These depositions accomplished, and successive races entombed within

them, there is evidence that the floor of the ocean was raised above

the waters, and that central Europe presented, all around, a breast of

high land. There are various intercalations, in the series of marine

and terrestrial deposits as well as of fresh and salt water fossils.

Violent internal convulsions prevailed throughout the period, and the

animals were all of a kind to care little for the war of the elements.

Meanwhile a fresh water formation is completed in many places a thousand

feet in thickness, and consisting of a series of beds; not continuous

all round the shores of the oolitic detritus, but confined to a few

localities, and characterized everywhere by its own group of organisms.

This is the wealden formation. And the question arises, How this series

of fresh water clays, and sands, and grits, was produced at a time when

the sea prevailed so universally over the whole of continental Europe,

and the eastern division of Great Britain? The solution is simpler than

at first sight might appear, when viewed in connection with the existing

distribution of all our great primary formations. The extent of dry land

was such as to furnish watershed for numerous rivers. The mountains

supplied the detrital matter. This was brought to the river’s mouth,

where it formed deltas; or spread out on the floor of estuaries, where it

received the few marine fossils which are found in the formation. Cast

your eye along the geological map of western Europe, and—in the mountains

of Wales, the silurian district of the north-west of France, the primary

rocks of the tributaries of the Elbe, the Hartz mountains, and the gneiss

and granites of Sutherland and Caithness—we have all the materials and

requisites that are necessary for the silting process of the wealden, its

accumulation, and geographical distribution as referred to in its range

and extent.

The continuity of the coasts of France and England is herein supposed,

and, upon geological data, this is a matter of far simpler inference than

the framing even of a political constitution that will stand a decade of

the years of our fleeting pilgrimage. The vision of Plato’s Atlantis in

the great ocean becomes in the geologist’s creed a reality, who believes

that a vast continent must have existed on our south and west, all

now sunk and whelmed in the deep abyss. A chain of islands would just

indicate the positions of the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, and

the Caucasian ranges, all then overlooking central and eastern Europe,

not yet elevated above the waves. “At this period,” says Professor

Ansted, “it is most probable that no great east and west subterranean

movement had acted on the part of the earth’s crust now above the water

in the northern hemisphere, and possibly the first intimation of such a

disturbing force, may be traced, though faintly, in the existence of a

considerable estuary, in which our wealden beds were deposited. From the

condition of the upper Portland beds, we find, that, just at the close

of the oolitic period, there were very numerous changes of level induced

over a small area in the south-east of England, then, most likely, not

far from the coast line of a large continent.”

It may seem to many presumptuous, and beyond all the usual latitude of

exaggerated description to attempt to dwell thus minutely on physical

arrangements, and a vegetable and animal economy, so remote and beyond

the sphere of observation. Remarkable enough that our great healing

springs of Bath, Cheltenham, Leamington, Tunbridge, and Harwich, are all

situated among, or have their origin in, the series of deposits we have

been considering. But the judgment, more than the fancy, is employed in

studying the geography of the ancient world, in looking out from the

heights around, and trying again to unite the waters and the dry land, to

recall the vanishing traces of former sea-marks, and from the disinterred

remains of the remarkable races that inhabited the island, and swarmed

around its coasts, to contemplate the ways and doings of

“That Eternal Mind,

Who built the spacious universe, and decked

Each part so richly with whate’er pertains

To life, to health, to pleasure.”

And these three blessings all are striving to maintain, to restore,

or to acquire. Life, health, pleasure—these are the great stimulants

to all human exertion, and how best to promote them ought to be the

aim of human study. The suite of rocks which compose the carboniferous

system is one clearly of pre-arrangement, and designed for man’s use.

The strata, now beneath us, as undeniably evince a like beneficent

purpose. The treasures of saline rock, gypseous marls, iron sands, and

pyritous clays, may be mysterious all, in their origin: but their uses

and their ends, human wants and frailties have long since established.

The cravings of appetite satisfied, every creature has an instinct, which

unerringly leads it to seek a remedy against injury and disease; and a

provision for the one equally with the other, has been made by Him who

notices the sparrow in his fall, and careth for the ravens of the desert.

Slow of apprehension the mind, that cannot discern in the strata under

review, a striking instance of foresight, a gift of benevolent wisdom,

recesses long since stored with medicaments and restoratives for human

frailties; and, though no angel now is there to trouble the waters, a

kind Providence has designed them, and a good heart will use them, as

tokens of its love.

II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS are chiefly of a fluviatile and terrestrial

character. The beds in which they occur were deposited in the channel, or

delta, of a river of great breadth, and demonstrate the existence of a

large extent of neighboring country. These beds range from Hastings into

Dorsetshire, but are not found to the north of the Thames. In Portland

and the Isle of Wight they likewise exist with all their peculiar

organisms in the greatest abundance. In the latter locality, the wealden

beds form the cliffs between Atherfield Point and Compton Bay; they

also overhang the Bay of Sandown. The Purbeck beds and sands are well

displayed at Durdle Cove, Warbarrow, and Swanage Bays; and in the Vale of

Wardour the same strata are developed. In every one of these beautiful,

picturesque, accessible, and very limited districts, you have congregated

specimens of the fauna and flora of rivers, groves, forests, and plains,

which have no longer a place on the terraqueous globe. Compared with the

living or extinct races they constitute a chapter in natural history

nowhere else to be seen or studied.

Thus of eight genera of plants in the wealden, there are only four

common to it and the oolites, but not a single species. Of the hundreds

of zoophytes in the older formation, not one occurs in the newer.

Twenty genera of insects existed in the period of the wealden, one

only of which is prolonged from the antecedent period of oolitic life;

one new genus of Crustacean (the Cypris), and five species; while the

conchifera have little in common, save the mytilus and unio, and both of

which, generically, have been transmitted from the carboniferous era.

The fishes of the wealden consist of seven genera, of which only one

is new, the Sphenonchus. The reptilians amount to eleven genera, three

of which present remains in the oolitic group, Cetiosaurus, Chelonia,

and Megalosaurus—same species in both. The Cetiosaurus belongs to the

whale race of animals, and it is singular to find the tribe exhibiting

the same stupidity, or hardihood it may be, in forsaking, then as now,

their briny element, and seeking a grave in the clays and sands of fresh

water shoals! The Hylæosaurus and Iguanodon were both found in the

Tilgate Forest beds, but have been noticed under the fauna of the oolite

series, as probably living in the age of, as they approach so closely in

structure and size to, the reptilian types of the deposit; frequenting

the woods and pastures, while their mighty cotemporaries were following

their instincts in the seas and lakes of the district.

It would thus appear that the close of the oolitic period of the

earth’s history resembles the close of the carboniferous period, in

the sudden transition from an exuberant to a remarkably barren display

of vegetable fossils. In the comparative scantiness of the sauroid

family of fishes, by which the outgoing of the coal era is likewise

distinguished, we may fancy another point of analogy in the diminution

of the monstrous reptilians that appears to have taken place after this

series of deposits. May it be inferred that these two periods enjoyed

a higher degree of temperature than has prevailed, either before or

since, generally over the earth’s surface, and more certainly in these

northern latitudes? Interred among the strata of both lie the remains of

races, vegetable and animal, which have perished: and what we describe

by kindred names are confined to climes and regions basking near the

equator, and enlightened by other constellations. Then the alternating

deposits of clay, lime, ironstone, coal, salt, gypsum, speak of lakes

and estuaries, rolling rivers and high lands no longer existing in these

parts. A few leaves of their annals are inscribed with forms of grotesque

life, and stirring activities, which are there to attest the majesty

of their revolutions. Geology, in little more than twenty years, has

made the discovery, collected the facts, arranged and systematized the

knowledge of the character and habits of the successive generations whose

domain, whether of land or water, was so different from ours, and now all

passed away.

A higher temperature, from central heat, will not explain these facts,

for that should have prevailed more in the devonian, and still more

in the silurian periods,—and of this we have no evidence. Appearances

would rather support an opposite conclusion. The sweep of the comet

again, resorted to upon occasions, may have destroyed, but could not

maintain, such a state of things. A change of the polar axis, of the

most inconsiderable extent, is demonstrated to be highly improbable, or

almost impossible. And now, in the unwearied march of science, often

baffled but never cast down, it has been announced as the probable

solution of all the changes of the past, THE PROGRESSION OF THE WHOLE

SOLAR SYSTEM, whereby the earth, and all the sister planets, are dragged

through infinite space, and brought successively within the sphere

of new constellations—now in a hotter and now in a milder efflux of

ether—combining its own with a more general movement in a universal

whirl—and thus constantly subjected, in all its parts, to ever-varying

external influences! This, at least, is the ingenious theory of M.

Poisson, which, he thinks, will account for the central heat of the

globe, dipped for a time into a burning atmosphere, and cooling off more

rapidly on the surface, and will give a no less plausible explanation as

to the extent and frequency of change effected on the surface. Geology

and astronomy become, when viewed in this light, correlative sciences,

and impart an illustrative interest to the researches of each other. The

lofty flights of the one are brought down, as it were, to more earthly

things; while the geologist, on the other hand, is lifted from his miry

pit and downward studies, to meditate on the “sweet influences and bands”

that harmonize and link all the planets in their orbits, and rejoices to

see his own earth taking part in the eternal music of the spheres. He is

pleased to believe, according to the view of the astronomer, that this

ball of stone and clay enjoys at times a vitality all over, which warms

and cherishes into life natant forms, and creeping things, and flying

dragons, whose development of powers could not have been sustained, on so

great a scale, in the lower and less favored regions.

But while the cause may be adequate to the effect—and in the

approximation to the truth there is a feeling of satisfaction, an

elevation of vision and elasticity of thought, as

“Rays divine dart round the globe,”

—still the speculation referred to belongs rather to the poetry than

to the philosophy of science, influencing the imagination more than

the judgment, and trenching on relations that lie beyond the field of

legitimate research.

CHAPTER V.

THE CRETACEOUS SYSTEM.

The history of our globe during the deposition of the CHALK FORMATION,

and the changes therewith connected, have now to be considered. By

whatever causes effected—from whatever sources derived the materials—the

line of demarkation is here complete. The sands of Africa, suddenly

converted into or drifted over by the snows of the Alps, would not

present a greater diversity of outline than is the transition to the

geologist, when for the first time he steps into a chalk district,

and marks the obvious contrast with all the surrounding scenery. From

Gloucester into Wiltshire we pass, as it were, into a new zone of

latitude.

The details contained in the two last chapters are in strict conformity

with the laws of nature: the animals connected with the epoch possessed

functions of life and an external adaptation of things suited to each

other. Similar arrangements exist at present under nearly similar

circumstances: the tropical animals bear a close affinity to the extinct

races; and show that, however nature may contrive to display her

exhaustless powers of invention in her forms of living creatures, she

still conforms to a type, and has her limits of divergence. The past and

the present so agree in all essential points as clearly to demonstrate

a wise and controlling agency, a measure of enjoyment combined with

an adjustment of figure, which, though approaching the marvelous, has

resulted from design and the profoundest intelligence. Accordingly,

the symptoms of the change we now witness are cotemporaneous. With the

cretaceous system are introduced new mineral conditions, and along with

these there are new forms of existence.

