no right to enter. Save, however, for its close proximity with that in
which the geologist expatiates as properly his own, this little volume
would never have been written. It is the fact that man must believingly
coöperate with God in the work of preparation for the final dynasty,
or exist throughout its never-ending cycles as a lost and degraded
creature, that alone renders the development hypothesis formidable.
But inculcating that the elevatory process is one of the natural law,
not of moral endeavor,—by teaching, inferentially at least, that in the
better state of things which is coming there is to be an identity of
race with that of the existing dynasty, but no identity of individual
consciousness,—that, on the contrary, the life after death which we
are to inherit is to be merely a horrid life of wriggling impurities,
originated in the putrefactive mucus,—and that thus the men who now
live possess no real stake in the kingdom of the future,—it is its
direct tendency, so far as its influence extends, to render the required
coöperation with God an impossibility. For that coöperation cannot exist
without belief as its basis. The hypothesis involves a misreading of the
geologic record, which not merely affects its meaning in relation to the
mind, and thus, in a question of science, substitutes error for truth,
but which also threatens to affect the record itself, in relation to the
destiny of every individual perverted and led astray. It threatens to
write down among the degraded and the lost, men who, under the influence
of an unshaken faith, might have risen at the dawn of the terminal
period, to enjoy the fulness of eternity among the glorified and the
good.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Mr. Miller is the author also of _Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland_, one vol. 8vo.; _A Letter from one of the Scotch people to the
Right Honorable Lord Brougham and Vaux, on the opinions expressed by his
Lordship in the Auchterarder Case_; and _The Whiggism of the Old School,
as exemplified in the Past History and Present Position of the Church
of Scotland_. The second of these works is well characterized by Mr.
Gladstone as “an able, elegant, and masculine production.”
[2] London, 1847, pp. 409
[3] Since the above sentence was written and set in type, I have learned
that my ingenious friend, Mr. Charles Peach of the Customs, Fowey,
so well known for his palæontological discoveries, has just found in
the Devonian system of Cornwall, fragments of what seem to be dermal
plates of _Asterolepis_. It is a somewhat curious circumstance, that
the two farthest removed extremities of Great Britain—Cornwall and
Caithness—should be tipped by fossiliferous deposits of the same ancient
system, and that organisms which, when they lived, were contemporary,
should be found embedded in the rocks which rise over the British Channel
on the one extremity, and overhang the Pentland Frith on the other.
[4] Figured from a Thurso specimen, slightly different in its proportions
from the Stromness specimen described.
[5] Dr. George Garson, Stromness, and Mr. William Watt, jun. Skaill.
[6] The Continental assertors of the development hypothesis are greatly
more frank than those of our own country regarding the “life after
death,” and what man has to expect from it. The individual, they tell
us, perishes forever; but, then, out of his remains there spring up
other vitalities. The immortality of the soul is, it would seem, an idle
figment, for there really exists no such things as souls; but is there no
comfort in being taught, instead, that we are to resolve into monads and
maggots? Job solaced himself with the assurance that, even after worms
had destroyed his body, he was in the flesh to see God. Had Professor
Oken been one of his comforters, he would have sought to restrict his
hopes to the prospect of living in the worms. “If the organic fundamental
substance _consist_ of infusoria,” says the Professor, “so must the
whole organic world _originate_ from infusoria. Plants and animals can
only be metamorphoses of infusoria. This being granted, so also must all
organizations _consist_ of infusoria, and, during their destruction,
dissolve into the same. Every plant, every animal, is converted by
maceration into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and the moisture is
stocked with infusoria. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division
of organisms into infusoria,—a reduction of the higher to the primary
life.... Death is no annihilation, but only a change. One individual
emerges out of another. Death is only a transition to another life,—not
into death. This transition from one life to another takes place through
the primary condition of the organic, or the mucus.”—_Physio-Philosophy_,
pp. 187-189.
[7] I trust that at least by and by there may be an exception claimed,
from the general, but, I am sure, well-meant, censure of this passage,
in favor of the Free Church of Scotland. It has got as its Professor of
Physical Science—thanks to the sagacity of Chalmers—Dr. John Fleming,
a man of European reputation, and all that seems further necessary, in
order to secure the benefits contemplated in the appointment, is, that
attendance on his course should be rendered imperative on _all_ Free
Church candidates for the ministry.
