p 279
the theoretical views that have been started regarding the simplicity of
primitive forms of organic life, ow that vegetable preceded animal life, and
that the former was necessarily dependent upon the latter. The existence of
races of men inhabiting the icy regions of the North Polar lands, and whose
nutriment is solely derived from fish and cetaceans, shows the possibility
of maintaining life independently of vegetable substances. After the
devonian system and the mountain limestone, we come to a formation, the
botanical analysis of which has made such brilliant advances in modern
times.*
[footnote] *By the important labors of Count Sternberg, Adolphe Brongniart,
Goppert, and Lindley.
The coal measures contain not only fern-like cryptogamic plants and
phanerogamic monocotyledons (grasses, yucc-like Liliaceae and palms), but
also gymnospermic dicotyledons (Coniferae and Cycadeae), amounting in all to
nearly 400 species, as characteristic of the coal formations. Of these we
will only enumerate arborescent Calamites and Lycopodiaceae, scaly
Lepidodendra, Sigillariae, which attain a height of sixty feet, and are
sometimes found standing upright, being distinguished by a double system of
vascular bundles, cactus-like Stigmariae, a great number of ferns, in some
cases the stems, and in others the fronds alone being found, indicating by
their abundance the insular form of the dry land,* Cycadeae** especially
palms, although fewer in number.***
[footnote] *See Robert Brown's 'Botany of Congo', p. 42, and the Memoir of
the unfortunate E'Urville, 'De la Distribution des Fougeres sur la Surface
du Globe Terrestre'.
[footnote] **Such are the Cycadeae discovered by Count Sternberg in the old
carboniferous formation at Radnitz, in Bohemia, and described by Corda (two
species of Cycatides and Zamites Cordai. See Goppert, 'Fossile Cycadeen in
den Arbeiten der Schles. Gesellschaft, fur waterl. Cultur im Jahr' 1843, s.
33, 37, 40 and 50). A Cycadea (Pterophyllum gonorchachis, Gopp.) has also
been found in the carboniferous formations in Upper Silesia, at Konigshutte.
[footnote] ***Lindley, 'Fossil Flora', No. xv., p. 163.
Asterophyllites, having whorl-like leaves, and allied to the Naiades, with
araucaria-like Coniferae',* which exhibit faint traces of annual rings.
[footnote] *'Fossil Coniferae', in Buckland's 'Geology', p. 483-490.
Witham has the great merit of having first recognized the existence of
Coniferae in the early vegetation of the old carboniferous formation.
Almost all the trunks of trees found in this formation were previously
regarded as palms. The species of the genus 'Araucaria' are, however, not
peculiar to the coal formations of the British Islands; they likewise occur
in Upper Silesia.
This difference of character from our present vegtation, minifested in the
vegetative forms which were so luxuriously developed on the drier
p 280
and more elevated portions of the old red sandstone, was maintained through
all the subsequent epochs to the most recent chalk formations; amid the
peculiar characteristics exhibited in the vegetable forms contained in the
coal measures, there is, however, a strikingly-marked prevalence of the same
families, if not of the same species,* in all parts of the earth as it then
existed, as in New Holland, Canada, Greenland, and Melville Island.
[footnote[ *Adolphe Brongniart, 'Prodrome d'une Hist. des Vegetaux
Fossiles', p. 179; buckland, 'Geology', p. 479; Endlicher and Unger,
'Grundzuge der Botanik', 1843, s. 455.
The vegetation of the primitive period exhibits forms which, from their
simultaneous affinity with several families of the present world, testify
that many intermediate links must have become extinct in the scale of
organic development. Thus, for example, to mention only two instances, we
would notice the Lepidodendra, which, according to Lindley, occupy a place
between the Coniferae and the Lycopodiaceae*, and the Araucariae and pines,
which exhibit some peculiarities in the union of their vascular bundles.
[footnote] *"By means of Lepidodendron, a better passage is established
from flowering to flowerless plants than by either Equisetum or Cycas, or
any other known genus." -- Lindley and Hutton, 'Fossil Flora', vol. ii., p.
53.
