SKIPPING
We have now to deal with another absurdity involved in the life
succession theory, the discussion of which grows naturally out of the
subject of extinct species.
As preliminary to the subject here to be presented, we must bear in mind
that the present arrangement of the fossils in alleged chronological
order, as well as the naming of thousands of typical specimens, was all
well advanced while as yet little or nothing was known of the contents
of the depths of the ocean, or even of the land forms of Africa,
Australia, and other foreign countries. In most of the important groups
of both plants and animals, the detailed knowledge of the fossil forms
preceded the knowledge of the corresponding living forms, just as Zittel
says that the theories of the igneous origin of the crystalline rocks
"had been laid without the assistance of chemistry" and the knowledge of
the microscopic structure of these rocks.[40] On pp. 128-137 of his
"History," this author shows how, up to 1820, little or nothing of a
scientific character was known of any of the classes of living animals
save mammals. During the last half century, however, the progress of
science has been steadily showing case after case where families and
genera, long boldly said to have been "extinct" since "Palaeozoic time,"
are found in thriving abundance and in little altered condition in
unsuspected places all over the world. And the point for consideration
here is the manifest absurdity of these inhabitants of the modern seas
and the modern land =skipping= all the uncounted millions of years from
"Palaeozoic times" down to the "recent," for, though found in profuse
abundance in these "Older" rocks, not a trace of many of them is to be
found in all the "subsequent" deposits.
The proposition here to be considered and proved I shall venture to
formulate as follows:
=There is a fossil world, and there is a modern living world; the two
resembling one another in various details as well as in a general way;
but to get the ancestral representatives of many modern types, e.g.,
countless invertebrates, with other lower forms of animals and plants,
we must go clear back to the Mesozoic or the Palaeozoic rocks, for they
are not found in any of the "more recent" deposits.=
I have already remarked that the blending of the doctrine of life
succession with that of uniformity, must inevitably have given birth to
the evolution theory, for it is evident that the succession from the low
to the high could only have taken place by each type blending with those
before and those after it in the alleged order of time. That such is not
the testimony of the rocks, even when arranged with this idea in view,
is too notorious to need any words of mine, for it has been considered
by many[41] the "greatest of all objections" to the theory of evolution.
This abruptness in the disappearance of "old" and the first appearance
of "new" forms, has brought into being that "geological scape-goat," as
James Geikie has called the doctrine of the =imperfection of the
record=. But Dawson has well disposed of this argument in the following
words:
"When we find abundance of examples of the young and old of many fossil
species, and can trace them through their ordinary embryonic
development, why should we not find examples of the links which bound
the species together?"[42]
But it is equally evident that each successive series ought to contain,
in addition to its own characteristic or "new" species, =all the older
forms which survived into any later deposits, or are now to be found
living in our modern world=. Such no doubt was the idea of those of the
early geological explorers who discarded Werner's onion-coat theory, and
they tried to arrange their series accordingly. This reasonable demand
is still recognized as good; and the principle is alluded to by Dana
when he attempts to show how strata might be discovered and "proved" to
be older than the present Lower Cambrian rocks.[43]
It is, I say, still recognized =in theory= that the "younger" deposits
ought to contain samples of the "older" types which were still
surviving, in addition to their own characteristic species; but with the
progress of geological discovery it has long since been found that such
an arrangement was utterly impossible. Indeed, it would almost seem as
if modern writers had forgotten the principle altogether.
For, as already said, according to the present chronological
arrangement, many kinds of invertebrates, both terrestrial and marine,
occurring in comparative abundance in our modern world, are found as
fossils only in the very "oldest" rocks and are =wholly absent from all
the rest!!!= Others which date from "Mesozoic times" are wholly absent
from the Tertiaries, though abundant in our modern world. This I regard
as another crucial test of the rationality of this idea of a life
succession.
Of course there are certain limitations which must be borne in mind. If
we find a series of beds made up largely of deep sea deposits, we cannot
reasonably expect to find in them examples of all the land forms of the
preceding "ages" which then survived, nor even of the shallow water
types. Nor, conversely, can we demand that, in beds crowded with the
remains of the great mammals and plants, and thus probably of fresh or
shallow water formation, we ought to find examples of all the marine
types still surviving. We now know that each level of ocean depth has
its characteristic types of life, just as do the different heights on a
mountain side. This doctrine of "rock facies" was, I believe, enunciated
first in 1838. Edward Forbes also did much for this same idea, showing
how at the present time certain faunas are confined to definite
geographical limits, and particular ocean depths. Jules Marcou about
1848 applied this principle to the fossils and showed how such
distinctions must have prevailed during geological time.
Here it seems that we are at last getting a refreshing breath of true
science; but if carried out in its entirety how shall we assure
ourselves that in the long ago very diverse types of fossils, e.g.,
gratolites and nummulites, or even trilobites and mammals, =could not
have been contemporary with each other=? This principle of "rock
facies," if incorporated into the science in its early days, would have
saved the world from a large share of the nonsense in our modern
geological and zoological text-books.
But in answer to any pleadings about the imperfection of the record, or
any protests about the injustice of judging all the life-forms of an
"age" by a few examples of local character, i.e., of fresh, shallow, or
deep water as the case may be, the very obvious retort is, Why then are
such local and fragmentary records given =a time value=? Why, for
example, should the Carboniferous and associated formations be counted
as representing all the deposits made in a certain age of the world,
when we know from the Cambrian and Silurian and also from the alleged
"subsequent" Jurassic that there must have been vast open sea deposits
formed contemporaneously?
As Dana expresses it:
"The Lias and Oolyte of Britain and Europe afforded the first full
display of the marine fauna of the world since the era of the
Subcarboniferous. Very partial exhibits were made by the few marine beds
of the Coal measures: still less by the beds of the Permian, and far
less by the Triassic. The seas had not been depopulated. The occurrence
of over 4,000 invertebrate species in Britain in the single Jurassic
period is evidence, not of deficient life for the eras preceding, but of
extremely deficient records."[44]
Surely these words exhibit the "phylogenic series" in all its native,
unscientific deformity. It is =because= the Coal-measures, the Permian,
and the Triassic, are necessarily "extremely deficient records" of the
total life-forms then in the world, that I am writing this chapter, and
this book. But it seems like perverseness to plead about the
imperfection of the record, and yet refuse the =evidently complementary=
deposits when they are presented. If, as this illustrious author says,
"The seas had not been depopulated," what would he have us think they
were doing? Were they forming no deposits all these intervening ages
that the Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic were being piled up? Were
the fishes and invertebrates all immortalized for these ages, or were
they, when old and full of days translated to some supermundane sphere,
thus escaping deposit in the rocks? Did the elements continue in the
_status quo_ all these uncounted millions of years? and if so, how did
they receive notice that the Triassic period was at last ended, and that
it was time for them to begin work again? I do not like to appear
trivial; but these questions serve to expose the folly of taking
diverse, local, and partial deposits, and attaching a chronological
value to each of them separately, and then pleading in a piteous,
helpless way about the imperfection of the record.
And yet I cannot promise to present a tithe of the possible evidence,
because of two serious handicaps. First, the ordinary literature of the
science is silent and meagre enough in all conscience, even though the
bare fact may be recorded that a "genus" of the Cambrian or Silurian is
"closely allied" to some genus now living. It may be even admitted that
"according to some it is not genetically distinct from the modern genus"
so-and-so; but the authors =never descend below the "genus,"= and in
most cases forget to tell us whether or not it occurs in other "later"
formations, though of course the presumption is that it does not, but
has skipped all the intervening ages, or it would hardly be named as a
characteristic type of the formation in which it occurs.
But this disadvantage, serious though it be, is scarcely worth speaking
of when we remember the significant words of a well-known authority
already quoted:
"Some geologists make it a point to give a new name to all forms found
in the Palaeozoic rocks, i.e. a name different from those of modern
species."