[8] Agassiz’s description of the _Pterichthys_, as quoted by Humboldt, in
his _Cosmos_.
[9] From Murchison’s Silurian System.
[10] These scales, which occur in a detached state, in a stratified clay
of the Old Red Sandstone, near Cromarty, present for their size a larger
extent of _cover_ than the scales of any other Ganoid.
[11] A peculiarity which also occurs in the anterior dorsal of the
_Dipterus_.
[12] From the head of _Raja clavata_.
[13] The darker, upper patch in this figure indicates a portion in which
the scales of the fins in the fossil still retain their enamel;—the
lighter, a portion from which the enamel has disappeared.
[14] The Acanths of the Coal Measures possess the cranial buckler.
[15] Professor Owen, in fixing the homologies of the ichthyic head,
differs considerably from Cuvier; but his view seems to be demonstrably
the correct one. It will, however, be seen, that in my attempted
comparison of the divisions of the ancient ganoid cranium with those of
the craniums of existing fishes, the points at issue between the two
great naturalists are not involved, otherwise than as mere questions of
words. The matter to be determined, for instance, is not whether plate A
in the skulls of the cod and _Coccosteus_ be the homologue of a part of
the occipital or that of a part of the parietal bones, but whether plate
A in the _Coccosteus_ be the homologue of plate A in the cod. The letters
employed I have borrowed from Agassiz’s restoration of the _Coccosteus_;
whereas the figures intimate divisions which the imperfect keeping of the
specimens on which the ichthyologist founded did not enable him to detect.
[16] The jaws (10, 10) which exhibit in the print their greatest breadth,
would have presented in the animal, seen from beneath, their narrow
under-edges, and have nearly fallen into the line of the sub-opercular
plates, (13, 13.)
[17] In all probability it is likewise the principle of the placoid
skull. The numerous osseous points by which the latter is encrusted,
each capable of increase at the edges, seem the minute bricks of an
ample dome. It is possible, however, that new points may be formed in
the interstices between the first formed ones, as what anatomists term
the _triquetra_ or _Wormiana_ form between the serrated edges of the
lambdoidal suture in the human skull; and that the osseous surface of the
cerebral dome may thus extend, as the dome itself increases in size, not
through the growth of the previously existing pieces,—the minute bricks
of my illustration,—but through the addition of new ones. Equally, in
either case, however, that essential difference between the placoid skull
and the placoid vertebra, to which I have referred, appears to hinge
on the circumstance, that while the osseous nucleus of each vertebral
centrum could form, in even its most complicated shape, from a _single_
point, the osseous walls of the cranium had to be formed from _hundreds_.
The accompanying diagram serves to show after what manner the vertebral
centrum in the Ray enlarges with the growth of the animal, by addition of
bony matter external to the point in the middle, at which ossification
first begins. The horizontal lines indicate the lines of increment in the
two internal cones which each centrum comprises, and the vertical ones
the lines of increment in the lateral pillars.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.
SECTION OF VERTEBRAL CENTRUM OF THORNBACK.]
[18] One of the Thurso coprolites in my possession is about one fourth
longer than the larger of the two specimens figured here, and nearly
thrice as broad.
[19] In two of these, in a collection of several score, I have failed to
detect the spiral markings, though their state of keeping is decidedly
good. There are other appearances which lead me to suspect that the
_Asterolepis_ was not the only large fish of the Lower Old Red Sandstone;
but my facts on the subject are too inconclusive to justify aught more
than sedulous inquiry.
[20] The shaded plate, (_a_,) accidentally presented in this specimen,
belongs to the upper part of the head. It is the posterior frontal
plate F, which half-encircled the eye orbit, (see fig. 29;) and I have
introduced it into the print here, as in none of the other prints, or of
any other specimens, is its upper surface shown.
[21] The late Mr. John Thurston.
