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NATURE, SCIENCE, AND REVELATION.

In large crown 8vo, price 9s., cloth.

THE HIGHER MINISTRY OF pURE

VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE.

JOHN H« LKXFCHXLD, A.M.,

AUTHOR OF "our COAL FIELDS AND OUR COAL PITS;" "CORNWALL: ITS
MI.._3 AND MINERS," ETC., ETC.

" Mr. Leifcliild is well known from his contributions to the practical
departments of Physical Geography. He writes with great vigour and
charm of style, and has acquired by long c ommunion with Nature the
right to speak of itj higher ministry, and of ti e 'authentic tidings' which
it brings from the mind and heart and will ox God." — British Qiixirterhj
Review.

" This is an able and interesting book, and one which for its purpose
and scope we are glad to have an opportunity of recommending." — Globe.

" Mr. Leifchild does not fear to confront the most advanced theories
of mere Naturalism in a free and fair spirit. His book is one of sound
knowledge and sober thought, and is hkely to be useful at the present
time." — Illustrated London News.

" The author takes up his position under circumstances that entitle
him to a fair and impartial hearing on either side. He is known to
science as a writer on geological subjects, whose contribi tions deserve
the highest respect, while his right to be heard as a theologian is manifest
in the conservative yet purely scientific spirit in which theology is treated.
A timely and in many senses a rich contribution to the mental ne-
cessities of our tir.'es ; it is the work of a mind comprehensive in its grasp,
deep in its sympathy with nature, and strong in its love of truth. Its
bcope is broad, comprising on the one hand the largest questions possible
to thought, and on the other the minutest details of the latest research .
The philosophy of death, the question of resurrection, the certainty of
immortality, the future continuity of our knowledge of God in His works,
and the consequent heaven of mind, are all considered with the reverence
of a Christian and the calmness of a man of science. The author seizes
with exquisite aptitude the latest discourses and hypotheses of science,
and by analogical reasoning marshals thorn in support and elucidation of
the highest claims of religious thought." — Londoii Quarterly Review.

THE STORY

THE EARTH AND MAN.

87788

Iss7ied ill Canada by special arrangement with Messrs. Hodder 61^ Stons^ktcn,

the English Publishers.

THE STORY

3 6-5-6. y i

THE EARTH AND MAN.

J. W. DAWSON, LL.D, F.R.S., F.G.S.,

PKrXClPAL yIND VICE-CHANCELLOR OF McGILL VNIVERSITY, MO.\TREAL.
AUTHOR OF "aRCHAIA," " ACADIAN GEOLOGV," ETC.

• • *

• . »

•• •

. • • •

• • • • •

Coronta :
COPP CLARK & CO.

MDCCCLXXIII.

J t • • I I

■ I « tjl

* I > I t "^ c ^

r « c

PREFACE.

The science of the earth as illustrated by geological
research, is one of the noblest outgrowths of our
modern intellectual life. Constituting the sum of
all the natural sciences in their application to the
history of our world, it affords a very wide and varied
scope for mental activity, and deals with some of the
grandest problems of space and time and of organic
existence. It invites us to be present at the origin
of things, and to enter into the very workshop of the
Creator. It has, besides, most important and intimate
connection with the industrial arts and with the mate-
rial resources at the disposal of man. Its educational
value, as a means of cultivating the powers of ob-
serving and reasoning, and of accustoming the mind
to deal with large and intricate questions, can scarcely
be overrated.

But fully to serve these high ends, the study of
geology must be based on a thorough knowledge of
the subjects which constitute its elementary data. It
must be divested as far as possible of merely local
colouring, and of the prejudices of specialists. It
must be emancipated from the control of the bald
metaphysical speculations so rife in our time, and

• ••

Vlll

PREFACE.

Ill

above all it must be delivered from that materialistic
iufidelity, which, by robbing nature of the spiritual
element, and of its presiding Divinity, makes science
dry, barren, and repulsive, diminishes its educational
value, and even renders it less efficient for purposes
of practical research.

That the want of these preliminary conditions mars
much of the popular science of our day is too evident ;
and I confess that the wish to attempt something
better, and thereby '.o revive the interest in geological
study, to attract attention to its educational value, and
to remove the misapprehensions which exist in some
quarters respecting it, were principal reasons which
induced me to undertake the series of papers for the
Leisure IIouVj which are reproduced, with some amend-
ments and extension, in the present work. How far
I have succeeded, I must leave to the intelligent and,
I trust, iudulgent reader to decide. In any case I
have presented this many-sided subject in tLe aspect
in which it appears to a geologist whose studies have
led him to compare with each other the two great
continental areas which are the classic ground of the
science, and who retains his faith in those unseen
realities of which the history of the earth itself is but
one of the shadows projected on the fiuld of time.

To geologists who Diay glance at the following

PREFACE.

pages, I would say that, amidst much that is familiar,
they will find here and there some facts which may
be new to them, as well as some original suggestions
and conclusions as to the relations of things, which
though stated in familiar terms, I have not advanced
without due consideration of a wide range of facts.
To the general reader I have endeavoured to present
the more important results of geological investigation
divested of technical difficulties, yet with a careful re-
gard to accuracy of statement, and in such a manner
as to invite to the farther and more precise study of
the subject in nature, and in works which enter into
technical details. I have endeavoured as far as pos-
sible to mention the authors of important discoveries ;
but it is impossible in a work of this kind to quote
authority for every statement, while the omission of
much important matter relating to the topics discussed
is also unavoidable. Shortcomings in these respects
must be remedied by the reader himself, with the
aid of systematic text-books. Those who may desire
any farther explanation of the occasional allusions to
the record of creation in Genesis, will find this in my
previously published volume entitled " Archaia."

J. W. D.

McGiLL College, Montreal,
Jayiuaryj 1873.

nil

CONTENTS.

Chapteii I. — The Genesis of the Earth.

i r 1R

Uniformity and Progress. — Internc'i Heat. — Nebular
Theory. — Probable Condition of the Primitive World 1

Chapter II. — Th-j Eozoic Ages.

The Laurentian Rocks. — Their Character and Distribution.
— The Conditions of their Deposition. — Their Meta-
morphism. — Eozoon Canadense. — Laurentian Vegeta-
tion 17

Chapter III. — The Primordial or Cambrian Age.

Connection of the Laurentian and Primordial. — Animaly
of the Primordial Seas. — Lingula, Trilobites, Old-
hamia, etc. — The terms Cambrian and Silurian.—
Statistics of Primordial Life

Chapter IV. — The Silurian Ages.

Geography of the Continental Plateaus. — Life of the
Silurian. — Reign oi' Invertebrates. — Corals, Crinoids,
Mollusks, Crustaceans. — The First Vertebrates. —
Silurian Fishes.— Land Plants 56

Chapter V. — The Devonian or Erian Age.

Physical Character of the Age. — Difference of Deposits in
Marginal and Continental Areas. — Specialisation of
Physical Geography.— Corals, Crustaceans, Fishes,
Insects, Plants 81

■M

Xll

CONTENTS.

OiiArTER yi. — The Carboniferous Age.

PAQK

Perfection of Palaoozoic Life. — Carboniferous Geography.
— Colours of Sediments. — Vegetation. — Origin of Coal.
— Laud Life. — Reptiles, Land Snails, Millipedes, etc.
— Oceanic Life 109

CiiAPTER VIL — The Permian Age.

Movements of the Land. — Plication of the Crust. — Che-
miciil Conditions of Dolomite, etc. — Geographic d
Results of Permian Movements. — Life of the Period.
— Summary of Palaeozoic Hi> ny . . . .160

Chapter VIIL — The Mesozoic Ages.

Characters of the Tria-^. — Summary of Changes in the
Triassic and Cretaceous Periods. — Changes of the
Continental Plateaus. — Relative Dunition of the
P.Utoozoic and Mesozoic. — Mesozoic Forests. — Land
Animals. — The reign of Reptiles. — Early Mammals
and Birds 188

CiiArxER IX. — The Mesozoic Ages — {continued).

Aniu?als of the Sea. — Great Se;i Lizards, Fishes, Cephalo-
pv ds, etc. — Chalk and its History. — Tabular View of
the Mesozoic Ages 211

Chapter X. — The Neozoic Ages.

Physical Changes at the end of Mesozoic. — S.^:bdi visions
of the Neozoic. — Great Eocene Seas. — Land Animals
and Plants. — Life of the Miocene. — Reign of Mammals 235

Chapter XL — The Neozoic Ag¥.s— {continued).

Later Vegetation. — The Animals of the Pliocene Period.
— Approach of the Glacial Period. — Character of the
Post-pliocene or Glacial 258

CONTENTS.

cll after xii. — cl-ose of the post-puocene, and
Advent of Man.

xiu

rxflu

Connection of Geological and Human History.— The Post-
glacial Period. — Its Relations to the Pre-Historic
Hwnan Period. — Elevation of Post-Pliocene Land. —
Introduction of ^Man. — Subsidence and Re-elevation. —
Calculations as to Time. — Tabular View of the Neozoic
Ages 282

Chapter XIIL— Advent of Man — {continued).

Relations of Post-pliocene and INIodern Animal -•?.— Cavern
Deposits. — Kent'sCave.— General Remark jt . .209

Chapter XIV. — Primitive ^Ian.

Theory of Evolution as applied to Man. — Its Demands. —
Its Deficiencies. — Fallacious Character of Arguments
of Deri.a'i-ioiilrts. — Hypothesis of Creation. — Its
Demands and Adv^antages 316

Chapter XV. — Primitive Man — {continued).

Geological Conditions of Man's Introduction. — His Modern
Date. — His Isolated Position. — His Higher Powers. —
Pictures of Primitive Man according to Evolution and
Creation. — General Conclusions 356

iDEi

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LiFI

Org

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LiPE

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Car]
Old]
Car]

FOLI
CURA
CUL3

Lani

Aqvi

FORA

Mioc
Brit.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Ideal Sections Illustrating the Genesis op the Earth 8

America in the Laurentian Period 18

Eozoon Canadense 24

Life in the Primordial Age 40

Organic Limestone of the Silurian . . . .63

Life in the Silurian 6Q

Life in the Devonian 88

Vegetation of the Devonian 103

Carboniferous Plants 126

Oldest Land Snails 139

Carboniferous Reptiles 146

Foldings of the Crust in the Permian Period . . 162
Curves of Elevation and Depression . . . .179
Culmination of Types of Palaeozoic Animals . . . 183

Land Animals of the Mesozoic 194

Aquatic Animals of the Mesozoic 219

Foraminiperal Rock-builders 243

Miocene Mammals 253

Britain in the Post-pliocene 301

1 , ,

.Itill!!}

DIA'JiRAMoF TIIK EARTH vS HISTORY.

lltliil

ANIMALS

Age
of

IjtperSti'U'ta)

and
Maininals

Age
of

Reptiles

Age
of

Amphibians

and

Fishes

Ago

MoUiibIvs

Coral.s

and

Crustact'an.s

Age
of

Protozoa

ROCK FORMATIONS

3 i

9 ^

S3 0^

c S

c a
o ^

Modem
^osl-pliotcne

Hiocene
Miocene

Cretaceous

Jurassif
Triassic

n t f p n ixirn

Eriaii or
BCfjIIXITrill Devonian

-'!>" j^' "'M.f'-"j:'i

o o o c^ o o o n«

).!..'.'• ■>, ■■'■ . '■;','■-:•

rr-r.'i. -xrTrr.i .»::r;.-jrnm=G:

1 1 111 I ij,nTn

! 1 r{ ] llM 1 HTS Caml>rian

FVriTuaTi
Ciirboniftrous

.Silnrian
Siliiro=

Cambrian

HuroniaD'

Laureutian

PLANTS

Age

Angiospemis
and

Pal

nis

Age

r'. ids

and
Pines

Age

Aero gens
and

GjnnnospeniLs

Age

Algae

Planus

not
delennniiiiT)le

Vincent Broote DayAoor, Li'i

C^^ Stnrji 0f tlj^ €uxt)^ mxH Pan.

CHAPTER I.

THE GENESIS OP THE EARTH.

The title of this work is intended to indicate precisely
its nature. It consists of rough, broad sketches of
the aspects of successive stages in the earth's history,
as disclosed by geology, and as they present themselves
lo observers at the present time. The last qualification
is absolutely necessary, when dealing with a science
whose goal to-day will be its starting point to-morrow,
and in whose view every geological picture must have
its light and shaded portions, its clear foreground and
its dim distance, varying according to the lights cast
on them by the progress of investigation, and accord-
ing to the standpoint of the observer. In such pic-
tures results only can bo given, not the processes by
which they have been obtained ; and with all possible
gradations of light and distance, it may be that the
artist will bring into too distinct outline facts still only
dimly perceived, or will give too little prominence to

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

others which should appear in bold relief. He must
in this judge for himself; and if the writer's irapres-
sions do not precisely correspond with those of others,
he trusts that they will allow something for difference
of vision and point of view.

The difficulty above referred to perhaps rises to its
maximum in the present chapter. For how can any
one paint chaos, or give form and filling to the form-
less void ? Perhaps no word-picture of this period
of the first phase of mundane history can ever equal
the two negative touches of the inspired penman —
" without form and void" — a world destitute of all

, its present order, and destitute of all that gives it life
and animation. This it was, and not a complete and
finished earth, that sprang at first from its Creator's
hand ; and we must inquire in this first chapter what
information science gives as to any such condition of
the earth.