Or Zittel's confession that:
"The terminology which has been introduced in the innumerable monographs
of special fossil faunas in the majority of cases makes only the
slenderest pretext of any connection with recent systematic zoology; if
there is a difficulty, then stratigraphical arguments are made the basis
of a solution. Zoological students are as a rule too actively engaged
and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt to
spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions arrived at by
many stratigraphers, or to revise their labors from a zoological point
of view."
Hence I have no reluctance in saying that, in the present confused state
of the science, it is utterly impossible to find out the truth as to how
many hundreds of these "genera" of the Paleozoic rocks may have survived
to the present, though having skipped perhaps all the formations of the
intervening millions of years. I doubt not that the number is enormously
large, though as I have not attempted "to spell through the arbitrary
palaeontological conclusions" scattered through the literature, I can
only depend on a few though striking examples that lie on the open pages
of the ordinary text-books.
The larger mammals can of course furnish us no examples, for the "age"
in which they abounded is quite conveniently modern, and is separated
from the present by no great lapse of time. Of the smaller marsupials,
quite a number of jaw-bones have been found in the Jurassic and
Triassic, one from the latter being strikingly like the living
_Myrmecobius_ of Australia. They are scarcely more numerous in the
Cretaceous of America, while in the foreign rocks of this system Dana
says that "Only one species had been reported up to 1894." Those
strange, sad-eyed creatures called Lemurs deserve a passing notice, for
though now confined as to their typical forms to the island of
Madagascar, their fossils seem as exclusively confined to the temperate
regions of the New and the Old World. Flower and Lydekker enumerate
about fifteen fossil species, and add that:
"... it is very noteworthy that all these types seem to have disappeared
from both regions with the close of the upper portion of the Eocene
period."[45]
But this jump from the "Eocene period" to the present is as nothing
compared with the secular acrobatics of some of the fishes and
especially of the invertebrates. The living Cestraciont sharks, of which
there are four species found in the seas between Japan and Australia,
seem to disappear with the Cretaceous, skipping the whole Tertiary
Epoch, as do also a tribe of modern barnacles which, as Darwin says,
"coat the rocks all over the world in infinite numbers." The Dipnoans or
Lung-fishes (having lungs as well as gills, such as the _Ceratodus_ and
_Lepidosiren_), which are represented by several living species in
Australia and South Africa, are the remains of a tribe found in whole
shoals in the Carboniferous, Triassic and Jurassic rocks, but not, so
far as I know, in any of the intervening rocks. The living Ceratodus was
only discovered in 1870, and was regarded as a marvel of "persistence."
On a pinch, as when his native streams dry up, this curious fellow can
get along all right without water, breathing air by his lungs like a
land animal. If in the meantime he was off on a trip to the moon, he
must have "persisted" a few million years without either.
But his cousin, the _Polypterus_ of the Upper Nile, has a still more
amazing record, for he has actually skipped all the formations from the
Devonian down to the modern; while the Limuloids or sea scorpions have
jumped from the Carboniferous down.
The Mollusks and Brachiopods would afford us examples too numerous to
mention. How is it possible that these numerous families disappear
suddenly and completely with the Mesozoic or even the "early"
Palaeozoic, and are not found in any "later" deposits, though alive now
in our modern world? Parts of Europe and America have, we are told, been
down under the sea and up again a dozen times since then; why then
should we not expect to find abundant remains of these "persistent"
types in the Mesozoic and Tertiaries? Surely these feats of
time-acrobatics show the folly of arranging contemporaneous, taxonomic
groups in single file and giving to each a time value.
The Chalk points a similar lesson. It was not till the time of the
"Challenger" Expedition that the modern deposits of Globigerina ooze,
made up of species identical with those of the Chalk, were known to be
now forming over vast areas of the ocean floor. In the words of Huxley,
these modern species "bridge over the interval between the present and
the Mesozoic periods."[46]
As for the silicious sponges found in the Chalk, which were such puzzles
for the scientists during the first half of the nineteenth century,
because their living forms were unknown, the deep-sea investigations
have solved the problem, for in 1877 Sollas demonstrated "the identity
of their structure with that of living Hexactinellids, Lithistids, and
Monactinellids."[47]
And yet with all the alleged vicissitudes of the continents during the
millions of years since the Cretaceous age, there is so far as I am
aware not a trace of either the chalk or the sponges in any of the
"subsequent" rocks. Pieces of Cretaceous rock are of course found thus
sporadically as boulders, but there is no natural deposit of this kind.
But in the light of these modern discoveries why is not the Chalk of
"the white dear cliffs of Dover," full of modern living species as we
now know it to be, just as "recent" a deposit as the "late" Tertiaries
or the Pleistocene?
Another good illustration of the absurdity of the present arrangement of
the rocks is found in the Echinoderms--crinoids, star-fishes,
sea-urchins, etc. Of the latter Prof. A. Agassiz found in the deep
waters of the West Indies, four genera of Echinids or sea-urchins of the
"later Tertiary," =but 24 genera of the "early" Tertiary, 10 of the
Cretaceous, and 5 of the Jurassic=.[48]
But far from being uncommon we know that similar discoveries have been
in almost constant progress during the last half century. And were it
not that "zoological students are," as Zittel says, "too actively
engaged and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt
to spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions" found in
the "dead weight of stratigraphical-palaeontological literature," there
is no telling what hosts of similar facts might not be pointed to
regarding the forms found in all the "older" rocks.
Of the star-fishes and serpent-stars (_Asteridea_ and _Ophiuridea_),
Zittel says: "It would seem that the Palaeozoic 'sea-stars' differed
very little from those in the seas of the present age." (p. 395.) The
crinoids, we are told, "are among the earliest in geological history,"
making up vast limestones of the Palaeozoic rocks; and forms scarcely
separable from the modern are found in the Jurassic, but so far as the
text-books tell us are =absolutely unknown in any later deposits=. But
there are several modern genera, such as Pentacrinus, Rhizocrinus,
Bathycrinus, etc., found in the deep waters of nearly all the oceans.
The genus Rhizocrinus was discovered off the coast of Norway about the
sixties of the last century. But what were these creatures doing since
"Jurassic times," while the "pulsating crust" was putting parts of the
continents under the sea for ages at a stretch? Why did they form no
deposits during the Cretaceous, Eocene, Miocene or Pliocene ages? Surely
the absurdity of the present arrangement is evident to a child. During
all these intervening ages the climate of the globe continued of the
same remarkable mildness, fossils of all these formations being found
about as far north as explorers have ever gone. Why did the crinoids and
polyp-corals suspend business from "Jurassic times" to the "recent,"
merely to accommodate a modern theory? Dana says that "The coral reefs
of the Oolyte in England consist of corals of the same group with the
reef-making species of the existing tropics,"[49] and he argues from
this fact that the mean temperature of the waters must have been about
69 deg. F. But a luxuriant vegetation still continued in the Arctic
regions during the Cretaceous and the Tertiaries. How absurd to say that
these corals built no reefs about the European coasts during all these
ages. Or, to put the matter in another way, considering how many of
their characteristic types are alive in our modern seas, why should we
say that the crinoidal or coral limestones of the Mesozoic or Palaeozoic
rocks are not as recent as the nummulitic limestones of the Eocene or
any late Tertiary deposits?
It is no answer at all to tell us that, though the general types are the
same, the =species= of the Palaeozoic and the Mesozoic are entirely
extinct. I have not had the courage "to attempt to spell through" all
the "dead weight" of the modern literature, but I think that the world
would like more satisfactory proof of this oft-repeated assertion than
the customs and traditions of a hundred years, and the exigencies of a
fanciful theory. This worn-out argument of Cuvier's about extinct
species has kept up a running fight with common sense for many decades,
and though driven backward from one point to another over the long thin
line of this taxonomic series of the fossil world, it still contests
every inch of ground.