[22] “Mr. Phillips proceeded to describe some remains of a small fish,
resembling the _Cheiracanthus_ of the Old Red Sandstone, scales and
spines of which he had found in a quarry at Hales End, on the western
side of the Malverns. The section presented beds of the Old Red Sandstone
inclined to the west; beneath these were arenaceous beds of a lighter
color, forming the junction with Silurian shales; these, again, passing
on to calcareous beds in the lower part of the quarry, containing the
corals and shells of the Aymestry Limestone, of their agreement with
which stronger evidence might be obtained elsewhere. He had found none
of these scales in the junction beds or in the Upper Ludlow Shales; but
about sixty or one hundred feet lower, just above the Aymestry Limestone,
his attention had been attracted to discolored spots on the _surface_ of
the beds, which, upon microscopic examination, proved to be the minute
scales and spines before mentioned. These remains were only apparent
on the surface, whilst the ‘fish-bed’ of the Upper Ludlow rock, as it
usually occurred, was an inch thick, consisting of innumerable small
teeth and spines.”—_Report, in “Athenæum” for 1842, of the Proceedings of
the Twelfth Meeting of British Association, (Manchester.)_
[23] “This is the lowest position” (that of the Onondago Limestone) “in
the State of New York in which any remains have been found higher in
the scale of organized beings than _Crustacea_, with the exception of
an imperfectly preserved fish-bone discovered by Hall in the Oriskany
Sandstone. That specimen, together with the defensive fish-bone found in
this part of the New York system, furnishes evidences of the existence of
animals belonging to the class _vertebrata_ during the deposition of the
middle part of the protozoic strata.”—_American Journal of Science and
Arts for 1846_, p. 63.
[24] “The shales _alternating_ with the Wenlock Limestone.” (_Edinburgh
Review._)
[25] The Silurian Placoids are most adequately represented by the
_Cestracion_ of the southern hemisphere; but I know not that of the
peculiar character and instincts of this interesting Placoid,—the last of
its race,—there is any thing known. For its form and general appearance
see fig. 49, page 177.
[26] Such as the dog-fishes, picked and spotted.
[27] The twelfth in _Spinax Acanthius_, and the fourteenth in _Scyllium
Stellare_.
[28] It will scarce be urged against the degradation theory, that those
races which, tried by the tests of defect or misplacement of parts, we
deem degraded, are not less fitted for carrying on what in their own
little spheres is the proper business of life, than the non-degraded
orders and families. The objection is, however, a possible one, and one
which a single remark may serve to obviate. It is certainly true that the
degraded families _are_ thoroughly fitted for the performance of all the
work given them to do. They greatly increase when placed in favorable
circumstances, and, when vigorous and thriving, enjoy existence. But then
the same may be said of all animals, without reference to their place in
the scale;—the mollusc is as thoroughly adapted to its circumstances and
as fitted to accomplish the end proper to its being, as the mammiferous
quadruped, and the mammiferous quadruped as man himself; but the fact of
perfect adaptation in no degree invalidates the other not less certain
fact of difference of rank, nor proves that the mollusc is equal to the
quadruped, or the quadruped to man. And, of course, the remark equally
bears on the _reduced_ as on the _unelevated_,—on lowness of place when
a result of degradation in races pertaining to a higher division of
animals, as on lowness of place when a result of the humble standing of
the division to which the races belong.
[29] The vertebral column in the genus _Diplopterus_ ran, as in the
placoid genus _Scyllium_, nearly through the middle of the caudal fin.
[30] In the following diagram a few simple lines serve to exhibit the
progress of degradation. Fig. _a_ represents the symmetrical Placoids of
the Silurian period, consisting of head, neck, body, tail, fore limbs and
hinder limbs; fig. _b_ represents those heterocercal Ganoids of the Old
Red Sandstone, Coal Measures, and Permian System, in which the neck is
extinguished, and the fore limbs stuck on to the occiput; fig. _c_, those
homocercal Ganoids of the Trias Lias, Oolite, and Wealden, whose tails
spread out into broad terminal processes, without homologue in the higher
animals; fig. _d_, those Acanthopterygii of the Chalk that, in addition
to the non-homological processes, have both fore limbs and hinder
limbs stuck round the head; while fig. _e_ represents the asymmetrical
Platessa, of the same period, with one of its eyes in the middle of its
head, and the other thrust out to the side.