The animals of the chalk and oolite periods are essentially

different—still generically shading, indeed, into each other—but so

differing in species, and the appearance for the first time of new

creations, as again to announce to us that we tread on sacred ground, and

witness in its arrangement and contents the direct agency of Omnipotence.

We can form no opinion, no notion whatever, in these changes, of the

_modus operandi_. We remark simply the effects; and science, amidst all

its otherwise barren and useless details, then achieves its loftiest

purposes when it thus traces the footsteps and actings of the Great First

Cause.

1. RANGE AND STRUCTURE OF THE CHALK FORMATION. Considered

mineralogically, this rock can never fail to arrest attention or

inquiries, even among the least observant, as to its nature and origin.

There is no trace of it in the northern portion of the island; and when

one for the first time sees whole mountains of it, his sensations are not

a little exciting. For our own part, we felt as if we entered a new world

when we gazed upon hills, and their long-furrowed escarpments, of this

calcareous snow-drift. Our acquaintance with the mineral had hitherto

been limited to the fragments with which we were wont to trace the lines

of our schoolboy pastimes. We got no deeper into its mysteries when, on

a higher scale of action, we saw it delineate the diagram, or run over

the fluxional problem on the black-board in academy and college-hall. But

here! and half an island is covered with these stores of knowledge and of

industry. Nine or ten counties on a stretch, from Dorset to Flamborough

Head, and from Bridport to Deal, are covered over, and for hundreds of

feet in depth, with the milk-white earth; and, whichever way you turn and

bend toward the Capital, there are ample opportunities for the study of

this curious page of geological history.

The chalk beds are not composed of one uniform compact mass of the

useful mineral itself, which consists of nearly pure carbonate of

lime, of soft earthy texture. Geologically considered, the cretaceous

system comprises a series of green and ferruginous sands, clays, marls,

gray and white limestones; and these again are arranged under three

leading groups—chalk, gault, and green sand. The _chalk_—properly so

called—is subdivided into the upper and lower,—containing in the upper

numerous veins and nodules of flint, and varies in color through several

intermediate hues, until, in its contact with trap, it assumes a deep

red. The _gault_ is an argillaceous deposit of stiff, dark blue clays,

highly calcareous, and effervesces freely with acids. The _green sand_ is

a triple alternation of sands, cherty limestone, and friable sandstone,

with beds, in some places of ocher and Fuller’s earth. The whole series

may be estimated at nearly two thousand feet in thickness, formed in

a deep sea basin, the materials floating in very still waters, and

aggregated successively through the combined influence of mechanical,

chemical, and organic agencies.

The _mechanical_ influence is very apparent in the sands and marls,

which are evidently the spoils of islands and continents, washed down by

currents and floods of fresh water, and deposited over an ancient ocean

bed. The _chemical_ composition of the flints or concretionary nodules,

which give such a remarkable character and appearance often to the chalk,

is equally demonstrable; from fifty to a hundred beds of chalk, pure

and beautifully white, will sometimes be seen alternating with as many

bands of dark-colored flints, all regularly arranged as cannon-shot of

all sizes on a floor, and presenting, for miles along the cliffs of the

sea-shore, lines of beautifully defined fortifications. The _organic_

agent is visible in the nucleus of these round masses, which consists

of an animal or vegetable substance, as a coral, a shell, a piece of

flustra, or sponge. The nodules assume various shapes, that seem to

be molded according to the cavities of the matrix in which they are

imbedded, but are actually the forms of the bodies or organic substances

to which they are attached. The explanation given is, that a chemical

attraction has taken place between the vegetable or animal remains,

strewed abundantly through the waters, and the silicious matter held

in solution. The silex in solution gradually incrusts, or incorporates

with, the organized substance,—and thus were produced at once the flinty

concretions and the wonderful petrifactions contained in them. Break

any one of these nodular masses, and minute drops of moisture will, if

immediately inspected, be seen to ooze out from its pores: thus clearly

furnishing a proof of the state of solution in which it originally

existed, and the watery menstruum in which it was produced.

The mineralogical history and arrangement of the chalk group of rocks

are therefore in many respects very interesting. The chalk overlies

the wealden, which was a mere delta at the river’s mouth. The bed of

the river suddenly disappears, and now there rests upon it a deep sea

formation. How stupendous and overwhelming the forces of nature through

all her operations! How vast her affluence and prodigality, which could

so thoroughly alter all her exterior and interior arrangements, and fill

the seas with this new matter.

II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS display the boundless profusion of animal life

which prevailed during the cretaceous period. The wealden furnishes no

grounds of comparison, as that is simply a local fresh water deposit,

and consequently can furnish no test of the general condition of life

upon the surface of the globe. But when we go back to the oolitic period

we obtain a standard by which to measure the doings of nature in the

interval, what new creations started into being, and what provisions

were made for their subsistence. The state of the temperature cannot be

determined, as the products, with the rarest possible exceptions, are

wholly marine, and therefore affected by atmospheric influences in a

very small degree. Neither can much be conjectured concerning the state

of the land, as scarcely a fragment of true terrestrial life has been

detected in the deposit; and yet, from the stillness and comparatively

small dimensions of sea-basins into which the earthy ingredients were

floated, the probability is that the land was both lofty and widely

extended. One mammalian, and the remains of a solitary bird, and a meager

sprinkling of vegetables, constitute the whole, and even dubious, amount

of contributions from this department of nature. To Neptune, therefore,

the palæontologist turns his undivided attention; and, comparing one

period with another, he finds the following results:

The cretaceous deposits all lie WITHIN THE AREA of the oolites. They

are _conformable_ generally in position, and display, in proportion to

their extent, a like superabundance of calcareous earth. Hence a return

to polyp and shelly types of life, which we find so characteristic and

diversified in both epochs.

Thus of the first order, Amorphozoa, the oolitic age produced only one

genus; in the cretaceous we find thirteen genera, in the list Spongia,

which is common to both. Of Zoophytes, there are twenty-three genera in

the former, and seventeen in the latter—of which nine are common to both

periods. The Echinodermata number eighteen in the oolite, and twenty-five

in the chalk—five only common. The genus Foraminifera is entirely new

in the latter formation, and consists of twelve ascertained genera, and

nearly double the number of species. Of Annelida there are four genera in

the oolite, and six in the chalk, in which the new order of Cirrhipeda

occurs likewise. The Astacus is the only crustacean in the oolitic group:

this and three new genera are found in the chalk. The Conchifera are

very numerous in both deposits; forty-six in the older, and thirty-eight

genera in the newer, of which eight are peculiar to the chalk. Monymaria

are nearly in the same relative proportions. _Rudistes_ occurs, as a new

order, for the first time in the chalk, while again the Brachiopods,

Gasteropods, and Cephalopods, are about equally abundant in both

formations, with additions in the chalk to the generic models. And here

too the new order Pteropoda, of a single genus and species, is introduced

to our contemplation. Ammonites and Belemnites do not pass this age.

[Illustration:

1. Pecten quinque-costatus.

2. Plagiostoma Spinosum.

3. Hamites intermedius.

4. Spatangus cor-anguinum.

5. Galerites albogalerus.

6. Scaphites Striatus.

7. Belemnites mucronatus.]

The fishes of the two periods are equally striking in their contrasts;

the two orders of Ganoids and Placoids are common to both, while the

Ctenoids and Cycloids appear for the first time in the history of

our planet, and which were afterward to contribute so largely to the

sustenance and comforts of man. The Reptilians show a declension in

the latter period in numbers, with the introduction, however, of four

new genera—one of which (the Iguanodon Mantelli), is also found in the

wealden.

The Cimoliornis Diomedeus, described by Professor Owen, is the only

specimen of the order Aves or bird-tribe that as yet appears over this

waste of waters. The term _cimoliornis_ means simply the chalk-bird,

and is allied, in some of its osseous processes, to the albatross, but

also differs in too many points to be regarded as the ancestor of that

courageous storm-braving animal. The claims of this fossil, indeed, to

its true place in the system, have not yet been fully established. “Of

the few actually fossilized remains of birds,” says Professor Owen, “that

have been discovered in England, the most complete and characteristic

are those from the London clay. Some fragmentary Ornitholites have been

discovered in the older pliocene crag, and in the newer pliocene fresh

water deposits and bone caves. Extremely scanty have hitherto been the

recognizable remains of birds from the chalk formations. The fossil from

the wealden, which I formerly believed, with Cuvier and Dr. Mantell, to

belong to a wading bird, I have since adduced reasons for referring to

the extinct genus of flying reptiles called Pterodactyle.” The fossil

bones of the Cimoliornis were obtained by the Earl of Enniskillen from

the chalk beds near Maidstone, and resemble the humerus of the albatross

in form, proportions and size; there are no distinct traces of the

attachments of the quill-feathers in any of the fragments; but in other

points there are analogies to the osseous structure of birds; and there

are bones so gigantic as will assign them a place, if the proofs are

completed, among the enormous foot-print class of the permian age, and go

almost to realize the fabulous “roc” of the Arabian romance.

Our attention in this group of deposits, however, is riveted more by

the little than the great—by the microscopic than the gigantic forms of

life. It is astounding, indeed, to contemplate the myriads of creatures

which swarmed in the seas during this period. A fragment of chalk, the

size of a garden pea, contains thousands of perfect shells; these shells

inclose still, in many instances, the pulpy animal matter; and consist

of a series of distinct well-defined chambers. In a cubic inch of the

rock it is calculated that there are upward of a million of infusorial

animalcules. Yet their orders are determined, their genera fixed,

their very species are described, so perfect is the structure, and so

thoroughly preserved all the parts of their minute shelly coverlets. The

microscope has restored, under the action of certain dilute acids, the

contour and shape of entire hosts of these creatures. Some specimens,

so positively can it speak of them, appear to consist of tubes placed

edgewise,—one projecting sometimes beyond another. Others are seen to

possess a series of tubular organs placed parallel, and disposed in long

lines of fragile reticulated riband. Some are oblong figures. Others

are complicated, exhibiting numerous projecting processes, and of every

variety of shape. Some resemble the shell of the nautilus; others are

still detected with the skin adhering to the skeleton; while in the

stomachs and digestive sacs of others the more minute infusoria, which

the diminutive monster had swallowed, are made palpable to the sight.

All this may be called trifling, a misapplication of talent, a waste of

ingenuity. What terms too grand to describe the lofty speculations of

the astronomer, who points his telescope to some dark point in the blue

sky, and descries in its infinite depths a cluster of closely aggregated

shining particles, minute as the motes in the sunbeam, and hails it as

the discovery of a new system of worlds. He cannot count them, for they

are innumerable. He cannot measure them, for they have no dimensions. He

cannot tell their relations, nor describe their orbits of motion, for

a sparkling heap of star-dust is all that flits before the reflector.

But the boundaries of knowledge are enlarged, and though man nor any of

the arts may ever be benefited thereby, the fortunate discoverer will

have his name inscribed in that distant region of the universe, and

transmitted from generation to generation with increasing luster.