But let us try the tree-ferns and cycads of the coal beds of the "older"
rocks. In northern regions they are not found "later" than the Triassic
and Jurassic, and doubtless the same holds good of the rocks in the
Tropics, where the modern species now live in fair abundance. But how
did they come to shift to the Tropics so many millions of years before
the palms, etc., of the Tertiaries thought it time to do the same? The
climate had not changed a bit: how did they come to scent the coming
"Glacial Age" so much earlier than their more highly organized fellows?
The "Challenger" expedition found some Cyathophylloid corals now
building reefs at the bottom of our modern ocean. The geologists had
already assigned =the last= of them to the Carboniferous and Permian
rocks with the idea that they were extinct. But where have these fellows
kept themselves during all the intervening ages while the continents
were deep under the ocean time and time again? or why are not the rocks
containing their fossils as "recent" as any deposits on the globe?
And so I might go on. There is hardly a tribe found in the "older" rocks
which does not have its living representatives of to-day, and with, I
believe, a fair proportion of the species identical; though in hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of cases these species, genera, or even whole tribes,
have somehow skipped all the intervening formations.
But let us drop this method of studying our subject, and look at it from
a slightly different standpoint.
Thus Dana[50] says that:
"The absence of Lamellibranchs in the Middle Cambrian, although present
in both Lower and Upper, means =the absence of fossils from the rocks,
not of species from the faunas=."
He puts this in italics by way of emphasis, for it is certainly a
reasonable idea, and as A. R. Wallace says, "no one =now= doubts that
where any type appears in two remote periods it must have been in
existence during the whole intervening period, although we may have no
record of it."[51] But what would be the result if we only extend this
idea to its logical conclusion? It seems to be an effort to avoid one of
the absurdities of the onion-coat theory, without, however, discarding
that theory altogether.
In speaking of some corals and crinoids of the Devonian which "were
absent" from some of the divisions of this formation because the
conditions of the seas about New York "were unfavorable," Dana says
that "they were back when the seas were again of sufficient purity."[52]
In his review of these formations he enlarges on this subject:
"At the close of the early Devonian the evidences of clear seas--the
corals and crinoids, with most of the attendant life--disappear,
migrating no one knows whither.... With the variations in the fineness,
or other characteristics of the beds as H. S. Williams has illustrated,
the species vary.... =The faunas of each stratum are not strictly faunas
of epochs or periods of time, but local topographical faunas.= After the
Corniferous period, corals, crinoids, and trilobites still flourished
=somewhere=, as before, but they are absent from the Central Interior
until the Carboniferous age[53] opens."
Here we are certainly getting a refreshing breath of common-sense
geology; but what would become of current theories if we enlarge a
little on this idea?
What if the gigantic dinosaurs of the Cretaceous or the equally
marvellous mammals of the "early" Tertiaries of the Western States,
described by Marsh and Cope, and the Pleistocene mammals of other parts
of America and of Europe and Northern Siberia, "are not strictly faunas
of epochs or periods of time, but local topographical faunas?" What if
the world-wide limestones of the Cambrian and Silurian, and the no less
enormous or widespread nummulitic limestones of the Eocene, extending
from the Alps to Eastern Asia, and constituting mountains ten, fifteen,
or twenty thousand feet high--what if these are possibly
=contemporaneous with one another=? Supposing the coal-measures of Nova
Scotia and Pennsylvania, and the Cretaceous and Tertiary lignites of
Vancouver Island, Alberta, and the Western States are not strictly
floras of epochs or periods of time, but local topographical floras?[54]
But it must be confessed that the logical extension of this broad view
of the fossils, and the projection of our modern zoological provinces
and zones back into the fossil world would mean the death-blow to the
life succession theory, and might have a very disturbing effect upon
certain theories about human origins and other genetic relationships
which have grown quite popular since the middle of the last century.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] "History," pp. 327, 341.
[41] See LeConte, "Evol. and Religious Thought," p. 253.
[42] "Modern Ideas of Evol.," p. 35.
[43] See "Manual," pp. 487-8.
[44] "Manual," p. 776.
[45] "Mammals, etc." p. 696.
[46] "Discourses Biol. and Geol.," p. 347.
[47] Zittel, "Hist. of Geo.," p. 388.
[46] Dana, "Manual," p. 59.
[49] "Manual," p. 793.
[50] "Manual," p. 488.
[51] "Distribution of Life," p. 33.
[52] "Manual," p. 611.
[53] "Manual," pp. 628-9.
[54] Note--This is only carrying the argument a little further than
Huxley does when he says that "A Devonian fauna and flora in the
British Islands may have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in
North America, and with a Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa.
Geographical provinces and zones may have been as distinctly marked
in the Palaeozoic epoch as at present." "Discourses," p. 286.
PART II.
CHAPTER IX
GRAVEYARDS
"The crust of our globe," writes a distinguished scientist, "is a great
cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have
written their own epitaphs." The reading of these epitaphs is the
business of geology; and too often, as we shall see, the record is that
of a violent and sudden death.
With the doctrine of Uniformity as a theoretical proposition, I shall
have little to say. At best it is a pure assumption that the present
quiet and regular action of the elements has always prevailed in the
past, or that this supposition is sufficient to explain the facts of the
rocks. In its more extreme form it becomes an iron dogma, which shuts
out all evidence not agreeable to its teachings. But in its essential
nature, whether in its least or its most extreme form, it is not
approaching the subject from the right standpoint. It seeks to show how
the past geological changes may have occurred; it never attempts to
prove how they =must= have occurred. And I may say in passing, that it
is largely for the purpose of avoiding the cumulative character of the
evidence gathered from every stone quarry and from every section of
strata in every corner of the globe, that the uniformitarians have
wished to have these burials take place on the installment plan; for
otherwise the violent and catastrophic character of the events recorded
in the rocks would become too plainly manifest. But if a coroner, called
upon to hold an inquest, were to content himself, after the manner of
Lyell and Hutton, with glittering generalities about how people are all
the time dying of old age, fever, or other causes, coupled with
assurances of the quiet, regular habits and good reputation of all his
fellow citizens, I do not think that he would be praised for his
adherence to inductive methods if we could get at clear and decisive
evidence that the poor fellow under examination had been shot. Just so
with common-sense methods in geology. =A true induction is capable of
finding out for certain= whether or not the present quiet regular action
of the elements has always prevailed in the past; and it is most
unscientific to assume, as the followers of Hutton and Lyell have done,
that the comparatively insignificant changes within historic time have
always prevailed in the past, when there is plenty of clear and decisive
evidence to the contrary.
The general fact which I wish to develop in this chapter may be stated
somewhat as follows:
=Rocks belonging to all the various systems or formations give us
fossils in such a state of preservation, and heaped together in such
astonishing numbers, that we cannot resist the conviction that the
majority of these deposits were formed in some sudden and not modern
manner, catastrophic in nature.=
But before giving any examples of these abnormal deposits we must first
study the modern normal deposits; before we can rightly understand the
sharp contrast between the ancient and the modern action of the
elements, we must become familiar with the way in which fossils are now
being buried by our rivers and oceans.