Even if we limit our consideration to the present world alone, we must
regard as highly important the discovery of Cycadeae and Coniferae side by
side with Sagenariae and Lepidodendra in the ancient coal measures. The
Coniferae are not ony allied to Cupuliferae and Betulinae, with which we
find them associated in lignite formations, but also with Lycopodiaceae.
The family of the sago-like Cycadeae approaches most nearly to palms in its
external appearance, while these plants are specially allied to Coniferae in
respect to the structure of their blossoms and seed.*
[footnote] *Kunth, 'Anordnung der Pflanzenfamilien', in his 'Handb. der
Botanik', s. 307 und 314.
Where many beds of coal are superposed over one another, the families and
species are not always blended, being most frequently grouped together in
separate genera; Lycopodiaceae and certain ferns being alone found in one
bed, and Stigmariae and Sigillariae in another. In order to give some idea
of the luxuriance of the vegetation of the primitive world, and of the
immense masses of vegetable matter which was doubtlessly accumulated in
currents and converted in a moist condition into coal,* I would instance the
Saarbrucker coal measures,
p 281
where 120 beds are superposed on one another, exclusive of a great many
which are less than a foot in thickness; the coal beds at Johnstone, in
Scotland, and those in the Creuzot, in Burgundy, are some of them,
respectively, thirty and fifty feet in thickness,** while in the forests of
our temperate zones, the carbon contained in the trees growing over a
certain area would hardly suffice, in the space of a hundred years, to cover
it with more than a stratum of seven French lines in thickness.***
[footnote] That coal has not been formed from vegetable fibers charred by
fire, but that it has more probably been produced in the moist way by the
action of sulphuric acid, is strikingly demonstrated by the excellent
observation made by Goppert (Karsten, 'Archiv fu Mineralogie', bd. xviii.,
s. 530), on the conversion of a fragment of amber-tree into black coal. The
coal and the unaltered amber lay side by side. Regarding the part which the
lower forms of vegetation may have had in the formation of coal beds, see
Link, in the 'Abhandl. der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften', 1838, s.
38.
[footnote] **[The actual total thickness of the different beds in England
varies considerably in different districts, but appears to amount in the
Lancashire coal field to as much as 150 feet. -- Ansted's 'Ancient World',
p. 78. For an enumeration of the thickness of coal measures in America and
the Old Continent, see Mantell's 'Wonders of Geology', vol. ii., p. 60.] --
Tr.
[footnote] ***See the accurate labors of Chevandier, in the 'Comptes Rendus
de l'Academie des Sciences', 1844, t. xviii., Part i., p. 285. In comparing
this bed of carbon, seven lines in thickness, with beds of coal, we must not
omit to consider the enormous pressure to which the latter have been
subjected from superimposed rock, and which manifests itself in the
flattened form of the stems of the trees found in these subterranean
regions. "The so-called 'wood-hills' discovered in 1806 by Sirowatskoi, on
the south coast of the island of New Siberia, consist, according to
Hedenstrom, of horizontal strata of sandstone, aolternating with bituminous
trunks of trees, forming a mound thirty fathoms in neight; at the summit the
stems were in a vertical position. The bed of driftwood is visible at five
wersts' distance." -- See Wrangel, 'Reise Iangs der Nordkuste von Siberien,
in den Jahren' 1820-24, th. i., s. 102.
Near the mouth of the Mississippi, and in the "wood hills" of the Siberian
Polar Sea, described by Admiral Wrangel, the vast number of trunks of trees
accumulated by river and sea water currents affords a striking instance of
theenormous quantities of drift-wood which must have favored the formation
of carboniferous deposition in the island waters and insular bays. There
can be no doubt that these beds owe a considerable portion of the substances
of which they consist to grasses, small branching shrubs, and cryptogamic
plants.
The association of palms and Coniferae, which we have indicated as being
characteristic of the coal formations, is discoverable throughout almost all
formations to the tertiary period. In the present condition of the world,
these genera
p 282
appear to exhibit no tendency whatever to occur associated together. We
have so accustomed ourselves, although erroneously, to regard Coniferae as a
northern form, that I experienced a feeling of surprise when, in ascending
from the shores of the South Pacific toward Chilpansingo and the elevated
valleys of Mexico, between the 'Venta de la Moxonera' and the 'Alto de los
Caxones', 4000 feet above the level of the sea, I rode a whole day through a
dense wood of Pinus occidentalis, where I observed that these trees, which
are so similar to the Weymouth pine, were associated with fan palms*
('Corypha dulcis'), swarming with brightly-colored parrots.