The discoveries of the geologist may be inferior in grandeur, but

are they practically less illustrative in their bearings on existing

arrangements? He sees the past in the present, the near and the distant

in time brought together. A charm is thereby thrown over studies and

speculations which would otherwise be useless. Thus, in the mineral

structures resulting from the agencies of these invisible organic bodies,

the mind is struck with the resemblance to similar processes that may

be now going forward in the ocean: it sees in the discoloration of

the waves, as the voyager steers his vessel over the main, a light by

which to decipher the story of an age; and, while no voice issues from

the countless myriads of animals which thicken the waters, rocks are

elaborating and depositions made that will yet be raised into islands or

continents. “On the coast of Chili, a few leagues north of Conception,

the Beagle,” says Dr. Darwin, “one day passed through great bands of

muddy water, which, when taken up in a glass, was found to be slightly

stained as if by red dust, and after leaving it for some time quiet, a

cloud collected at the bottom. With a lens of one-fourth of an inch focal

distance, small hyaline points could be seen, darting about with great

rapidity, and frequently exploding. Examined with a much higher power,

their shape was found to be oval, and contracted by a ring round the

middle, from which line curved little setæ proceeded on all sides; and

these were the organs of motion. The animals move with the narrow apex

forward, by the aid of their vibratory cilia, and generally by rapid

starts. Their numbers were infinite, and in one day we passed through two

spaces of water thus stained, one of which alone must have extended over

several square miles. The color of the water, as seen at some distance,

was like that of a river which has flowed through a red clay district;

but under the shade of the vessel’s side, it was quite as dark as

chocolate.”

These are the foundation-builders of future islands, of the very color

and size, it may be, as those which piled up these masses of the

brick-red chalk. In an ounce of sea-sand, from three to four millions

of these minute bodies have been enumerated. Twenty-two thousand can be

placed side by side on a linear inch of surface. One single individual,

in the course of a month in summer, will produce as many as 800,000,000.

In a globule of water, a cubic inch contains more inhabitants than are

now existing of the human family on the face of the globe. The skeletons

of the animalcula are transported through the air in the form of a

fine impalpable dust, covering the decks of vessels, and darkening the

atmosphere many hundred miles distant at sea. The eye can trace nothing

of structure—not even of granular form—and while clothes, rigging, and

every crevice is filled and discolored with the organic nebulæ, it is

not until the highest microscopic powers are applied, that it becomes

resolvable and demonstrated to be a system of living creatures, moving

through space, and fulfilling their destiny!

The views of nature thus opened up are boundless and infinite, in either

terms of the scale, ascending or descending. The immensity of things

on the one side, and their minuteness on the other, carry them equally

beyond the reach of direct observation, and the intervention of means

must in both cases be provided, ere they can become the subjects of human

perception and examination. But what is it to me, some will reason, if

there lie within the depths of space myriads of rolling worlds, when I

see them not, and whose revolutions can in no way affect my condition

on earth? These rocks around are but obstacles in my way, or stones for

which I have no regard, as I can apply them to no useful purpose. I

know that every blade of grass, every leaf in the forest, every drop of

water, every grain of sand, teem with living creatures. And, in the air

I breathe, systems more, beyond the ken of human view “both when we wake

and when we sleep,” revel in the irresponsible enjoyment of sentient

existence. Science, viewed in this light, and calculated upon the rule of

mere statistical enumeration, may be reckoned as utterly valueless, and

knowledge as but a term for MATERIALISM.

But neither astronomy nor geology will permit our speculations thus to

terminate. A principle of causation is involved in both, and to trace

this through a chain of sequences and effects, whether in the great or

little, in the remote or near, is the one grand aim of philosophy. If

I can perceive no bounds to the vast expanse in which natural causes

operate, and can fix no border or termination of the universe; and if

I am equally at a loss to discern things in their elements, and to

discover the limits which terminate the subdivisions of organic matter,

my inquiries will not here cease. The mind will not be satisfied so to

close and to shut up the thesis propounded. I am compelled to advance

onward, even as the objects recede from the view, or expand in magnitude

beyond the grasp of comprehension. The soul is filled with the idea

of immensity, as it familiarizes itself to the thought of the highest

mountains of the earth being but specks on its surface—the terraqueous

globe as an atom compared with the sun—the sun itself dwindling to a

star from some point in the distant fields of space—and even all the

systems that sparkle in the clearest sky only as faint streaks of light,

or not discernible even for millions of years after their creation,

in the systems that replenish and shine in the still remoter void.

Speculations, lofty as these, do leave something behind—something nobler

than arithmetical calculation—and knowledge becomes SPIRITUALIZED by them.

The same result follows, when we descend in the scale of nature toward

the other limit, when we perceive a like gradation from minute bodies to

others incomprehensibly more minute, and are led as far below sensible

measures of perception, as we were before carried beyond them, until

vision is lost in utter vacuity and obliteration of all organic form. But

the more attenuated and fragile the structure, the more the manifestation

of Omnipotence and superintending care. If from microscopical observation

we discover animals, thousands of which scarce form an atom perceptible

to unassisted sense—each of which are endowed with a system of vessels,

and fluids circulating in those vessels—if we can trace the propagation,

nourishment, and growth of these animals—observe their motions,

capacities of action, limits and conditions of existence—all this through

countless millions and multiplications of tribes and generations—and,

finally, after their term of being ended, now find them entombed in

rocks, and elaborated into useful minerals;—knowledge thus pursued

becomes again the handmaid of RELIGION, and terminates in the conviction,

that we live in a universe over which the eye of Omniscience and love has

been ever wakeful and predominant. The telescope leads to one verge of

infinity, the microscope brings us to another; and in the discoveries of

both there is the firmest assurance, that as nothing is too distant and

vast for the Creator’s control, so nothing is too minute for His wise and

fatherly care.

CHAPTER VI.

THE TERTIARY SYSTEM.

The Tertiary System forms the last great subdivision of the rocky

strata of the earth—the last in the creative, as well as geographical,

distribution of organic and inorganic matter—antecedent to the human

epoch. All the European and partly Asiatic chains of mountains were again

farther elevated toward the close of the preceding period. Europe itself

assumed a more distinctive shape and contour, a bolder coast-line, higher

plateaux, deeper and more extensive lakes. Great Britain was rounded into

form, settled upon new foundations, and already stood out, in her western

and northern belt of granitic and primary rocks, the empress of the ocean.

In thus recalling the features of the old world, and marking the

configuration of a newer state of things, geology furnishes indubitable

evidence upon which to establish these and other more general

conclusions. The physical geography of the globe is inseparably connected

with the series of changes we have been contemplating. The elevation,

small and isolated as it appears, of the formation termed the wealden,

supplies a key by which to measure the rivers and deltas of our own

island. The chalk, forming at the time the bed of the ocean, remained for

a period in undisturbed repose, as evidenced by the hollows and erosive

action seen on its surface. Then a series of convulsive movements, over

a vast area, are indicated by the disrupted and altered position of the

strata, when the bottom of the sea was lifted up, and its whole marine

fauna completely changed. The secondary era passed away: the new tertiary

arrangements, animate and inanimate, from henceforth commence.

Thus rolls on the mighty course of time. A continent is the gift of one

age: half a globe is shattered and wasted in the next. All living things

become extinct and entombed in this quarter: in that, there are new

and more abundant creations. The face of nature is again redolent with

beauty: life, profusion, and enjoyment are everywhere abounding.

“Look down on earth. What seest thou? Wondrous things,

Terrestrial wonders that eclipse the skies.

Nor can the eternal rocks His will withstand—

What leveled mountains, and what lifted vales!

High through mid air, here streams are taught to flow—

Whole rivers there, laid by in basins, sleep—

Here plains turn oceans; there vast oceans join,

Through kingdoms, channel’d deep from shore to shore.”

The geological district upon which we now enter, embraces London as

nearly the center of its range, from which in every direction, along

every line of railway, sections of the tertiary deposits are laid open:

cabinets of conchology are to be met with in every pit for forty miles

around; and what facilities to visit and examine them all with the speed

of the wind. Not a spot but may be reached at a wish, sections more than

can be numbered are in every locality, and in half the time one makes the

ascent of Schehalion, he has taken the circuit of several counties.

London! what can it be likened or compared to? Nothing is so unlike as a

simile, and we need not try to describe this emporium of the world by a

comparison. It is not Rome nor Thebes, nor Nineveh, nor Babylon, but more

than them all in the stirring activities of mere animal existence—more

boundless in wealth—more dominant in conquests—more all-embracing in

commerce; as deep in its sins, arrogant in its pride, haughty in its

supremacy, as Queen City of the nations. About twelve hundred souls are

every week added to that dense mass of human beings. As many, nearly, are

every week blotted from the sum of mortal existence. No metropolis on

this mundane scene ever stood in a similar relation to all other nations

and cities of the world, whose every wish, for weal or woe, so affected

the destinies of all the families of men. A part of every one of them

is therein concentrated. Not a tribe but has its representative. Not a

specimen or production of human skill but is borne thither. Genius, wit,

industry, ingenuity, are in all their most beautiful creative efforts

indelibly embalmed; and were that mighty pile to be ingulfed in the bosom

of the waters, out of which its foundations were recently lifted up, the

_genus homo_ would, in all its entireness, be conserved together—the type

and wonder of our own geological epoch.

This city, too, contains everything else that the world contains. A

specimen of every living thing is here; and things which cannot live,

but pine and die away from their native haunts, have been carefully

preserved and skillfully arranged for the inspection of the curious.

The kaleidoscope, in all its phantasmagoria of change and infinite

diversity of hues, can display nothing half so various as the realities

of nature; and types of the entire modern era, from the extinct Dodo to

the recently-discovered Moas of Wanganui, are before you in all their

diversified forms, from the misshapen and fantastic to the loveliest of

earthly creations. When Adam gave names to the creatures of the field,

they are simply said to have been “brought unto him to see what he would

call them;” every tree pleasant to the sight grew out of the ground; and

Eve, Milton beautifully represents

“went forth among her fruits and flowers,

To visit how they prosper’d, bud and bloom,

Her nursery; they at her coming sprung.”

Here are all things once more assembled, and as the tree of knowledge no

longer bars from the tree of life, we can innocently search into all the

mysteries, and see all the qualities and shapes, of every earthly object.

Nor is London less privileged and distinguished by its geological

treasures and multifarious condition of things beneath. The capital

stands on the tertiary _Eocene_ strata, or last of the rocky series of

the island. The pre-Adamic arrangements all here cease, the boundaries

betwixt the old and the new world are here drawn. The age of HUMANITY

dawns. And, interred in the deposits immediately below, lie the last

of a series of monsters which preceded man’s introduction upon the

stage, and between whom and all his race an unequal war of merciless

extermination must have prevailed. The reasoning animal, indeed, at once

the most helpless and most potent of nature’s offspring, could but ill

have existed under a constitution of the elements which fostered the

Palæotheriums and Chæropotami of the tertiary age.