In the first place, the geological history of the earth
plainly intimates a beginning, by utterly negativing
the idea that " all things continue as they were from
the creation of the world.'' It traces back to their
origin not only the animals and plants which at present
live, but also their predecessors, through successive
dynasties emerging in long procession from the depths
of a primitive antiquity. Not only so; it assigns to
theii relative ages all the rocks of the earth's crust,

and all the plains and mountains built up of them.

Thus, as we go back in geological time, we leave

behind us, one by one, all the things with which we

THE GENESIS OF THE EABTH,

are familiar, and the inevitable conclusion gains on us
tlia,t we must be approacbing a beginning, though this
may be veiled from us in clouds and thick darkness.
How is it, then, that there are " Uniformitarians" in
geology, and that it has been said that our science
shows no traces of a beginning, no indications of an
end? The question deserves consideration; but the
answer is not difficult. In all the lapse of geological
time there has been an absolute uniformity of natural
law. The same grand machinery of force and matter
has been in use throughout all the ages, working out
the great plan. Yet the plan has been progressive
and advancing, nevertheless. The uniformity has been
in the methods, the results have presented a wondrous
diversity and development. Again, geology, in its
oldest periods, fails to reach the beginning of things.
It shows us how course after course of the building
has been laid, and how it has grown to completeness,
but it contains as yet no record of the laying of the
foundation-stones, still less of the quarry whence they
were dug. Still the constant progress which we have
seen points to a beginning which we have not seen;
and the very uniformity of the process by which the
edifice has been erected, implies a time when it had
not been begun, and when its stones were still repos-
ing in their native quarry.

What, then, is the oldest condition of the earth
actually shown to us by geology, — that which pre-
vailed in the Eozoic or Laurentian period, when the
oldest rocks known, those constituting the foundation-

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

stones of our present continents, were formed and laid
in their places ? With regard to physical conditions,
it was a time when our existing continents were yet
in the bosom of the waters, when the ocean was almost
universal, yet when sediments were being deposited in
it as at present, while there were also volcanic foci,
vomiting forth molten matter from the eartVs hidden
interior. Then, as now, the great physical agencies of
water and fire were contending with one another for
the mastery, doing and undoing, building up and
breaking down. But is this all? Has the earth no
earlier history ? That it must have had, we may infer
from many indications ; but as to the nature of these
earlier states, we can learn from conjecture and in-
ference merely, and must have recourse to other
witnesses than those rocky monuments which are the
aure guides of the geologist.

One fact bearing on these questions which has long
excited attention, is the observed increase in tempera-
ture in descending into deep mines, and in the water
of deep artesian wells — an increase which may be
stated in round numbers at one degree of heat of the
centigr^.de thermometer for every 100 teet of depth
from the surface. These observations apply of course
to a very inconsiderable depth, and we have no
certainty that this rate continues for any great dis-
tance towards the centre of the ear^ i. If, however,
we regard it as indicating the actual law of increase
of temperature, it would result that the whole crust
of the earth is a mere shell covering a molten mass

THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH.

of rocky matter. Thus a very slight step of imagi-
nation would carry us back to a time when this slender
crust had not yet formed^ and the earth rolled through
space an incandescent globe, with all its water and
other vaporisable matters in a gaseous state. As-
tronomical calculation has, however, shown that the
earth, in its relation to the other heavenly bodies,
obeys the laws of a rigid ball, and not of a fluid
globe. Hence it has been inferred that its actual
crust must be very thick, perhaps not less than 2,500
miles, and that its fluid portion must therefore be of
smaller dimensions than has been inferred from the
observed increase of temperature. Further, it seems
to have been rendered probable, from the density
of rocky matter in the solid and liquid states, that
a molten globe would solidify at the centre as well
an at the surface, and consequently that the earth
must not only have a solid crust of great thickness,
but also a solid nucleus, and that any liquid portions
must be of the nature of a sheet or of detached
masses intervening between these. On the other
hand, it h ^s recently been maintained that the calcu-
lations which are supposed to have established the
great thickness of the crust, on the ground that the
earth does not change its form in obedience to the
attraction of the sun and moon, are based on a mis-
conception, and that a molten globe^ with a thin crust
would attain to such a state of equilibrium in this
respect as not to be distinguishable from a solid
planet. This view has been maintained by the French

THE STORY OP TIIK EARTH AND MAN.

physicist, Delaunay, and for some time it made geo-
logists suppose that, after all, the earth's crust may
be very thin. Sir William Thomson, however, and
Archdeacon Pratt, have ably maintained the previous
opinion, based on Hopkins' calculations; and it is
now believed that we may rest upon this as repre-
senting the most probable condition of the interior
of the earth at present. Another fact bearing on
this point is the form of the earth, which is now
actually a spheroid of rotation; that is, of such a
shape as would result from the action of gravity and
centrifugal force in the motion of a huge liquid drop
rotating in the manner in which the eaytli rotates.
Of course it may be said that the earth may have
been made in that shape to fit it for its rotation ; but
science prefers to suppose that the form is the result
of the forces acting on it. This consideration would
of course corroborate the deductions from that just
mentioned. Again, if we examine a map showing the
distribution of volcanoes upon the earth, and trace
these along the volcanic belt of Western America and
Eastern Asia, and in the Pacific Islands, and in the
isolated volcan:" regions in other parts of the world;
and if we add to these the multitude of volcanoes now
extinct, we shall be convinced that the sources of
internal heat, of which these are the vents, must be
present almost everywhere under the earth's crust.
Lastly, if we consider the elevations and depressions
which large portions of the crust of the earth have
undergone in geological time, and the actual crump-

:l!l

THE GENESIS OP THE EARTH.

ling and folding of the crust visible in great mountain
chains, we arrive at a similar conclusion, and also
become convinced that the crust has been not too
thick to admit of extensive fractures, flexures, and
foldings. There are, however, it must be admi^.ted,
theories of volcanic action, strongly supported by the
chemical nature of the materials ejected by modern
volcanoes, which would refer all their phenomena to
the softening, under the continued influence of heat
and water, of materials within the crust of the earth
rather than under it.* Still, the phenomena of vol-
canic action, and of elevation and subsidence, would,
under any explanation, suppose intense heat, and
therefore probably an original incandescent condition.
La Place long ago based a theory of the originally
gaseous condition of the solar system on the re-
lation of the planets co each other, and to the sun,
on their planes of revolution, the direction of their
revolution, and that of their satellites. On these
grounds he inferred that the solar system had been
formed out of a nebulous mass by the mutual attrac-
tion of its parts. This view was further strengthened
by the discovery of nebulae, which it might be sup-
posed were undergoing the same processes by which
the solar system was produced. This nebular theory,
as it was called, was long very popular. It was
subsequently supposed to be damaged by the fact
that some of the nebulas which had been regarded as
systems in progress of formation were found by im-
* Dr. T. Sterry Hunt, in Silliman's Journal, 1870.

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

proved telescopes to be really clusters of stars, and
it was inferred that the others might be of like
character. The spectroscope has, however, more
recently shown that some nebulaa are actually gaseous ;
and it has even been attempted to demonstrate that

Figs. 1 to 5. Ideal sections illustrating the Genesis of the Earth.

Fig. 1. A vaporous world.

Fig. 2. A world with a central fluid nucleus (6) and a photosphere (a).

Fig. 3. The photosphere darkened, and a solid crust (c) and solid
nuclius (d) formed.

Fig. 4. Water (e) deposited on the crust, forming a universal ocean.

Fig. 5. The crust crumpled by shrinkage, land elevated, and the water
occupying the intervening depressions.

The figures are all of uniform size ; but the circle (A) shows the
diameter of the globe when in the state of fig. 1, and that marked (B)
its diameter when in the state of fig. 6. In ajl the figures (a) represents
vapour or air; (b) liquid rock; (c) solid rook as a crust; (d) solid
nucleus ; (e) water.

THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH.

they are probably undergoing change fitting them to
become systems. This has served to revive the
nebular hypothesis, which has been further strength-
ened by the known fact that the sun is still an incan-
descent globe surrounded by an immense luminous
envelope of vapours rising from its nucleus and con-
densing at its surface. On the other hand, while the
sun may be supposed, from its gret, j magnitude, to
remain intensely heated, and while it will not be
appreciably less powerful for myriads of years, the
moon seems to be a body which has had time to
complete the whole history of geological change, and
to become a dry, dead, and withered world, a type
of what our earth would in process of time actually
become.

Such considerations lead to the conclusion that the
former watery condition of our planet was not its first
state, and that we must trace it back to a previous
reign of fire. The reasons which can be adduced
in support of this are no doubt somewhat vague, and
may in their details be variously interpreted ; but at
present we have no other interpretation to give of that
chaos, formless and void, that state in which " nor
aught nor nought existed," which the sacred writings
and the traditions and poetry of ancient nations concur
with modern science in indicating as the primitive
state of the earth.

Let our first picture, then, be that of a vaporous
mass, representing our now solid planet spread out
over a space nearly two thousand times greater in

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

diameter tlian that which it now occupies, and whirl-
ing in its annual round about the still vaporous centre
of our system, in which at an earlier period the earth
had been but an exterior layer, or ring of vapour.
The atoms that now constitute the most solid rocks
are in this state as tenuous as air, kept apart by the
expansive force of heat, which prevents not only their
mechanical union, but also their chemical combination.
But within the mass, slowly and silently, the force of
gravitation is compressing the particles in its giant
hand, and gathering the denser toward the centre, while
heat is given forth on all sides from the condensing
mass into the voids of space without. Little by little
the denser and less volatile matters collect in the
centre as a fluid molten globe, the nucleus of the
future planet j and in this nucleus the elements, obey-
ing their chemical affinities hitherto latent, are arrang-
ing themselves in compounds which are to constitute
the future rocks. At the same time, in the exterior
of the vaporous envelope, matters cooled by radiation
into the space without, are combining with each other,
and are being precipitated in earthy rain or snow into
the seething mass within, where they are either again
vaporised and sent to the sarface or absorbed in the
increasing nucleus. As this process advances, a new
brilliancy is given to the faint shining of the nebulous
matter by the incandescence of these solid particles in
the upper layers of its atmosphere, a condition which
at this moment, on a greater scale, is that of the sun ;
in the case of the earth, so much smaller in volume,

THE GENESIS OP THE EARTH.

and farther from the centre of the system, it came on
earlier, and has long since passed away. This was
the glorious starlike condition of our globe : in a
physical point of view, its most perfect and beautiful
state, when, if there were astronomers with telescopes
in the stars, they might have seen our now dull
earth flash forth — a brilliant white star secondary to
the sun.

But in process of time this passes away. All the
more solid and less olatile substances are condensed
and precipitated ; and now the atmosphere, still vast
in bulk, and dark and misty in texture, contains only
the water, chlorine, carbonic acid, sulphuric acid, and
other more volatile substances ; and as these gather in
dense clouds at the outer surface, and pour in fierce
corrosive rains upon the heated nucleus, combining
with its materials, or flashing again into vapour, dark-
ness dense and gross settles upon the vaporous deep,
and continues for long ages, until the atmosphere is
finally cleared of its acid vapours and its superfluous
waters.* In the meantime, radiation, and the heat
abstracted from the liquid nucleus by the showers
of condensing material from the atmosphere, have
so far cooled its surface that a crust of slag or cinder
forms upon it. Broken again and again by the heav-
ings of the ocean of fire, it at length sets permanently,
and receives upon its bare and blistered surface the
ever-increasing aqueous and acid rain thrown down

* Hunt, " Chemistry of the Primeval Earth," SilUman*8
Journal, 1858.

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

from the atmosphere, at first sending it all hissing and
steaming back, but at length allowing it to remain
a universal boiling ocean. Then began the reign of
the waters, and the dominion of fire was confined to
the abysses within the solid crust. Under the prime-
val ocean were formed the first stratified rocks, from
the substances precipitated from its waters, which
must have been loaded with solid matter. We must
not imagine this primeval ocean like our own blue
sea, clear and transparent, but filled with earthy and
saline matters, thick and turbid, until these were per-
mitted to settle to the bottom and form the first
sediments. The several changes above referred to are
represented in diagrammatic form in figs. 1 to 4.

In the meantime all is not at rest in the interior of
the new-formed earth. Under the crust vast oceans
of molten rock may still remain, but a solid interior
nucleus is being crystallised in the centre, and the
whole interior globe is gradually shrinking. At
length this process advances so far that the exterior
crust, like a sheet of ice from below which the water
has subsided, is left unsupported; and with terrible
earth quake- throes it sinks downward, wrinkling up
into huge folds, between which are vast sunken areas
into which the t waters subside, while from the inter-
vening ridges the earth^s pent-up fires belch forth
ashes and molten rocks. (Fig. 5.) So arose the first
dry land : —

" The mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave

THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH. 13

Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky,
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep.
Capacious bed of waters."

The cloud was its garment, it was swathed in thick
darkness, and presented but a rugged pile of rocky-
precipices ; yet well might the " morning stars sing
together, and all the sons of God shout with joy,''
when its foundations were settled and its corner-
stone laid, for then were inaugurated the changes
which were to lead to the introduction of life on the
earth, and to all the future development of the con-
tinents.

