these small and detached deposits. The former connection of the White Sea and the Gulf of Finland is proved by the fact that a mult.i.tude of huge erratic blocks extend over the intervening s.p.a.ce, and a large portion of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, as well as Germany and Russia, are represented as sea, on the same evidence, strengthened by the actual occurrence of fossil sea-sh.e.l.ls, of recent species, in the drift of various portions of those countries. The submergence of considerable areas under large bodies of fresh water, during the tertiary period, of which there are many striking geological proofs in Auvergne, and elsewhere, has not been expressed by ruled lines. They bear testimony to the former existence of neighboring lands, and a certain elevation of the areas where they occur above the level of the ocean; they are therefore left blank, together with all the s.p.a.ce that cannot be demonstrated to have been part of the sea at some time or other, since the commencement of the Eocene epoch.

In compiling this map, which has been entirely recast since the first edition, I have availed myself of the latest geological maps of the British isles, and north of Europe; also of those published by the government surveyors of France, MM. de Beaumont and Dufresnoy; the map of Germany and part of Europe, by Von Dechen, and that of Italy by M.

Tchihatchoff (Berlin, 1842). Lastly, Sir R. Murchison's important map of Russia, and the adjoining countries, has enabled me to mark out not only a considerable area, previously little known, in which tertiary formations occur; but also a still wider expanse, over which the northern drift, and erratic blocks with occasional marine sh.e.l.ls, are traceable. The southern limits of these glacial deposits in Russia and Germany indicate the boundary, so far as we can now determine it, of the northern ocean, at a period immediately antecedent to that of the human race.

I was anxious, even in the t.i.tle of this map, to guard the reader against the supposition that it was intended to represent the state of the physical geography of part of Europe at any _one point of time_. The difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of restoring the geography of the globe as it may have existed at any former period, especially a remote one, consists in this, that we can only point out where part of the sea has been turned into land, and are almost always unable to determine what land may have become sea. All maps, therefore, pretending to represent the geography of remote geological epochs must be ideal.

The map under consideration is not a restoration of a former state of things, at any particular moment of time, but a synoptical view of a certain amount of one kind of change (the conversion of sea into land) known to have been brought about within a given period.

It may be proper to remark that the vertical movements to which the land is subject in certain regions, occasion alternately the subsidence and the uprising of the surface; and that, by such oscillations at successive periods, a great area may have been entirely covered with marine deposits, although the whole may never have been beneath the waters at one time; nay, even though the relative proportion of land and sea may have continued unaltered throughout the whole period. I believe, however, that since the commencement of the tertiary period, the dry land in the northern hemisphere has been continually on the increase, both because it is now greatly in excess beyond the average proportion which land generally bears to water on the globe, and because a comparison of the secondary and tertiary strata affords indications, as I have already shown, of a pa.s.sage from the condition of an ocean interspersed with islands to that of a large continent.

But supposing it were possible to represent all the vicissitudes in the distribution of land and sea that have occurred during the tertiary period, and to exhibit not only the actual existence of land where there was once sea, but also the extent of surface now submerged which may once have been land, the map would still fail to express all the important revolutions in physical geography which have taken place within the epoch under consideration. For the oscillations of level, as was before stated, have not merely been such as to lift up the land from below the water, but in some cases to occasion a rise of many thousand feet above the sea. Thus the Alps have acquired an additional alt.i.tude of 4000, and even in some places 10,000 feet; and the Apennines owe a considerable part of their present height to subterranean convulsions which have happened within the tertiary epoch.

On the other hand, some mountain chains may have been lowered during the same series of ages, in an equal degree, and shoals may have been converted into deep abysses.[200] Since this map was recast in 1847, geologists have very generally come to the conclusion that the nummulitic limestone, together with the overlying fucoidal grit and shale, called "Flysch," in the Alps, belongs to the older tertiary or Eocene group. As these nummulitic rocks enter into the structure of some of the most lofty and disturbed parts of the Alps, Apennines, Carpathians, Pyrenees, and other mountain chains, and form many of the elevated lands of Africa and Asia, their position almost implies the ubiquity of the post-Eocene ocean, not, indeed, by the simultaneous, but by the successive, occupancy of the whole ground by its waters.[201]

_Concluding remarks on changes in physical geography._--The foregoing observations, it may be said, are confined chiefly to Europe, and therefore merely establish the increase of dry land in a s.p.a.ce which const.i.tutes but a small portion of the northern hemisphere; but it was stated in the preceding chapter, that the great Lowland of Siberia, lying chiefly between the lat.i.tudes 55 and 75 N. (an area nearly equal to all Europe), is covered for the most part by marine strata, which, from the account given by Pallas, and more recently by Sir R. Murchison, belongs to a period when all or nearly all the sh.e.l.ls were of a species still living in the north. The emergence, therefore, of this area from the deep is, comparatively speaking, a very modern event, and must, as before remarked, have caused a great increase of cold throughout the globe.