Neither the romance of geology nor the era of prodigies, therefore,

are yet over. The curtain once more requires to be lifted from the

dark regions of the past, ere we approach the arrangements, forms, and

distribution of animal and vegetable life, of the epoch in which our own

lot has been cast.

I. THE TERTIARY GROUP consists of a series of well-marked and closely

connected beds of clays, sands, gravel, brecciated conglomerate, marls,

and limestones; some of which are of marine, and some of fresh water

origin—points only to be determined by their respective fossil remains.

Some lithological distinctions may also be established; the marine

deposits are less minutely laminated than those of the fresh water;

and also, in general, the beds are thicker, and their sediments more

confused in their arrangement. “Limestones, and fine light-colored

clays,” says Mr. Phillips, “constitute the principal mass of the fresh

water sediments; while sands, and blue and variously-colored clays, more

particularly mark the marine depositions. The latter appear like the

products of littoral agitation, as if the wearing of cliffs of older

strata had furnished the materials of these newer rocks; while the

former resemble the accumulations from the wasting surface of chalky and

argillaceous countries.”

These deposits lie in hollows and depressions of the chalk formation, and

constitute what is termed the London basin. A similar series of materials

occur in Hampshire, separated from the former by the upraised edges of

the subjacent strata, which, cropping out in like manner on the south,

inclose them also in a basin-shaped area. The same arrangement prevails

across the channel, where a suite of rocks referable to the same age lie

_within_ the chalks, and constitute the well-known Paris basin, whose

remarkable remains were first brought to light from their tomb of ages

in Montmartre by M. Brongniart and Cuvier, upward of thirty years ago.

The Auvergne basins, in central France, are equally well characterized.

And, stretching onward through southern Europe, the tertiary deposits

occupy positions nearly similar; and all composed, with slight local

variations, of kindred fossils and sediments.

Geology has been compared to history. We also see how it embraces the

whole range of physical geography, restoring the land-marks of the past,

and presenting pictures of the earth’s surface which the mere traveler

can no longer detect. The rolling Thames, with town, spire, and villa

nestling in every slope, and tunnel, bridges, and

“Crowded ports,

Where rising masts an endless prospect yield,”—

we seek in vain for on the geological map of the period. There were

spice islands, with aromatic gales, palm trees, dates, turtles lazily

pacing the sands, and crocodiles heavily climbing the banks, or plunging

and gamboling in the deeper pools. A Polynesia, with a tropical climate

and corresponding luxuriance of vegetable and animal life, occupied

the intermediate regions of Europe and Western Asia. On the south and

west a vast continent loomed over the main, whence, in part at least,

the detrital matter of the several basins alluded to was derived; and

there, too, in all probability, the source of the spasmodic action which

successively elevated and depressed the bed of the sea on which were

accumulating the tertiary deposits, and whose throes finally terminated

in its own submergence, and upheaval of the south-east coast of Britain,

and the whole of central Europe. Gulliver returned with a report of

strange people, flying islands, and fertile descriptions of impossible

monstrosities. Geology deals in a simple shifting of the scenes, new

arrangements in the drama of creation, and is entitled to credit in its

boldest assumptions, furnishing proof, as it abundantly does, from the

existing wreck of those vanished realities to which it now assigns local

habitation and name. London occupies the bottom of an ancient sea, whose

spoils, six or seven hundred feet in thickness, are there to attest

the fact; and for miles around, every excavation into the marine mass

multiplies the evidence, and repeats the story of its existence.

The plastic and London clays constitute the lower beds of the series

immediately above the chalk, and are nearly co-extensive in their range.

From Reading on the west, these sediments stretch eastward through the

valley of the Thames along the right bank to Margate; on the left,

they cover the entire district to Ipswich; and constitute a very large

part of the soil of the adjacent counties from Norfolk to Hampshire,

prevailing more especially through the central and eastern districts.

Mr. Prestwick has recently shown, that the lower English tertiaries form

several distinct subdivisions, each marked by different conditions, and

these conditions indicating ancient hydrographical and palæontological

changes of importance. A conglomerate bed of round flint pebbles, mixed

with yellow, green, or ferruginous sands, extends almost uninterruptedly

from the Isle of Wight to Woodbridge, in Suffolk; this bed underlies the

London clay, intercalated betwixt it and the plastic clay, and forms

a well-marked geological horizon, dividing this formation from the

older Eocene deposits. It contains thirty known, and eight or ten still

undescribed species of testacea, twenty of which are not found in the

lower deposits, while all are nearly identical with those of the superior

and London clay beds. The plastic formation thus embraces the London

clay, as the chalk does both, which again in its turn is embraced by the

oolites; whence the older and _inferior systems_ all widen, and extend

successively as the bed of the sea was elevated; and hence the basins

were gradually narrowed and contracted as they approached the last and

closing ante-human epoch.

A kind of convergency in all this can be distinctly traced in the

superficies of the earth to the state which it has now assumed. A similar

approximation in its living inhabitants, as will immediately appear, can

as clearly be pointed out to its present occupants. Intelligent will and

design are equally manifest in the arrangements; for, however great the

amount of change, the restraining hand of foresight is visibly present

in them all, and, in every successive advance to the present order of

things, a purpose is discernible in making the more effectual provision

for the permanent stability of the human system.

II. THE ORGANIC REMAINS of the tertiary deposits, if they possess not

so much of antiquity as those which have already passed in review, are

all the more interesting and worthy of attention, as they admit of a

closer comparison with the established order of things, and the laws now

regulating the distribution of animal and vegetable life. The locality

most fertile in the organic remains of this period is the small island

of Sheppey, situated near the mouth of the Thames, which is not more

welcomely descried by the home-bound mariner as a Pharos of light and

safety from the howling waste of waters, than it has proved to the

palæontologist a repository and beacon-light for determining the most

recondite mysteries connected with almost every living thing, in sea or

land, during the Eocene age. It consists entirely of the London clay

deposit, of an average thickness of five hundred feet, and displaying

in the cliffs vertical faces two hundred feet high. The fossils in both

localities are almost identical; in the isle of Sheppey they are more

abundant, as well as accessible; and, in consequence, they have been more

minutely and generally described.

1. The shells are very abundant. A few genera have survived the changes

and disturbances succeeding the upheaval of the chalk, and a single

species of Gasteropodes (Actæon elongatus), is common to both formations.

The Belemnites and Ammonites, swarming in the seas of the secondary

period, are now entirely withdrawn. The Nautilus is but sparingly

represented. The new genus Cerithium is introduced, a long, tapering,

spiral-formed shell, and apparently of strong predaceous habits. Lobsters

resembling existing species are very abundant. The Nummulites, of which

entire rocks were formed during the secondary age, still survive. And,

as an index to the state of temperature, it requires to be mentioned,

that many species, now found only in tropical seas, are mixed with the

testaceous fossils of these localities.

2. The fishes are equally peculiar and characteristic of the era upon

which we enter. Nothing can more strikingly show the violence and

universality of the change that was cotemporaneous with the tertiary

arrangements, than the total disappearance of the old tribes of fishes,

and their replacement by entirely new specific, and a large infusion

likewise of new generic, types. The change is no less remarkable when

viewed in its relation to existing races, every one of which, with the

solitary exception of the salmon family, have here their representatives.

Perch, cod, herring, mackerel, eels, had all become occupants of the seas

of this period, and their remains deposited in the clays of Sheppey

are in the greatest profusion. “The number of fossil fish from the

London clay,” says Agassiz, “amounts to ninety-two in the one single

locality of Sheppey, without counting ten species to which I have not yet

assigned names, not having hitherto been able to characterize them in a

satisfactory manner.” The difficulty arises from two causes—the imperfect

and fragmentary state of the fossils themselves, and the new principle

adopted by him for their classification.

Most of the fishes belonging to the tertiary era are of the Cycloid and

Ctenoid orders, with thin fragile scales, which, unlike the Ganoids whose

cuirassed bodies were protected by a thick covering of plates, have

been unable to preserve the integrity of their form and outline. The

greater number of these interesting remains, accordingly, have rotted

in the matrix, their bones separating, and the soft parts all replaced

by clay. The scales are _disaggregated_ (leur sécailles désagrégées),

and the cranium alone of the osseous structure remaining entire, owing

to the soldering of the pieces composing it, the ingenious naturalist

has adopted this single organ as the basis of the new system. “The

characteristic features of the skulls of the mammalia and reptilia are

known; the variations which such a bone, such a crest, such a groove

may undergo in such and such a family are understood; and already, at

the first glance, it is possible to ascertain whether the animal under

consideration is carnivorous, ruminant, or solipedal. But nothing is

more variable than the forms of the cranium and of the heads of fish.

The multitude of bones and of spines which serve for the attachment of

the muscles, the infinite variety of forms in the families themselves,

impart such a diversity to the crania of the fish, that the ichthyologist

frequently despairs of being able to reduce them to their respective

types, and in fact a comparative craniology of fish does not exist. There

is no one, that I know, who can tell at first sight, whether such and

such a cranium belongs to a percoid, to a sparoid, or to a chetodontal

type.”[8]

Isolated crania and detached vertebræ are nearly all that remain of the

Sheppey fossils, and the conclusions established from them by M. Agassiz,

are as follows, throwing new and important light upon the two last great

and approximating geological epochs.

The English coasts, at present, are inhabited by one hundred and

sixty-three species of fish, of which there are eighty-one genera,

divided among six predominant families, while two or three are only

occasionally domiciled. Sixty species belong to the order of Ctenoids,

fifty to that of the Cycloids, and eleven to the Ganoids. The fossil

distribution establishes the following results: of Ctenoids twelve

species, eleven genera, and three families, of which the perch tribe is

the most numerous; three genera of the Teuthiæ, a family essentially

meridional, and occurring only in southern seas, a fact which shows

a higher climatic condition of temperature than now exists in this

latitude; thirty-two species of the Cycloid order, twenty-six genera,

and eleven families—of these the cod and mackerel tribes are the most

numerous. While no trace of the family Salmonidæ has been detected in

the tertiary deposit, a family exclusively tropical, the Characidæ,

is found to have had congeners of very considerable size in the more

ancient epoch. The haddock, cod, and ling races are very abundant—a fact,

says Agassiz, which proves that, notwithstanding the more meridional

physiognomy of the Sheppey deposit as a whole, there is nevertheless

already an approximation in the fish of this interesting locality toward

the actual character of the ichthyological fauna of England.

The living representatives of most of these fossils are, if anywhere, to

be looked for in southern and tropical latitudes; for, notwithstanding

of an approximation, there is not much of real identity of type between

the existing and extinct races of the British seas. In fact, there are

but four genera, _Megalops_, _Cybium_, _Tetrapterus_, and _Myripristis_,

whose families are still known in the current epoch; and but very few

species, from the rich prolific beds of Sheppey, have been as yet

rendered into living forms.—The fishes most nearly related to the present

inhabitants of warmer climes are those which are obtained from the fossil

tertiary deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy, and in the little

explored region of Mount Lebanon. Much remains to be done, therefore,

before wider generalizations can be fully established. The knowledge

already acquired in this department of ichthyology confirms every

previous inference relating to periodic physical changes of the globe,

and their convergency to the order and arrangements of nature which now

prevail over the earth.