One of the many geological myths dissipated by the work of the
"Challenger" Expedition, which, as Zittel says, "marks the grandest
scientific event of the nineteenth century," is that about the ocean
bottom and the work now being carried on there. The older text-books
taught that, not only was the bottom of the ocean thickly strewn with
the remains of the animals which died there and in the waters above, but
also that the oceanic currents were constantly wearing away in some
places and building up in others over all the ocean floor, and hence
producing true stratified deposits. Accordingly it was said that it was
only necessary for these beds to be lifted above the surface to produce
the ordinary rocks that we find everywhere about us. But we now know
that the ocean currents have, as Dana says, "no sensible, mechanical
effects, either in the way of transportation or abrasion."[55] We know
also that all kinds of sediment drop so much quicker in salt water than
in fresh, that none of it gets beyond the narrow "continental shelf" and
the classic 100 fathom line, which in most cases is not very far from
shore. In the north Atlantic there are sediments found in deeper water
produced by ice-floes or icebergs dropping their loads there; but we
cannot suppose such work to have gone on when the Arctic regions were
clothed with a temperate-climate vegetation, much less that such things
occurred over all the earth. On the floor of the open ocean, and away
from the tracks of our modern icebergs, we have two or three kinds of
mud or ooze formed from minute particles of organic matter; but besides
these =absolutely nothing= save a possible sprinkling of volcanic
products, which of course are limited in their distribution. Where then
can we find a stratified or bedded structure now being formed over the
ocean bottom? Dana says there is nothing of the kind now being produced
there, save as the result of possible variations during the passing ages
in the organic deposits thrown down, where a bed of ooze may be supposed
to be thrown down directly upon another kind of ooze. There is =no
gravel=, =no sand=, =no clay=, but whatever variation there might be in
the organic deposits, the new kind would be laid down immediately upon
the preceding similar deposits, unless a thin sprinkling of volcanic
dust happened to intervene.
Thus to explain practically all the deposits found in the rocks, we are
absolutely limited to the shore deposits and the mouths of large rivers.
Here we certainly have alternations of sand, clay and gravel, producing
a true bedded structure. But I ask: What kind of organic remains will we
get from these modern deposits? Certainly nothing like the crowded
graveyards which we find everywhere in the ancient ones.
Darwin, in his famous chapter on "The Imperfection of the Geological
Record," has well shown how scanty and imperfect are the modern
fossiliferous deposits. The progress of research has only confirmed and
accentuated the argument there presented on this point. Thus
Nordenskiold, the veteran Arctic explorer, remarks with amazement on the
scarcity of recent organic remains in the Arctic regions, where such a
profusion of animal life exists; while in spite of the great numbers of
cats, dogs and other domestic animals which are constantly being thrown
into rivers like the Hudson or the Thames, dredgings about their mouths
have revealed the surprising fact that scarcely a trace of any of them
is there to be found.[56]
Even the fishes themselves stand a very poor chance of being buried
intact. As Dana[57] puts it:
"Vertebrate animals, as fishes, reptiles, etc., which fall to pieces
when the animal portion is removed, =require speedy burial after death=,
to escape destruction from this source (decomposition and chemical
solution from air, rain-water, etc.), as well as from animals that would
prey upon them."
If a vertebrate fish should die a natural death, which of itself must be
a rare occurrence, the carcass would soon be devoured whole or bit by
bit by other creatures near by. Possibly the lower jaw, or the teeth,
spines, etc., in the case of sharks, or a bone or two of the skeleton,
might be buried unbroken, but a whole vertebrate fish entombed in a
modern deposit is surely a unique occurrence.
But every geologist knows that the remains of fishes are, in countless
millions of cases, found in a marvelous state of preservation. They have
been entombed in =whole shoals=, with the beds containing them miles in
extent, and scattered over all the globe. Indeed, so accustomed have we
grown to this state of affairs in the rocks we hammer up, that if we
fail to find such well-preserved remains of vertebrate fishes, land
animals, or plants, we feel disappointed, almost hurt; we think that
nature has somehow slighted this particular set of beds. But where in
our modern quiet earth will we go to find deposits now forming like the
copper slate of the Mansfield district, the Jurassic shales of
Solenhofen, the calcareous marls of Oeningen on Lake Constance, the
black slates of Glarus, or the shales of Monte Bolca?--to mention some
cases from the Continent of Europe more than usually famous in the
literature for exquisitely preserved vertebrate fishes, to say nothing
of other fossils. According to Dana, all these must have met with a
"speedy burial after death"--perhaps before, who knows?
Buckland[58] in speaking of the fossil fish of Monte Bolca, which may be
taken as typical of all the others, is quite positive that these fish
must have "perished suddenly," by some tremendous catastrophe.
"The skeletons of these fish," he says, "lie parallel to the laminae of
the strata of the calcareous slate; they are always entire, and so
closely packed on one another that many individuals are often contained
in a single block.... =All these fish must have died suddenly= on this
fatal spot, and have been speedily buried in the calcareous sediment
then in course of deposition. From the fact that certain individuals
have even preserved traces of color upon their skin, we are certain that
they were entombed before decomposition of their soft parts had taken
place."
In many places in America as well as Europe, where these remains of fish
are found, the shaley rock is so full of fish oil that it will burn
almost like coal, while some have even thought that the peculiar
deposits like Albertite "coal" and some cannel coals were formed from
the distillation of the fish oil from the supersaturated rocks.
De La Beche[59] was also of the opinion that most of the fossils were
buried suddenly and in an abnormal manner. "A very large proportion of
them," he says, "must have been =entombed uninjured, and many alive=,
or, if not alive, at least before decomposition ensued." In this he is
speaking not of the fishes alone but of the fossiliferous deposits in
general.
There is a series of strata found in all parts of the world which used
to be called the "Old Red Sandstone," now known as the Devonian. In
this, almost wherever we find it, the remains of whole shoals of fishes
occur in such profusion and preservation that the "period" is often
known as the "Age of Fishes." Dr. David Page, after enumerating nearly a
dozen genera, says:
"These fishes seem to have thronged the waters of the period, and their
remains are often found in masses, =as if they had been suddenly
entombed in living shoals= by the sediment which now contains them."
I beg leave to quote somewhat at length the picturesque language of Hugh
Miller[60] regarding these rocks as found in Scotland.
"The river bull-head, when attacked by an enemy, or immediately as it
feels the hook in its jaws, erects its two spines at nearly right angles
with the plates of the head, as if to render itself as difficult of
being swallowed as possible. The attitude is one of danger and alarm;
and it is a curious fact, to which I shall afterward have occasion to
advert, that =in this attitude nine-tenths of the= _Pterichthes_ =of the
Lower Old Red Sandstone are to be found=.... It presents us, too, with a
wonderful record of violent death falling at once, not on a few
individuals, but on whole tribes."
"At this period of our history, some terrible catastrophe involved in
sudden destruction the fish of an area at least a hundred miles from
boundary to boundary, perhaps much more. The same platform in Orkney as
at Cromarty is strewed thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally
the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted,
curved, the tail in many instances is bent round to the head; the spines
stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in fish that die in
convulsions.... The record is one of destruction at once widely spread
and total, so far as it extended.... By what quiet but potent agency of
destruction were the innumerable existences of =an area perhaps ten
thousand square miles in extent annihilated at once=, and yet the medium
in which they had lived left undisturbed in its operations?
"Conjecture lacks footing in grappling with the enigma, and expatiates
in uncertainty over all the known phenomena of death."
I shall not taunt the uniformitarians by asking them to direct us to
some modern analogies. But I would have the reader remember that these
Devonian and other rocks are absolutely world-wide in extent.
Surely Howorth is talking good science when he says that his masters
Sedgwick and Murchison taught him "that no plainer witness is to be
found of any physical fact than that Nature has at times worked with
enormous energy and rapidity," and "that the rocky strata teem with
evidence of violent and sudden dislocations on a great scale."
I have spoken only of the class Fishes. But what other class of the
animal kingdom will not point us a similar lesson? The Reptiles and
Amphibians, to say nothing of the larger Mammals, are also found in
countless myriads, packed together as if in natural graveyards.