Physical geographers have taught us that the great
continents, whether we regard their coasts or their
mountain chains, are built up on lines which run
north-east and south-west, and north-west and south-
east ; and it is also observed that these lines are great
circles of the earth tangent to the polar circle. Fur-
ther, we find, as a result of geological investigation,
that these lines determined the deposition and the
elevation of the oldest rocks known to us. Hence
it is fair to infer that these were the original directions
of the first lines of fracture and upheaval. Whether
these lines were originally drawn by the influence of
of the seasons on the cooling globe, or by the cur-
rents of its molten interior, or of the superficial
ocean, they bespeak a most uniform and equable
texture for the crust, and a definite law of fracture
and upheaval ; and they have modified all the subse-

TEE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

quent action of the ocean as a depositor of sediment,
and of the internal heat as a cause of alteration and
movement of rocks. Against these earliest belts of
land the ocean first chafed and foamed. Along their
margins marine denudation first commenced, and the
oceanic currents first deposited banks of sediment ;
and along these first lines have the volcanic orifices
of all periods been most plentiful, and elevatorj move-
ments most powerfully felt.

We must not suppose that the changes thus shortly-
sketched were rapid and convulsive. They must have
required periods of enormous duration, all of which
had elapsed before the beginning of geological time,
properly so called. From Sir William Thomson's
calculations, it would appear that the time which has
elapsed from the first formation of a solid crust on the
earth to the modern period may have been from
seventy to one hundred millions of years, and the
whole time from the vaporous condition of the solar
system to the present, must of course have been still
greater than even this enormous series of ages. Such
a lapse of time is truly almost inconceivable, but it is
only a few days to Him with whom one day is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
How many and strange pictures does this series of
processes call up ! First, the uniform vaporous ne-
bula. Then the formation of a liquid nucleus, and a
brilliant photosphere without. Then the congealing
of a solid crust under dark atmospheric vapours, and"
the raining down of acid and watery showers. Then

THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH.

the universal ocean, its waves rolling unobstructed
around the globe, and its currents following without
hindrance the leading of heat and of the earth's rota-
tion. Then the rupture of the crust and the emer-
gence of the nuclei of continents.

Some persons seem to think that by these long
processes of creative work we exclude the Creator, and
would reduce the universe into a mere fortuitous
concourse of atoms. To put it in more modern phrase,
" given a quantity of detached fragments cast into
space, then mutual gravitation and the collision of the
fragments would give us the spangled heavens." But
we have still to ask the old question, " Whence the
atoms ?'^ and we have to ask it with all the added
weight of our modern chemistry, so marvellous in its
revelations of the original differences of matter and
their varied powers of combination. We have to ask.
What is gravitation itself, unless a mode of action of
Almighty power ? We have to ask for the origin of
of thousands of correlations, binding together the past
and the future in that orderly chain of causes and
effects which constitutes the plan of the creation. If
it pleased God to create in the beginning an earth
" formless and void," and to elaborate from this all
that has since existed, who are we, to say that the
plan was not the best ? Nor would it detract from
our view of the creative wisdom and power if we were
to hold that in ages to come the sun may experience
the same change that has befallen the earth, and may
become "black as sackcloth of hair," preparatory.

It)

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Ill'lJlilllllJ

perhaps, to clianges which may make him also the
abode of life ; or if the earth, cooling still further,
should, like our satellite the moon, absorb all its
waters and gases into its bosom, and become bare,
dry, and parched, until there shall be '^ no more sea,'^
how do we know but that then there shall be no
more need of the sun, because a better light may be
provided ? Or that there may not be a new baptism
of fire in store for the earth, whereby, being melted
with fervent heat, it may renew its youth in the fresh
and heavenly loveliness of a new heaven and a new
earth, free from all the evils and imperfections of the
present ? God is not slack in these things, as some
men count slackness ; but His ways are not like our
ways. Ho has eternity wherein to do His work, and
takes His own time for each of His operations. The
Divine wisdom, personified by a sacred writer, may
well in this exalt his own oflBce :—

" Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of His way,
Before His work of old.
I was set up from everlasting,
From the beginning, or ever the earth was.
When there were no deeps, T was brought forth;
When there were no fountains abounding in water.
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, was I brought forth :
While as yet He had not made the earth,
Nor the plains, nor the higher part of the habitable world,
When He gave the sea His decree,
That her waters should not pass His limits ;
When He determined the foundations of the earth."

CHAPTER II.

THE EOZOIC AGES.

The dominion of heat has passed away; the excess
of water has been precipitated from the atmosphere,
and now covers the earth as a universal ocean. The
crust has folded itself into long ridgos, the bed of the
waters has subsided into its place, and the sea for the
first time begins to rave against the shores of the
newly elevated land, while the rain, washing the bare
surfaces of rocky ridges, carries its contribution of
the slowly wasting rocks back into the waters whence
they were raised, forming, with the material worn from
the crust by the surf, the first oceanic sediments.
Do we know any of these earliest aqueous beds, or
are they all hidden from view beneath newer deposits,
or have they been themselves worn away and de-
stroyed by denuding agencies ? Whether we know
the earliest formed sediments is, and may always
remain, uncertain ; but we do know certain very
ancient rocks which may be at least their immediate
successors. -

Deepest and oldest of all the rocks we are ac-
quainted with in the crust of the earth, are certain
beds much altered and metamorphosed, baked by
the joint action of heat and heated moisture — rocks
once called Azoic, as containing no traces of life,

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

but for which I have elsewhere proposed the name
" Eozoic/' or those that afford the traces of the
earliest known living beings. These rocks are the
Laurentian Series of Sir William Logan, so named
from the Laurcntide hills, north of the River St.
Lawrence, which are composed of these ancient beds,
and where they are more largely exposed than in
any other region. It m.ay seem at first sight
strange that any of these ancient rocks should be
found at the surface of the earth ; but this is a

Fig. (i. The Laui-eiiLiaii nucleus of tlio .timcricau coiiLiucut.

necessary result of the mode of formation of the
continents. The oldest rocks, thrown up in places
into high ridges, have either not been again "brought

THE EOZOIC AGES.

under the waters, or have lost by denudation the
sediments once resting on them ; and being of a
hard and resisting nature, still remain, and often
rise into hills of considerable elevation, showing
as it were portions of the skeleton of the eartii
protruding through its superficial covering. Such
rocks stretch along the north side of the St. Lawrence
river from Labrador to Lake Superior, ajid thence
northwardly to an unknown distance, constituting
a wild and rugged district often rising into hills
4000 feet high, and in the deep gorge of the
Saguenay forming cliffs 1,500 feet in sheer height
from the water's edge. South of this great ridge,
the isolated mass of the Adirondack Mountains
rises to the height of 6,000 feet, rivalling the newer,
though still very ancient, chain of the White Moun-
tains. Along the eastern coast of North America,
a lower ridge of Laurentian rock, only appearing
here and there from under the overlying sediments,
is seen in Newfoundland, in New Brunswick, pos-
sibly in Nova Scotia, and perhaps farther south in
Massachusetts, and as far as Maryland. In the old
world, rocks of this age do not, so far as known,
appear so extensively. They have been recognised
in Norway and Sweden, in the Hebrides, and in
Bavaria, and may, no doubt, be yet discerned in
other localities. Still, the grandest and most
instructive development of these rocks is in North
America; and it is there that we may best investi-
gate their nature, and endeavour tcf restore the

V «

THE STOEY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

ill

conditions in wliicli they wore deposited. It has
been already stated that the oldest wrinkles of the
crust of the globe take the direction of great circles
of the earth tangent to the polar circle, forming
north-east and south-west, and north-west and south-
east lines. To such lines are the great exposures of
Laurentian rock conformed, as may be well seen
from the map of North America (fig. 6), taken from
Dana, with some additions. The great angular
Laurentian belt is evidently the nucleus of the con-
tinent, and consists of two broad bands or ridges
meeting in the region of the great lakes. The
remaining exposures are parallel to these, and appear
to indicate a subordinate coast-line of comparatively
little elevation. It is known that these Laurentian
exposures constitute the oldest part of the continent,
a part which was land before any of the rocks of the
shad^^d portion of the map were deposited in the
bed of the ocean — all this shaded portion being
composed of rocks of various geological ages resting
on the older Laurentian. It is further to be observed
that the beds occurring in the Laurentian bands are
crumpled and folded in a most remarkable manner,
and that these folds were impressed upon them before
the deposition of the rocks next in geological age.

What then are these oldest rocks deposited by the
sea — the firctborn of the reign of the waters ? They
are very different in their external aspect from the
silt and mud, the sand and gravel, and the shell
and coral rocks of the modern sea, or of the more

TFE EOZOIC AQE8.

recent geological formations. Yet the difference is
one in condition rather than composition. The
members of this ancient aristocracy of the rocka
are made of the same clay with their fellows, but
have been subjected to a refining and crystallizing
process which has greatly changed their condition.
They have been, as geologists say, metamorphosed;
and are to ordinary rocks what a china vase is to
tha lump of clay from which it has been made.
Deeply buried in the earth under newer sediments,
they have been baked, until sandstones, gravels, and
clays came out bright and crystalline, as gneiss,
mica- schist, hornblende-schist, and quartzite — all
hard crystalline rocks showing at first sight no
resemblance to their original material, except in the
regularly stratified or bedded arrangement which
serves to distinguish them from igneous or volcanic
rocks. In like manner certain finer, calcareous sedi-
ments have been changed into Labrador feldspar,
sometimes gay with a beautiful play of colour, and
what were once common limestones appear as cry-
stalline marble. If the evidence of such metamor-
phoses is asked for, this is twofold. In the first
place, these rocks are similar in structure to more
modern beds which have been partially metamor-
phosed, and in which the transition from the unaltered
to the altered state can be observed. Secondly,
there are limited areas in the Laurentian itself, in
which the metamorphism has been so imperfect as
to permit traces of the original character of the rocks

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

III!

■Hi

to remain. It seems also quite certain, and this
is a most important point for our sketcli, that the
Laurentian ocean was not universal, but that there
were already elevated portions of the crust capable
of yielding sediment to the sea.

In North America these Laurentian rocks attain
to an enormous thickness. This has been estimated
by Sir W. E. Logan at 30,000 feet, so that the beds
would, if piled on each other horizontally, be as high
as the highest mountains on earth. They appear to
consist of two great series, the Lower and LTpper
Laurentian. Even if we suppose that in the e ..rlier
stages of the world^s history erosion and deposition
were somewhat more rapid than at present, the
formation of such deposits, probably more widely
spread than any that succeeded them, must have
required an enormous length of time.

Geologists long looked in vain for evidences of life
in the Laurentian period; but just as astronomers
have suspected the existence of unknown planets
from the perturbations due to their attraction, geolo-
gists have guessed that there must have been some
living things on earth even at this early time. Dana
and Sterry Hunt especially have committed them-
selves to such speculations; The reasons for this
belief may be stated thus: (1.) In later formations
limestone is usually an organic rock, produced by the
accumulation of shells, corals, and similar calcareous
organisms in the sea, and there are enormous lime-
stones in the Laurentian, constituting regular beds.

THE EOZOIC AGES.

(2.) In later formations coaly matter is an organic
substance, derived from vegetables, and there are
large quantities of Laurentian carbon in the form of
graphite. (3.) In later formations deposits of iron
ores are almost always connected with the deoxidising
influence of organic matters as an eflScient cause of
their accumulation, and the Laurentian contains im-
mense deposits of iron ore, occurring in layers in the
manner of later deposits of these minerals. (4.) The
limestone, carbon, and iron of the Laurentian exist
in association with the other beds in the same manner
as in the later formations in which they are known to
be organic.

In addition to this inferential evidence, however,
one well-marked animal fossil has at length been
found in the Laurentian of Canada, Eozoon Canade7ise,
(fig. 7), a gigantic representative of one of the lowest
forms of animal life, which the writer had the honour
of naming and describing in 1865 — its name of
"Dawn-animal^^ having reference to its great an-
tiquity and possible connection with the dawn of life
on our planet. In the modern seas, among the
multitude of low forms of life with which they swarm,
occur some in which the animal matter is a mer^
jelly, almost without distinct parts or organs, yet un-
questionably endowed with life of an animal character.
Some of these creatures, ibhe Foraminifera, have the
power of secreting at the surface of their bodies a
calcareous shell, often divided into numerous cham-
bers, communicating with each other, and with the

111

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

water without, by pores or orifices through which the
animal can extend soft and delicate prolongations of
its gelatinous body, which, when stretched out into
the water, serve for arms and legs. In modern times

Fig. 7. Eozoon Canadense. Dawson.