3. The reptiles and semi-natants of the tertiary period lead to the same

general conclusions. The intercourse now so closely established betwixt

this country and Borneo throws new light, every day more and more, upon

the ancient condition of our island. The resemblance, both in the fauna

and flora of these remote places, is striking throughout; when, for

_space_ on the one hand we substitute _time_ on the other, we have nearly

a transcript of their respective conditions. The northern swarmed with

the crocodiles of the southern hemisphere: the boa constrictor has his

representatives in the serpents of the London clay; and turtles, both of

marine and fresh water characters, are equally abundant. The Pythonic

monster is also there, represented by reptilians which now only inhabit

tropical countries, and prey on quadrupeds and birds, both of which

became abundant during the tertiary age.

4. The mammalia consisted of large pachyderms or thick-skinned animals,

now represented by the rhinoceros, tapir, and elephant. Wolves, foxes,

and raccoons, mice, rats, rabbits, hogs, even monkeys, began also to flit

over the stage of stirring life. The existence of the order Quadrumana

and the ape genus Macacus, during the earlier tertiary period, was

determined by the discovery of the fragment of a lower jaw, including

the socket of the last molar tooth, in a stratum of blue clay in

Suffolk, and described in the “Magazine of Natural History,” for 1839,

by Professor Owen. Other remains have been detected of the same animal

in France, the East Indies, and South America, establishing beyond a

doubt the co-existence of four different genera of apes and monkeys

with the extinct mammalians of the English tertiary deposits.—That

these creatures were anterior to MAN, in point of creation, is in

accordance with all geological evidence regarding the animal kingdom.

The progressive development theory avails itself of the fact, but can

establish less upon it than if it took the example of the bat—which,

in anatomical structure, resembles the human family scarcely less than

the monkey! But geographically considered, it furnishes a striking

instance of the wonderful revolution which this island has undergone

since the comparatively recent epoch of the tertiary formation. Images

and pictures of life are thus called up in the vista of the past, which

at once transport the mind into the bosom of the wilderness or remote

Afric forest; and long ere man had betaken himself to cities, or a stone

of all that huge capital had been dug out of the earth, or a sail of

all its vast commercial greatness had been wafted over the waters, the

very spot on which he has developed the greatest resources of his power,

enterprise, and genius, was tenanted by those tribes which approach

him nearest in form, which philosophers have mistaken for his type,

but in which the semblance of external figure is lamentably contrasted

by the absence of all that moral framework, mind, and spirit, which

pre-eminently distinguish and glorify the human race!

A remarkable peculiarity in the mammalian remains of the tertiary period

is the total absence of the ruminating animals, which do not appear

until the modern epoch, when we recognize them at once as the companions

and useful contributors to the comforts of man. These still retain “the

names” which Adam bestowed upon them. The more ancient creations rejoice

in the mythical nomenclature of science, of which between fifty and sixty

species have been determined. The greater proportion are from the Paris

basin; but the district under review contains, in its lower and middle

divisions, the remains of some of the more remarkable of the group—as

the _Palæotherium_, _Anoplotherium_, _Lophiodon_, _Chœropotamus_,

_Didelphis_, _Balœenodon_, and the huge _Mastodon_.—These animals are

specifically different from everything now in existence; even Macacus

Eocenus will find no lineal descendant in Ceylon, Madagascar, or the

Cape; and no Celtic pedigree will meet the case. The race have left our

island, and departed from the earth; and to restore them in imagination,

we must seek their nearest analogies in the impenetrable fastnesses and

prairies of unreclaimed nature.

5. BIRDS are distinctly traceable in this formation. The Eocene clays of

the Isle of Sheppey have produced materials sufficiently indicative of

the class, in which the true affinities of the aerial inhabitants are

detected, and a new genus completely established. The specimens found

bear a resemblance to the osteology of the smaller kinds of vultures,

and one has been designated Lithornis Vulturinus. The ‘Icones fossilium

sectiles’ of Kœnig contains a description of some other ornitholites

found in the same locality, considered by the author as belonging to a

natatorial or long-toed bird, and denominated Bucklandium Diluvii. The

Paris basin is more fruitful in these fossils than the London; from these

several species have been determined—more or less allied to the pelican,

the sea-lark, curlew, woodcock, buzzard, owl, and quail; thus clearly

establishing the link in the chain of being, but still at a wide interval

from the gay choristers and domesticated tribes which minister so much to

the solace and happiness of man. The geologist traces the connection, and

sees in the expanse of ages, as race after race emerge upon the scene, a

gradual preparation and tendency of all things to a final result; sea,

earth, and air successively possessed by creatures approximating as they

advance to those of the human epoch; and man proudly or presumptuously

concludes, that all has been “worked solely for his good.” But as the

poet has sung—may we not ask, and ask concerning the humblest life which

man often despises and as often terribly destroys, but which is never

overlooked by Him who made man and all things, and whose tender care is

over all his works?—

“Is it for thee, the lark ascends and sings?

Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.

Is it for thee, the linnet pours his throat?

Loves of his own, and raptures swell the note.

Is thine alone, the seed that strews the plain?

The birds of Heaven shall vindicate their grain.”

6. And in the Flora which then decked the plains, fringed the marshes, or

clothed the heights, “the birds of heaven” had ample provision in seed,

fruit, and herbage for all their wants. Remarkable indeed the adaptation

of the animal tribes referred to in the previous section to the

lacustrine condition of the surface which still so generally prevailed.

The plants of the period are such as are now exclusively confined to warm

or tropical latitudes. The palms and cocoa-nut bearing trees are abundant

and of different kinds. One family belongs to the _Nipadites_, which

are found in Japan and the Spice Islands, generally in the estuaries of

rivers, or along the tracts of damp marshy grounds. The lovely Acacia was

here naturalized. Pepper, dates, and cucumbers added to the variety of

the sylvan banquet, which tall branching pines shaded from the scorching

heat. If we are no longer in possession of the luxurious fruits and

condiment-bearing plants of this early age, the change has led to other

and better productions. For deep lakes we have these verdant meadows and

corn plains; the stagnant marshes are drained of their mephitic vapors;

the theroid monsters are supplanted by the laboring ox and the industrial

horse; and with all the arts flourishing, and carried to the highest

pitch along her borders, the proudest achievements of science wafted on

her bosom—the “fruitful Thame” may challenge the nations of the earth for

every product which climate yields or genial suns ripen.

Such was the dawn or introduction to the present order of things. In the

language of geology it is called the EOCENE AGE of the world, because it

approaches in its organic productions to those which are now existing,

and containing a very few recent species, not more than three or four

per cent. Nature did not all at once leap from one epoch to another. In

the tertiary deposits there is evidence of successive creations, rests

and pauses, as it were, before the final and crowning consummation of

her works. More and more analogies begin to manifest themselves in the

ascending series of the group. The Miocene, or middle period, develops a

yet larger proportion, though not a majority, of the present inhabitants

of the sea. The Pleiocene arrangements follow; and in the shells and

terrestrial products of this group the modern characters and types are

still more clearly discernible. When we reach the highest members, the

difficulties of separation from the modern deposits begin to multiply;

the mineral qualities and mere earthy beds are not distinguishable;

while, on the other hand, in all the animal forms and huge colossal

proportions of Mastodons and Theriums, there are the unequivocal markings

of an extinct anterior age.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MAMMOTH PERIOD.

The tertiary deposits are referable to three great divisions, containing

subdivisions, some of marine, some of fresh water origin, and severally

characterized by their fossil remains. The terms Eocene, Miocene,

and Pleiocene, are applied to them in their respective order of

superposition, as the lower, middle, and upper groups. The London basin

belongs to the first of these divisions. When these congeries of beds

were completed, and the bottom of the sea was elevated, a fresh water

occupation of the district appears to have prevailed. And during the

supremacy of this reign of the Naïads it was, that England was tenanted

by herds of large quadrupeds, tigers, hyenas, and the companions of

the untamable class, whose haunts are now in the Indian jungle, or the

forests and prairies of America.

This has been denominated the Mammoth Epoch, when the elephant race

literally swarmed over northern Europe, from Italy to the Arctic regions.

Great Britain at this era formed part of the continent, or rather of the

great series of lakes and marshy swamps which then prevailed. Hence only

can geologists account for the identity of fossils scattered over this

area. The organisms are all of a type, all of the remarkable orders now

confined to warmer climes. And when we find these fossils cast up in

every field from the same series of deposits—in Switzerland, on the banks

of the Danube, through the plains of Siberia, and northern Russia—in the

basins of the Rhine, and the whole of lower Germany—in the Netherlands,

over central and northern France, the entire south and east coasts of

England—we decipher in all this, not only the organic characters of

the same period of time, but the connecting links of one and the same

superficial portion of the globe.

This is a very remarkable chapter in the history of our island, whether

we consider the mineral or animal arrangements that prevailed, and

their relations to continental Europe. Here we contemplate the relics

of herds of the larger mammals which then ranged over a quarter of the

earth’s surface, all now extinct; while, toward the close of the epoch,

everything conspires to favor the notion, that our insular position was

then, for the first time, established.

The type of the period is the Mammoth, or the Elephas Primogenius. There

are only two existing species, namely, the Asiatic, which is limited to

within 31° north latitude, and the African, whose range extends to the

shores of the Pacific, as far south as the Cape of Good Hope. America,

through all its forests and boundless wastes, possesses not a single

individual of the modern family, while the remains of the extinct race

are to be found in every prairie, along the banks of the Missouri, and

abundantly in the great salt marshes, whither they had resorted in

vast herds in quest of the salt, and been mired, as heavy animals are

frequently at the present day. The intertropical plains of the new world,

and the polar regions of the old, were equally congenial to their habits.

Nay, so adaptive were they in their nature and tastes—these gigantic

pachyderms of the middle tertiary period—that in every intermediate

country, they have left in their huge skeletons unequivocal traces of

their sojourn or migration.

From the British strata alone, no less than three thousand and upward

of fossil teeth have been dug up belonging to this colossal animal.

These are found chiefly in the drift along the east coast of England,

from Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, to Holderness. In a period of little

more than thirteen years, the fishermen of the village of Happisburgh

have dragged up more than two thousand grinders of the mammoth. In the

valley of the Thames the relics have been discovered very numerously,

at Sheppey, Woolwich, the Isle of Dogs, Lewisham,—in the gravel beneath

the streets of London,—at Kensington, Kew, Wallingford, Oxford,—and all

around the south-east coast from Brighton to Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire.

The central counties of Stafford, Northampton, Warwick, and York, are

everywhere strewed a few feet under ground with these remains. At Stroud,

a railway section laid open a tusk, measuring nine feet in length; and

everywhere in the British Channel the fishery of the extinct quadruped is

as ardently pursued, and often is as remunerative, as the fishery of the

finny tribes themselves now existing on our shores.