Upon a review, then, of all the facts above enumerated, respecting the ancient geography of the globe as attested by geological monuments, there appear good grounds for inferring that changes of climate coincided with remarkable revolutions in the former position of sea and land. A wide expanse of ocean, interspersed with islands, seems to have pervaded the northern hemisphere at the periods when the Silurian and carboniferous rocks were formed, and a warm and very uniform temperature then prevailed. Subsequent modifications in climate accompanied the deposition of the secondary formations, when repeated changes were effected in the physical geography of our northern lat.i.tudes. Lastly, the refrigeration became most decided, and the climate most nearly a.s.similated to that now enjoyed, when the lands in Europe and northern Asia had attained their full extension, and the mountain chains their actual height.

Soon after the first publication of this theory of climate, an objection was made by an anonymous German critic in 1833 that there are no geological proofs of the prevalence at any former period of a temperature _lower_ than that now enjoyed; whereas, if the causes above a.s.signed were the true ones, it might reasonably have been expected that fossil remains would sometimes indicate colder as well as hotter climates than those now established.[202] In answer to this objection, I may suggest, that our present climates are probably far more distant from the extreme of possible heat than from its opposite extreme of cold. A glance at the map (fig. 6, p. 111) will show that all the existing lands might be placed between the 30th parallels of lat.i.tude on each side of the equator, and that even then they would by no means fill that s.p.a.ce. In no other position would they give rise to so high a temperature. But the present geographical condition of the earth is so far removed from such a state of things, that the land lying between the poles and the parallels of 30, is in great excess; so much so that, instead of being to the sea in the proportion of 1 to 3, which is as near as possible the average general ratio throughout the globe, it is 9 to 23.[203] Hence it ought not to surprise us if, in our geological retrospect, embracing perhaps a small part only of a complete cycle of change in the terrestrial climates, we should happen to discover everywhere the signs of a higher temperature. The strata hitherto examined may have originated when the quant.i.ty of equatorial land was always decreasing and the land in regions nearer the poles augmenting in height and area, until at length it attained its present excess in high lat.i.tudes. There is nothing improbable in supposing that the geographical revolutions of which we have hitherto obtained proofs had this general tendency; and in that case the refrigeration must have been constant, although, for reasons before explained, the rate of cooling may not have been uniform.

It may, however, be as well to recall the reader's attention to what was before said of the indication brought to light of late years, of a considerable oscillation of temperature, in the period immediately preceding the human era. We have seen that on examining some of the most northern deposits, those commonly called the northern drift in Scotland, Ireland, and Canada, in which nearly all, in some cases, perhaps all, the fossil sh.e.l.ls are of recent species, we discover the signs of a climate colder than that now prevailing in corresponding lat.i.tudes on both sides the Atlantic. It appears that an arctic fauna specifically resembling that of the present seas, extended farther to the south than now. This opinion is derived partly from the known habitations of the corresponding living species, and partly from the abundance of certain genera of sh.e.l.ls and the absence of others.[204] The date of the refrigeration thus inferred appears to coincide very nearly with the era of the dispersion of erratic blocks over Europe and North America, a phenomenon which will be ascribed in the sequel (ch. 16) to the cold then prevailing in the northern hemisphere. The force, moreover, of the German critic's objection has been since in a great measure destroyed, by the larger and more profound knowledge acquired in the last few years of the ancient carboniferous flora, which has led the ablest botanists to adopt the opinion, that the climate of the coal period was remarkable for its warmth, moisture, equability, and freedom from cold, rather than the intensity of its _tropical heat_. We are therefore no longer ent.i.tled to a.s.sume that there has been a constant and gradual decline in the absolute amount of heat formerly contained in the atmosphere and waters of the ocean, such as it was conjectured might have emanated from the incandescent central nucleus of a new and nearly fluid planet, before the interior had lost, by radiation into surrounding s.p.a.ce, a great part of its original high temperature.