[Illustration]
[31] I would, however, respectfully suggest, that that theory of cerebral
vertebræ, on which, in this question, the comparative anatomists proceed
as their principle, and which finds as little support in the geologic
record from the actual history of the fore limbs as from the actual
history of the bones of the cranium, may be more ingenious than sound. It
is a shrewd circumstance, that the rocks refuse to testify in its favor.
Agassiz, I find, decides against it on other than geological grounds;
and his conclusion is certainly rendered not the less worthy of careful
consideration by the fact that, yielding to the force of evidence, his
views on the subject underwent a thorough change. He had first held,
and then rejected it. “I have shared,” he says, “with a multitude of
other naturalists, the opinion which regards the cranium as composed of
vertebræ; and I am consequently in some degree called upon to point out
the motives which have induced me to reject it.”
“M. Oken,” he continues, “was the first to assign this signification to
the bones of the cranium. The new doctrine he expounded was received
in Germany with great enthusiasm by the school of the philosophers of
nature. The author conceived the cranium to consist of three vertebræ,
and the basal occipital, the sphenoid, and the ethmoid, were regarded
as the central parts of these cranial vertebræ. On these alleged bodies
of vertebræ, the arches enveloping the central parts of the nervous
system were raised, while on the opposite side were attached the inferior
pieces, which went to form the vegetative arch destined to embrace the
intestinal canal and the large vessels. It would be too tedious to
enumerate in this place the changes which each author introduced, in
order to modify this matter so as to make it suit his own views. Some
went the length of affirming that the vertebræ of the head were as
complete as those of the trunk; and, by means of various dismemberments,
separations, and combinations, all the forms of the cranium were referred
to the vertebræ, by admitting that the number of pieces was invariably
fixed in every head, and that all the vertebrata, whatever might be
their organization in other respects, had in their heads the same number
of points of ossification. At a later period, what was erroneous in
this manner of regarding the subject was detected; but the idea of the
vertebral composition of the head was still retained. It was admitted as
a general law, that the cranium was composed of three primitive vertebræ,
as the embryo is of three blastodermic leaflets; but that these vertebræ,
like the leaflets, existed only ideally, and that their presence,
although easily demonstrated in certain cases, could only be slightly
traced, and with the greatest difficulty, in other instances. The notion
thus laid down of the virtual existence of cranial vertebræ did not
encounter very great opposition; it could not be denied that there was a
certain general resemblance between the osseous case of the brain and the
rachidian canal; the occipital, in particular, had all the characteristic
features of a vertebra. But whenever an attempt was made to push the
analogy further, and to determine rigorously the anterior vertebræ of the
cranium, the observer found himself arrested by insurmountable obstacles,
and he was obliged always to revert to the virtual existence.
“In order to explain my idea clearly, let me have recourse to an
example. It is certain that organized bodies are sometimes endowed with
virtual qualities, which, at a certain period of the being’s life, elude
dissection, and all our means of investigation. It is thus that at the
moment of their origin, the eggs of all animals have such a resemblance
to each other, that it would be impossible to distinguish, even by the
aid of the most powerful microscope, the ovarial egg of a craw-fish,
for example, from that of true fish. And yet who would deny that beings
in every respect different from each other exist in these eggs? It is
precisely because the difference manifests itself at a later period,
in proportion as the embryo develops itself, that we are authorized
to conclude, that, even from the earliest period, the eggs were
different,—that each had virtual qualities proper to itself, although
they could not be discovered by our senses. If, on the contrary, any
one should find two eggs perfectly alike, and should observe two beings
perfectly identical issue from them, he would greatly err if he ascribed
to these eggs different virtual qualities. It is therefore necessary, in
order to be in a condition to suppose that virtual properties peculiar
to it are concealed in an animal, that these properties should manifest
themselves once, in some phase or other of its development. Now, applying
this principle to the theory of cranial vertebræ, we should say, that
if these vertebræ virtually exist in the adult, they must needs show
themselves in reality, at a certain period of development. If, on the
contrary, they are found neither in the embryo nor the adult, I am of
opinion that we are entitled likewise to dispute their virtual existence.