These animals, once filling the plains of England with herds equaled only

by those of the buffalo race which now darken the prairies of America,

have fulfilled their destiny, and have perished from the earth. “The

difference,” says Professor Owen, “between the extinct and existing

species of elephant in regard to the structure of the teeth, has been

more or less manifested by every specimen of fossil elephant’s tooth

that I have hitherto seen from the British strata; and those now amount

to upward of three thousand. Very few of them could be mistaken, by a

comparative anatomist, for the tooth of an Asiatic elephant, and they are

all obviously distinct from the peculiar molars of the African elephant.”

Cuvier ascertained like distinctions between the extinct and the existing

Indian elephants; and concluded, from the reconstruction of the complete

framework, that the mammoth type is no longer in being.

The proof that the elephant race actually inhabited this country is as

satisfactory, and as well established, as that the species were different

from any now existing. Little, indeed, can it be wondered at, upon the

first discovery of their remains, that the accounts given by geologists

and others were received with the greatest distrust. Their appearance, in

these high latitudes, was attributed to the inroad of armies rather than

to any indigenous connection with the soil that covers them. Cæsar, it

was remembered, brought many elephants with him into Gaul. According to

Polinæus, one at least was transported across the channel into Britain:

hence an easy and ready explanation of the fossils, as Voltaire, in

his time, fancied the shells found on mountain tops to be the stray

specimens dropped by pious pilgrims or superstitious monks on their

journeyings. But as their numbers increased—some from Ireland where the

soldiers of Rome never set foot, along with the bones of the rhinoceros

and hippopotamus which could be instructed in no military tactics, and

all over the length and breadth of the land bones and entire skeletons

began to be exhumed—all grounds for skepticism against their aboriginal

national descent were forever swept away. And Britain, it was admitted,

literally and truly, had once been stocked, among its most recently

extinct families, with these monster tenants of the wilderness.

An entire carcass, it is well known, covered with long woolly hair, was

found at the mouth of the river Lena, as far north as the 74th degree of

latitude, imbedded in ice. This discovery opened up more enlarged and

correct views as to the history and habits of these animals. Subsequent

years increased prodigiously the stock of fossils, entire and perfect

in hide and fleshy muscle; and now, so abundant are the remains of the

fossil mammalia in the arctic regions, that they have not only become

an article of commercial traffic to man, but serve as an unfailing

repository of food to the present denizens of those countries, the hordes

of marauding wolves, foxes, and bears, which prey amid the polar regions

and sterility. It has farther been ascertained that, where the lichen and

the scanty moss now only grow, a rich arboreal vegetation once flourished

in these latitudes; birch trees, of large dimensions, are everywhere

imbedded in the sandy cliffs; and it is conjectured, with the greatest

probability, that herds of elephants migrated from the warm interior,

during the summer months, to the embouchures of the rivers and borders of

the arctic sea, covered as they were with sheltering forests, or shrubby

brushwood steppes. “As we advance,” says Murchison, “into the plains of

Siberia, or descend into the valleys of Tobol and the Obe, the bones

are in greater quantities, and in a better state of preservation; and

the farther the Siberian rivers are followed to their mouths, the more

do the mammalian remains increase, until at length whole skeletons, and

even carcasses, are found. The single fact of the very wide diffusion of

the mammoth bones, over enormous regions, in itself indicates that those

creatures had long been inhabitants of such countries, living and dying

there for ages; while their final destruction may have resulted from

aqueous débacles dependent on oscillations of the land, the elevation of

mountain-chains, and the formation of much local detritus.”

The same causes will account for their destruction in this

country—causes, whose effects are still traceable over the whole of

continental Europe. Doubtless, these causes extended across the channel,

and may have been cotemporaneous with the movements which resulted in

separating us from France, occasioning débacles by the alternate upheaval

and depression of the sea-bottom, which even the largest animals would be

unable to contend against. In the midst of these movements, multitudes

would resort to the higher protected grounds, in quest of food, or retire

for shelter to caves and other concealments that were elevated above the

waters. Remains, accordingly, of nearly all the quadrupeds of the period,

the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, tiger, hyena, bear, elk, are to be

found in such places, associated with bones of the elephant family, and

mixed, for the most part, with the alluvia and detrital gravel of the

district. These animals appear not to have perished simultaneously or

suddenly; but from the condition of the celebrated Kirkdale caves, when

first discovered, it would rather seem that they had long haunted these

places, the caverns being generally at a considerable elevation, with an

entrance on the side of the valley. The floors were entirely covered with

mud, teeth, bones, and stalagmitic incrustations, several feet deep—a

den of monsters that were devouring each other, while the common enemy

of destruction was approaching to seal the fate of all! The “Reliquiæ

Diluvianæ” of Buckland, which first introduced the notice of these caves

to the public, assumed the Mosaic deluge as the cause of the catastrophe:

other hypotheses have been resorted to, as that certainly would not

apply to all the circumstances of the case. Bones of a species of hare

or rabbit, the water-rat, mouse, weasel, with fragments of the skeletons

of ravens, pigeons, larks, and ducks, are also included among the relics

of the fiercer tribes; and many have supposed that these were drifted in

by subaqueous currents, or dropped through the fissures, which are both

numerous and large in the limestone in which the caverns, for the most

part, are situated.

The Mastodon, that is, the mammillary-toothed elephant, was another of

the extinct pachyderm class then inhabiting the island. Remains of this

animal have been found in the Norwich Crag; there are several species,

all of gigantic proportions, some of which have been detected in North

America only, and others in Europe. The tigers of the period were larger

than the largest of the Bengal race, as is proved by the fossil teeth and

bones of the extremities that have been discovered, both at Kirkdale and

other places. And so, generally, of all the extinct carnivora, in the

qualities of strength and size, superior to all existing types, and cast

in the mold of, as they had to contend with, the mammoths and monster

theria among which their destiny was cast.

And again, and again, will the questions recur to every curious reader

of these details—when, and how, were these huge quadrupeds exterminated,

or driven from this island, some of them now utterly extinct, and some

of them only generically allied to existing tropical races? The epoch

of their rule, according to the geological testimony, verges on the

human age, if it does not actually run into it. Terror-stricken, shall

we suppose, by the terrene and subaqueous movements which severed

Great Britain from the continent—the rush of waters—the rending of the

rocks—and the drying up of lakes, consequent on the change—they sought

a refuge above the general wreck, where the weak were preyed upon by

the strong, and a fierce carnival, for a season, was maintained? On

the continent, while similar alterations were taking place over large

superficial areas, and the tertiary deposits were being drifted up, many

of the animals, and whole families, would escape into southern and warmer

countries, and some of the species, in consequence, might long survive

the destruction of others. But here, insulated and deprived of the means

of performing their annual migrations, the races of every kind would all

more speedily perish, preying more easily upon each other, and weakened

by alteration of habits, and the great physical changes to which they

were subjected. On the Ararat of Yorkshire, and other favored heights,

they found a temporary resting-place! But, it was only temporary; for, as

the island approximated to its present condition, it proved no longer a

suitable dwelling to creatures of their mold—their course was run—and a

new creation was to occupy their place.

In closing these sketches of the geology of Great Britain, one may well

marvel at the vast changes over the face of this island and of all its

productions, as read in the varied and multiform disclosures which the

interior structure, formation upon formation, makes known to us.

1. Mark the distinct character of the geological evidence of all the

changes, organic and inorganic, to which the island and its inhabitants

have been subjected. The evidence rests upon direct observation. The

registers are graven as with a pen of iron, and in characters which to

be understood have only to be read. The historical period, beyond two

decades of centuries, is an utter blank. When Cæsar came into the island,

painted savages peopled the land, Druids immolated in thousands their

human victims, and, the brief occupation of the invaders past, we are

again involved in the darkness of barbarous annals and exterminating

wars of unknown tribes. Whence the migrations of its first inhabitants?

who were the Cymri that spoke the language of Cwm Llewelyn, and of

Cefn y Bêdd? who were the Silures, the Trinobantes, the Cantii, and

the Atribates? and whither and what the ever-conflicting lines betwixt

the territories of Picts, Celts, and Scots?—questions these that will

ever puzzle and disturb the slumbers of the unhappy wight who deals

in chronicle lore and archæological history. What now of the oldest

civilized states of the old world who gave law, literature, science, art,

language, and blood, to all the families of the earth, as the tide of

population rolled westward, and the Quadrumana and the Bimana contended

for mastery amid the dense aboriginal forests on the banks of the Danube,

the Rhine, the Rhone, the Seine, the Thames, the mountains of Cambria and

Caledonia? Rome sits in ruined majesty by the waters of the Tiber. Greece

knows not, and mourns not, the buried ashes of her mighty dead. Carthage

_has_ been blotted out. Tyre has fulfilled her destiny—“a place for the

spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.” The shepherd kings of the

pyramids have not a name even among men; and Thebes, Luxor, and Carnac,

lie as fossils in the desert. What of Babylon and her Tower on the plains

of Shinar, that was to reach unto the heavens? and of Nineveh, “a city

of three days’ journey” to be compassed? Mounds of earth and rubbish,

over which the Arab has pitched his rude tent, and into which the prying

antiquary, at the risk of his life, digs for fragments, while the Tigris

and Euphrates pursue their heedless course through the waste slimy

borders of Uz and Mesopotamia. Thus mark how many illustrious heroes,

scholars, lawgivers, who once filled the world with their fame, have,

with all their splendid or useful benefactions to their race, passed

under the thick cloud of oblivion! The very names of the most noted of

them is matter of dispute. And of the multitudes who panted after glory

in these ancient days, not an incident in the life of millions has

reached the present times.

But geology, as HISTORY, is truthful in the oldest as in the most recent

of its narrations. How generally accurate in its family genealogies:

their relations, kindreds, alliances, and individual peculiarities;

the length and strength of body, contour of face, size, structure, and

capacity of head, eye, and stomach—all as precisely determined and

described in regard to the “habitans” of the most ancient fossiliferous

rocks, as the living possessors of earth, sea, or air. Look into our

museums, cabinets, monographs, and palæontological lists, and types of

organic life are there, from which not only to number the tribes, but

to tell of their own varying states and conditions. Wonders there are

in geology. But its most seeming fables are realities. The placoids and

ganoids of the silurian and devonian age, the exuberant flora of the

carboniferous, the giant birds of the triassic, the matchless reptilian

forms of the oolite, the microscopic organisms of the chalk, the

colossal mammoths and mammalia of the tertiaries, were all as veritable

productions of the island as the most familiar grains, grasses, and

domesticated breeds which minister to our daily wants. How obscure,

uncertain, and limited the range of human history! How extensive, and

boundless, and minute the pursuits of geology, which touches on the

history of all creatures that ever lived through all their species,

genera, orders, and classes, and even remounts to the primeval condition

of the planet itself during all the periods, phases, and revolutions of

its existence! But of man there is no trace. No voice from the past,

issuing out of the solid framework of the globe, intimates the existence

of the human family anterior to the last of those great physical changes

which we have been contemplating, and over the wreck of whose organic

tribes the epoch of the tertiary sections of its crust closes.