The oldest known rnimal. Portion of skeleton, two-thirds natural size, (a)
Tubulated cell-w I, magnified, (b) Tortion of canal system, magnified.

these creatures, though extremely abundant in the
ocean, are usually small, often microscopic ; but in a
fossil state there are others of somewhat larger size,
though few equalling the Eozoon, which seems to
have been a sessile creature, resting on the bottom of

THE EOZOIC AGES.

the sea, and covering its gelatinous body with a thin
crust of carbonate of lime or limestone, adding to this,
as it grew in size, crust after crust, attached to each
other by numerous partitions, and perforated with
pores for the emission of gelatinous filaments. This
continued growth of gelatinous animal matter and
carbonate of lime went on from age to age, accumu-
lating great beds of limestone, in some of which the
entire form and most minute structures of the creature
are preserved, while in other cases the organisms have
been broken up, and the limestones are a mere con-
geries of their fragments. It is a remarkable instance
of the permanence of fossils, that in laese ancient
organisms the minutest pores through which the
semi-fluid matter of these humble animals passed,
have been preserved in the most delicate perfection.
The existence of such creatures supposes that of other
organisms, probably microscopic plants, on which they
could feed. No traces of these have been observed,
though the great quantity of carbon in the beds
probably implies the existence of larger seaweeds.
No other form of animal has yet been distinctly
recognized in the Laurentian limestones, but there are
fragments of calcareous matter which may have be-
longed to organisms distinct from Eozoon. Of life on
the Laurentian land we know nothing, unless the
great beds of iron ore already referred to may be
taken as a proof of land vegetation.*

* It is proper to state here that some geologists and natural-
ists still doubt the organic nature of Eozoon. Their objections,

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

To an observer in the Laurentian period, tlie earth
would have presented an almost boundless ocean, its
waters, perhaps, still warmed with the internal heat,
and sending up copious exhalations to be condensed in
thick clouds and precipitated in rain. Here and there
might be seen chains of rocky islands, many of them
volcanic, or ranges of bleak hills, perhaps clothed with
vegetation the forms of which are unknown to us. In
the bottom of -^^he sea, while sand and mud and gravel
were being deposited in successive layers in some
portions of the ocean floor, in others great reefs of
Eozoon were growing up in the manner of reefs of coral.
If we can imagine the modern Pacific, with its volcanic
islands and reefs of coral, to be deprived of all other
forms of life, we should have a somewhat accurate
picture of the Eozoic time as it appears to ns now.
I say as it appears to us now ; for we do not know
what new discoveries remain to be made. ^lore
especially the immense deposits of carbon and iron in
the Laurentian would seem to bespeak a profusion of
plant life in the sea or on the land, or both, second to
that of no other period that succeeded, except that
of the great coal formation. Perhaps no remnant of
this primitive vegetation exists retaining its form or
structure; but we may hope for better things, and

however, so far as stated publicly, have been shown to depend
on misapprehension as to the structures observed and their
state of preservation ; and specimens recently found in com-
paratively unaltered rocks have indicated the true character of
those more altered by metamorphism.

THE EOZOIC AGES.

cherish the expectation that some fortunate discovery
may still reveal to us the forms of the vegetation of
the Laurentian time.

It is remarkable that the humbly organized living
things which built up the Laurentian limestones have
continued to exist unchanged, save in dimensions, up
to modern times ; and here and there throughout the
geological series we find beds of Foraminiferous lime-
stone, similar, except in the species of Foraminifera
composing them, to that of the Laurentian. It is
true that other kinds of creatures, the coral animals
more particularly, have been introduced, and have
proved equally efficient builders of limestones ; but
in the deeper parts of the sea the Foraminifera con-
tinue to assert their pre-eminence in this respect, and
the dredge reveals in the depths of our modern oceans
beds of calcareous matter which may be regarded as
identical in origin with the limestones formed in the
period which is to us the dawn of organic life.

Many inquiries suggest themselves to the zoologist
in connection with the life of the Laurentian period.
Was Eozoon the first creature in which the wondrous
forces of animal life were manifested, when, in obe-
dience to the Divine fiat, the waters first "swarmed
with swarmers," as the terse and expressive language
of the Mosaic record phrases it ? If so, in contem-
plating this organism we are in the presence of one of
the greatest of natural wonders — brought nearer than
in any other case to the actual workshop of the
Almighty Maker. Still we cannot affirm that other

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

il I!

iiilii

creatures even more humble may not have preceded
Eozoon, since such humble organisms are known in
the present world. Attempts have often been made,
and very recently have been renewed with much affir-
mation of success, to prove that such low forms of life
may originate spontaneously from their materials in
the waters ; but so far these attempts merely prove
that the invisible germs of the lower animals and
plants exist everywhere, and that they have marvellous
powers of resisting extreme heat and other injurious
influences. We need not, therefore, be surprised if
even lower forms than Eozoon may have preceded
that creature, or if some of these may be found, like
the organisms said to live in modern boiling springs,
to have had the power of existing even at a time
when the ocean may have been almost in a state of
ebullition. Another problem is that of means of
subsistence for the Eozoic Foraminifera. A similar
problem exists in the case of the modern ocean, in
whose depths live multitudes of creatures, where, so
far as we know, vegetable matter, ordinarily the
basis of life, cannot exist in a living condition. It is
probable, however, from the researches of Dr. Wyville
Thompson, that this is to be accounted for by the
abundance of life at the surface and in the shallower
parts of the sea, and by the consequent diffusion
through the water of organic matter in an extremely
tenuous state, but yet sufficient to nourish these
creatures. The same may have been the case in the
Eozoic sea, where, judging from the vast amount of

THE EOZOIC AQES.

residual carbon, there must have been abundance of
organic matter, either growing at the bottom, or
falling upon it from the surface ; and as the Eozoon
limestones are usually free from such material, we may-
assume that the animal life in them was sufficient to
consume the vegetable pabulum. On the other hand,
as detached specimens of Eozoon occur in graphitic
limestones, we suppose that in some cases the vege-
table "matter was in excess of the animal, and this may
have been either because of its too great exuberance,
or because the water was locally too shallow to permit
Eozoon and similar creatures to flourish. These
details we must for the present fill up conjecturally ;
but the progress of discovery may give us further
light as to the precise conditions of the beginning of
life in the " great and wide sea wherein are moving
things innumerable," and which is as much a wonder
now as in the days of the author of the " Hymn of
Creation,"* in regard to the life that swarms in all
its breadth and depth, the vast variety of that life,
and its low and simple types, of which we can 'affirm
little else than that they move.

The enormous accumulations of sediment on the
still thin crust of the earth in the Laurentian period
— accumulations probably arranged in lines parallel
to the directions of disturbance already indicated —
weighed down the surface, and caused great masses
of the sediment to come within the influence of the
heated interior nucleus. Thus, extensive meta-

* Psalm civ.

THE STOET OP THE EARTH "AND MAN.

lil

morphism took place, and at lengtli the tension
' becoming too great to be any longer maintained, a
second great collapse occurred, crumpling and dis-
turbing the crust, and throwing up vast masses of
the Laurentian itself, probably into lofty mountains
— many of which still remain of considerable height,
though they have been subjected to erosion through-
out all the extent of subsequent geological time.

The Eozoic age, whose history we hav e thus shortly
sketched, is fertile in material of thought for the
geologist and the naturalist. Until the labours of
Murchison, Sedgwick, Hall, and Barrande had de-
veloped the vast thickness and organic richness of the
Silurian and Cambrian rocks, no geologist had any
idea of the extent to which li% had reached backward
in time. But when this new and primitive world of
Si^'iria was unveiled, men felt assured that they had
now at last reached to the beginnings of life. The
argument on this side of the question was thus put
by one of the most thoughtful of English geologists,
Professor Phillips : " It is ascertained that in passing
, downwards through the lower Palaeozoic strata, the
forms of life grow fewer and fewer, until in the lowest
Cambrian rocks they vanish entirely. In the thick
series of these strata in the Longmynd, hardly any
traces of life occur, yet these strata are of such a kind
as might be expected to yield them. . . . The
materials are fine-grained or arenaceous, with or with-
out mica, in laminae or beds quite distinct, and of
various thicknesses, by no means unlikely to retain

THE EOZOIC AGES.

impressions of a delicate nature, such as those left by
graptolites, or mollusks, or annulose crawlers. Indeed,
one or two such traces are supposed to have been
recognised, so that the almost total absence of the
traces of life in this enormous series is best understood
by the supposition that in these parts of the sea little
or no life existed. But the same remark of the ex-
cessive rarity of life in the lower deposits is made in
North America, in Norway, and in Bohemia, countries
well searched for this very purpose, so that all our
observations lead to the conviction that the lowest of
all the strata are quite deficient of organic remains.
The absence is general — it appears due to a general
cause. Is it not probable that during these very early
periods the ocean and its sediments were nearly
devoid of plants and animals, and in the earliest time
of all, which is represented by sediments, quite de-
prived of such ? " These words were written ten years
ago, and about the same time were published in
America those anticipations of the probability of life
in the Laurentian already referred to, and Lyell was
protesting against the name Primordial, on the ground
that it implied that we had reached the beginning
of life, when this was not proved. Yet there were
elements of truth in both views. It is true now, as
then, that the Primordial seems to be a morning hour
of life, having, as we shall see in our next paper, un-
mistakable signs about it of that approach to the
beginning to which Phillips refers. It is also true
that it is not so early a morning hour as one who has

''"

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

III 1(1

riiiiii

not risen witli the dawn might suppose, since with its
apparently small beginnings of life it is almost as far
removed from the Eozoon reefs of the ear y Lauren-
tian on the one hand, as it is from the modern period
on the other. The dawn of life seems to have been
a very slow and protracted process, and it may have
required as long a time between the first appearance
of Eozoon and the first of those primordial Trilobites
which the next period will introduce to our notice,
as between these and the advent of Adem. Perhaps
no lesson is more instructive than this as to the length
of the working days of the Almighty.

Another lesson lies ready for us in these same facts.
Theoretically, plants should have preceded animals;
and this also is the assertion of the first chapter of
Genesis ; but the oldest fossil certainly known to us
is an animal. What if there were still earlier plants,
whose remains are still to be discovered ? For mv
own part, I can see no reason to despair of the
discovery of an EojpUytlc period preceding the Eozoic;
perhaps preceding it through ages of duration to us
almost immeasurable, though still within the possible
time of the existence of the crust of the earth. It
is even possible that in a warm and humid condition
of the atmosphere, before it had been caused " to
rain upon the earth," and when dense "mists as-
cended from the earth and watered the whole surface
of the ground,"* vegetation may have attained to a

* Genesis ii. 6. For a description of this Eophytic period of
Genesis, see the Author's " Archaia," pp. 160 et seq.

THE EOZOIC AQES.

profusion and grandeur unequalled in the periods
whose flora is known to us.

But while Eozoou thus preaches of progress and of
development, it has a tale to tell of unity and same-
ness. Just as Eozoon lived in the Laurentian sea,
and was preserved for us by the infiltration of its
canals with siliceous mineral matters, so its suc-
cessors and representatives have gone on through all
the ages accumulating limestone in the sea bottom.
To-day fchey are as active as they were then, and are
being fossilised in the same way. The English chalk
and the chalky modern mud of the Atlantic sea-bed,
are precisely similar in origin to the Eozoic lime-
stones. There is also a strange parallelism in the fact
that in the modern seas Foraminifera can live under
conditions of deprivation of light and vital air, anc.
of enormous pressure, under which few organisms
of greater complexity could exist, and that in like
manner Eozoon could live in seas which were perhaps
as yet unfit for most other forms of life.

It has been attempted to press the Eozoic Forami-
nifers into the service of those theories of evolution
which would deduce the animals of one geological
period by descent with modification from those of
another ; but it must be confessed that Eozoon proves
somewhat intractable in this connection. In the first
place, the creature is the grandest of his class, both
in form and structure; and if, on the hypothesis of
derivation, it has required the whole lapse of geo-
logical time to disintegrate Eozoon into Orbulina,

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

j» I

I i

Globigerina, and other comparatively simple Forami-
nifcrs of the modern seas, it may have taken as long,
probably much longer, to develop Eozoon from such
simple forms in antecedent periods. Time fails for
such a process. Again, the deep sea has been the
abode of Foraminifers from the first. In this deep
sea they have continued to live without improvement,
and with little material change. How little lil-ely is
it that in less congenial abodes they could have im-
proved into higher grades of being ; especially since
we know that the result in actual fact of any such
struggle for existence is merely the production of
depauperated Foraminifers ? Further, there is no
link of connection known to us between Eozoon and
any of the animals of the succeeding Primordial, which
are nearly all essentially new types, vastly more
different from Eozoon than it is from many modern
creatures. Any such connection is altogether imagin-
ary and unsupported by proof. The laws of creation
actually illustrated by this primeval animal are only
these : First, that there has been a progress ir
creation from few, low, and generalised types o^
to more numerous, higher, and more specialised t^^ o;
and secondly, that every type, low or high, was in-
troduced at first in its best and highes- form, and was,
as, a type, subject to degeneracy, and to partial or
"total replacement by higher types subsequently in-
troduced. I do not mean that we could learn all this
from Eozoon alone ; but that, rightly considered, it
illustrates these laws, which we gather from the

< !

THE EOZOIC AGES.

subsequent progress of tlie creative work. As to the
mystery of the origin of living beings from dead
matter, or uny changes which they may have under-
gone after their creation, it is absolutely silent.

llPiW" 'ill.

CHAPTER III.

::iiji!