Everybody knows of the enormous numbers and splendid preservation of the
great reptiles of the Western and Southern States, untombed by Leidy,
Cope and Marsh. One patch of Cretaceous strata in England, the Wealden,
has afforded over thirty different species of dinosaurs, crocodiles, and
pleisosaurs. Mr. Chas. H. Sternberg, one of Zittel's assistants,
recently reported great quantities of Amphibians from the Permian of
Texas. They are of all sizes, some frogs being six feet long, others
ten. Besides these he found three "bone-beds" full of minute forms an
inch or less in length. Of the small ones, which I judge must represent
whole millions of young ones =suddenly= entombed, he says:
"I got over twenty perfect skulls, many with vertebrae attached, and
thousands of small bones from all parts of the skeleton. In one case, a
complete skull, one-fourth of an inch in length, had connected with it
nearly the entire vertebral column, with ribs in position, coiled upon
itself, bedded with many bones of other species in a red silicious
matrix. So perfectly were they weathered out that they lay in bas-relief
=as white and perfect as if they had died a month ago=; a single row of
teeth, =like the points of cambric needles=, occupied both sets of
jaws."[61]
How many more such cases there may have been in these "three bone-beds
full" of similar remains, it would be interesting to know. But though
somewhat aside from the present subject, I cannot refrain in passing
from referring to the wonderful preservation of these remains. It is
preposterous to say that these bones have lain thus exposed to the
weather for the millions of years postulated by the popular theory.
There is not a particle of scientific evidence to prove that they are
not just as recent as any specimen from the Tertiaries or the
Pleistocene. Buffon and Cuvier proved the mammals to be of "recent" age,
because they occurred in the superficial deposits. They never heard of
the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous of Colorado and Wyoming, nor
these Permian of Texas. Think of this frog's teeth "like the points of
cambric needles," and he and his fellows "as perfect as if they had died
a month ago." Of one of the big six-foot specimens this author says:
"Its head was so beautifully preserved, and cleaned under long erosion,
it was difficult to believe it was not a recent specimen." While of the
little six-inch fellow referred to above he says: "The bones of the
skull are perfectly preserved, quite smooth, and show the sutures
distinctly; there is no distortion, some red matrix attached below seems
absolutely necessary to convince the mind that it is not =a thing of
yesterday=." James Geikie[62] mentions the case of the Elgin sandstones
"formerly classed as 'Old Red,'" but which are now called Triassic,
"from the fact that they have yielded reptilian remains of a higher
grade than one would expect to meet with in old Red Sandstone." Since
these strata =slide up and down so easily=, we have here far more urgent
scientific reasons for calling these amphibian remains of Texas among
the most "recent" geological deposits on the globe.
But I must return to my subject. The Invertebrates are also eloquent to
the fact of abnormal conditions having prevailed when their remains were
entombed. We could go through the whole list, but it is the same old
story of abnormal deposits, essentially different from anything that is
being made to-day.
Where, for instance, in the modern seas, will we find the remains of
polyp-corals now being intercalated between beds of clays or sands over
vast areas, as we find them in the Lias and Oolyte of England and
elsewhere? Corals require a definite depth of water, neither too deep
nor too shallow, but it must be clear and pure; and nothing but some
awful catastrophe could place a bed of coral remains a few feet or a
=few inches= in thickness over the vast areas that we find them.
Crinoids require the same clear, pure water, but much deeper, some of
the modern kinds living =over a mile down=, but every student of the
science knows that the Subcarboniferous limestone of both Europe and
America (called Mountain Limestone in England), so noted for its
crinoids and its corals, is constantly found intercalated between shale
or sandstone, or between the coal beds themselves as at Springfield,
Ill., or in the Lower Coal Measures of Westmorland County, Pa. There are
of course, here and there, great masses of these rocks which represent
an original formation by growth _in situ_; but no sane man can say this
for these great sheets perhaps =only a few inches= in thickness, for in
many cases they show a stratified or bedded structure just as much as a
sandstone or a shale. In some tables given by Dana on pp. 651-2 of his
"Manual," compiled from four different localities, I count no less than
=23 beds= of limestone thus intercalated, though we are not told how
many of them contain corals or crinoids. Such details are generally
omitted as of little consequence.
Next, let us try the Lamellibranchs, such as the clam, oyster, and other
true bivalves. These creatures have an arrangement in the hinge region
by which the valves of the shell tend to open, but during life are held
together by the adductor muscles. When dead, however, these muscles
relax and decay, and then the valves spread wide open. Of course there
are some, such as certain kinds of clams, which burrow in the mud or
sand, and the shells of these, if they happened to die a natural death
in their holes, could not spread very far apart. However =some mud= must
even then wash into their burrows and into their empty shells. But many
kinds of bivalves do not thus burrow in the ground; and when the fossils
of such kinds are found in quantity with the valves =applied= and often
=hollow=, as is so frequently the case in many of the "older" rocks, I
cannot see how we are to understand any ordinary conditions of deposit.
And yet we are gravely assured by a high authority, that "A sudden
burial is not necessary to entombment in this condition."
Or, let us take the Brachiopods. These have a bivalve shell, the parts
of which, however, are not pulled apart after death, and only need to
open a little way even in life to admit the sea water which brings them
their food. Yet, though the valves do not gape after death, there is
when dead and empty a =hole= at the hinge or beak, which would readily
admit mud if such were present in the water, or if the shells after
death were subject to the ordinary movements of tide, wave and current.
Yet Dawson[63] says of the Brachiopods, Spirifer and Athyris:
"I may mention here that in all the Carboniferous limestones of Nova
Scotia the shells of this family are usually found with the valves
closed and =the interior often hollow=."
Of course he tries to explain how this state of things might occur "in
deep and clear water"--for some of the modern species are found in the
clear depths 18,000 feet down--and he thinks that their entombment in
this condition "does not prove that the death of the animals was
sudden." But we now know that there is no means of producing a
stratified formation in this "deep and clear water," and hence that some
revolution of nature is implied by the conditions in which we find them.
Some people seem to have converted David Hume's famous sentence into a
scientific formula, thus: "Anything contrary to Uniformity is
impossible: hence no amount of evidence can prove anything contrary to
Uniformity."
For the trouble in this case is that, not only do such conditions
prevail "in all the Carboniferous limestones of Nova Scotia," which must
be several thousands of square miles in extent, but in the Devonian
shales and Silurian limestones of Ontario and the Middle States at
least--perhaps over the rest of the world--the Brachiopods are found =in
this same tell-tale condition=, and it would establish a very dangerous
precedent to admit abnormal conditions in even a single case.
I have only touched upon the voluminous evidence that might be adduced
in the case of the lower forms of life. Had I the space, I might show
how the marvelously preserved plants of the coal beds tell the same
story. But we must pass on to consider the remains of the larger land
animals. I have already given a quotation from Dana about the mammoth
and rhinoceros in Northern Siberia, where he says that their encasing in
ice and the perfect preservation of their flesh "shows that the cold
finally became =suddenly= extreme, as of a single winter's night, and
knew no relenting afterward." Not very many serious attempts have been
made to account for this remarkable state of things, which is a protest
against uniformity that can be appreciated by a child, and I never heard
of any theory which attempted to account for the facts without some kind
of awful catastrophe.
Many, however, seem to have little idea of the extent of these remains
in the Arctic regions. They are not all thus perfectly preserved, for
thousands of skeletons are found in localities where the ground thaws
out somewhat in the short summer, and here of course, the skin and
tissues could not remain intact. Remains of these beasts occur in only a
little less abundance over all Western Europe, and the mammoth also in
North America, well preserved specimens having been obtained from the
Klondike region of Alaska; and there is nothing to forbid the idea that
many, if not most of these latter specimens were also at one time
enshrined as "mummies" in the ice, which has since melted over the more
temperate regions. But we must confine ourselves to the remains in
Siberia. Flower and Lydekker tell us that since the tenth century at
least, these remains have been quarried for the sake of the ivory tusks,
and a regular trade in this fossil ivory, in a state fit for commercial
purposes, has been carried on "both eastward to China, and westward to
Europe," and that "fossil ivory has its price current as well as wheat."