2. The teachings of this science in physical geography are no

less definite than the astounding disclosures which it makes in

history—shadowing out, where mountain chains now rise, the seats

of ancient sea bottoms—creeks and bays by lines of mudstones and

conglomerates—continents that have been formed from islands, and islands

disrupted from continents—lakes, estuaries, and rivers displaced and

silted up, and now become the richest depositories of our mineral

treasures. The connection of Great Britain with France is a matter

almost of demonstration. A zone of primary crystalline rocks encompasses

the western coast of both countries, whence geology follows them from

Wales and Cornwall into Brittany and Normandy. The silurian, devonian,

and carboniferous systems are arranged in the same order on both

sides of the channel. Their chalk coasts are identical. A succession

of elevating movements, depressions, and dislocations, is traceable

everywhere along the southern counties of England, where the line of

disturbance, from east to west, has separated the chalk on the north and

south, and elevated the Wealden into an anticlinal axis on the Sussex

coast. The Isle of Wight has been so shaken by the convulsion, as to

have been literally tumbled over, the whole cretaceous formation, and

every inferior deposit subjacent to the tertiaries, being in an inverted

position. The existence, too, of a vast connecting stretch of land in the

Atlantic is far from being improbable, whence the rivers of the Wealden

may have issued, as well as much of the detrital matter been transported

which now constitutes, with their remarkable and varied organic exuviæ,

the basins of London, Hampshire, and Paris.

Very recently botany has come to the assistance of geology, in a manner

as remarkable as it was unsuspected. It appears that, along the coast

line of Great Britain and Ireland, there are several distinct floras or

groups of plants, and all geographically related to existing families on

the opposite coasts of the Continent. The flora of the west of Ireland

corresponds to that on the north-west of Spain—the south-west of England,

and also of Ireland, presents groups allied to those on the north-west

of France,—and, again, one is common to the north coast line of France,

and south-east of England,—while the fourth and fifth have their types

in the alpine flora developed in the Scottish and Welsh mountains,

and the mixed and diversified tribes more generally distributed over

Ireland, England, and Germany. The assumption implied in this botanic

speculation is, that these are the remains of a state of things no

longer enduring, proofs of the existence of hotter or colder climates

than now prevail, and the indications of a configuration of land and sea

when a great mountain barrier extended across the Atlantic from Ireland

to Spain. The distribution of the second and third sets of vegetation

depended on the connection of England with France and Germany, when a

sea covered a large portion of the south of Europe, and the upheaval

of whose bed, which constitutes the latest of the tertiary deposits,

gave rise to a vast continent, comprising Spain, Ireland, the north of

Africa, the Azores, and the Canaries. The alpine flora of Scotland and

Wales was effected during the glacial period—to be afterward noticed—when

the mountain summits of Britain were low islands or members of an

archipelago extending over the Frozen Ocean, and clothed with an arctic

vegetation which, in the gradual upheaval of those islands and consequent

change of climate, became limited to the summits of the still existing

mountains. Professor Edward Forbes, adopting in this curious speculation

the views of Mr. Hewet Watson, finds a corroboration of them in the

peculiar distribution of _endemic_ animals, especially of the marine

and terrestrial mollusca. And he justly concludes that all the changes

required for the events which he would connect with the distribution

of the British flora, are borne out by the geological phenomena that

prevailed during the epoch of the several tertiary deposits.

3. Geology, moreover, in deciphering the evidences of those stupendous

operations which resulted in the statical, mineral, and organic

arrangements merging in the modern epoch, inculcates some important

truths connected with the science of natural theology. The mind, indeed,

can never escape, in these investigations, from theistic conclusions.

Step by step, as we ascended through the component strata of the globe,

witnessed the modifications to which they were subjected, and observed

the successive introduction and extinction of so many types of animal

and vegetable life, we were just furnished with so many incontestable

proofs of the direct interposition of Almighty power. If, indeed, I can

read anything more clearly than another in these constantly recurring

geological phenomena, termed epochs and formations, it is that of

INTERFERENCE with the established order of things. I am conscious that

matter did not originate itself. I can see no power in what is termed

a law of matter to constitute organic bodies. The originator of matter

must be the disposer of all its forms. And when I see these forms so

repeatedly changed, assuming new shapes, and giving new scope for varied

and multiplied degrees of enjoyment, I have only the more evidences

and illustrations before me, that creation and change are, in these

instances, correlative terms. The quadrupeds of the tertiary age are

like nothing that preceded them in any of the orders or sections of

animal existence. Their size, structure, and abundance, equally rivet the

attention. And, however long or short the period assigned them on earth,

they constitute a group of organic statuary, too remarkable to have been

slid in and out by the simple operations of material law. The geological

fact, of formation after formation, and of life after life, lies at the

foundation of the sublime truth, that God is potentially in, arranging

and disposing anew, the entire series of his works: and when I see this

mundane scene shifted in all its parts, one system subverted, and another

so very different introduced; and, again, the organic and inorganic

condition of things readjusted, and in keeping as before, I at once rise

in the contemplation of the change “from nature up to nature’s God.”

Geology, I should thus conclude, admits us a step nearer than any of the

other sciences, even than astronomy itself, to the actings of the divine

Architect. The revolution of every season demonstrates a providence—the

workings of a perpetual miracle—in its sustaining energies. But geology

shows us, not the mere annual renovation of things already existing,

but the circumstances under which they BEGAN to exist. The fiat of

Omnipotence peals through the bounds of creation. The earth and the

seas obey. We see new things starting into being. We are present, as it

were, at the moment of their birth. We see the molds out of which they

are fashioned, and the first provision made to sustain them. Geology, in

a word, hangs up before us one of the brightest and most diversified

pages in the book of nature, inducing habits of thinking, and constantly

reminding us of the facts and relations, that bodily and vividly keep

before the mind the ever-active impress of the Divinity at whose bidding—

“Awakening nature hears

The new creating word, and starts to life

In every heighten’d form.”

FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND.

PART III.

CHAPTER I.

GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF FRANCE—BASIN OF PARIS. ORGANIC REMAINS.

On the continental side of the Channel it will not be necessary to dwell,

in minute details, upon any of the systems of rocks which are here

presented. What is France? The tourist will say—A two hours’ voyage from

the sister isle—a salt lake separates them—a pleasure trip is the measure

of their estrangement. The geologist will add—And when safely landed, one

finds himself among the sights and objects, the rocks and fossils, which

engaged his attention on the coast of Albion, the cliffs and downs of

both countries being composed of the self-same materials.

I. THE PHYSICAL UNION OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND, although already adverted

to, falls again to be noticed.

The geographical distribution of the respective rocks of France and Great

Britain forms a remarkable coincidence in giving shape and contour to

their general outline. Thus, the primary systems in both stretch along

their western shores, presenting a vast barrier-wall of the oldest

and hardest rock against the incessant encroachments of the Atlantic.

Britanny and Normandy consist almost entirely of granite, gneiss,

mica-schist, and silurian rocks; on these repose the upper suites of

the secondary strata,—the lias, oolite, and chalk—training to the south

and east. On the tertiary formations rest the secondary, narrowing in

their basins, and preserving the same general line of bearing with the

English beds, and in both cases reaching their maximum of thickness and

exuberance of fossils around the capitals of Paris and London. The old

red sandstone is not indicated on the maps, nor is it clearly ascertained

to possess a habitat in the district in question. The coal-measures

are of very limited dimensions, but in their due order of position at

Hardinger, near Boulogne, and passing under the chalk and green sand,

continue in an easterly direction by Valenciennes, Mons, Namur, and

Liege, to Eschweiler, near Aix-la-Chapelle. The new red sandstone, of

both divisions, is amply developed along the eastern boundaries from

Semoy in Ardennes to Langrés and the borders of Switzerland. On the west

again, the tertiaries prevail from the mouth of the Gironde to Bayonne

on the Adour, where they are exposed to the constant tearing and erosion

of the rude surges of the Bay of Biscay, while in the interior, and over

the district of Auvergne, the granites and gneiss are widely overlaid by

the overflowings of the most recent extinct volcanoes; the oldest and the

newest plutonic rocks thus lying in immediate superposition and contact.

The rocks on this side of the channel are not indeed everywhere so well

displayed, nor do they crop out with the same successive regularity

as in Britain. Over extensive districts some disappear altogether,

while in other places patches are seen lying out of their due order of

superposition; not that in these instances the order is ever violated,

but that some of the intermediate members seem to be wanting, and the

remoter ones are in consequence found in contact. Still they conform to

each other in their great line of section, and occupy the same constant

relative position in their respective basins. Here, as in England,

the Oolitic system embraces the Cretaceous, and extends in a larger

semicircle round Paris as a common center, stretching from Ardennes

to Normandy. The Lias, again, is inferior to the Oolite, and, filling

a wider space, reposes on the transition slates of Virreville on the

western coast. The Plastic clay, London Clay, and freshwater beds emerge

in succession, and maintain each their corresponding dimensions. A

remarkable grouping of rocks, illustrative of the order of superposition,

occurs within the circuit of a few miles in the immediate vicinity of

Boulogne, where resting upon the mountain limestone the following series

may be observed: Coal, Oolitic marble, Purbeck and Portland stone,

Iron-sand, Wealden clay, Chalk marl, Green sand, and Chalk. The Plastic

clay reposes upon the chalk at Calais on the east of this group, and on

the west stretches along the coast from Etaples to Treport.

The period during which the two countries continued to be united

superficially, extended down at least to the last great upheaval of the

bed of the ocean, subsequent to the Pleiocene deposits, and probably even

after the establishment of the current epoch. The different formations we

have been tracing are geologically connected over vast tracts of country;

these tracts once formed basins or inland seas, into which their several

suites of materials were drifted; the extensive regions of the older

formations were amply fitted to inclose them; and, when the _uppermost_

or pleiocene series of the English beds were deposited, one and the same

shores and waters must have been common to the two countries—to the now

insular as well as to the continental basins of the closing tertiary age.

One feels a real and enhanced pleasure in his researches, and his

speculations assume a wider and a loftier range, as he casts a glance

back to the white shores of Britain, and around upon the aspect of the

country before him, and sees that he is still treading the same soil,

threading his way among the same rocks, ascending and descending the

slopes and valleys of the same earthy accumulations, varied only by

slight local causes. Embarked upon the Seine, and along the banks of that

lovely river, there is laid open for inspection a series of deposits,

with every one of which we are already acquainted. The resemblance is

even more striking when we examine the vast undulating plains around, and

find the depressions, elevations, hills, and general outline of surface

all of a class; and when we observe also the rocky foundations beneath

to be one and the same—extensions merely of the same series of deposits,

and forming at no very distant geological period integral portions of one

great continent.