[[footnote] *This corypha is the 'soyate' (in Aztec, zoyatl), or the 'Palma
dulce' of the natives. See Humboldt and Bonplaud, 'Synopsis Plant.
AEquinoct. Orbis Novi', t. i., p. 302. Professor Buschmann, who is
profoundly acquainted with the American languages, remarks, that the 'Palma
soyate' is so named in Yepe's 'Vocabulario de la Lengua Othomi', and that
the Aztec word zoyatl (Molina, 'Vocabulario en Lengua Mexicana y
Castellana', p. 25) recurs in names of places, such as Zoyatitlan and
Zoyapanco, near Chiapa.
South America has oaks, but not a single species of pine; and the first time
that I again saw the familiar form of a fir-tree, it was thus associated
with the strange appearance of the fan palm.*
[footnote] *Near Baracoa and Cayos de Moya. See the Admiral's journal of
the 25th and 27th of November, 1492, and Humboldt, 'Examen Critique de
l'Hist. de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent', t. ii., p. 252, and 5. iii.,
p. 23. Columbus, who invariably paid the most remarkable attention to all
natural objects, was the first to observe the difference between
'Podocarpus' and 'Pinus'. "I find," said he, "en la tierra aspera del Cibao
pinos que no Ilevan pinas (fir cones), pero portal orden compuestos por
naturaleza, que (los frutos) parecen azeytunas del Axarafe de Sevilla." The
great botanist, Richard, when he published his excellent Memoir on Cycadeae
and Coniferae, little imagined that before the time of L'Heritier, and even
before the end of the fifteenth century, a navigator had separated
'Podocarpus' from the Abietineae.
Christopher Columbus, in his first voyage of discovery, saw Coniferae and
palms growing together on the northeastern extremity of the island of Cuba,
likewise within the tropics, and scarcely above the level of the sea. This
acute observer, whom nothing escaped, mentions the fact in his journal as a
remarkable circumstance, and his friend Anghiera, the secretary of Frdinand
the Catholic, remarks with astonishment "that 'palmeta' and 'pineta' are
found associated together in the newly-discovered land." It is a matter of
much importance to geology to compare the present distribution of plants
over the earth's surface with that exhibited in the fossil floras of the
primitive world. The temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, which is so
rich in seas and islands, and where
p 283
tropical forms blend so remarkably with those of colder parts of the earth,
presents according to Darwin's beautiful and animated descriptions,* the
most instructive materials for the study of the present and the past
geography of plants.
[footnote] *Charles Darwin, 'Journal of the Voyages of the Adventure and
Beagle', 1839, p. 271.
The history of the primordial ages is, in the strict sense of the word, a
part of the history of plants.
Cycadeae, which, from the number of their fossil species, must have occupied
a far more important part in the extinct than in the present vegetable
world, are associated with the nearly allied Coniferae from the coal
formations upward. They are almost wholly absent in the epoch of the
variegated sandstone which contains Coniferae of rare and luxuriant
structure ('Voltizia, Haidingera, Albertia'); the Cycadeae, however, occur
most frequently in the keuper and lias strata, in which more than twenty
different forms appear. In the chalk, marine plants and naiades
predominate. The forests of Cycadeae of the Jura formations had, therefore,
long disappeared, and even in the more ancient tertiary formations they are
quite subordinate to the Coniferae and palms.*
[footnote] *Goppert describes three other Cycadeae (species of Cycadites
and Pterophyllum), found in the brown carboniferous schistose clay of
Alt-sattel and Commotau, in Bohemia. They very probably belong to the
Eocene Period. Goppert, 'Fossile Cycadeen', s. 61.
The lignites, or beds of brown coal* which are present in all divisions of
the tertiary period, present, among the most ancient cryptogamic land
plants, some few palms, many Coniferae having distinct annual rings, and
foliaceous shrubs of a more or less tropical character.
[footnote] *['Medals of Creation', vol. i., ch. v., etc. 'Wonders of
Geology', vol. i., p. 278, 392.] -- Tr.