_Astronomical causes of fluctuations in climate._--Sir John Herschel has lately inquired, whether there are any astronomical causes which may offer a possible explanation of the difference between the actual climate of the earth's surface, and those which formerly appear to have prevailed. He has entered upon this subject, he says, "impressed with the magnificence of that view of geological revolutions, which regards them rather as regular and necessary effects of great and general causes, than as resulting from a series of convulsions and catastrophes, regulated by no laws, and reducible to no fixed principles." Geometers, he adds, have demonstrated the absolute invariability of the mean distance of the earth from the sun; whence it would at first seem to follow, that the mean annual supply of light and heat derived from that luminary would be alike invariable: but a closer consideration of the subject will show, that this would not be a legitimate conclusion; but that on the contrary, the _mean_ amount of solar radiation is dependent on the eccentricity of the earth's...o...b..t, and therefore liable to variation.[205]

Now the eccentricity of the orbit, he continues, is actually diminis.h.i.+ng, and has been so for ages beyond the records of history. In consequence, the ellipse is in a state of approach to a circle, and the annual average of solar heat radiated to the earth is actually on the _decrease_. So far this is in accordance with geological evidence, which indicates a general refrigeration of climate; but the question remains, whether the amount of diminution which the eccentricity may have ever undergone can be supposed sufficient to account for any sensible refrigeration. The calculations necessary to determine this point, though practicable, have never yet been made, and would be extremely laborious; for they must embrace all the perturbations which the most influential planets, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, would cause in the earth's...o...b..t, and in each other's movements round the sun.

The problem is also very complicated, inasmuch as it depends not merely on the ellipticity of the earth's...o...b..t, but on the a.s.sumed temperature of the celestial s.p.a.ces beyond the earth's atmosphere; a matter still open to discussion, and on which M. Fourier and Sir J. Herschel have arrived at very different opinions. But if, says Herschel, we suppose an extreme case, as if the earth's...o...b..t should ever become as eccentric as that of the planet Juno or Pallas, a great change of climate might be conceived to result, the winter and summer temperatures being sometimes mitigated, and at others exaggerated, in the same lat.i.tudes.

It is much to be desired that the calculations alluded to were executed, as even if they should demonstrate, as M. Arago thinks highly probable,[206] that the mean amount of solar radiation can never be materially affected by irregularities in the earth's motion, it would still be satisfactory to ascertain the point. Such inquiries, however, can never supersede the necessity of investigating the consequences of the varying position of continents, s.h.i.+fted as we know them to have been during successive epochs, from one part of the globe to the other.

Another astronomical hypothesis respecting the possible cause of secular variations in climate, has been proposed by a distinguished mathematician and philosopher, M. Poisson. He begins by a.s.suming, 1st, that the sun and our planetary system are not stationary, but carried onward by a common movement through s.p.a.ce; 2dly, that every point in s.p.a.ce receives heat as well as light from innumerable stars surrounding it on all sides, so that if a right line of indefinite length be produced in any direction from such a point, it must encounter a star either visible or invisible to us. 3dly, He then goes on to a.s.sume, that the different regions of s.p.a.ce, which in the course of millions of years are traversed by our system, must be of very unequal temperature, inasmuch as some of them must receive a greater, others a less, quant.i.ty of radiant heat from the great stellary inclosure. If the earth, he continues, or any other large body, pa.s.s from a hotter to a colder region, it would not readily lose in the second all the heat which it has imbibed in the first region, but retain a temperature increasing downwards from the surface, as in the actual condition of our planet.[207]

Now the opinion originally suggested by Sir W. Herschel, that our sun and its attendant planets were all moving onward through s.p.a.ce, in the direction of the constellation Hercules, is very generally thought by eminent astronomers to be confirmed. But even if its reality be no longer matter of doubt, conjectures as to its amount are still vague and uncertain; and great, indeed, must be the extent of the movement before this cause alone can work any material alteration in the terrestrial climates. Mr. Hopkins, when treating of this theory, remarked, that so far as we were acquainted with the position of the stars not very remote from the sun, they seem to be so distant from each other, that there are no points in s.p.a.ce among them, where the intensity of radiating heat would be comparable to that which the earth derives from the sun, except at points very near to each star. Thus, in order that the earth should derive a degree of heat from stellar radiation comparable to that now derived from the sun, she must be in close proximity to some particular star, leaving the aggregate effect of radiation from the other stars nearly the same as at present. This approximation, however, to a single star could not take place consistently with the preservation of the motion of the earth about the sun, according to its present laws.