Combined with the subterranean movements which occasioned the

dislocations, and inversions often, of the strata on both sides of

the channel, the action of oceanic currents and incessant beating of

the waves may be looked to as the instruments which produced their

severance. The proofs are ample of the encroachments of the sea upon the

eastern coast of England, the sites of towns, villages, and extensive

fields, as marked on maps, now forming sand-banks, islands, and marshy

swamps. The promontories and cliffs of Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk

are still, as they were in Pennant’s time, “perpetually preyed on by

the fury of the German sea;” the whole site of ancient Cromer is now

under its waves; the towns of Shipden, Wimpwell, and Eccles, have

entirely disappeared; large manors and even parishes have, piece after

piece, been swallowed up; nor has there been any intermission, from

time immemorial, in the inroads of the sea along a line of coast twenty

miles in length, in which these places stood.[9] The ravages, from the

same cause, have been equally if not more violent on the shores of the

channel, the Straits of Dover, and the whole south coast; where slips

of enormous magnitude are frequently recorded, cliffs undermined, and

lands of considerable extent carried into the sea. The Isle of Wight,

the peninsulas of Purbeck and Portland, the promontories of Devonshire

and Cornwall, have all received their shape from the destructive agency,

as they are still preyed upon and consumed by the tides and currents

to which they are incessantly exposed. The French coast bears similar

testimony to the inroads of the sea. From Calais to Cherbourg, with

its magnificent dock-yard, the line of shore is everywhere indented

and stripped bare, the strata undermined, and huge masses toppling

over the abyss or rising into lofty pyramids of the most grotesque and

varied forms. Britanny lies open, on every side, to the full swell of

the Atlantic, where very recent as well as more ancient history attests

the ravages of the waters in the destruction of towns and woods, the

inundation of whole parishes, the severance of the hill of St. Michael

from the main land, and, according to tradition, in the obliteration of

the south-western district, of unknown extent.

Familiarized to facts such as these, and their necessary deductions, the

mind no longer startles at the notion of the former physical union of the

two countries. The agency seen in operation is demonstrably adequate to

the effect. The straits are narrow. Their greatest depth between Dover

and Calais is twenty-nine fathoms. The bed throughout is composed of

the same stratum of chalk-rock, while a submarine chain extending from

Boulogne to Folkestone is only a few fathoms under low water. Accordingly

the wave of the mighty “ocean stream,” parted on the western coast, met

tide after tide on the opposite banks of the connecting peninsula or

narrow tongue of land, the one portion winding round by the Orcades and

rolling up the German Sea, and the other portion beating on the line

of cliffs facing to the west. The softer sedimentary deposits of the

tertiaries would rapidly yield to the constant erosive action; the harder

strata of the chalk, bared and undermined, would speedily follow; and

thus, in a period comparatively short, the entire mass would be carried

away, and the gulf of separation be irrevocably effected.

As a proof that France and England were united, and that these operations

were continued _within_ the human epoch, M. Desmarest, in his prize

essay on this subject, proposed in 1753 by a society at Amiens, adduces

the fact, that the noxious animals in both countries are identical,

creatures which were not fitted to swim across the straits, and were not

of a kind to be willingly introduced by man. But Desmarest in this only

followed the views of an older writer, and from whose work, “Restitution

of Decayed Intelligence,” all his facts and reasonings are obviously

borrowed. This curious volume is the production of Richard Verstegan,

written about two hundred and fifty years ago, and dedicated to James I.

of Great Britain. The principal object of the author is to trace out the

origin of the western nations, and more especially of “the most noble and

renowned English nation,” as discoverable in their language and other

antiquities. The fourth chapter of this quaint work is entitled, “How

the Isle of Albion is showed to have been continent or firm land with

Gallia, now named France, since the Flood of Noah.” Verstegan holds the

doctrine that “in whatever manner and form it pleased Almighty God, in

the beginning of the world, to divide the sea from the dry land, is unto

us wholly unknown; but altogether unlikely it is that there were any

_isles_ before the deluge;” and to this event he ascribes the disruption

of much of the dry land and the formation of islands. The connection of

France and England continued long after this, and their severance, he

believes, was produced by the operation of existing causes. The narrow

isthmus by which they were conjoined extended across the Straits of

Dover, just as Africa is united to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez, or North

and South America by the Isthmus of Panama. This isthmus was breached

by the action of the sea on both sides, but the sea being _lower_ on

the west side, the current swept with greater violence through this new

channel, “toward the most huge Western Ocean, the greater divider of

Europe and Africa, from the late found America.” He notices the identity

of cliffs on the opposite sides of the straits, the submarine ridge which

extends from Folkestone to Boulogne, the existence of marine shells

all over the Netherlands and adjacent countries, and their consequent

submergence before the sea was permitted to retreat through the new

course produced in the isthmus, “and no way is there else to be found or

imagined, whereby these seas might be drained or drawn away.” He refers

to the identity also of the noxious animals in England and France, when

our isle, continuing since the flood fastened by nature to the great

continent, these wicked beasts did of themselves pass over; nor is the

earthquake omitted by the writer, in his enumeration of causes whereby

the sea, first breaking through, might afterward by little and little

enlarge her passage; and the labor of man, too, had its share, when the

inhabitants of the one side or the other by occasion of war did cut it,

thereby to be sequestered and freed from their enemies.

Such is the train of illustration employed by Richard Verstegan, at a

time when the state of the science of geology could furnish him with few

helps; and but little indeed has been added by subsequent observers,

except a few additional facts and inferences, which serve to confirm his

conclusions. He remarks that such too had been the opinions of others,

as of Antonius Volscus, Marius Niger, Servius Honoratus, the French poet

Bartas, and our own countrymen, John Twin and Dr. Richard White; but

these simply held the connection of the two countries as a matter of

opinion, without laboring to find out “by sundry frequent reasons, that

so it was indeed.”[10] England long dominated in France, crowned her

princes Sovereigns of Navarre and the adjacent provinces, and Agincourt,

Cressy, and Poictiers tell where man waged war against his fellow-man,

over the remains of races long extinct, denizens of the same land, and

propelled by instincts fierce alike for mastery or destruction. What

a moral effect has been produced by the physical severance of the two

nations, not only to themselves, but to the rest of the world! Great

Britain, freed from the connection, can well afford to repose in peaceful

majesty on her own shores, improving the arts, extending her commerce,

and communicating, as the most noble and renowned nation the blessings of

religion to the remotest parts of the globe.

II. ORGANIC REMAINS. There are three districts in France which claim the

special consideration of the geologist. The first comprises the basin of

the Seine, of which Paris may be regarded as the center; the second is

the basin of the Loire, extending in the direction of the rivers Gironde

and Adour; the third is the volcanic district of Auvergue, embracing the

tertiary and lacustrine formations, which have excited much geological

speculation. The Silurian beds of Britanny are in many places absolutely

loaded with Trilobites, which have found an able expositor in M. Marie

Rouault; and the New Red Sandstone, which skirts the Vosges mountains, is

equally remarkable for the fossils, vegetable and animal, peculiar to the

Permian system.

THE BASIN OF THE SEINE. The series of rocks included in this district,

are described as the Paris basin formation, where, amidst their

fossiliferous remains, the genius of Cuvier shone forth and captivated

the world by his wonderful disclosures in the science of comparative

anatomy. The deposits occupy a depression in the chalk upon which

they rest unconformably, like those of the London basin: they agree

generally in their organisms, but differ considerably in the quality

of their respective materials. Blue clay with imbedded calcareous and

argillaceous bands characterize the London formation, while that of Paris

is distinguished by a superabundance of white limestones, marls, and

gypsum. These rocks range over a vast extent of superficial area, being

in their greatest length from N. E. to S. W. about one hundred and eighty

miles, and from E. to W. about ninety miles. They belong to the Eocene

period, consist of alternating groups of marine and fresh water strata,

and have been arranged in the following order, according to the corrected

diagram of M. Constant Prevost, who has considerably modified the earlier

tabular arrangements of Cuvier and Brongniart:—Plastic clay, Calcaire

grossier, Calcaire silicieux, Gypsum, Marls, Marine and fresh water

strata.

_The plastic clay and sand_ consist of intercalating argillaceous and

gritty beds, containing a considerable quantity of lignite and fresh

water shells. This deposit is not continuous throughout the basin, nor

is it always lowest in position. In some places it rests upon a marine

calcaire grossier, and in other places it is mixed up and imbedded in it,

clearly showing that a river charged with argillaceous sediment entered a

bay of the sea and drifted down, from time to time, wood and fresh water

shells. No remains of mammalia have been detected in the plastic clay

reposing on the chalk. _The Calcaire grossier_ is composed of a coarse

limestone, often passing into sand, and extremely rich in testacea,

a locality near Gignon alone furnishing about four hundred distinct

species. _The Calcaire silicieux_ is a compact silicious limestone,

almost destitute of organisms, and from its strong resemblance to the

precipitates of mineral springs, as well as the fact that the few fossils

contained in it are all of the land and fresh water species, it is justly

inferred that the deposit is of fresh water origin. _The Gypsum_, with

its associated _Marls_, is a saccharoid rock of considerable thickness,

and constitutes the hill of Montmartre and other elevations toward

the center of the basin. Here occur the remarkable variety as well as

abundance of those organic remains which have given so much celebrity

to the Paris basin. Fishes, reptiles, crocodiles, tortoises, birds,

bats, mice, squirrels, opossums, gigantic mammoths, Anoplotheriums, and

palm-wood, are all interred in this receptacle of the extinct dead. The

remains of about fifty species of quadrupeds alone have been detected in

the deposit, some of them, to the minutest organ, in the highest state

of preservation—all of them extinct—and nearly four-fifths belonging to

a division Pachydermata or thick-skinned animals. Immediately above the

gypseous formation is an oyster-bed, of great superficial extent; this

is succeeded by beds of sand, entirely destitute of fossils, forming a

suitable covering to the countless millions which lie interred beneath.

Reader! pause and reflect upon this enumeration of the rocky strata, and

their contents, which compose the Paris basin. What vast accumulations,

now of terrestrial floods, now of inroads from the ocean—here a deposit,

testifying to the fact of some great inland lake, with huge monsters

browsing on its banks or reposing in its shallows—there another, bearing

witness to “the strength of a mountain river,” combating with the waves

of an estuary, and each wearying of the conflict and mingling their

spoils from land and sea in one common mass. Neptune is again triumphant,

and leaves as the trophies of victory whole families and tribes of his

own domains. Silvanus now asserts and establishes his reign, and the

Genet, Raccoon, Opossom, the Squirrel, Woodcock, and Buzzard are there

to proclaim his sway. The Nereids too had their doings, and both genera

and species of seven extinct nondescript fishes show their powers. And,

last of all, come the Naïads of the streams, presenting you with their

offering in the Quail, Curlew, and Pelican, along with Tortoises and

Crocodilians. Count and enter upon your list, as found in the gypseous

formation alone, eleven or twelve species of the Palæotherium, an animal

partaking of the respective structures of the rhinoceros, the horse,

and the tapir; of the Anoplotherium five species, commingling the light

and graceful form of the gazelle with the conformation of the camel;

fifteen species of the Lophiodon, closely allied to the former, but

partaking also of the qualities of the hippopotamus; seven species of

the Anthracotherium, a creature whose dimensions through the various

members of the family swell out from the size of the hog to that of the

hippopotamus; the Chæropotamus, allied to the suidæ, and forming a link

between the Anoplotherium and the existing Peccary; and, lastly, as

closing the list of this remarkable race of thick-skinned animals, we

are presented with specimens of the Adapis, of hedgehog appearance, but

in size three times larger, and uniting in characters the insectivorous

carnivora with the Pachydermata.