In the middle tertiary period we again find palms and Cycadeae fully
established, and finally a great similarity with our existing flora,
manifested in the sudden and abundant occurrence of our pines and firs,
Cupuliferae, maples, and poplars. The dicotyledonous stems found in lignite
are occasionally distinguished by colossal size and great age. In the trunk
of a tree found at Bonn, Noggerath counted 792 annual rings.*
[footnote] *Buckland, 'Geology', p. 509.
In the north of France, at Yseux, near Abbeville, oaks have been discovered
in the turf moors of the Somme which measured fourteen feet in diameter, a
thickness which is very remarkable in the Old Continent and without the
tropics. According to Goppert's excellent investigations, which, it is
hoped, may soon be illustrated by plates, it would appear that "all the
amber of the Baltic comes from
p 284
a coniferous tree, which, to judge by the still extant remains of wood and
the bark at different ages, approaches very nearly to our white and red
pines, although forming a distinct species. The amber-tree of the ancient
world ('Pinites succifer') abounded in resin to a degree far surpassing that
manifested by any extant coniferous tree; for not only were large masses of
amber deposited in and upon the bark, but also in the wood itself, following
the course of the medullary rays, which, together with ligneous cells, are
still discernible under the microscope, and peripherally between the rings,
being some times both yellow and white."
"Among the vegetable forms inclosed in amber are male and femald blossoms of
our native needle-wood trees and Cupuliferae, while fragments which are
recognized as belonging to thuia, cupressus, ephedera, and castania vesca,
blended with those of junipers and firs, indicate a vegetation different
from that of the coasts and plains of the Baltic."*
[footnote] *{The forests of amber-pines, 'Pinites succifer', were in the
southeastern part of what is now the bed of the Baltic, in about 55 degrees
N. lat., and 37 degrees E. long. The different colors of amber are derived
from local chemical admixture. The amber contains fragments of vegetable
matter, and from these it has been ascertained tht the amber-pine forests
contained four other species of pine (besides the 'Pinites succier'),
several cypresses, yews, and junipers, with oaks, poplars, beeches, etc. --
altogether forty-eight species of trees and shrubs, constituting a flora of
North American chracter. There are also some ferns, mosses, fungi, and
liverworts. See Professor Goppert, 'Geol. Trans.', 1845. Insects, spiders,
small crustaceans, leaves, and fragments of vegetable tissue, are imbedded
in some of the masses. Upward of 800 species of insects have been observed;
most of them belong to species, and even genera, that appear to be distinct
from any now known, but others are nearly related to indigenous species, and
some are identical with existing forms, that inhabit more southern climes.
-- 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 242, etc.] -- Tr.
We have now passed through the whole series of formations comprised in the
geological portion of the present work, proceeding from the oldest erupted
rock and the most ancient sedimentary formations to the alluvial land on
which are scattered those large masses of rock, the causes of whose general
distribution have been so long and variously discussed, and which are, in my
opinion, to be ascribed rather to the penetration and violent outpouring of
pent-up waters by the elevation of mountain chains than to the motion of
floating blocks of ice.*
[footnote] *Leopold von Buch, in the 'Abhandl. der Akad. der Wissensch. zu
Berlin', 1814-15, s. 161; and in Poggend., 'Annalen', bd. ix., s. 575; Elie
de Beaumont, in the 'Annales des Sciences Naturelles', t. xix., p. 60.
The most ancient structures of the transition formation
p 285
with which we are acquainted are slate and graywacke, which contain some
remains of sea weeds from the silurian or cambrian sea. On what did these
so-called 'most ancient' formations rest, if gneiss and mica schist must be
regarded as changed sedimentary strata? Dare we hazard a conjecture on that
which can not be an object of actual geognostic observation? According to
an ancient Indian myth, the earth is borne up by an elephant, who in his
turn is supported by a gigantic tortoise, in order that he may not fall; but
it is not permitted to the credulous Brahmins to inquire on what the
tortoise rests. We venture here upon a somewhat similar problem, and are
prepared to meet with opposition in our endeavors to arrive at its soluion.