THE PRIMOEDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

Between the time when Eor.oori Canadenso flourished
in the seas of the Laurentian period, and the age
which we have been in the habit of calling Primor-
dial, or Cambrian, a great gap evidently exists in our
knowledge of the succession of life on both of the
continents, representing a vast lapse of time, in which
the beds of the Upper Laurentian were deposited, and
in which the Laurentian sediments were altered, con-
torted, and upheaved, before another immense series
of beds, the Huronian, or Lower Cambrian, was formed
in the bottom of the sea. Eozoon and its companions
occur in the Lower Laurentian. The Upper Lauren-
tian has afforded no evidence of life ; and even those
conditions from which we could infer life are absent.
The Lowest Cambrian, as we shall see, presents only
a few traces of living beings. Still, the physical
history of this interval must have been most impor-
tant. The wide level bottom of the Laurentian sea
was broken up and thrown into those bold ridges
which were to constitute the nuclei of the existing
continents. Along the borders of these new-made
lands intense volcanic eruptions broke forth, produ-
cing great quantities of lava and scoriae and huge
' beds of conglomerate and volcanic ash, which are

li III

THE PRIMORDIAL^ OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

characteristic features of the older Cambrian in both
hemispheres. Such conditions, undoubtedly not fa-
vourable to life, seem to have prevailed, and extended
their influence very widely, so that the sediments of
this period are among tho most barren in fossils of
any in the crust of the earth. If any quiet undis-
turbed spots existed in which the Lower Laurentian
life could be continued and extended in preparation
for the next period, we have yet discovered few of
them. The experience of other geological periods
would, however, entitle us to look for such oases in
the Lower Cambrian desert, and to expect to find
there some connecting links between the life of the
Eozoic and the very dissimilar fauna of the Primor-
dial.

The western hemisphere, where the Laurentian is
so well represented, is especially unproductive in
fossils of the immediately succeeding period. The
only known exception is the occurrence of Eozoon
and of apparent casts of worm-burrows in rocks at
Madoc in Canada, overlying the Laurentian, and be-
lieved to be of Huronian age, and certain obscure
fossils of uncertain affinities, recently detected by Mr.
Billings, in rocks supposed to be of this age, in New-
foundland. Here, however, the European series comes
in to give us some small help. Giimbel lius described
in Bavaria a great series of gneissic rocks c? rrespond-
ing to the Laurentian, or at least to the lower part of
it ; above these are what he calls the Hercynian mica-
slate and primitive clay- slate, in the latter of which

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

!iW

mil iiii

lie finds a peculiar species of Eozoon, wliicli he names
Eozoon Bavaricum. In England also the Longmynd
groups of rocks in Shropshire and in Wales appears
to be the immediate successor to the Upper Lauren-
tian ; and it has afibrded some obscure " worm-
burrows," or, perhaps, casts of sponges or fucoids,
with a small shell of the genus Lingulella, and also
fragments of crustaceans (Palceopyr"^ The " Fucoid
Sandstones" of Sweden, believed to be of similar
age, afford traces of marine plants and burrows of
worms, while the Harlech beds of Wales have afforded
to Mr. Hicks a considerable number of fossil animals,
not very t'issimilar from those of the Upper Cambrian.
If these :'ocks are really the next in order to the
Eozoic, they show a marked advance in life immedi-
ately on the commencement of the Primordial period.
In Ireland, the curious Oldhamia, noticed below, ap-
pears to occur in rocks equally old. As we ascend,
however, into the Middle and Upper parts of the
Cambrian, the Menevian and Lingula flag-beds of
Britain, and their equivalents in Bohemia and Scan-
dinavia, and the Acadian and Potsdam groups of
America, we find a rich and increasing abundance of
animal remains, constituting the first Primordial fauna
of Barrande.

The rocks of the Primordial are principally sandy
and argillaceous, forming flags and slates, without
thick limestones, and often through great thicknesses,
very destitute of organic remains, but presenting some
layers, especially in their upward extonsion, crowded

THE PRIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

with fossils. These are no longer mere Protozoa, but
include representatives of all the great groups of ani-
mals which yet exist, except the vertebrates. We
shall not attempt any systematic classification of
these; but, casting our dredge and tow-net into the
Primordial sea, examine what we collect, rather in the
order of relative abundance than of classification.

Over great breadths of the sea bottom we find vast
numbers of little bivalve shells of the form and size
of a finger-nail, fastened by fleshy peduncles imbedded
in the sand or mud; and thus anchored, collecting
their food by a pair of fringed arms from the minute
animals and plants which swarm in the surrounding
waters.- These are the Lingulm, from the abundance
of which some of the Primordial beds have received
in England and Wales the name of Lingula flags.
In America, in like manner, in some beds near St.
John, New Brunswick, the valves of these shells are
so abundant as to constitute at least half of the
material of the bed ; and alike in Europe and
America, Lingula and allied forms are among the
most abundant Primordial fossils. The Lingula3 are
usually reckoned to belong to the great sub-king-
dom of mollusks, which includes all the bivalve and
univalve shell-fish, and several other groups of crea-
tures; but an able American naturalist, Mr. Morse,
has recently shown that they have many points of
resemblance to the worms ; and thus, perhaps, consti-
tute one of those curious old-fashioned " comprehen-
sive " types, as they have been called, which present

!. 0

•2 a

e:i

'-'^

shells
the e

THE PRIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

resemblances to groups of creatures, in more modern
times quite distinct from each other. He has also
found that the modern Lingulge are very tenacious of
life, and capable of suiting themselves to different
circumstances, a fact which, perhaps, has some con-
nection with their long persistence in geological time.
They are in any case members of the group of lamp-
shells, creatures specially numerous and important in
the earlier geological ages.

The Lingulje are especially interesting as ex-
amples of a type of beings continued almost from the
dawn of life until now ; for their shells, as they exist
in the Primordial, are scarcely distinguishable from
those of members of the genus which still live. While
other tribes of animals have run through a great
number of different forms, these little creatures re-
main the same. Another interesting point is a most
curious chemical relation of the Lingula, with refe-
rence to the material of its shell. The shells of mol-
lusks generally, and even of the ordinary lamp-shells,
are hardened by common limestone or carbonate of
lime: the rarer substance, phosphate of lime, is in
general restricted to the formation of the bones of
the higher animals. In the case of the latter, this
relation depends apparently on the fact thnt the
albuminous substances on which animals are chiefly
nourished require for their formation the presence
of phosphates in the plant. Hence the animal
naturally obtains phosphate of lime or bone-earth
with its food, and its system is related to this chemi-

JP"

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

cal fact in such wise that phosphate of lime is a most
appropriate and suitable material for its teeth and
bones. Now, in the case of the lower animals of the
sea, their food, not being of the nature of the richer
land plants, but consisting mainly of minute algae
and of animals which prey on these, furnishes, not
phosphate of lime, but carbonate. An exception to
this occurs in the case of certain animals of low grade,
sponges, etc., which, feeding on minute plants with
siliceous cell-walls, assimilate the flinty matter and
form a siliceous skeleton. But this is an exception
of downward tendency, in which these animals ap-
proach to plants of low grade. The exception in the
case ^of Lingulee is in the other direction. It gives
to these humble creatures the same material for their
hard parts which is usually restricted to animals of
much higher rank. The purpose of this arrangement,
whether in relation to the cause of the deviation from
the ordinary rule or its utility to the animal itself,
remains unknown. It has, however, been ascertained
by Dr. Hunt, who first observed the fact in the case
of the Primordial Lingulae, that their modern suc-
cessors coincide with them, and differ from their
contemporaries among the mollusks in the same par-
ticular. This may seem a trifling matter, but it
shows in this early period the origination of the dif-
ference still existing in the materials of which animals
construct their skeletons, and also the wonderful per-
sistence of the Lingulae, through all the geological
ages, in the material of their shells. This is the more

THE PRIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

remarkable, in connection with our own very slender
acquaintance with the phenomenon, in relation eith'"^
to its efficient or final causes.

Before leaving the Lingulae, I may mention that
Mr. Morse informs me that living specimens, when
detached from their moorings, can creep like worms,
leaving long furrows on the sand, and that they can
also construct sand-tubes wherein to shelter them-
selves. This shows that some of the abundant '^worm
burrows '' of the Primordial may have been the work
of these curious little shell-fishes, as w jII as, perhaps,
some of the markings which have been described
under the name of Eophyton, and have been supposed,
I think incorrectly, to be remains of land plants.

In addition to Lingula we may obtain, though
rarely, lamp-shells of another type, that of the Orthids.
These have the valves hinged along a straight line,
in the middle of which is a notch for the peduncle,
and the valves are ofcen marked with ribs or strige.
The Orthids were content with limestone for their
shells, and apparently lived in the same circumstances
with the Lingulee; and in the period succeeding the
Primordial they became far more abundant. Yet
they perished at an early stage of the world's pro-
gress, and have no representatives in the modern
seas.

In many parts of the Primordial ocean the muddy
bottom swarmed with crustaceans, relatives of our
shrimps and lobsters, but of a form which differs so
much from these modern shell-fishes that the question

mr^

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

of their affinities has long been an unsettled one
with zoologists. Hundreds of species are known,
some almost microscopic in size, others a foot in
length. All are provided with a broad flat horseshoe-
shaped head-plate, which, judging from its form and
a comparison with the modern king-crabs or horse-
shoe-crabs, must have been intended as a sort of
mud-plough to enable them to excavate burrows or
hide themselves in the slimy ooze of the ocean bed.
On the sides of this buckler are placed the prominent
eyes, furnished with many separate ^enses, on pre-
cisely the same plan with those of modern crustaceans
and insects, and testifying, as Buckland long ago
pointed out, to the identity of the action of light in
the ancient and the modern seas. The body was
composed of numerous segments, each divided trans-
versely into three lobes, whence they have received
the name of Ti'ilohites, and the whole articulated, so
that the creature could roll itself into a ball, like the
modern slaters or wood-lice, which are not very dis-
tant relatives of these old crustaceans.* The limbs
of Trilobites were long unknown, and it was even
doubted whether they had any ; but recent discoveries
have shown that they had a series of flat limbs useful
both for swimming and creeping. The Trilobites,
under many specific and generic forms, range from

* Woodward has recent!^ suggested affinities of Trilobites
with the Isopods or equal-footed crustaceans, on the evidence
of a remarkable specimen with remains of feet described by
Billings.

THE PEIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

the Primordial to the Carboniferous rocks, but are
altogether wanting in the more recent formations and
in the modern seas. The Trilobites lived on muddy
bottoms, and their remains are extremely abundant
in shaly and slaty beds, though found also in lime-
stone and sandstone. In the latter they have left
most curious traces of their presence in the trails
which they have produced. Some of the most ancient
sandstones have their surfaces covered with rows of
punctured impressions (Pj'otichnites, first foot-prints),
others have strange series of transverse grooves with
longitudinal ones at the side (GUmactichnites, ladder
foot-prints) ; others are oval burrows, marked with
transverse lines and a ridge along the middle {Riisich-
nites, wrinkle foot-prints). All of these so nearly
resemble the trails and tracks of modern king-crabs
that there can be little doubt as to their origin.
Many curious striated grooves and bifid marks, found
on the surfaces of Primordial beds, and which have
been described as plants, are probably only the marks
of the oral organs or feet of these and similar crea-
tures, which passed their lives in grubbing for food
in the soft, slimy ooze, though they could, no doubt,
like the modern king-crabs, swim when necessary.
Some still more shrimp-like creatures, Hymenocaris,
which are found with them, certainly had this power.

A lower type of annulose or ringed animal than that
of the Trilobites, is that of the worms. These crea-
tures cannot be preserved in a fossil state, except in
the case of those which inhabit calcareous tubes : but

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

tlie marks which their jointed bodies and numerous
side-bristles leave on the sand and mud may, when
buried under succeeding sediments, remain ; and ex-
tensive surfaces of very old rocks are marked in this
way, either with cylindrical burrows or curious trails
with side scratches looking like pinnate leaves. These
constitute the genus Crusiana, while others of more
ordinary form belong to the genus ArcnicoUtes, so
named from the common Arenicola, or lobworm, whose
burrows they are supposed to resemble. Markings
referable to seaweed also occur in the Primordial rocks,
and also some grotesque and almost inexplicable or-
ganisms known as Ohlhamia, which have been chiefly
found in the Primordial of Ireland. One of the most
common forms consists of a series of apparently
jointed threads disposed in fan-like clusters on a cen-
tral stem {Oldhmnla antiqua). Another has a wider
and simpler fan-like arrangement of filaments. These
have been claimed by botanists as algae, and have been
regarded by zoologists as minute Zoophytes, while
some more sceptical have supposed that they may be
mere inorganic wrinklings of the beds. This last view
does not, however, seem tenable. They are, perhaps,
the predecessors of the curious GraptoUtes, which we
shall have to represent in the Silurian.