"They are found at all suitable places along the whole line of the shore
between the mouth of the Obi and Behring Straits, and the further north
the more numerous do they become, the islands of New Siberia being now
one of the favorite collecting localities. The soil of Bear Island and
of Liachoff Islands is said to consist only of sand and ice with such
quantities of mammoth bones as almost to compose its chief substance.
The remains are not only found around the mouths of the great rivers, as
would be the case if the carcasses had been washed down from more
southern localities in the interior of the continent, but are imbedded
in the frozen soil in such circumstances as to indicate that the animals
had lived not far from the localities in which they are now found, and
they are exposed either by the melting of the ice in unusually warm
summers, or by the washing away of the sea cliffs or river banks by
storms or floods. In this way the bodies of more or less nearly perfect
animals, even standing in the erect position, with the soft parts and
hairy covering entire, have been brought to light."[64]
But these remains of the mammoth, though the best known, are not the
only ones attesting extraordinary conditions: though of course in warmer
latitudes we do not find perfect "mummies" with the hide and flesh
preserved untainted. Let us go to a warmer climate, to Sicily, and read
a description of the remains of the hippopotamus found there. I quote
from Sir Joseph Prestwich:
"The chief localities, which centre on the hills around Palermo, arrest
attention from the extraordinary quantity of bones of _Hippopotami_ (in
complete hecatombs) which have there been found. Twenty tons of these
bones were shipped from around the one cave of San Ciro, near Palermo,
within the first six months of exploiting them, and they were so fresh
that they were sent to Marseilles to furnish animal charcoal for use in
the sugar factories. How could this bone breccia have been
accumulated?... The only suggestion that has been made is that the bones
are those of successive generations of _Hippopotami_ which went there to
die. But this is not the habit of the animal, and besides, the bones are
those of animals =of all ages down to the foetus=, nor do they show
traces of weathering or exposure....
"My supposition is, therefore, that when the island was submerged, the
animate in the plain of Palermo naturally retreated, as the waters
advanced, deeper into the amphitheatre of hills until they found
themselves embayed, as in a seine, with promontories running out to sea
on either side and a mural precipice in front. As the area became more
and more circumscribed the animals must have thronged together in vast
multitudes, crushing into the more accessible caves, and swarming over
the ground at their entrance, until overtaken by the waters and
destroyed."[65]
Our author then adds this summary of his argument:
"The extremely fresh condition of the bones, proved by the retention of
so large a proportion of animal matter, and the fact that animals of all
ages were involved in the catastrophe, shows that the event was
geologically, comparatively recent, as other facts show it to have been
sudden."
That it must have been a good deal more "sudden" than even this author
will admit, is evident from the nature of the hippopotamus. I never
thought that it was particularly afraid of the water, or likely to be
drowned by any such moderate catastrophe as Prestwich invokes in this
singular volume. The reader must, however, note that this affair, like
the entombment of the mammoth, certainly =took place since man was upon
the globe=, even according to the uniformitarians. Would it not be
economy of energy to correlate the two together? But if man dates from
"Miocene times," as some contend, he must have witnessed half a dozen
awful affairs like these, for there is scarcely a country on the globe
that has not been under the ocean since then.
Let us proceed.
But whither shall we turn to avoid finding similar phenomena? The vast
deposits of mammals in the Rocky Mountains may occur to the reader. As
Dana says, they "have been found to be literally Tertiary burial
grounds." I need not go into the details of these deposits, nor of those
in other places containing the great mammals which must have been
contemporary with "Tertiary man," for I would only weary the reader with
a monotony of abnormal conditions of deposit--unlike anything now being
produced this wide world over. We shall be stating the case very mildly
indeed, if we conclude that the vast majority of the fossils, by their
profuse abundance and their astonishing preservation, tell a very plain
story of "speedy burial after death," and =are of an essentially
different character= from modern deposits.
Prof. Nicholson, in speaking of the remains of the Zeuglodon, says:
"Remains of these gigantic whales are very common in the 'Jackson beds'
of the Southern United States. So common are they that, according to
Dana, 'the large vertebrae, some of them a foot and a half long and a
foot in diameter, were formerly so abundant over the country in Alabama
that they were used for making walls, or were burned to rid the fields
of them.'"[66]
Shortly before his death in 1895, Dana prepared a revised edition of his
"Manual," and in it he gives us quite a rational explanation of this
case, as follows:
"Vertebrae were so abundant, on the first discovery, in some places that
many of these Eocene whales must have been stranded together in a common
catastrophe, on the northern borders of the Mexican Gulf--possibly by a
series of earthquake waves of great violence; or by an elevation along
the sea limit that made a confined basin of the border region, which the
hot sun rendered destructive alike to Zeuglodons and their game; or by
an unusual retreat of the tide, which left them dry and floundering
under a tropical sun." (p. 908.)
That is, this veteran geologist in his old age would not attempt to
account for such abnormal conditions without a catastrophe of some kind.
But if we use similar explanations for similar conditions, where shall
we stop through the whole range of the rocks from the Cambrian to the
Pleistocene?
Dana became very fond of this idea of earthquake waves, and invoked them
to account for "the universality and abruptness" with which the species
disappear at the close of "Palaeozoic time," using as the generating
cause the uplifting of the Appalachian Mountains, with "flexures miles
in height and space, and slips along newly opened fractures that kept up
their interrupted progress through thousands of feet of displacement,"
from which he says "incalculable violence and great surgings of the
ocean should have occurred and been often repeated.... Under such
circumstances the devastation of the sea border and the low-lying lands
of the period, the destruction of their animals and plants, would have
been a sure result. The survivors within a long distance of the coast
line would have been few."[67]
But as this sudden break in the life-chain "was so general and extensive
that no Carboniferous species is known to occur among the fossils of
succeeding beds, not only in America and Europe, but also over the rest
of the world" (p. 735), he is obliged to make his catastrophe by
earthquake waves positively =world wide=. Hence he adds: "The same waves
would have swept over European land and seas, and there found coadjutors
for new strife in earthquake waves of European origin."
At the close of the Mesozoic he uses similar language, though in this
case he has the whole range of the mountains on the west of both North
and South America, the Rockies and the Andes, in length a "third of the
circumference of the globe," "undergoing simultaneous orogenic
movements, with like grand results." (p. 875.) "The deluging waves sent
careering over the land" would, he thinks, "have been destructive over
all the coasts of a hemisphere," and "may have made their marches inland
for hundreds of miles" (p. 878), sweeping all before them.
I should think so; but then what becomes of this doctrine of uniformity?
Personally, I have not the slightest objection to these "deluging waves
sent careering over the land," for I feel sure that just such things
have occurred, and on just such a scale as our author pictures, for, as
he says, the destruction of species "was great, =world-wide=, and one of
the most marvelous events in geological history." (p. 877.)
But it seems to me that here we have an enormous amount of energy going
to waste. Others have demanded a continent to explain the appearance of
a beetle in a certain locality; but here we have a great world-wide
catastrophe to explain the sudden disappearance of merely a few species.
Why not utilize this surplus energy in doing other necessary work, that
has certainly been accomplished somehow, but has hitherto gone a-begging
for a competent cause? The only thing I object to in Dana's view of the
case is his way of having these "exterminations" take place on the
installment plan. For in that way we have to work up a great world
catastrophe to do only a very limited amount of work, and then have to
repeat the thing another time for a similarly limited work, =when one
such cosmic convulsion is competent to do the whole thing=. I plead for
the "law of parsimony," and the economizing of energy.
The vast shoals of carcasses which seem to be piled up in almost every
corner of the world are _prima facie_ evidence that our old globe has
witnessed some sort of cosmic convulsion. The exact cause, nature, and
extent of this event we may never have sufficient facts to determine,
though two or three additional facts having a bearing on the subject
will be considered in the following chapters.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] "Manual," p. 229.