Suppose our sun should approach a star within the present distance of Neptune. That planet could no longer remain a member of the solar system, and the motions of the other planets would be disturbed in a degree which no one has ever contemplated as probable since the existence of the solar system. But such a star, supposing it to be no larger than the sun, and to emit the same quant.i.ty of heat, would not send to the earth much more than one-thousandth part of the heat which she derives from the sun, and would therefore produce only a very small change in terrestrial temperature.[208]

_Variable splendor of stars._--There is still another astronomical suggestion respecting the possible causes of secular variations in the terrestrial climates which deserves notice. It has long been known that certain stars are liable to great and periodical fluctuations in splendor, and Sir J. Herschel has lately ascertained (Jan. 1840), that a large and brilliant star, called _alpha_ Orionis, sustained, in the course of six weeks, a loss of nearly half its light. "This phenomenon,"

he remarks, "cannot fail to awaken attention, and revive those speculations which were first put forth by my father Sir W. Herschel, respecting the possibility of a change in the l.u.s.tre of _our sun itself_. If there really be a community of nature between the sun and fixed stars, every proof that we obtain of the extensive prevalence of such periodical changes in those remote bodies, adds to the probability of finding something of the kind nearer home." Referring then to the possible bearing of such facts on ancient revolutions, in terrestrial climates, he says, that "it is a matter of observed fact, that many stars _have_ undergone, in past ages, within the records of astronomical history, very extensive changes in apparent l.u.s.tre, without a change of distance adequate to producing such an effect. If our sun were even _intrinsically_ much brighter than at present, the mean temperature of the surface of our globe would, of course, be proportionally greater. I speak now not of periodical, but of secular changes. But the argument is complicated with the consideration of the possibly imperfect transparency of the celestial s.p.a.ces, and with the cause of that imperfect transparency, which may be due to material non-luminous particles diffused irregularly in patches a.n.a.logous to nebulae, but of greater extent--to _cosmical clouds_, in short--of whose existence we have, I think, some indication in the singular and apparently capricious phenomena of temporary stars, and perhaps in the recent extraordinary sudden increase and hardly less sudden diminution of ? _Argus_."[209]

More recently (1852) Schwabe has observed that the spots on the sun alternately increase and decrease in the course of every ten years, and Captain Sabine has pointed out that this variable obscuration coincides in time both as to its maximum and minimum with changes in all those terrestrial magnetic variations which are caused by the sun. Hence he infers that the period of alteration in the spots is a _solar magnetic period_. a.s.suming such to be the case, the variable light of some stars may indicate a similar phenomenon, or they may be stellar magnetic periods, differing only in the degree of obscuration and its duration.

And as. .h.i.therto we have perceived no fluctuation in the heat received by the earth from the sun coincident with the _solar magnetic period_, so the fluctuations in the brilliancy of the stars may not perhaps be attended with any perceptible alteration in their power of radiating heat. But before we can speculate with advantage in this new and interesting field of inquiry, we require more facts and observations.

_Supposed gradual diminution of the earth's primitive heat._--The gradual diminution of the supposed primitive heat of the globe has been resorted to by many geologists as the princ.i.p.al cause of alterations of climate. The matter of our planet is imagined, in accordance with the conjectures of Leibnitz, to have been originally in an intensely heated state, and to have been parting ever since with portions of its heat, and at the same time contracting its dimensions. There are, undoubtedly, good grounds for inferring from recent observation and experiment, that the temperature of the earth increases as we descend from the surface to that slight depth to which man can penetrate: but there are no positive proofs of a secular decrease of internal heat accompanied by contraction. On the contrary, La Place has shown, by reference to astronomical observations made in the time of Hipparchus, that in the last two thousand years at least there has been no sensible contraction of the globe by cooling; for had this been the case, even to an extremely small amount, the day would have been shortened, whereas its length has certainly not diminished during that period by 1/300th of a second.