Singularly enough, Foraminifera, the characteristic
fossils of the Laurentian, have been little recognised in
the Primordial, nor are there any limestones known
so massive as those of the former series. There are,
however, a number of remarkable organisms, which

THE rRIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

have usually been described as sponges, but are more
probably partly of tho nature of sponges and partly
of that of Foraminifera. Of tliis kind are some of the
singular conical fossils described by Billings as Archceo-
cyathus, and found in the Primordial limestone of
Labrador. They are hollow within, with radiating
pores and plates, calcareous in some, and in others
with siliceous spicules like those of modern sponges.
Some of them are several inches in diameter, and they
must have grown rooted in muddy bottoms, in the
manner of some of the deep-sea sponges of modern
times. One species at least of these creatures was a
true Foraminifer, allied, though somewhat distantly, to
Eozoon. In some parts of the Primordial sandstones,
curious funnel-shaped casts in sand occur, sometimes
marked with spiral lines. The name Hlstioclerma has
been given to some of these, and they have been
regarded as mouths of worm-burrows. Others of
larger size have been compared to inverted stumps
of trees. If they were produced by worms, some of
these must have been of gigantic size, but Billings
lias recently suggested that they may be casts of
ponges that lived like some modern species imbedded
in the sand. In accordance with this view I have
represented these curious objects in the engraving,
On the whole, the life of these oldest Palaeozoic rocks
is not very abundant ; but there are probably represen-
tatives of three of the great subdivisions of animals —
or, as some would reckon the n. of four — the Protozoa,
tbe Radiata (Coelenterata), the Mollusca, and the

1 4

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Annulosa. And it is most interesting thus to find in
these very old rocks the modern subdivisions of
animals already represented, and these by types some
of them nearly allied to existing inhabitants of the
seas. I have endeavoured in the engraving to repre-
sent some of the leading forms of marine life in this
ancient period.

Perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries in
these rocks is that of rain-marks and shrinkage -cracks,
in some of the very oldest beds — those of the Long-
mynd in Shropshire. On the modern muddy beach
any ordinary observer is familiar with the cracks
produced by the action of the sun and air on the dried
surfaces left by the tides. Such cracks, covered by
the waters of a succeeding tide, may be buried in
newer silt, and once preserved in this way are im-
perishable. In like manner, the pits left by passing
showers of rain on the -nud recently left bare by the
tide may, when the mud has dried, become sufficiently
firm to be preserved. In this way we have rain -marks
of various geological ages; but the oldest known are
those of the Longmynd, where they are associated
both with ripple-marks and shrinkage-cracks. We
thus have evidence of the action of tides, of sun, and
of rain, in these ancient periods just as in the present
day. Were there no land animals to prowl along the
low tidal flats in search of food ? Were there no herbs
or trees to drink in the rains and flourish in the sun-
shine ? If there were, no bone or footprint on the
shore, or drifted leaf or branch, has yet revealed their
existence to the eyes of geologists.

iiii:i

THE PRIMORDIAL, OK CAMBRIAN AGE.

The beds of the Primordial age exist in England, in
Bohemia, in Sweden and Norway, and also in North
America. They appear to have been deposited along
the shores of the old Laurentian continent, and
probably some of them indicate very deep water.
The Primordial rocks are in many parts of the world
altered and hardened. They have often assumed a
slaty structure, and their bedding, and the fossils
which they contain, are both affected by this. The
usual view entertained as to what is called slaty struc-
ture is, that it depends on pressure, acting on more or
less compressible material in some direction usually
different from that of the bedding. Such pressure has
the effect of arranging all the flat particles — as scales
of mica, etc. — in planes parallel to the compressing
surface. Hence, if much material of this kind is
present in the sediment, the whole rock assumes a
fissile character, causing it to split readily into thin
plates. That such yielding to pressure has actually
taken place is seen very distinctly in micror.copic
sections of some slaty rocks, which often show not
only a laminated structure, but an actual crumpling
on a small scale, causing them to assume almost the
aspect of woody fibre. Such rocks often remind a
casual observer of decaying trunks of trees, and
sections of them under the microscope show the most
minute and delicate crumpling. It is also proved by
the condition of the fossils the beds contain. These
are often distorted, so that some of the^- are length-
ened and others shortened^ and if specimens were

THE STOEY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

selected with that view, it would be quite easy to
suppose that those lengthened by distortion are of
different species from those distorted so as to be
shortened. Slaty cleavage and distortion are not,
however, confined to Primordial rocks, but occur in
altered sediments of various ages.

The Primordial sediments must have at one time
been very widely distributed, and must have filled up
many of the inequalities produced by the rending and
contortion of the Laurentian beds. Their thicker and
more massive portions are, however, necessarily along
the borders of the Laurentian continents, and as they
in their turn were raised up into land, they became
exposed to the denuding action first of the sea, and
afterguards of the rain and rivers, and were so exten-
sively wasted away that only in a few regions do large
areas of them remain visible. That of Bohemia has
afforded to Barrande a great number of most interest-
ing fossils. The rocks of St. David^s in Wales, those
of Shropshire in England, and those of Wicklow in
Ireland are also of great interest ; and next to these
in importance are, perhaps, the Huronian and Acadian
groups of North America, in which continent — as for
example in Nova Scotia and in some parts of New
England — there are extensive areas of old metamor-
phic rocks whose age has not been determined by
fossils, but which may belong to this period.

The question of division lines of formations is one
much agitated in the case of the Cambrian rocks.
Whether certain beds are to be called Cambrian or

THE PRIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

Silurian has been a point greatly controverted ; and
the terms Primordial and Primordial Silurian have been
used as means to avoid the raising of this difficulty.
Many of our division lines in geology are arbitrary
and conventional, and this may be the case with that
between the Primordial and Silurian, the one age
graduating into the other. There appears to be, how^
ever, the best reason to recognise a distinct Cambrian
period, preceding the two great periods, those of the
second and third faunas of Barrande, to which the
term Silurian is usually applied. On the other hand,
in so far as our knowledge extends at present, a
strongly marked line of separation exists between the
Laurentian and Primordial, the latter resting on the
edges of the former, which seems then to have been as
much altered as now. Still a break of this kind may
be, perhaps must be, merely local ; and may vary in
amount. Thus, in some places we find rocks of Silu-
rian and later ages resting directly on the Laurentian,
without the intervention of the Primordial. In any
case, where a line of coast is steadily sinking, each
succeeding deposit will overlap that which went before;
and this seems to have been the case with the Lauren-
tian shore when the Primordial and Silurian were being
doposited. Hence over large spaces the Primordial is
absent, being probably buried up, except where exposed
by denudation at the margin of the two formations.

This occurs in several parts of Canada, while the
Laurentian rocks have evidently been subjected to
metamorphism and long- continued weathering before

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

the Lower Silurian were deposited ; and in some cases
the latter rest on weather-worn and pitted surfaces,
and are filled with angular bits of the underlying rock,
as well as with drift-shells which have been cast on
these old Laurentian shores ; while in other cases the
Silurian rests on smooth water-worn Laurentian rocks,
and is filled at the junction with well-rounded pebbles
and grains of sand which have evidently been subjected
to a more thorough attrition than those of the present
beach. With respect to the line of division between
the Primordial and the next succeeding rocks, it will
be seen that important movements of the continents
occurred at the close of the Cambrian, and in some
places the Cambrian rocks have been much disturbed
before the deposition of the Lower Silurian.

Seated on some ancient promontory of the Lau-
rentian, and looking over the plain which, in the
Primordial and Lower Silurian periods was the sea, I
have often wished for some shred of vegetable matter
to tell what lived on that land when the Primordial
surf beat upon its shore, and washed up the Trilobites
and Brachiopods of those old seas ; but no rock has
yet taken up its parable to reveal the secret, and the
Primordial is vocal only with the old story : " And God
said. Let the waters swarm with swarming living
things, and it was so.'' So our picture of the period
may represent a sea-bottom swarming with animals of
low grade, some sessile, som.e locomotive ; and we may
merely suppose a distant shore with vegetation dimly
seen, and active volcanoes ; but a shore on which no

iiiiiiiiiiii

iilT,.;' .: J I

THE PEIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

foot of naturalist has yet trod to scan its productions.
Very different estimates have been formed of the
amount of Hfe in this period, according to the position
given to its latest limit. Taking some of the more
modern views of this subject, we might have included
among the Primordial animals many additional crea-
tures, which we prefer noticing in the Silurian, since
it may at least be affirmed that their head- quarters
were in that age, even if they had a beginning in the
Primordial. It may be interesting here, however, to
note the actual amount of life known to us in this
period, taken in its largest scope. In doing this,
I shall take advantage of an interesting table given by
Dr. Bigsby,* and representing the state of knowledge
in 1868, and shall group the species in such a manner
as to indicate the relative abundance of distinct types
of structure. We find then —

Plants (all, or nearly all, supposed to be
seaweeds, ai)d some, probably, mere
tracks or trails of animals)

Sponges, and similar creatures

Corals and their allies

Starfishes and their allies

Worms

Trilobites and other crustaceans .

Lamp- shells and other mollusco) is

Common bivalve mollusks

Common univalve mollusks and their
allies ......

Higher mollusks, nautili,cuttle-fishes,etc,

In all
# "Thesaurus Siluricus."

22 species.

27 „

6 „

4 „

29 „

442 „

193 „

12 „

172 „

65 „

972 „

THE STOKY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Now in this emimeration we observe, in the first
place, a representation of all the lower or invertebrate
groups of the waters. We have next the remarkable
fact that the Radiata of Cuvier, the lowest and most
plant-like of the marine animals, are comparatively
slenderly represented, yet that there are examples of
their higher as well as of their lower forms. We
have the further fact that the crustaceans, the highest
marine animals of the annulose type, are predominant
in the waters ; and that in the mollusks the highest
and lowest groups are most plentiful, the middle less
so. The whole number of species is small, and this
may arise either from our having here reached an
early period in the history of life, or from our in-
formation being defective. Both are probably true.
Still, of the animals known, we cannot say that the
proportions of the different kinds depend on defec-
tive knowledge. There is no reason, for example, why
corals should not have been preserved as well as
Trilobites, or why Brachiopods should have been
preserved rather than ordinary bivalves. The pro-
portions, therefore, it may be more safe to reason from
than the aggregate. In looking at these proportions,
and comparing them with those of modern seas, we
are struck with the great number of species represent-
ing some types either now ex l act or comparatively
rare : the Trilobites and Brachiopods more particularly.
We are astonished at the enormous preponderance
of these two groups, and especially of the Trilobites.
Further, we observe that while some formSj like

THE PRIMORDIAL, OR CAMBRIAN AGE.

Lingula and Nautilus, have persisted down to modern
times, others, like the Trilobites and Orthids, perished
very early. In all this we can dimly perceive a
fitness of living things to physical conditions, a
tendency to utilise each type to the limit of its capa-
cities for modification, and then to abandon it for
something higher ; a tendency of low types to appear
first, but to appear in their highest perfection and
variety ; a sudden apparition of totally diverse plans
of structure subserving similar ends simultaneously
with each other, as for instance those of the Mollusk
and the Crustacean; the appearance of optical and
mechanical contrivances, as for example the compound
eyes of the Trilobite and the swimming float of the
Orthoceras, in all their perfection at first, just as they
continue to this day in creatures of similar grade.
That these and other similar things point to a uniform
and far-reaching plan, no rational mind can doubt;
and if the world had stopped short in the Primordial
period, and attained to no further development, this
would have been abundantly apparent ; though it
shines forth more and more conspicuously in each
succeeding page of the stony record. How far such
unity and diversity can be explained by the modern
philosophy of a necessary and material evolution out of
mere death and physical forces, and how far it requires
the intervention of a Creative mind, are questions
which we may well leave with the thoughtful reader,
till we have traced this history somewhat further.

"'liiii

'illiimSlli'

CHAPTER IV.

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

By English geologists, the great series of formations
which succeeds to the Cambrian is usually included
under the name Silurian System, first proposed by
Sir Roderick Murchison. It certainly, however, con-
sists of two distinct groups, holding the second and
third faunas of Barrande. The older of the two,
usually called the Lower Silurian, is the Upper
Cambrian of Sedgwick, and may properly be called
the Siluro- Cambrian. The newer is the true Silurian,
or Silurian proper — the Upper Silurian of Murchison.
We shall in this chapter, for convenience, consider
both in connection, using occasionally the term Lower
Silurian as equivalent to Siluro-Cambrian. The Silu-
rian presents us with a definite physical geography,
for the northern hemisphere at least ; and this physical
geography is a key to the life conditions of the time.
The North American continent, from its great un-
broken area, afibrds, as usual, the best means of
appreciating this. In this period the northern cur-
rents, acting perhaps in harmony with old Laurentian
outcrops, had deposited in the sea two long submarine
ridges, running to the southward from the extreme
ends of the Laurentian nucleus, and constituting the
foundations of the present ridges of the Rocky

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

Mountains and the Alleghanies. Between these the
extensive triangular area now constituting the greater
part of North America^ was a shallow oceanic plateau,
sheltered from the cold polar currents by the Lauren-
tian land on the north, and separated by the ridges
already mentioned from the Atlantic and Pacific. It
was on this great plateau of warm and sheltered ocean
that what we call the Silurian fauna lived; while of
the creatures that inhabited the depths of the great
bounding oceans, whose abysses must have been far
deeper and at a much lower temperature, we know
little. During the long Silurian periods, it is true,
the great American plateau underwent many revolu-
tions j sometimes being more deeply submerged, and
having clear water tenanted by vast numbers of corals
and shell-fishes, at others rising so as to become
shallow and to receive deposits of sand and mud ; but
it was always distinct from the oceanic area without.
In Europe, in like manner, there seems to have been a
great internal plateau bounded by the embryo hills of
Western Europe on the west, and harbouring a very
similar assemblage of creatures to those existing in
America.