[56] _Pop. Sci. Mo._, Vol. xxi, pp. 143, 693.
[57] "Manual," p. 141.
[58] "Geol. and Min.," Vol. I., pp. 124-5. Ed. 1858.
[59] "Theoretical Geol.," p. 265. London, 1834.
[60] "Old Red Sandstone," pp. 48, 221-2.
[61] _Pop. Sci. News_, May, 1902, pp. 106-7.
[62] "Histor. Geol.," p. 53.
[63] "Acadian Geol.," p. 260.
[64] "Mammals," p. 430.
[65] "On Certain Phenomena, etc.," pp. 50-52.
[66] "Ancient Life-History," p. 300.
[67] "Manual," p. 736.
CHAPTER X
CHANGE OF CLIMATE
Another great general fact about the fossil world may be stated about as
follows:
=All of the fossils= (save a very few of the so-called "Glacial Age,"
and they admit of other easy explanation) =give us proofs of an almost
eternal spring having prevailed in the Arctic regions, and semi-tropical
conditions in north temperate latitudes; in short give us proofs of a
singular uniformity of climate over the globe which we can hardly
conceive possible, let alone account for.=
The proofs of this are almost unnecessary, as this subject of climate
has been pretty well discussed of late years. And it was the
overwhelming evidence on this point which forced Lyell and so many
others to decide against the theory of Croll, which called for a regular
rotation of climates, for they said that the fossil evidence was wholly
against such a view. Howorth has given an admirable argument on this
point in Chapter XI of his second work on the Glacial Theory[68] and to
it I would refer the reader for details which I have not the space to
reproduce here.
This author first remarks:
"The best thermometer we can use to test the character of a climate is
the flora and fauna which lived while it prevailed. This is not only the
best, but is virtually the only thermometer available when we inquire
into the climate of past geological ages. Other evidence is always
sophisticated by the fact that we may be attributing to climate what is
due to other causes; boulders can be rolled by the sea as well as by
sub-glacial streams, and conglomerates can be formed by other agencies
than ice. But the biological evidence is unmistakable; cold-blooded
reptiles cannot live in icy water; semi-tropical plants, or plants whose
habitat is in the temperate zone, cannot ripen their seeds and sow
themselves under arctic conditions.... We may examine the whole series
of geological horizons, from the earliest Palaeozoic beds down to the
so-called Glacial beds, and find, so far as I know, no adequate evidence
of discontinuous and alternating climates, no evidence whatever of the
existence of periods of intense cold intervening between warm periods,
but just the contrary. Not only so, but we shall find that the
differentiation of the earth's climate into tropical and arctic zones is
comparatively modern, and that in past ages not only were the climates
more uniform, but more evenly distributed over the whole world."
Without attempting to follow through the whole series of formations we
may note a few characteristic statements of the text-books. Thus Dana
says of the Cambrian:
"There was no frigid zone, and there may have been no excessively torrid
zone."
While of the Silurian coral limestones of the Arctic regions he says:
"The formation of thick strata of limestone shows that life like that of
the lower latitudes not only existed there, but flourished in
profusion."[69]
Howorth thus quotes Colonel Fielden, the Arctic explorer, regarding the
fossil Sclerodermic corals of the Silurian, widely distributed in the
Arctic regions:
"These undoubted reef-forming corals of the Silurian epoch were just as
much inhabitants of warm water in northern latitudes at that period as
are the Sclerodermata of to-day in the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic
oceans.... These corals were forms of life which must have been tropical
in habits and requirement."
In fact coral limestones of the Carboniferous system are the nearest
known fossiliferous rocks to the North Pole, and from the strike of the
beds must underlie the Polar Sea. In the words of Howorth, "Coal strata
with similar fossils have occurred all round the Polar basin ... and may
be said, therefore, to have occupied a continuous cap around the North
Pole."[70]
Again I quote from Howorth regarding the Mesozoic rocks:
"This very widespread fauna and flora proves that the high temperature
of the Secondary era prevailed in all latitudes, and not only so, it
pervaded them apparently continuously without a break. There is no
evidence whatever, known to me, that can be derived from the fauna and
flora of Secondary times, which points to any period of cold as even
possible. There are no shrunken and stunted forms, and no types such as
we associate with cold conditions, and no changes evidenced by
intercalated beds showing vicissitudes of life."
The following is from Nordenskiold, as quoted by Howorth, and refers to
the whole geological series:
"From what has been already stated it appears that the animal and
vegetable relics found in the Polar regions, imbedded in strata
deposited in widely separated geological eras, uniformly testify that a
warm climate has in former times prevailed over the whole globe. From
palaeontological science no support can be obtained for the assumption
of a periodical alternation of warm and cold climates on the surface of
the earth."[71]
And now we have the equally positive language of A. R. Wallace:
"It is quite impossible to ignore or evade the force of the testimony as
to the continuous warm climate of the North Temperate and Polar Zones
=throughout Tertiary times=. The evidence extends over a vast area both
in space and time, it is derived from the work of the most competent
living geologists, and it is absolutely consistent in its general
tendency ... Whether in Miocene, Upper or Lower Cretaceous, Jurassic,
Triassic, Carboniferous or Silurian times, and in all the numerous
localities extending over more than half the Polar regions, we find =one
uniform climatic aspect of the fossils=."[72]
Of course in all this I am taking the various kinds of fossils in the
traditional chronological order. But I shall presently show on the best
of authority that Man existed in "Pliocene" or perhaps "Miocene times,"
and in view of such an admission we have, even from the standpoint of
current theory, a vital, personal interest in this question of climate.
Let us take, then, the following from James Geikie, the great champion
of the Glacial theory, on the climate of the Arctic regions at this part
of the =human epoch=:
"Miocene deposits occur in Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, and at other
places within the Arctic Circle. The beds contain a similar (similar to
the "most luxuriant vegetation" of Switzerland) assemblage of
plant-remains; the palm-trees, however, being wanting. It is certainly
wonderful that within so recent a period as the Miocene, a climate
existed within the Arctic regions so mild and genial as to nourish there
beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, walnuts, limes, magnolias, hazel, holly,
blackthorn, logwood, hawthorn, ivy, vines, and many evergreens, besides
numerous conifers, among which was the sequoia, allied to the gigantic
_Wellingtonia_ of California. This ancient vegetation has been traced up
to within eleven degrees of the Pole."[73]
According to Dana and other American geologists the "Glacial Period" is
only a variation intervening between the warm Tertiary and the equally
warm "Champlain Period," and it was during the latter that the mammoth,
mastodon, etc., roamed over Europe, Asia, and America. Of the climate
then indicated, when all acknowledge that Man was in existence, this
author says:
"The genial climate that followed the Glacial appears to have been
marvelously genial to the species, =and alike for all the continents,
Australia included=. The kinds that continued into modern time became
dwindled in the change wherever found over the globe, notwithstanding
the fact that genial climates are still to be found over large
regions."[74]
In his "Geological Story Briefly Told," he uses even stronger language:
"The brute mammals reached their maximum in numbers and size during the
warm Champlain Period, and many species lived then which have since
become extinct. Those of Europe and Britain were largely warm-climate
species, such as are now confined to warm temperate and tropical
regions; and only in a warm period like the Champlain could they have
thrived and attained their gigantic size. The great abundance of their
remains and their condition show that the climate and food were all the
animals could have desired. They were masters of their wanderings, and
had their choice of the best."[75]
"The genial climate of the Champlain period was _abruptly_ (italics
Dana's) terminated. For carcasses of the Siberian elephants were frozen
so suddenly and so completely at the change, that the flesh has remained
untainted." (Id. p. 230.)