Baron Fourier, after making a curious series of experiments on the cooling of incandescent bodies, considers it to be proved mathematically, that the actual distribution of heat in the earth's envelope is precisely that which would have taken place if the globe had been formed in a medium of a very high temperature, and had afterwards been constantly cooled.[210] He contends, that although no contraction can be demonstrated to have taken place within the historical period (the operation being slow and the time of observation limited), yet it is no less certain that heat is annually pa.s.sing out by radiation from the interior of the globe into the planetary s.p.a.ces. He even undertook to demonstrate that the quant.i.ty of heat thus transmitted into s.p.a.ce in the course of every century, through every square metre of the earth's surface, would suffice to melt a column of ice having a square metre for its base, and being three metres (or 9 feet 10 inches) high.

It is at the same time denied, that there is any a.s.signable mode in which the heat thus lost by radiation can be again restored to the earth, and consequently the interior of our planet must, from the moment of its creation, have been subject to refrigeration, and is destined together with the sun and stars forever to grow colder. But I shall point out in the sequel (chapter 31) many objections to these views, and to the theory of the intense heat of the earth's central nucleus, and shall then inquire how far the observed augmentation of temperature, as we descend below the surface, may be referable to other causes unconnected with the supposed pristine fluidity of the entire globe.

CHAPTER IX.

THEORY OF THE PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE AT SUCCESSIVE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS.

Theory of the progressive development of organic life--Evidence in its support inconclusive--Vertebrated animals, and plants of the most perfect organization, in strata of very high antiquity--Differences between the organic remains of successive formations--Comparative modern origin of the human race--The popular doctrine of successive development not established by the admission that man is of modern origin--Introduction of man, to what extent a change in the system.

_Progressive development of organic life._--In the preceding chapters I have considered whether revolutions in the general climate of the globe afford any just ground of opposition to the doctrine that the former changes of the earth which are treated of in geology belong to one uninterrupted series of physical events governed by ordinary causes.

Against this doctrine some popular arguments have been derived from the great vicissitudes of the organic creation in times past; I shall therefore proceed to the discussion of such objections, which have been thus formally advanced by the late Sir Humphrey Davy. "It is impossible," he affirms, "to defend the proposition, that the present order of things is the ancient and constant order of nature, only modified by existing laws: in those strata which are deepest, and which must, consequently, be supposed to be the earliest deposited, forms even of vegetable life are rare; sh.e.l.ls and vegetable remains are found in the next order; the bones of fishes and oviparous reptiles exist in the following cla.s.s; the remains of birds, with those of the same genera mentioned before, in the next order; those of quadrupeds of extinct species in a still more recent cla.s.s; and it is only in the loose and slightly consolidated strata of gravel and sand, and which are usually called diluvian formations, that the remains of animals such as now people the globe are found, with others belonging to extinct species.

But, in none of these formations, whether called secondary, tertiary, or diluvial, have the remains of man, or any of his works, been discovered; and whoever dwells upon this subject must be convinced, that the present order of things, and the comparatively recent existence of man as the master of the globe, is as certain as the destruction of a former and a different order, and the extinction of a number of living forms which have no types in being. In the oldest secondary strata there are no remains of such animals as now belong to the surface; and in the rocks, which may be regarded as more recently deposited, these remains occur but rarely, and with abundance of extinct species;--there seems, as it were, a gradual approach to the present system of things, and a succession of destructions and creations preparatory to the existence of man."[211]

In the above pa.s.sages, the author deduces two important conclusions from geological data: first, that in the successive groups of strata, from the oldest to the most recent, there is a progressive development of organic life, from the simplest to the most complicated forms;--secondly, that man is of comparatively recent origin, and these conclusions he regards as inconsistent with the doctrine, "that the present order of things is the ancient and constant order of nature only modified by existing laws."

With respect, then, to the first of these propositions, we may ask whether the theory of the progressive development of animal and vegetable life, and their successive advancement from a simple to a more perfect state, has any secure foundation in fact? No geologists who are in possession of all the data now established respecting fossil remains, will for a moment contend for the doctrine in all its detail, as laid down by the distinguished philosopher to whose opinions we have referred: but naturalists, who are not unacquainted with recent discoveries, continue to defend it in a modified form. They say that in the first period of the world (by which they mean the earliest of which we have yet brought to light any memorials), the vegetation was characterized by a predominance of cryptogamic plants, while the animals which coexisted were almost entirely confined to zoophytes, testacea, and a few fish. Plants of a less simple structure, coniferae and cycadeae, flourished largely in the next epoch, when oviparous reptiles began also to abound. Lastly, the terrestrial flora became most diversified and most perfect when the highest orders of animals, the mammalia and birds, were called into existence.