Further, during these long periods there were
great changes, from a fauna of somewhat primordial
type up to a new order of things in the Upper Silu-
rian, tending toward the novelties which were in-
troduced in the succeeding Devonian and Carboni-
ferous. We may, in the first place, sketch these
changes as they occurred on the two great continental

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

plateaus, noting as we proceed sucli hints as can be
obtained with reference to tbe more extensive oceanic
spaces.

Before the beginning of the age, both plateaus seem
to have been invaded by sandy and muddy sediments
charged at some periods and places with magnesian
limestone ; and these circumstances were not favour-
able to the existence or preservation of organic
remains. Such are the Potsdam and Calciferous
beds of America and the Tremadoc and Llandeilo
beds of England. The Potsdam and Tremadoc are by
their fossils included in the Cambrian, and may at least
be regarded as transition groups. It is further to be
observed, in the case of these beds, that if we begin
at the west side of Europe and proceed easterly, or
at the east side of America and proceed westerly, they
become progressively thinner, the greater amount of
material being deposited at the edges of the future
continents ; just as on the sides of a muddy tideway
the flats are higher, and the more coarse sediment de-
posited near the margin of the channel, and fine mud
is deposited at a greater distance and in thinner beds.
The cause, however, on the great scale of the Atlantic,
was somewhat different, ancient ridges determining
the border of the channel. This statement holds
good not only of these older beds, but of the whole
of the Silurian, and of the succeeding Devonian and
Carboniferous, all deposited on these same plateaus.
Thus, in the case of the Silurian in England and
Wales, the whole series is more than 20,000 feet

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

thick, but in Eussia, it is less than 1,000 feet. In
the eastern part of America the thickness is estimated
at quite as great an amount as in Europe, while in the
region of the Mississippi the Silurian rocks are scarcely
thicker than in Russia, and consist in great part of
limestones and fine sediments, the sandstones and
conglomerates thinning out rapidly eastward of the
Appalachian Mountains.

In both plpvteaus the earlier period of coarse accu-
mulations was succeeded by one in which was clear
water depositing little earthy sediment, and this
usually fine ; and in which the sea swarmed with
animal life, from the debris of which enormous beds
of limestone were formed — the Trenton limestone of
America and the Bala limestone of Europe. The
fossils of this part of the series open up to us the
head-quarters of Lower Silurian life, the second great
fauna of Barrande, that of the Upper Cambrian of
Sedgwick; and in America more especially, the
Trenton and its associated limestones can be traced
over forty degrees of longitude ; and throughout the
whole of this space its principal beds are composed
entirely of comminuted corals, shells, and crinoids,
and studded with organisms of the same kinds still re-
taining their forms. Out of these seas, in the Euro-
pean area, arose in places volcanic islets, like those of
the modern Pacific.

In the next succeeding era the clear waters became
again invaded with muddy and sandy sediments, in
various alternations, and with occasional bands of lime-

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

stone, constituting the Caradoc beds of Britain and
the Utica and Hudson Eiver groups of America.
During the deposition of these, the abounding life of
the Siluro- Cambrian plateaus died away, and a middle,
group of sandstones and shales, the Oneida and Medina
of America and the Mayhill of England, form the base
of the Upper Silurian.

But what was taking place meanwhile in the oceanic
areas separating our plateaus ? These were identical
with the basins of the Atlantic and Pacific, which
already existed in this period as depressions of the
earth's crust, perhaps not so deep as at present. As
to the deposits in their deeper portions we know
nothing ; but on the margin of the Atlantic area are
some rocks which give us at least a little information.

In the later part of the Cambrian period the enor-
mous thickness of the Quebec group of North America
appears to represent a broad stripe of deep water
parallel to the eastern edge of the American plateau,
and in which an immense thickness of beds of sand
and mud was deposited with very few fossils, except
in particular beds, and these of a more primordial
aspect than those of the plateau itself. These rocks
no doubt represent the margin of a deep Atlantic
area, over which cold currents destructive of life were
constantly passing, and in which great quantities of
sand and mud, swept from the icy regions of the
North, were continually being laid. The researches
of Dr. Carpenter and Dr. Wyville Thomson show us
that there are at present cold areas in the deeper

i'iilii

^■Mt!

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

parts of tlie Atlantic, on the European side, as we
have long known that they exist at less depths on the
American side ; and these same researches, with the
soundings on the American banks, show that sand
and gravel may be deposited not merely on shallows,
but in the depths of the ocean, provided that these
depths are pervaded by cold and heavy currents
capable of eroding the bottom, and of moving coarse
material. The Quebec group in Canada and the
United States, and the metalliferous Lower Silurian
rocks of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, destitute of
great marine limestones and coral reefs, evidently
represent deep and cold-water areas on the border
of the Atlantic plateau.

At a later period, the beginning of the Upper Si-
lurian, the richly fossiliferous and exceptional deposits
of the Island of Anticosti, formed in the deep
hollow of the Gulf of St. Laurence, show that when
the plateau had become shallowed up by deposition
and elevation, and converted into desolate sandbanks,
the area of abundant life was transferred to the still
deep Atlantic basin and its bordering bays, in which
the forms of Lower Silurian life continued to exist
until they were mixed up with those of the Upper
Silurian.

If we turn now to these latter rocks, ai 1 inquire
as to their conditions on our two great plateaus, we
shall find a repetition of changes similar to those which
occurred in the times preceding. The sandy shallows
of the earlier part of this period give place to wide

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

oceanic areas similar to those of the Lower Silurian,
In these wo find vast and thick coral and shell lime-
stones, the Wonlock of England and Niagara of Ameri-
ca, as rich in life as the limestones of the Lower Silu-
rian, and with the generic and family forms similar,
but the species for the most part different. In America
these limestones were followed by a singularly shallow
condition of the plateau, in whicn the surface was so
raised as at times to be converted into separate salt
lakes in which beds of salt were deposited. On both
plateaus there were alternations of oceanic and shal-
low conditions, under which the Lower Helderberg
and Ludlow beds, the closing members of the Silu-
rian, were laid down. Of the Atlantic beds of this
period wo know little, except that the great lime-
stones appear to be wanting, and to be replaced by
sandy and muddy deposits, in some parts at least of
the margins of the area. In some portions also of
tho plateaus and their margins, extensive volcanic
outbursts seem to have occurred ; so that the Ameri-
can plateau presented, at least in parts, the aspect of
a coral sea with archipelagoes of volcanic islands, the
ejections from which became mixed with the aqueous
deposits forming around them.

Having thus traced the interesting series of geo-
graphical conditions indicated by the Silurian series,
we may next take our station on one of the submerged
plateaus, and inquire as to the new forms of life now
introduced to our notice ; and in doing so shall include
the life of both the Lower and Upper Silurian.

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

First, we may remark tho vast abundance and
variety of corals. Tho polyps, close relatives of the
common sea-anemone of our coasts, which build up
our modern coral reefs, were represented in tho Silu-
rian seas by a great number of allied yet different
forms, equally effectual in the groat work of secrctiug
carbonate of lime in stony masses, and therefore in

Fig. 9.— FrnfT:ment of Lower Silurian Limestone, sliced and mafrnificd ten
diameters, showing the manner in which it is made up of tragments of corals,
crinoids, and shells. (From a paper on the Microscopic Structure of Canadian
limestone, " Canadian Naturalist.")

the building-up of continents. Let us note some of
the differences. In the first place, whereas our modern
coral-workers can show us but the topmost pinnacles
of their creations, peeping above the surface of the

THE STORY OP THE EAKTH AND MAN.

bea in coral reefs and islands, the work of tlie coral
animals of the Silurian has been finished, by these
limestones being covered with masses of new sediment
consolidatea into hard rock, and raised out of the sea
to constitute a part '^f the diy land. In the Silurian
limestones we thus have, not merely the coral reefs,
but the wide beds of comminuted coral, mixed with
the remains of other animals, which are necessarily
accumulated in the ocean bed around the reefs and
islands. I^urther, these beds, which we might find
loose and unconsolidated in the modern sea, have their
fragments closely cemented together in the old lime-
stones. The -^ature of this diff'erence can be well
seen by comparing a fragment of modern coral or
shell limestone from Bermuda, with a similar fragment
of the Trenton limestone, both being sliced for exami-
nation under the microscope. The old limestone is black
or greyish, the modern one is nearly white, because in
the former the organic matter in the £«nimal fragments
has been carbonised or converted into coaly and bitu-
minous matter. The old limestone is much more
dense and compact, partly because its materials have
been more closely compressed by superincumbent
weight, but chiefly because calcareous matter in solu-
tion in water Las penetrated all the interstices, and
filled them up with a deposit of crystalline limestone.
In examining a slice, however, under the microscope,
H will be seen that the fragments of corals and other
organisms are as distinct and well preserved as in the
crumbling modern rock, except that they are perfectly

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

imbedded in a paste of dear transparent limestone^ or
rather calcareous spar, infiltrated between them. I
have examined great numbers of slices of these lime-
stones, ever with new wonder at the packing of the
organic fragments which tliey present. The hard
marble-like limestones used for building in the Silu-
rian districts of Europe and America, are thus in most
cases consolidated masses of organic fragments.

In the next place, the animals themselves must have
differed somewhat from their modern successors. This
we gather from the structure of their stony cells,
which present points of difference indicating corre-
sponding difference of detail in the soft parts. Zoolo-
gists thus separate the rugose or wrinkled corals and
the tabulate or floored corals of the Silurian from those
of the modern seas. The former must have been
more like the ordinary coral animals ; the latter were
very peculiar, more especially in the close union of the
cells, and in the transverse floors which they were in
the habit of building across these cells as they grew
in height. They presented, however, all the, forms of
our modern corals. Some were rounded and massive
in form, others delicate -^.nd brandling. Some were
solitary or detached, others ag^^'regativo in communi-
ties. Some had the individual animals large and pro-
b:bly showy, others had them of microscopic size.
Perhaps the most remarkable of all is the American
Beatricea,^ which grew like a great trunk of a tree

* First described by Mr. BiUings. It has been regarded as
a plant, and as a cephalopod shell ; but I believe it was a coral
allied to Cystiphyllum.

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THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

twenty feet or more in height, its solitary animal at
the top like a pillar-saint, though no doubt more ap-
propriate and comfortable ; and multitudes of delicate
and encrusting corals clinging like mosses or lichens
to its sides. This creature belongs to the very middle
of the Silurian, and must have lived in great depths,
undisturbed by swell or breakers, and sheltering vast
multitudes of other creatures in its stony colonnades.
Lastly, the Silurian corals flourished in latitudes
more boreal than their modern representatives. In
both hemispheres as far north as Silurian limestones
have been traced, well-developed corals have been
found. On the great plateaus sheltered by Laurentian
ridges to the north, and exposed to the sun and to the
warmer currents of the equatorial regions, they flou-
rished most grandly and luxuriantly : but they lived
also north of the Laurentian bands in the Arctic Sea
basins, though probably in the shallower and more
sheltered parts. Undoubtedly the geographical ar-
rangements of the Silurian period contributed to this.
We have already seen how peculiarly adapted to an
exuberant marine life were the submerged continents
of the period ; and there was probably little Arctic
land producing icebergs to chill the seas. The great
Arctic currents, which then as now flowed powerfully
toward the equator, must have clung to the deeper
parts of the ocean basins, while the return waters from
the equator would spread themselves widely over the
surface j so that wherever the Arctic Seas presented
areas a little elevated out of the cold bottom water,

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

there might be suitable abodes for coral animals. It
has been supposed that in the Silurian period the sea
might have derived some appreciable heat from the
crust cl the earth below, and astronomical conditions
have been suggested as tending to produce changes of
climate ; but it is evident that whatever weight may be
due to these causes, the observed geogi'aphical condi-
tions are sufficient to account for the facts of the case.
It is also to be observed, that we cannot safely infer
the requirements as to temperature of Silurian coral
animals from those of the tenants of the modern ocean.
In the modern seas many forms of life thrive best
and grow to the greatest size in the colder seas ; and
in the later tertiary period there were elephants and
rhinoceroses sufficiently hardy to endure the rigours
of an Arctic climate. So there may have been in the
Silurian seas corals of much less delicate constitution
than those now living.

Next to the corals we may place the crinoids, or
stone-lilies — creatures abounding throughout the Silu-
rian seas, and realizing a new creative idea, to be
expanded in subsequent geological time into all the
multifarious types of star-fishes and sea-urchins. A
typical crinoid, such as the Glyptocrinus of the Lower
Silurian, consists of a flexible jointed stem, sometimes
several feet in length, composed of short cylindrical
discs, curiously articulated together, a box-like body
on top made up of polygonal pieces attached to each
other at the edges, and five radiating jointed arms
furnished with branches and branchlets, or fringes, all

r i

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

articulated and capable of being flexed in any direc-
tion. Such a creature has more the aspect of a flower
than of an animal ; yet it is really an animal, and sub-
sists by collecting with its arms and drifting into its
mouth minute creatures floating in the water. Ano-
ther group, less typical, but abundantly represented in
the Silurian seas, is that of the Cystideans, in which
the body is sack-like, and the arms few and sometimes
attached to the body. They resemble tbe young or
larvae of crinoids. In the modern seas the crinoids
are extremely few, though dredging in very deep
water has recently added to the number of known
species; but in the Silurian period they had their
birth, and attained to a number and perfection not
afterwards surpassed. Perhaps the stone-lilies of the
Upper Silurian rocks of Dudley, in England, are the
most beautiful of Palaeozoic animals. Judging from
the immense quantities of their remains in some lime-
stciies, wide areas of the sea bottom must have been
crowded with their long stalks and flower-like bodies,
presenting vast submarine fields of these stony water-
lilies.