“Here, however, an objection may be made to me, drawn from the
physiological value of the vertebræ, the function of which, as is
well known, is, on the one hand, to furnish a solid support to the
muscular contractions which determine the movements of the trunk, and,
on the other, to protect the centres of the nervous system, by forming
a more or less solid case completely around them. The bodies of the
vertebræ are particularly destined to the first of these offices; the
neurapophyses to the second. What can be more natural than to admit, from
the consideration of this, that in the head, the bodies of the vertebræ
diminish in proportion as the moving function becomes lost, while the
neurapophyses are considerably developed for protecting the brain, the
volume of which is very considerable, when compared with that of the
spinal marrow? Have we not an example of this fact in the vertebræ of
the tail, where the neurapophyses become completely obliterated, and
a simple cylindrical body alone remains? Now, may it not be the case,
that in the head, the bodies of the vertebræ have disappeared; and that,
in consequence, there is a prolongation of the cord only as far as the
moving functions of the vertebræ extend? There is some truth in this
argument, and it would be difficult to refute it _a priori_. But it
loses all its force the moment that we enter upon a detailed examination
of the bones of the head. Thus, what would we call, according to this
hypothesis, the principal sphenoid, the great wings of the sphenoid, and
the ethmoid, which form the floor of the cerebral cavity? It may be said
they are apophyses. But the apophyses protect the nervous centres only
on the side and above. It may be said that they are the bodies of the
vertebræ. But they are formed without the concurrence of the dorsal cord;
they cannot, therefore, be the bodies of the vertebræ. It must therefore
be allowed, that these bones at least do not enter into the vertebral
type; that they are in some measure peculiar. And if this be the case
with them, why may not the other protective plates be equally independent
of the vertebral type; the more so, because the relations of the frontals
and parietals vary so much, that it would be almost impossible to assign
to them a constant place?”
[32] It is stated by Mr. Witham, that, “except in a few instances, he
had ineffectually tried, with the aid of the microscope, to obtain some
insight into the structure of coal. Owing,” he adds, “to its great
opacity, which is probably due to mechanical pressure, the action of
chemical affinity, and the percolation of acidulous waters, all traces
of organization appear to have been obliterated.” I have heard the late
Mr. Sanderson, who prepared for Mr. Witham most of the specimens figured
in his well-known work on the “Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables,”
and from whom the materials of his statement on this point seem to have
been derived, make a similar remark. It was rare, he said, to find a
bit of coal that exhibited the organic structure. The case, however, is
far otherwise; and the ingenious mechanic and his employer were misled,
simply by the circumstance, that it is rare to find pieces of coal which
exhibit the ligneous fibre, existing in a state of keeping solid enough
to stand the grinding of the lapidary’s wheel. The lignite usually
occurs in thin layers of a substance resembling soft charcoal, at which,
from the loose adhesion of the fibres, the coal splits at a stroke; and
as it cannot be prepared as a transparency, it is best examined by a
Stanhope lens. It will be found, tried in this manner, that so far is
vegetable fibre from being of rare occurrence in coal,—our Scotch coal
at least,—that almost every cubic inch contains its hundreds, nay, its
thousands, of cells.
[33] On a point of such importance I find it necessary to strengthen my
testimony by auxiliary evidence. The following is the judgment, on this
ancient petrifaction, of Mr. Nicol of Edinburgh,—confessedly one of our
highest living authorities in that division of fossil botany which takes
cognizance of the internal structure of lignites, and decides, from their
anatomy, their race and family:—
“Edinburgh, 19th July, 1845.
“DEAR SIR,—I have examined the structure of the fossil wood
which you found in the Old Red Sandstone at Cromarty, and
have no hesitation in stating, that the reticulated texture
of the transverse sections, though somewhat compressed,
clearly indicates a coniferous origin; but as there is not
the slightest trace of a disc to be seen in the longitudinal
sections parallel to the medullary rays, it is impossible to
say whether it belongs to the Pine or Araucarian division. I
am, &c.,
“WILLIAM NICOL.”