I quite agree with this author that the evidence is conclusive as to the
climate and food being "all the animals could have desired," and that
they must have "had their choice of the best." But it seems to me that
in following out their theory these authors have not left the poor
creatures very much to choose from. For as the inevitable result of
their theory in arranging the plants as well as the animals in
chronological order according to the percentages of living and extinct
forms, they have already disposed of, and consigned to the "early"
Tertiaries, etc., all the probable vegetation on which these animals
lived, and thus have nothing left on which to feed the horse and bison,
rhinoceros and elephant, etc., away within the Arctic Circle, except the
few miserable shrubs and lichens which now survive there.
But this strange, inconsistent notion of Dana's that the so-called
Glacial phenomena lie in between the warm Tertiary and the equally warm
"Champlain period," is easily understood as the survival of the notion,
so tenaciously held even later than the middle decades of the nineteenth
century, that Man was =not= a witness of any of the great geological
changes. When the evidence became overwhelming that Man lived while the
semi-tropical animals roamed over England, the "Glacial period" still
remained as a sort of buffer against the dangerous possibility of
extending the =human= period back any further. I am not aware that this
venerable scientist ever became quite reconciled to the idea of
"Tertiary Man," though in his "Manual" he mentions a few evidences in
favor of this now almost universally accepted opinion.
As for the real teachings of the Drift phenomena there is no need of
explanation here. At the very most they are confined to a quite limited
part of the northern hemisphere, there being no trace of them in Alaska,
nor on the plains of Siberia, where now almost eternal frosts
prevail.[76] In fact they are practically confined between the Rocky
Mountains and the Missouri River on the west, and the Ural Mountains on
the east; and with a little common sense infused into the foundation
principles of the science we will cease to be tormented with a "Glacial
Nightmare." Much of the Drift phenomena with the raised beaches are
certainly =later= events than most of the other geological work, but are
inseparably connected with the general problem in their explanation.
Even from the ordinary standpoint, I am not aware that the elaborate
argument of Howorth has even been satisfactorily answered. Indeed, I
feel almost like saying that this writer's various contributions to the
cause of inductive geology mark the beginning of the dawn.
Hence it may suffice here to merely call attention to the great
simplicity introduced into this vast complexity of the glacialists, by
the positive assurance of this author that the "Drift period" and the
Pleistocene =end together=, and join onto the modern; or perhaps I ought
rather to say that the so-called Glacial phenomena lie in between the
true fossil world and our modern one.
"Thus, in regard to the Pleistocene mammals, the view is now generally
accepted that, in every place where they have been found in a
contemporary bed, that bed underlies the till, and is therefore
pre-glacial. As in other places, so here (Scotland), teeth and bones of
mammals have occurred in the clay itself; but in all such cases they
occur sporadically and as boulders. As Mr. James Geikie says, 'They
almost invariably afford marks of having been subjected to the same
action as the stones and boulders by which they are surrounded; that is
to say, they are rubbed, ground, striated, and smoothed.'"[77]
And again:
"=The Pleistocene fauna, so far as I know, came to an end with the
so-called Glacial age.=" (Id. p. 463.)
From a recent notice in _Nature_[78] it would seem that even Dr. H.
Woodward, of the British Museum, supports this general view in his
"Table of British Strata," by the statement that the glacial deposits
contain =only derived fossils=.
But this is such a decided simplification of the problem of climate that
I am utterly at a loss to understand how any one can still cling to the
complex and highly artificial arrangement of numerous "interglacial"
periods, to account for a few bones of mammals or a few pockets of
lignite; and how they can even place between the "Glacial period" and
our times the "genial Champlain period," with it, as Dana says,
"=abruptly terminated=," and becoming "=suddenly= extreme as of a single
winter's night." Howorth, in the latter part of the chapter already
quoted from (pp. 460-478), gives a good review of this subject of
intermittent climates, and strongly supports his contention that the
=stratigraphical evidence= all points to the fact that the Pleistocene
forms are always older than the Drift-beds, and where the flora and
fauna of the Pleistocene occur in the Drift, they do so only as
boulders; that, in fact, as he says in his Preface, "The Pleistocene
Flood ... =forms a great dividing line= in the superficial deposits,"
separating the true fossil world from the modern.
I have hardly the space to repeat here my argument about the extremely
fanciful way in which geologists classify the various members of the
Tertiary group and the Pleistocene. And yet I must say a few words. I
have tried to show the utter nonsense of the common custom of
classifying these beds according to the percentage of living and extinct
forms which they contain, when the real fact is that the number and
kinds of the ancient life-forms which have survived into the modern era
is a purely fortuitous circumstance, being limited solely to those lucky
ones which could stand the radical change from a tepid water or a genial
air to the ice and frosts which they now experience, to mention only one
circumstance of that cosmic convulsion which we now know to have really
intervened between that ancient world and our own. =YET IT IS ON SUCH
EVIDENCE ONLY= that these Pleistocene forms are separated from the
Tertiaries, or that the Tertiaries themselves are classified off--at
least as far as the invertebrates and the plants are concerned. No one
claims that the so-called Glacial beds can be sharply distinguished from
other deposits on purely mechanical make-up. Indeed, I am strongly of
the opinion that very many Archaean soils, totally unfossiliferous
themselves, and resting on unfossiliferous rocks, have been assigned to
the "Glacial age," merely because their discoverers did not know what
else to do with them. When beds contain fossils, the latter are the one
and only guide in determining age; but in view of the purely arbitrary
character of this method of classifying off the Tertiary and
post-Tertiary rocks, I do not see where we are going to =draw the line=
when we once admit that the post-Tertiary beds contain only "derived
fossils." It seems to me truly astonishing that shrewd reasoners, like
Howorth and Dr. Woodward, have not seen the dangerous character of this
precedent which they have admitted. For with that marvelous climate of
all geological time continuing right up to that fatal day when it was
"abruptly terminated," and the mammoth and his fellows were caught in
the merciless frosts which now hold them, the percentage of all the
lucky forms of life, plants, invertebrates, or mammals, which could
stand such a change and "persist" into our modern world, must be
=utterly nonsensical as a test of age= even from their standpoint.
In resuming the main argument of this chapter, I need only summarize by
saying that the evidence is conclusive that all geological time down to
this sharp "dividing line" was characterized by a surprisingly mild and
uniform climate over all the earth. The modern period is characterized
by terrific extremes of heat and cold; and now little or nothing can
exist where previously plant and animal life flourished in profusion.
This radical and world-wide change in climate, therefore, demands ample
consideration when seeking a true induction as to the past of our globe.
That it was no gradual or secular affair, but that the climate "became
=suddenly= extreme as of a single winter's night," the Siberian
"mummies" are unanswerable arguments. =That it occurred within the human
epoch= all are now agreed.
FOOTNOTES:
[68] "The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood," pp. 426-479.
[69] "Manual," pp. 484, 524-5.
[70] Op. cit., pp. 434-5.
[71] Id., p. 45.
[72] "Island Life," pp. 182, 195-6; "Nightmare," pp. 455-6.
[73] "Historical Geology," p. 76.
[74] "Manual," p. 997.
[75] p. 225, Edition of 1875.
[76] See Dana's "Manual," pp. 945, 977; also "The Glacial Nightmare,"
pp. 45-2, 511, etc.
[77] "Great Ice Age," p. 129; "Nightmare," p. 473.
[78] See _Nature_ April 11, 1901, p. 560.
CHAPTER XI
DEGENERATION
There is another great general fact about the fossil world which seems
to be a natural corollary from the one already given about climate.
It is this:
=The fossils, regarded as a whole, invariably supply us with types
larger of their kind and better developed in every way than their
nearest modern representatives, whether of plants or animals.=
This fact also is so well known that it needs no proof. Through the
whole range of geological literature I do not know of a word of dissent
from this general fact by any writer whatever. Proof therefore is not
necessary, though a brief review of a little of the evidence may refresh
our memories.
To begin with the Cambrian, Dana says: