Statement of Objections to the Hypothesis of Transmutation
founded on the Absence of Intermediate Forms.
Genera of which the Species are closely allied.
Occasional Discovery of the missing Links in a Fossil State.
Davidson's Monograph on the Brachiopoda.
Why the Gradational Forms, when found, are not accepted as
Evidence of Transmutation.
Gaps caused by Extinction of Races and Species.
Vast Tertiary Periods during which this Extinction has been going
on in the Fauna and Flora now existing.
Genealogical Bond between Miocene and Recent Plants and Insects.
Fossils of Oeningen.
Species of Insects in Britain and North America represented by
distinct Varieties.
Falconer's Monograph on living and fossil Elephants.
Fossil Species and Genera of the Horse Tribe in North and
South America.
Relation of the Pliocene Mammalia of North America, Asia,
and Europe.
Species of Mammalia, though less persistent than the Mollusca,
change slowly.
Arguments for and against Transmutation derived from the Absence
of Mammalia in Islands.
Imperfection of the Geological Record.
Intercalation of newly discovered Formation of intermediate Age
in the chronological Series.
Reference of the St. Cassian Beds to the Triassic Periods.
Discovery of new organic Types.
Feathered Archaeopteryx of the Oolite.
THEORY OF TRANSMUTATION--ABSENCE OF INTERMEDIATE LINKS.
The most obvious and popular of the objections urged against the theory
of transmutation may be thus expressed: If the extinct species of plants
and animals of the later geological periods were the progenitors of
the living species, and gave origin to them by variation and natural
selection, where are all the intermediate forms, fossil and living,
through which the lost types must have passed during their conversion
into the living ones? And why do we not find almost everywhere passages
between the nearest allied species and genera, instead of such strong
lines of demarcation and often wide intervening gaps?
We may consider this objection under two heads:--
First. To what extent are the gradational links really wanting in the
living creation or in the fossil world, and how far may we expect to
discover such as are missing by future research?
Secondly. Are the gaps more numerous than we ought to anticipate,
allowing for the original defective state of the geological records,
their subsequent dilapidation and our slight acquaintance with
such parts of them as are extant, and allowing also for the rate of
extinction of races and species now going on, and which has been going
on since the commencement of the Tertiary period?
First. As to the alleged absence of intermediate varieties connecting
one species with another, every zoologist and botanist who has engaged
in the task of classification has been occasionally thrown into this
dilemma--if I make more than one species in this group, I must, to be
consistent, make a great many. Even in a limited region like the British
Isles this embarrassment is continually felt.
Scarcely any two botanists, for example, can agree as to the number of
roses, still less as to how many species of bramble we possess. Of the
latter genus, Rubus, there is one set of forms respecting which it is
still a question whether it ought to be regarded as constituting three
species or thirty-seven. Mr. Bentham adopts the first alternative and
Mr. Babington the second, in their well-known treatises on British
plants.
We learn from Dr. Hooker that at the antipodes, both in New Zealand and
Australia, this same genus Rubus is represented by several species rich
in individuals and remarkable for their variability. When we consider
how, as we extend our knowledge of the same plant over a wider area, new
geographical varieties commonly present themselves, and then endeavour
to imagine the number of forms of the genus Rubus which may now exist,
or probably have existed, in Europe and in regions intervening between
Europe and Australia, comprehending all which may have flourished in
Tertiary and Post-Tertiary periods, we shall perceive how little stress
should be laid on arguments founded on the assumed absence of missing
links in the flora as it now exists.
If in the battle of life the competition is keenest between closely
allied varieties and species, as Mr. Darwin contends, many forms can
never be of long duration, nor have a wide range, and these must often
pass away without leaving behind them any fossil memorials. In this
manner we may account for many breaks in the series which no future
researches will ever fill up.
DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL BRACHIOPODA.
It is from fossil conchology more than from any other department of the
organic world that we may hope to derive traces of a transition from
certain types to others, and fossil memorials of all the intermediate
shades of form. We may especially hope to gain this information from the
study of some of the lower groups, such as the Brachiopoda, which are
persistent in type, so that the thread of our inquiry is less likely to
be interrupted by breaks in the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks.
The splendid monograph just concluded by Mr. Davidson on the British
Brachiopoda, illustrates, in the first place, the tendency of certain
generic forms in this division of the mollusca to be persistent
throughout the whole range of geological time yet known to us; for
the four genera, Rhynchonella, Crania, Discina, and Lingula, have been
traced through the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Jurassic,
Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Recent periods, and still retain in the
existing seas the identical shape and character which they exhibited in
the earliest formations. On the other hand, other Brachiopoda have gone
through in shorter periods a vast series of transformations, so that
distinct specific and even generic names have been given to the same
varying form, according to the different aspects and characters it has
put on in successive sets of strata.
In proportion as materials of comparison have accumulated, the
necessity of uniting species previously regarded as distinct under
one denomination has become more and more apparent. Mr. Davidson,
accordingly, after studying not less than 260 reputed species from the
British Carboniferous rocks, has been obliged to reduce that number to
100, to which he has added 20 species either entirely new or new to the
British strata; but he declares his conviction that, when our knowledge
of these 120 Brachiopoda is more complete, a further reduction of
species will take place.
Speaking of one of these forms, which he calls Spirifer trigonalis,
he says that it is so dissimilar to another extreme of the series, S.
crassa, that in the first part of his memoir (published some ten years
ago) he described them as distinct, and the idea of confounding them
together must, he admits, appear absurd to those who have never seen the
intermediate links, such as are presented by S. bisulcata, and at
least four others with their varieties, most of them shells formerly
recognised as distinct by the most eminent palaeontologists, but
respecting which these same authorities now agree with Mr. Davidson in
uniting them into one species.*
(* "Monograph on British Brachiopoda" Palaeontographical
Society page 222.)
The same species has sometimes continued to exist under slightly
modified forms throughout the whole of the Ordovician and Silurian as
well as the entire Devonian and Carboniferous periods, as in the case of
the shell generally known as Leptaena rhomboidalis, Wahlenberg. No less
than fifteen commonly received species are demonstrated by Mr. Davidson
by the aid of a long series of transitional forms, to appertain to this
one type; and it is acknowledged by some of the best writers that they
were induced on purely theoretical grounds to give distinct names to
some of the varieties now suppressed, merely because they found them in
rocks so widely remote in time that they deemed it contrary to
analogy to suppose that the same species could have endured so long:
a fallacious mode of reasoning, analogous to that which leads some
zoologists and botanists to distinguish by specific names slight
varieties of living plants and animals met with in very remote
countries, as in Europe and Australia, for example; it being assumed
that each species has had a single birthplace or area of creation, and
that they could not by migration have gone from the northern to the
southern hemisphere across the intervening tropics.
Examples are also given by Mr. Davidson of species which pass from the
Devonian into the Carboniferous, and from that again into the Permian
rocks. The vast longevity of such specific forms has not been generally
recognised in consequence of the change of names which they have
undergone when derived from such distant formations, as when Atrypa
unguicularis assumes, when derived from a Carboniferous rock, the name
of Spirifer Urei, besides several other synonyms, and then, when it
reaches the Permian period, takes the name of Spirifer Clannyana, King;
all of which forms the author of the monograph, now under consideration,
asserts to be one and the same.
No geologist will deny that the distance of time which separates some
of the eras above alluded to, or the dates of the earliest and latest
appearances of some of the fossils above mentioned, must be reckoned by
millions of years. According to Mr. Darwin's views, it is only by having
at our command the records of such enormous periods that we can expect
to be able to point out the gradations which unite very distinct
specific forms. But the advocate of transmutation must not be
disappointed if, when he has succeeded in obtaining some of the proofs
which he was challenged to produce, they make no impression on the mind
of his opponent. All that will be conceded is that specific variation
in the Brachiopoda, at least, has a wider range than was formerly
suspected. So long as several allied species were brought nearer and
nearer to each other, considerable uneasiness might have been felt as
to the reality of species in general, but when fifteen or more are
once fairly merged in one group, constituting in the aggregate a single
species, one and indivisible, and capable of being readily distinguished
from every other group at present known, all misgivings are at an end.
Implicit trust in the immutability of species is then restored, and the
more insensible the shades from one extreme to the other, in a word,
the more complete the evidence of transition, the more nugatory does the
argument derived from it appear. It then simply resolves itself into one
of those exceptional instances of what is called a protean form.
Thirty years ago a great London dealer in shells, himself an able
naturalist, told me that there was nothing he had so much reason to
dread, as tending to depreciate his stock in trade, as the appearance of
a good monograph on some large genus of mollusca; for, in proportion as
the work was executed in a philosophical spirit, it was sure to injure
him, every reputed species pronounced to be a mere variety becoming from
that time unsaleable. Fortunately, so much progress has since been
made in England in estimating the true ends and aims of science, that
specimens indicating a passage between forms usually separated by wide
gaps, whether in the Recent or fossil fauna, are eagerly sought for, and
often more prized than the mere normal or typical forms.
It is clear that the more ancient the existing mollusca, or the farther
back into the past we can trace the remains of shells still living, the
more easy it becomes to reconcile with the doctrine of transmutation the
distinctness in character of the majority of living species. For, what
we want is time, first, for the gradual formation, and then for the
extinction of races and allied species, occasioning gaps between the
survivors.
In the year 1830 I announced, on the authority of M. Deshayes, that
about one-fifth of the mollusca of the Falunian or Upper Miocene strata
of Europe, belonged to living species. Although the soundness of that
conclusion was afterwards called in question by two or three eminent
conchologists (and by the late M. Alcide d'Orbigny among others), it has
since been confirmed by the majority of living naturalists and is well
borne out by the copious evidence on the subject laid before the public
in the magnificent work edited by Dr. Hoernes, and published under the
auspices of the Austrian Government, "On the Fossil Shells of the Vienna
Basin."
The collection of Tertiary shells from which those descriptions and
beautiful figures were taken is almost unexampled for the fine state of
preservation of the specimens, and the care with which all the varieties
have been compared. It is now admitted that about one-third of these
Miocene forms, univalves and bivalves included, agree specifically with
living mollusca, so that much more than the enormous interval which
divides the Miocene from the Recent period must be taken into our
account when we speculate on the origin by transmutation of the
shells now living, and the disappearance by extinction of intermediate
varieties and species.
MIOCENE PLANTS AND INSECTS RELATED TO RECENT SPECIES.
Geologists were acquainted with about three hundred species of marine
shells from the Falunian strata on the banks of the Loire, before they
knew anything of the contemporary insects and plants. At length, as if
to warn us against inferring from negative evidence the poverty of any
ancient set of strata in organic remains proper to the land, a rich
flora and entomological fauna was suddenly revealed to us characteristic
of Central Europe during the Upper Miocene period. This result
followed the determination of the true position of the Oeningen beds in
Switzerland, and of certain formations of "Brown Coal" in Germany.
Professor Heer, who has described nearly five hundred species of fossil
plants from Oeningen, besides many more from other Miocene localities
in Switzerland,* estimates the phanerogamous species which must have
flourished in Central Europe at that time at 3000, and the insects as
having been more numerous in the same proportion as they now exceed the
plants in all latitudes.
(* Heer, "Flora tertiaria Helvetiae" 1859; and Gaudin's
French translation, with additions, 1861.)
This European Miocene flora was remarkable for the preponderance of
arborescent and shrubby evergreens, and comprised many generic types
no longer associated together in any existing flora or geographical
province. Some genera, for example, which are at present restricted to
America, co-existed in Switzerland with forms now peculiar to Asia, and
with others at present confined to Australia.
Professor Heer has not ventured to identify any of this vast assemblage
of Miocene plants and insects with living species, so far at least as to
assign to them the same specific names, but he presents us with a list
of what he terms homologous forms, which are so like the living ones
that he supposes the one to have been derived genealogically from the
others. He hesitates indeed as to the manner of the transformation
or the precise nature of the relationship, "whether the changes were
brought about by some influence exerted continually for ages, or whether
at some given moment the old types were struck with a new image."
Among the homologous plants alluded to are forty species, of which both
the leaves and fruits are preserved, and thirty others, known at present
by their leaves only. In the first list we find many American types,
such as the tulip tree (Liriodendron), the deciduous cypress (Taxodium),
the red maple and others, together with Japanese forms, such as a
cinnamon, which is very abundant. And what is worthy of notice, some of
these fossils so closely allied to living plants occur not only in
the Upper, but even some few of them as far back in time as the Lower
Miocene formations of Switzerland and Germany, which are probably as
distant from the Upper Miocene or Oeningen beds as are the latter from
our own era.
Some of the fossil plants to which Professor Heer has given new names
have been regarded as Recent species by other eminent naturalists. Thus,
one of the trees allied to the elm Unger had called Planera Richardi, a
species which now flourishes in the Caucasus and Crete. Professor Heer
had attempted to distinguish it from the living tree by the greater size
of its fruit, but this character he confessed did not hold good, when he
had an opportunity (1861) of comparing all the varieties of the living
Planera Richardi which Dr. Hooker laid before him in the rich herbarium
of Kew.
As to the "homologous insects" of the Upper Miocene period in
Switzerland, we find among them, mingled with genera now wholly foreign
to Europe, some very familiar forms, such as the common glowworm,
Lampyris noctiluca, Linn., the dung-beetle, Geotrupes stercorarius,
Linn., the ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata, Linn., the ear-wig,
Forficula auricularia, Linn., some of our common dragon-flies, as
Libellula depressa, Linn., the honey-bee, Apis mellifera, Linn., the
cuckoo spittle insect, Aphrophora spumaria, Linn., and a long catalogue
of others, to all of which Professor Heer had given new names, but which
some entomologists may regard as mere varieties until some stronger
reasons are adduced for coming to a contrary opinion.
Several of the insects above enumerated, like the common ladybird, are
well known at present to have a very wide range over nearly the whole
of the Old World, for example, without varying, and might therefore be
expected to have been persistent throughout many successive changes of
the earth's surface and climate. Yet we may fairly anticipate that
even the most constant types will have undergone some modifications in
passing from the Miocene to the Recent epoch, since in the former period
the geography and climate of Europe, the height of the Alps, and the
general fauna and flora were so different from what they now are. But
the deviation may not exceed that which would generally be expressed by
what is called a well-marked variety.
Before I pass on to another topic, it may be well to answer a question
which may have occurred to the reader; how it happens that we remained
so long ignorant of the vegetation and insects of the Upper Miocene
period in Europe? The answer may be instructive to those who are in the
habit of underrating the former richness of the organic world wherever
they happen to have no evidence of its condition. A large part of
the Upper Miocene insects and plants alluded to have been met with at
Oeningen, near the Lake of Constance, in two or three spots embedded in
thinly laminated marls, the entire thickness of which scarcely exceeds
3 or 4 feet, and in two quarries of very limited dimensions. The
rare combination of causes which seems to have led to the faithful
preservation of so many treasures of a perishable nature in so small an
area, appear to have been the following: first, a river flowing into a
lake; secondly, storms of wind, by which leaves and sometimes the boughs
of trees were torn off and floated by the stream into the lake; thirdly,
mephitic gases rising from the lake, by which insects flying over its
surface were occasionally killed: and fourthly, a constant supply of
carbonate of lime in solution from mineral springs, the calcareous
matter when precipitated to the bottom mingling with fine mud and thus
forming the fossiliferous marls.
SPECIES OF INSECTS IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA, REPRESENTED BY DISTINCT
VARIETIES.
If we compare the living British insects with those of the American
continent, we frequently find that even those species which are
considered to be identical, are nevertheless varieties of the European
types. I have noticed this fact when speaking of the common English
butterfly, Vanessa atalanta, or "red admiral," which I saw flying
about the woods of Alabama in mid-winter. I was unable to detect any
difference myself, but all the American specimens which I took to
the British Museum were observed by Mr. Doubleday to exhibit a slight
peculiarity in the colouring of a minute part of the anterior wing,* a
character first detected by Mr. T.F. Stephens, who has also discovered
that similar slight, but equally constant variations, distinguish other
Lepidoptera now inhabiting the opposite sides of the Atlantic, insects
which, nevertheless, he and Mr. Westwood and the late Mr. Kirby, have
always agreed to regard as mere varieties of the same species.
(* Lyell's "Second Visit to the United States" volume 2 page
293.)
Mr. T.V. Wollaston, in treating of the variation of insects in maritime
situations and small islands, has shown how the colour, growth of
the wings, and many other characters, undergo modification under the
influence of local conditions, continued for long periods of time;* and
Mr. Brown has lately called our attention to the fact that the insects
of the Shetland Isles present slight deviations from the corresponding
types occurring in Great Britain, but far less marked than those which
distinguish the American from the European varieties.** In the case of
Shetland, Mr. Brown remarks, a land communication may well be supposed
to have prevailed with Scotland at a more modern era than that between
Europe and America. In fact, we have seen that Shetland can hardly fail
to have been united with Scotland after the commencement of the glacial
period (see map, Figure 41); whereas a communication between the north
of Europe by Iceland and Greenland (which, as before stated, once
enjoyed a genial climate) must have been anterior to the glacial epoch.
A much larger isolation, and the impossibility of varieties formed
in the two separated areas crossing with each other, would account,
according to Mr. Darwin's theory, for the much wider divergence observed
in the specific types of the two regions.
(* Wollaston, "On the Variation of Species" etc. London
1856.)
(** "Transactions of Northern Entomological Society" 1862.)
The reader will remember that at the commencement of the Glacial period
there was scarcely any appreciable difference between the molluscous
fauna and that now living. When therefore the events of the Glacial
period, as described in the earlier part of this volume, are duly
pondered on, and when we reflect that in the Upper Miocene period the
living species of mollusca constitute only one-third of the whole fauna,
we see clearly by how high a figure we must multiply the time in order
to express the distance between the Miocene period and our own days.
SPECIES OF MAMMALIA RECENT AND FOSSIL--PROBOSCIDIANS.
But it may perhaps be said that the mammalia afford more conspicuous
examples than do the mollusca, insects, or plants of the wide gaps which
separate species and genera, and that if in this higher class such a
multitude of transitional forms had ever existed as would be required
to unite the Tertiary and Recent species into one series or net-work of
allied or transitional forms, they could not so entirely have escaped
observation whether in the fossil or living fauna. A zoologist who
entertains such an opinion would do well to devote himself to the
study of some one genus of mammalia, such as the elephant, rhinoceros,
hippopotamus, bear, horse, ox, or deer; and after collecting all the
materials he can get together respecting the extinct and Recent species,
decide for himself whether the present state of science justifies his
assuming that the chain could never have been continuous, the number of
the missing links being so great.
Among the extinct species formerly contemporary with man, no fossil
quadruped has so often been alluded to in this work as the mammoth,
Elephas primigenius. From a monograph on the proboscidians by Dr.
Falconer, it appears that this species represents one extreme of a type
of which the Pliocene Mastodon borsoni represents the other. Between
these extremes there are already enumerated by Dr. Falconer no less
than twenty-six species, some of them ranging as far back in time as the
Miocene period, others still living, like the Indian and African forms.
Two of these species, however, he has always considered as doubtful,
Stegodon ganesa, probably a mere variety of one of the others, and
Elephas priscus of Goldfuss, founded partly on specimens of the African
elephant, assumed by mistake to be fossil, and partly on some aberrant
forms of E. antiquus.
The first effect of the intercalation of so many intermediate forms
between the two most divergent types, has been to break down almost
entirely the generic distinction between Mastodon and Elephas. Dr.
Falconer, indeed, observes that Stegodon (one of several subgenera which
he has founded) constitutes an intermediate group, from which the other
species diverge through their dental characters, on the one side into
the mastodons, and on the other into the Elephants.*
(* "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society" volume 13
1857 page 314.)
The next result is to diminish the distance between the several members
of each of these groups.
Dr. Falconer has discovered that no less than four species of
elephant were formerly confounded together under the title of Elephas
primigenius, whence its supposed ubiquity in Pleistocene times, or its
wide range over half the habitable globe. But even when this form
has been thus restricted in its specific characters, it has still its
geographical varieties; for the mammoth's teeth brought from America
may in most instances, according to Dr. Falconer, be distinguished from
those proper to Europe. On this American variety Dr. Leidy has conferred
the name of E. americanus. Another race of the same mammoth (as
determined by Dr. Falconer) existed, as we have seen, before the Glacial
period, or at the time when the buried forest of Cromer and the Norfolk
cliffs was deposited; and the Swiss geologists have lately found remains
of the mammoth in their country, both in pre-glacial and post-glacial
formations.
Since the publication of Dr. Falconer's monograph, two other species of
elephant, F. mirificus, Leidy, and F. imperator, have been obtained
from the Pliocene formations of the Niobrara Valley in Nebraska, one
of which, however, may possibly be found hereafter to be the same as E.
columbi, Falc. A remarkable dwarf species also (Elephas melitensis) has
been discovered, belonging, like the existing E. africanus, to the group
Loxodon. This species has been established by Dr. Falconer on remains
found by Captain Spratt R.N. in a cave in Malta.*
(* "Proceedings of the Geological Society" London 1862.)
How much the difficulty of discriminating between the fossil
representatives of this genus may hereafter augment, when all the
species with their respective geographical varieties are known, may be
inferred from the following fact--Professor H. Schlegel, in a recently
published memoir, endeavours to show that the living elephant of Sumatra
agrees with that of Ceylon, but is a distinct species from that of
Continental India, being distinguishable by the number of its dorsal
vertebrae and ribs, the form of its teeth, and other characteristics.*
(* Schlegel, "Natural History Review" Number 5 1862 page
72.)
Dr. Falconer, on the other hand, considers these two living species
as mere geographical varieties, the characters referred to not being
constant, as he has ascertained, on comparing different individuals
of E. indicus in different parts of Bengal in which the ribs vary from
nineteen to twenty, and different varieties of E. africanus in which
they vary from twenty to twenty-one.
An inquiry into the various species of the genus Rhinoceros, recent and
fossil, has led Dr. Falconer to analogous results, as might be inferred
from what was said in Chapter 10, and as a forthcoming memoir by the
same writer will soon more fully demonstrate.
Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from the Niobrara
Valley, Dr. Leidy describes a rhinoceros so like the Asiatic species,
R. indicus, that he at first referred it to the same, and, what is most
singular, he remarks generally of the Pliocene fauna of that part
of North America that it is far more related in character to the
Pleistocene and Recent fauna of Europe than to that now inhabiting the
American continent.
It seems indeed more and more evident that when we speculate in future
on the pedigree of any extinct quadruped which abounds in the drift or
caverns of Europe, we shall have to look to North and South America as
a principal source of information. Thirty years ago, if we had been
searching for fossil types which might fill up a gap between two species
or genera of the horse tribe (or great family of the Solipedes), we
might have thought it sufficient to have got together as ample materials
as we could obtain from the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia.
We might have presumed that as no living representative of the equine
family, whether horse, ass, zebra, or quagga, had been furnished
by North or South America when those regions were first explored by
Europeans, a search in the transatlantic world for fossil species might
be dispensed with. But how different is the prospect now opening before
us! Mr. Darwin first detected the remains of a fossil horse during his
visit to South America, since which two other species have been met
with on the same continent, while in North America, in the valley of the
Nebraska alone, Mr. Hayden, besides a species not distinguishable
from the domestic horse, has obtained, according to Dr. Leidy,
representatives of five other fossil genera of Solipedes. These he
names, Hipparion, Protohippus, Merychippus, Hypohippus, and Parahippus.
On the whole, no less than twelve equine species, belonging to seven
genera (including the Miocene Anchitherium of Nebraska), being already
detected in the Tertiary and Post-Tertiary formations of the United
States.*
(* "Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Science"
Philadelphia for 1858 page 89.)
Professors Unger* and Heer** have advocated, on botanical grounds,
the former existence of an Atlantic continent during some part of the
Tertiary period, as affording the only plausible explanation that can be
imagined, of the analogy between the Miocene flora of Central Europe and
the existing flora of Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other
hand, after showing how many of the American types found fossil in
Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first advanced by
Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to which the community of
types in the eastern states of North America and the Miocene flora of
Europe is due, took place when there was an overland communication from
America to eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of
latitude, or south of Behring Straits, following the direction of the
Aleutian islands.*** By this course they may have made their way, at any
epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene, antecedently to the glacial
epoch, to Mongolia, on the east coast of northern Asia.
(* "Die versunkene Insel Atlantis.")
(** "Flora tertiaria Helvetiae.")
(*** Oliver, Lecture at the Royal Institution, March 7, 1862.)
We have already seen that a large proportion of the living quadrupeds of
Mongolia (34 out of 48) are specifically identical with those at present
inhabiting the continent of Western Europe and the British Isles.
A monograph on the hippopotamus, bear, ox, stag, or any other genus of
mammalia common in the European drift or caverns, might equally well
illustrate the defective state of the materials at present at our
command. We are rarely in possession of one perfect skeleton of any
extinct species, still less of skeletons of both sexes, and of different
ages. We usually know nothing of the geographical varieties of the
Pleistocene and Pliocene species, least of all, those successive changes
of form which they must have undergone in the preglacial epoch between
the Upper Miocene and Pleistocene eras. Such being the poverty of
our palaeontological data, we cannot wonder that osteologists are at
variance as to whether certain remains found in caverns are of the same
species as those now living; whether, for example, the Talpa fossilis
is really the common mole, the Meles morreni the common badger, Lutra
antiqua the otter of Europe, Sciurus priscus the squirrel, Arctomys
primigenia the marmot, Myoxus fossilis the dormouse, Schmerling's Felis
engihoulensis the European lynx, or whether Ursus spelaeus and Ursus
priscus are not extinct races of the living brown bear (Ursus arctos).
If at some future period all the above-mentioned species should be
united with their allied congeners, it cannot fail to enlarge our
conception of the modifications which a species is capable of undergoing
in the course of time, although the same form may appear absolutely
immutable within the narrow range of our experience.
LONGEVITY OF SPECIES IN THE MAMMALIA.
In the "Principles of Geology," in 1833,* I stated that the longevity of
species in the class mollusca exceeded that in the mammalia. It has been
since found that this generalisation can be carried much farther, and
that in fact the law which governs the changes in organic being is such
that the lower their place in a graduated scale, or the simpler their
structure, the more persistent are they in form and organisation. I soon
became aware of the force of this rule in the class mollusca, when I
first attempted to calculate the numerical proportion of Recent species
in the Newer Pliocene formations as compared to the Older Pliocene, and
of them again as contrasted with the Miocene; for it appeared invariably
that a greater number of the lamellibranchs could be identified with
living species than of the gasteropods, and of these last a greater
number in the lower division, that of entire-mouthed univalves, than in
that of the siphonated. In whatever manner the changes have been brought
about, whether by variation and natural selection, or by any other
causes, the rate of change has been greater where the grade of
organisation is higher.
(* 1st edition volume 3 pages 48 and 140.)
It is only, therefore, where there is a full representation of all the
principal orders of mollusca, or when we compare those of corresponding
grade, that we can fully rely on the percentage test, or on the
proportion of Recent to extinct species as indicating the relation of
two groups to the existing fauna.
The foraminifera which exemplify the lowest stage of animal existence
exhibit, as we learn from the researches of Dr. Carpenter and of Messrs.
Jones and Parker, extreme variability in their specific forms, and
yet these same forms are persistent throughout vast periods of time,
exceeding, in that respect, even the brachiopods before mentioned.
Dr. Hooker observes, in regard to plants of complex floral structure,
that they manifest their physical superiority in a greater extent of
variation and in thus better securing a succession of race, an attribute
which in some senses he regards as of a higher order than that indicated
by mere complexity or specialisation of organ.*
(* "Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia" page 7.)
As one of the consequences of this law, he says that species, genera,
and orders are, on the whole, best limited in plants of higher grade,
the dicotyledons better than the monocotyledons, and the Dichlamydeae
better than the Achlamydeae.
Mr. Darwin remarks, "We can, perhaps, understand the apparently quicker
rate of change in terrestrial, and in more highly organised productions,
compared with marine and lower productions, by the more complex
relations of the higher beings to their organic and inorganic conditions
of life."*
(* "Origin of Species" 3rd edition page 340.)
If we suppose the mammalia to be more sensitive than are the inferior
classes of the vertebrata, to every fluctuation in the surrounding
conditions, whether of the animate or inanimate world, it would follow
that they would oftener be called upon to adapt themselves by variation
to new conditions, or if unable to do so, to give place to other types.
This would give rise to more frequent extinction of varieties, species,
and genera, whereby the surviving types would be better limited, and the
average duration of the same unaltered specific types would be lessened.
ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS CONSIDERED IN REFERENCE TO TRANSMUTATION.
But if mammalia vary upon the whole at a more rapid rate than animals
lower in the scale of being, it must not be supposed that they can alter
their habits and structures readily, or that they are convertible in
short periods into new species. The extreme slowness with which such
changes of habits and organisation take place, when new conditions
arise, appears to be well exemplified by the absence even of small
warm-blooded quadrupeds in islands far from continents, however well
such islands may be fitted by their dimensions to support them.
Mr. Darwin has pointed to this absence of mammalia as favouring his
views, observing that bats, which are the only exceptions to the rule,
might have made their way to distant islands by flight, for they are
often met with on the wing far out at sea. Unquestionably, the total
exclusion of quadrupeds in general, which could only reach such isolated
habitations by swimming, seems to imply that nature does not dispense
with the ordinary laws of reproduction when she peoples the earth with
new forms; for if causes purely immaterial were alone at work, we
might naturally look for squirrels, rabbits, polecats, and other small
vegetable feeders and beasts of prey, as often as for bats, in the spots
alluded to.
On the other hand, I have found it difficult to reconcile the antiquity
of certain islands, such as those of the Madeiran Archipelago, and those
of still larger size in the Canaries, with the total absence of small
indigenous quadrupeds, for, judging by ancient deposits of littoral
shells, now raised high above the level of the sea, several of these
volcanic islands (Porto Santo and the Grand Canary among others) must
have existed ever since the Upper Miocene period. But, waiving all such
claims to antiquity, it is at least certain that since the close of the
Newer Pliocene period, Madeira, and Porto Santo have constituted two
separate islands, each in sight of the other, and each inhabited by an
assemblage of land shells (Helix, Pupa, Clausilia, etc.), for the most
part different or proper to each island. About thirty-two fossil species
have been obtained in Madeira, and forty-two in Porto Santo, only
five of the whole being common to both islands. In each the living
land-shells are equally distinct, and correspond, for the most part,
with the species found fossil in each island respectively.
Among the fossil species, one or two appear to be entirely extinct,
and a larger number have disappeared from the fauna of the Madeiran
Archipelago, though still extant in Africa and Europe. Many which were
amongst the most common in the Pliocene period, have now become
the scarcest, and others formerly scarce, are now most numerously
represented. The variety-making force has been at work with such
energy--perhaps we ought to say, has had so much time for its
development--that almost every isolated rock within gun-shot of the
shores has its peculiar living forms, or those very marked races to
which Mr. Lowe, in his excellent description of the fauna, has given the
name of "sub-species."
Since the fossil shells were embedded in sand near the coast, these
volcanic islands have undergone considerable alterations in size
and shape by the wasting action of the waves of the Atlantic beating
incessantly against the cliffs, so that the evidence of a vast lapse of
time is derivable from inorganic as well as from organic phenomena.
During this period no mammalia, not even of small species, excepting
bats, have made their appearance, whether in Madeira and Porto-Santo or
in the larger and more numerous islands of the Canarian group. It might
have been expected, from some expressions met with here and there in the
"Origin of Species," though not perhaps from a fair interpretation
of the whole tenor of the author's reasoning, that this dearth of the
highest class of vertebrata is inconsistent with the powers of mammalia
to accommodate their habits and structures to new conditions. Why did
not some of the bats, for example, after they had greatly multiplied,
and were hard pressed by a scarcity of insects on the wing, betake
themselves to the ground in search of prey, and, gradually losing their
wings, become transformed into non-volant Insectivora? Mr. Darwin tells
me that he has learnt that there is a bat in India which has been known
occasionally to devour frogs. One might also be tempted to ask, how it
has happened that the seals which swarmed on the shores of Madeira and
the Canaries, before the European colonists arrived there, were never
induced, when food was scarce in the sea, to venture inland from the
shores, and begin in Teneriffe, and the Grand Canary especially, and
other large islands, to acquire terrestrial habits, venturing first
a few yards inland, and then farther and farther until they began to
occupy some of the "places left vacant in the economy of nature." During
these excursions, we might suppose some varieties, which had the skin
of the webbed intervals of their toes less developed, to succeed best in
walking on the land, and in the course of several generations they might
exchange their present gait or manner of shuffling along and jumping by
aid of the tail and their fin-like extremities, for feet better adapted
for running.
It is said that one of the bats in the island of Palma (one of the
Canaries) is of a peculiar species, and that some of the Cheiroptera
of the Pacific islands are even of peculiar genera. If so, we seem, on
organic as well as on geological grounds, to be precluded from arguing
that there has not been time for great divergence of character. We seem
also entitled to ask why the bats and rodents of Australia, which are
spread so widely among the marsupials over that continent, have never,
under the influence of the principle of progression, been developed
into higher placental types, since we have now ascertained that that
continent was by no means unfitted to sustain such mammalia, for these
when once introduced by Man have run wild and become naturalised in
many parts. The following answers may perhaps be offered to the above
criticisms of some of Mr. Darwin's theoretical views.
First, as to the bats and seals: they are what zoologists call aberrant
and highly specialised types, and therefore precisely those which
might be expected to display a fixity and want of pliancy in their
organisation, or the smallest possible aptitude for deviating in new
directions towards new structures, and the acquisition of such altered
habits as a change from aquatic to terrestrial or from Volant to
non-volant modes of living would imply.
Secondly, the same powers of flight which enabled the first bats to
reach Madeira or the Canaries, would bring others from time to time
from the African continent, which, mixing with the first emigrants and
crossing with them, would check the formation of new races, or keep
them true to the old types, as is found to be actually the case with the
birds of Madeira and the Bermudas.
This would happen the more surely, if, as Mr. Darwin has endeavoured to
prove, the offspring of races slightly varying are usually more
vigorous than the progeny of parents of the same race, and would be more
prolific, therefore, than the insular stock which had been for a long
time breeding in and in.
The same cause would tend in a still more decided manner to prevent the
seals from diverging into new races or "incipient species," because
they range freely over the wide ocean, and, may therefore have continual
intercourse with all other individuals of their species.
Thirdly, as to peculiar species, and even genera of bats in islands, we
are perhaps too little acquainted at present with all the species and
genera of the neighbouring continents to be able to affirm, with any
degree of confidence, that the forms supposed to be peculiar do not
exist elsewhere: those of the Canaries in Africa, for example. But
what is still more important, we must bear in mind how many species and
genera of Pleistocene mammalia have everywhere become extinct by causes
independent of Man. It is always possible, therefore, that some types
of Cheiroptera, originally derived from the main land, have survived in
islands, although they have gradually died out on the continents from
whence they came; so that it would be rash to infer that there has been
time for the creation, whether by variation or other agency, of new
species or genera in the islands in question.
As to the Rodents and Cheiroptera of Australia, we are as yet too
ignorant of the Pleistocene and Pliocene fauna of that part of the
world, to be able to decide whether the introduction of such forms dates
from a remote geological time. We know, however, that, before the Recent
period, that continent was peopled with large kangaroos, and other
herbivorous and carnivorous marsupials, of species long since extinct,
their remains having been discovered in ossiferous caverns. The
preoccupancy of the country by such indigenous tribes may have checked
the development of the placental Rodents and Cheiroptera, even were we
to concede the possibility of such forms being convertible by variation
and progressive development into higher grades of mammalia.
IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD [42].
When treating in the eighth chapter of the dearth of human bones in
alluvium containing flint implements in abundance, I pointed out that it
is not part of the plan of Nature to write everywhere, and at all times,
her autobiographical memoirs. On the contrary, her annals are local and
exceptional from the first, and portions of them are afterwards ground
into mud, sand, and pebbles, to furnish materials for new strata. Even
of those ancient monuments now forming the crust of the earth, which
have not been destroyed by rivers and the waves of the sea, or which
have escaped being melted by volcanic heat, three-fourths lie submerged
beneath the ocean, and are inaccessible to Man; while of those which
form the dry land, a great part are hidden for ever from our observation
by mountain masses, thousands of feet thick, piled over them.
Mr. Darwin has truly said that the fossiliferous rocks known to
geologists consist, for the most part, of such as were formed when the
bottom of the sea was subsiding. This downward movement protects the
new deposits from denudation, and allows them to accumulate to a great
thickness; whereas sedimentary matter, thrown down where the sea-bottom
is rising, must almost invariably be swept away by the waves as fast as
the land emerges.
When we reflect, therefore, on the fractional state of the annals
which are handed down to us, and how little even these have as yet been
studied, we may wonder that so many geologists should attribute every
break in the series of strata and every gap in the past history of the
organic world to catastrophes and convulsions of the earth's crust or
to leaps made by the creational force from species to species, or from
class to class. For it is clear that, even had the series of monuments
been perfect and continuous at first (an hypothesis quite opposed to the
analogy of the working of causes now in action), it could not fail to
present itself to our eyes in a broken and disconnected state.
Those geologists who have watched the progress of discovery during the
last half century can best appreciate the extent to which we may still
hope by future exertion to fill up some of the wider chasms which
now interrupt the regular sequence of fossiliferous rocks. The
determination, for example, of late years of the true place of the
Hallstadt and St. Cassian beds on the north and south flanks of the
Austrian Alps, has revealed to us, for the first time, the marine fauna
of a period (that of the Upper Trias) of which, until lately, but little
was known. In this case, the palaeontologist is called upon suddenly to
intercalate about 800 species of Mollusca and Radiata, between the fauna
of the Lower Lias and that of the Middle Trias. The period in question
was previously believed, even by many a philosophical geologist, to
have been comparatively barren of organic types. In England, France,
and northern Germany, the only known strata of Upper Triassic date had
consisted almost entirely of fresh or brackish-water beds, in which
the bones of terrestrial and amphibious reptiles were the most
characteristic fossils. The new fauna was, as might have been expected,
in part peculiar, not a few of the species of Mollusca being referable
to new genera; while some species were common to the older, and some
to the newer rocks. On the whole, the new forms have helped greatly to
lessen the discordance, not only between the Lias and Trias, but also
generally between Palaeozoic and Mesozoic formations. Thus the genus
Orthoceras has been for the first time recognised in a Mesozoic deposit,
and with it we find associated, for the first time, large Ammonites
with foliated lobes, a form never seen before below the Lias; also the
Ceratites, a family of Cephalopods never before met with in the Upper
Trias, and never before in the same stratum with such lobed Ammonites.
We can now no longer doubt that should we hereafter have an opportunity
of studying an equally rich marine fauna of the age of the Lower Trias
(or Bunter Sandstein), the marked hiatus which still separates the
Triassic and Permian eras would almost disappear.
Archaeopteryx macrurus, Owen.
I could readily add a copious list of minor deposits, belonging to the
Primary, Secondary and Tertiary series, which we have been called upon
in like manner to intercalate in the course of the last quarter of a
century into the chronological series previously known; but it would
lead me into too long a digression. I shall therefore content myself
with pointing out that it is not simply new formations which are brought
to light from year to year, reminding us of the elementary state of
our knowledge of palaeontology, but new types also of structure are
discovered in rocks whose fossil contents were supposed to be peculiarly
well known.
The last and most striking of these novelties is "the feathered fossil"
from the lithographic stone of Solenhofen.
Until the year 1858, no well-determined skeleton of a bird had been
detected in any rocks older than the Tertiary. In that year, Mr. Lucas
Barrett found in the Cambridge Greensand of the Cretaceous series, the
femur, tibia, and some other bones of a swimming bird, supposed by him
to be of the gull tribe. His opinion as to the ornithic character of the
remains was afterwards confirmed by Professor Owen.
The Archaeopteryx macrurus, Owen, recently acquired by the British
Museum, affords a second example of the discovery of the osseous remains
of a bird in strata older than the Eocene. It was found in the great
quarries of lithographic limestone at Solenhofen in Bavaria, the rock
being a member of the Upper Oolite.
It was at first conjectured in Germany, before any experienced
osteologist had had an opportunity of inspecting the original specimen,
that this fossil might be a feathered Pterodactyl (flying reptiles
having been often met with in the same stratum), or that it might at
least supply some connecting links between a reptile and a bird. But
Professor Owen, in a memoir lately read to the Royal Society (November
20, 1862), has shown that it is unequivocally a bird, and that such of
its characters as are abnormal are by no means strikingly reptilian. The
skeleton was lying on its back when embedded in calcareous sediment, so
that the ventral part is exposed to view. It is about 1 foot 8 inches
long, and 1 foot across, from the apex of the right to that of the left
wing. The furculum, or merry-thought, which is entire, marks the fore
part of the trunk; the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg
bones are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers and
of down on the body. The vanes and shafts of the feathers can be seen by
the naked eye. Fourteen long quill feathers diverge on each side of the
metacarpal and phalangial bones, and decrease in length from 6 inches
to 1 inch. The wings have a general resemblance to those of gallinaceous
birds. The tarso-metatarsal, or drumstick, exhibits at its distal end
a trifid articular surface supporting three toes, as in birds. The
furculum, pelvis, and bones of the tail are in their natural position.
The tail consists of twenty vertebrae, each of which supports a pair of
plumes. The length of the tail with its feathers is 11 1/2 inches, and
its breadth 3 1/2. It is obtusely truncated at the end. In all living
birds the tail-feathers are arranged in fan-shaped order and attached
to a coccygean bone, consisting of several vertebrae united together,
whereas in the embryo state these same vertebrae are distinct. The
greatest number is seen in the ostrich, which has eighteen caudal
vertebrae in the foetal state, which are reduced to nine in the adult
bird, many of them having been anchylosed together. Professor Owen
therefore considers the tail of the Archaeopteryx as exemplifying the
persistency of what is now an embryonic character. The tail, he
remarks, is essentially a variable organ; there are long-tailed bats
and short-tailed bats, long-tailed rodents and short-tailed rodents,
long-tailed pterodactyls and short-tailed pterodactyls.
The Archaeopteryx differs from all known birds, not only in the
structure of its tail, but in having two, if not three, digits in the
hand; but there is no trace of the fifth digit of the winged reptile.
The conditions under which the skeleton occurs are such, says Professor
Owen, as to remind us of the carcass of a gull which has been a prey to
some Carnivore, which had removed all the soft parts, and perhaps
the head, nothing being left but the bony legs and the indigestible
quill-feathers. But since Professor Owen's paper was read, Mr. John
Evans, whom I have often had occasion to mention in the earlier chapters
of this work, seems to have found what may indicate a part of the
missing cranium. He has called our attention to a smooth protuberance
on the otherwise even surface of the slab of limestone which seems to
be the cast of the brain or interior of the skull. Some part even of the
cranial bone itself appears to be still buried in the matrix. Mr. Evans
has pointed out the resemblance of this cast to one taken by himself
from the cranium of a crow, and still more to that of a jay, observing
that in the fossil the median line which separates the two hemispheres
of the brain is visible.
To conclude, we may learn from this valuable relic how rashly the
existence of Birds at the epoch of the Secondary rocks has been
questioned, simply on negative evidence, and secondly, how many new
forms may be expected to be brought to light in strata with which we
are already best acquainted, to say nothing of the new formations which
geologists are continually discovering.