In the first formation of the planets, as we stated in the astronomical
portion of this work, it is probable that nebulous rings revolving round the
sun were agglomerated into spheroids, and consolidated by a gradual
condensation proceeding from the exterior toward the center. What we term
the ancient silurian strata are thus only the upper portions of the solid
crust of the earth. The erupted rocks which have broken through and
upheaved these strata have been elevated from depths that are wholly
inaccessible to our research; they must, therefore, have existed under the
silurian strata, and been composed of the same association of minerals which
we term granite, augite, and quartzose porphyry, when they are made known to
us by eruption through the surface. Basing our inquiries on analogy, we may
assume that the substances which fill up deep fissures and traverse the
sedimentary strata are merely the ramifications of a lower deposit. The
foci of active volcanoes are situated at enormous depths, and judging from
the remarkable fragments which I have found in various parts of the earth
incrusted in lava currents, I should deem it more than probable tht a
primordial granite rock forms the substratum of the whole stratified edifice
of fossil remains.*
[footnote] *See Elie de Beaumont, 'Descr. Geol. de la France', t. i., p.
65; Beaudant, 'Geologie', 1844, p. 269.
Basalt containing olivine first shows itself in the period of the chalk
trachyte still later, while eruptions of granite belong, as we learn from
the products of their metamorphic action to the epoch of the oldest
sedimentary strata of the transition formation. Where knowledge can not be
attained from immediate perceptive evidence, we may be allowed from
induction, no less than from a careful comparison of facts, to hazard a
conjecture by which granite would be restored
p 286
to a portion of its contested right and title to be considered as a
'primordial' rock.
The recent progress of geognosy, that is to say, the more extended knowledge
of the geognostic epochs characterized by differences of mineral formations,
by the peculiarities and succession of the organisms contained within them,
and by the position of the strata, whether uplifted or inclined
horizontally, leads us, by means of the causal connection existing among all
natural phenomena, to the distribution of solids and fluids into the
continents and seas which constitute the upper crust of our planet. We here
touch upon a point of contact between geological and geographical geognosy
which would constitute the complete history of the form and extent of
continents. The limitation of the solid by the fluid parts of the earth's
surface and their mutual relations of area, have varied very considerably in
the long series of geognostic epochs. They were very different, for
instance, when carboniferous strata were horizontally deposited on the
inclined beds of the mountain limestone and old red sandstone; when lias and
oolite lay on a substratum of keuper and muschelkalk, and the chalk rested
on the slopes of green sandstone and Jura limestone. If, with Elie de
Beaumont, we term the waters in which the Jura limestone and chalk formed a
soft deposit the 'Jurassic or oolitic', and the 'cretaceous seas', the
outlines of these formations will indicate, for the two corresponding
epochs, the boundaries between the already dried land and the ocean in which
these rocks were forming. An ingenious attempt has been made to craw maps
of this physical portion of primitive geography and we may consider such
diagrams as more correct than those of the wanderings of Io or the Homeric
geography, since the latter are merely graphic representations of mythical
images, while the former are based upon positive facts deduced from the
science of geology.
The results of the investigations made regarding the areal relations of the
solid portions of our planet are as follows: in the most ancient times,
during the silurian and devonian transition epochs, and in the secondary
formations, including the trias, the continental portions of the earth were
limited to insular groups covered with vegetation; these islands at a
subsequent period became united, giving rise to numerous lakes and
deeply-indented bays; and finally, when the chains of the Pyrenees,
Apennines, and Carpathian Mountains were elevated about the period of the
more ancient tertiary formations, large continents appeared, having almost
their present
p 287
size.*
[footnote] *[These movements, described in so few words, were doubtless
going on for many thousands and tens of thousands of revolutions of our
planet. They were accompanied, also, by vast but slow changes of other
kinds. The expansive force employed in lifting up, by mighty movements, the
northern portion of the continent of Asia, found partial vent; and from
partial subsqueous fissures there were poured out the tabular masses of
basalt occurring in Central India, while an extensive area of depression in
the Indian Ocean, marked by the coral islands of the Laccadives, the
Maldives, the great Chagos Bank, and some others, were in the course of
depression by a counteracting movement. -- Ansted's 'Ancient World', p. 346,
etc.] -- Tr.