Passing over many tribes of mollusks, continued or
extended from the Primordial — and merely remarking
that the lamp-shells and the ordinary bivalve and
univalve shell-fishes are all represented largely, more
especially the former group, in the Silurian — we come
to the highest of the Mollusca, represented in our seas
by the cuLtle-lishes and nautili, creatures which, like
the crinoids, may bo said to have had their birth in

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

the Silurian, and to have there attained to some of
their grandest forms. The modern pearly nautilus
shell, well known in every museum, is beautifully
coiled in a disc-like form, and when sliced longitudi-
nally shows a series of partitions dividing it into
chambers, air-tight, and serving as a float to render
the body of the creature independent of the force of
gravity. As the animal grows it retracts its body
toward the front of the shell, and forms new par-
titions, so that the buoyancy of the float always
corresponds with the weight of the animal ; while by
the expansion and contraction of the body and removal
of water from a tube or syphon which traverses the
chambers, or the injection of additional water, slight
diS'erences can be eff'ected, rendering the creature a
very little lighter or heavier than the medium in
which it swims. Thus practically delivered from the
encumbrance of weight, and furnished with long
flexible arras provided with suckers, with great eyes
and a horny beak, the nautilus becomes one of the
tyrants of the deep, creeping on the bottom or
swimming on the surface at will, and everyvrhero
preying on whatever animals it can master. Fortu-
nately for us, as well as fo: the more feeble inhabit-
ants of the sea, the nautili are not of great size,
though some of their allies, the cuttle-fishes, which,
however, want the floating apparatus, are sufficiently
powerful to be formidable to man. In the Silurian
period, however, there were not only nautili like ours,
but a peculiar kind of straight nautilus — the Orthocer-

*ar|^a|^gggr

THE LOWEE AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

atites — which sometimes attained to gigantic size. The
shells of these creatures may be compared to those of
nautili straightened out, the chambers being placed in
a direct line in front of each other. A great number
of species have been discovered, many quite insignifi-
cant in size, but others as much as twelve feet in
length and a foot in diameter at the larger end.
Indeed, accounts have been given of individuals of
much larger growth. These large Ortlioccr atites were
the most powerful marine animals known to us in the
Silurian, ind must have been in those days the tyrants
of the seas.*

Among the crustaceans, or soft shell-fishes of the
Silurian, we meet with the Trilobltes, continued from
the Primordial in great and increasing force, and
represented by many and beautiful species ; while
an allied group of shell-fishes of low organization but
gigantic size, the Eurypterids, characteristic of the
Upper Silurian, were provided with powerful limbs,
long flexible bodies, and great eyes in the front of
the head, and were sometimes several feet in length.
Instead of being mud grovellers, like the Trilobites
and modern king-crabs, these Enryptcrids must have
been swimmers, careering rapidly through the water,
and probably active and predaceous. There were

* Zoologists will observe that I have, in the illustration,
given the Orthoceras the arms rathei* of a cuttle-fish than of a
nautilus. The form of the outer chamber of the shell, I
think, warrants this view of the structure of the animal, which
must have been formed ou a very comprehensive typo.

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

also great multitudes of those little crustaceans wliicli
are inclosed in two horny or shelly valves like a
bivalve shell-fish, and the remains of which sometimes
fill certain beds of Silurian shale and limestone.

No remains found in the Silurian rocks have been
more fertile sources of discussion than the so-called
Orajptolitos , or written stones — a name given long ago
by Linnceus, in allusion to the resemblance of some
species having rows of cells on one side, to minute
lines of writing. These little bodies usually appear
as black coaly stains on the surface of the rock,
showing a slender stem or stalk, with a row of little
projecting cells at one side, or two rows, one on
each side. The more perfect specimens show that, in
many of the species at least, these fragments were
branches of a complex organism spreading from a
centre; and at this centre there is sometimes per-
ceived a sort of membrane connecting the bases of
the branches, and for which various uses have been
conjectured. The branches themselves vary much in
different species. They may be simple or divided,
narrow, or broad and leaf-like, with one row of cells,
or two rows of cells. Hence arise generic distinc-
tions into single and double graptolites, leaf a ad tree
graptolites, net graptolites, and so on. But while it
is easy to recognise these organisms, and to classify
them in species and genera, it is not so easy to say
what their affinities are with modern things. They
are exclusively Silurian, disappearing altogether at
the close of this period, and, so far as we know, not

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

succeeded by any similar creatures serving to connect
them witli modern forms. Hence tlio most various
conjectures as to their nature. They have been sup-
posed to be plants, and have been successively re-
ferred to most of the great divisions of the lower
animals. Most recently they have been regarded by
Hall, Nicholson,* and others, wlio have studied them
most attentively, as zoophytes or bydroids allied to the
SertularifB, or tooth- corallines and sca-fir-corallines of
our coasts, to the cell-bearing branches of which their
fragments bear a very close resemblance. In this
case, each of the little cells or teeth at the sides of
the fibres must have been the abode of a little polyp,
stretching out its tentacles into the water, and en-
joying a common support and nutrition with the
other polyps ranged with it. Still the mode of life
of the community of branching stems is uncertain.
In some species there is a little radicle or spike at
the base of the main stem, which, may have been a
means of attacbment. In others the hollow central
disk has been conjectured to have served as a float.
Occurring as the specimens do usually in shales and
slates, which must have been muddy beds, they could
not have been attached to stones or rocks, and they
must have lived in clear water, either seated on the
surface of the mud, attached to sea-weeds, or floating
freely by means of hollow disks filled with air. After
much thought on their structure and mode of oc-

* See also an able paper by Carruthers, in the Geological
ilagazine, vol. v., p. 64.

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

currence, I am inclined to believe that in tlieir
younger stages tliey were attached, but by a very
slender thread; that at a more advanced stage they
became free, and acquiring a central membranous
disk filled with air, floated by means of this at the
surface, their long branches trailing in the waters
below. They would thus be, with reference to their
mode of life, though not to the details of their
structure, prototypes of the modern Portuguese man-
of-war, which now drifts so gaily over the surface of
the warmer seas. I have represented them in this
attitude ; but in case I should be mistaken, the reader
may imagine it possible that they may be adhering
to the lower surface of floating tangle. The head-
quarters of the Graptolites seem to be in the upper
part of the Cambrian, and in the Siluro- Cambrian,
and they are widely distributed in Europe, in
America, and in Australia. This very wide distribu-
tion of the species is probably connected with their
floating and oceanic habits.

Lastly, just as the Silurian period was passing
away, we find a new thing in the earth — vertebrate
animals, represented by several species of shark-like
fishes, which came in here as forerunners of the
dynasty of the vertebrates, which from that day to
this have been the masters of the world. These
earliest vertebrates are especially interesting as the
first known examples of a plan of structure which
culminates only in man himself. They appear to
have had cartilaginous skeletons; and in this and

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

their shagreen-like skin, strong bony spines, and
trenchant teeth, to have much resembled our modern
sharks, or rather the dog-fishes, for they were of
small size. One genus {Pterasjns), apparently the
oldest of the whole, belongs, however, to a tribe of
mailed fishes allied to some of those of tho old red
sandstone. In both cases the groups of fishes repre-
senting the first known appearance of the vertebrates
were allied to tribes of somewhat high organization
in that class ; and they asserted their claims to domi-
nancy by being predaceous and carnivorous creatures,
which must have rendered themselves formidable
to their invertebrate contemporaries. Coprolites, or
fossil masses of excrement, which are found with
them, indicate that they chased and devoured ortho-
ceratites and sea-snails of various kinds, and snapped
Lingulas and crinoids from their stalks ; and we can
well imagine that these creatures, when once intro-
duced, found themselves in rich pasture and increased
accordingly. Space prevents us from following further
our pictures of the animal life of the great Silurian
era, the monuments of which were first discovered
by two of England^s greatest geologists, Murchison
and Sedgwick. How imperfect such a notice must
06, may be learned from the fact that Dr. Bigsby, in
liis "Thesaurus Siluricus,^' in 1868, catalogues 8,897
Silurian species, of which only 972 are known in the
Primordial.

Our illustration, carefully studied, may do more to
present to the reader the teeming swarms of tho

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THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Silurian seas tlian our word-picture, and it includes
many animal forms not mentioned above, more especi-
ally the curved and nautilus-like cuttle-fishes, those
singular molluscous swimmers by fin or float known
to zoologists as violet-snails, winged-snails or ptero
pods, and carinarias ; and which, under various forms,
have existed from the Silurian to the present time.
The old Lingulce are also there as well as in the
Primordial, while the fishes and the land vegetation
belong, as far as we yet know, exclusively to the
Upper Silurian, and point forward to the succeeding
Devonian. We know as yet no Silurian animal that
lived on the land or breathed air. But our knowledge
of land plants, though very meagre, is important.
Without regarding such obscure and uncertain forms
as the Eoj)hyto7i of Sweden, Hooker, Page, and
Barrande have noticed, in the Upper Silurian, plants
allied to the Lycopods or club-mosses. T have
found in the same deposits another group of plants
allied to Lycopods and pill-worts (Psilophycon), and
fragments of wood representing the curious and
primitive type of pine-like trees known as Proto-
taxites. These are probably only a small instalment
of Silurian land plants, such as a voyager might find
floating in the sea on his approach to some unknown
shore, which had not yet risen above his horizon.
Time and careful search will, no doubt, add largely
to our knowledge.

In the Silurian, as in the Cambrian, the head-
quarters of animal life were in the sea. Perhaps there

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

was no animal life on the land ; but here our knowledge
may be at fault. It is, however, interesting to observe
the continued operation of the creative fiat, ''Let
the waters swarm with swarmers/' which, beginning
to be obeyed in the Eozoic age, passes down through
all the periods of geological time to the " moving
things innumerable " of the modern ocean. Can we
infer anything further as to the laws of creation from
these Silurian multitudes of living things ? One thing
we can see plainly, that the life of the Silurian is
closely related to that of the Cambrian. The same
generic and ordinal forms are continued. Even some
species may be identical. Does this indicate direct
genetic connection, or only like conditions in the
external world correlated with likeness in the organic
world ? It indicates both. First, it is in the highest
degree probable that many of the animals of the Lower
Silurian are descendants of those of the Cambrian.
Sometimes these descendants may be absolutely
unchanged. Sometimes they may appear as distinct
varieties. Sometimes they may have been regarded
as distinct though allied species. The continuance in
this manner of allied forms of life is necessarily related
to the continuance of somewhat similar conditions
of existence, while changes in type imply changed
external conditions. But is this all ? I think not ;
for there are forms of life in the Silurian which cannot
he traced to the Cambrian, and which relate to new
and even prospective conditions, which the unaided
powers of the animals of the earlier period could

KX8

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

not have provided for. These new forms require the
intervention of " higher power, capable of correlating
the physical and organic conditions of one period with
those of succeeding periods. Whatever powers may
be attributed to natural selection or to any other con-
ceivable cause of merely genetic evolution, surely pro-
phetic gifts cannot be claimed for it ; and the life of all
these geological periods is full of mute prophecies to
be read only in the light of subsequent fulfilments.

The fishes of the Upper Silurian are such a
prophecy. They can claim no parentage in the older
rocks, and they appear at once as kings of their class.
With referencb to the Silurian itself, they are of little
consequence ; and in the midst of its gigantic forms
of invertebrate life they seem almost misplaced. But
they predict the coming Devonian, and that long and
varied reign of vertebrate life which culminates in man
himself. No such prophetic ideas are represented by
the giant crustaceans and cuttle-fishes and swarming
graptolites. They had already attained their maxi-
mum, and were destined to a speedy and final grave in
the Silurian, or to be perpetuated only in decaying
families whose poverty is rendered more conspicuous
by the contrast with the better days gone by. The
law of creation provided for new types, and at once for
the elevation and degradation of them when introduced;
and all this with reference to the physical conditions
not of the present only but of the future. Such facts,
which cannot He ignored save by the wilfully blind, are
beyond the leach of any merely material philosophy.

THE LOWER AND UPPER SILURIAN AGES.

The little that we know of Silurian plants is as
eloquent of plan and creation as that which we can
learn of animals. I saw not long ago a series of
genealogies in geological time reduced to tabular form
by that ingenious but imaginative physiologist,
Haeckel. In one of these appeared the imaginary
derivation of the higher plants from Algas or sea- weeds.
Nothing could more curiously contradict actual facts.
A]gSQ were apparently in the Silurian neither more nor
less elevated than in the modern seas, and those forms
of vegetable life which may seem to bridge over
the space between them and the land plants in the
modern period, are wanting in the older geological
periods, while land plants seem to start at once into
being in the guise of club-mosses, a group by no
means of low standing. Our oldest land plants thus
represent one of the highest types of that cryptogamous
series to which they belong, and moreover are better
developed examples of that type than those now exist-
ing. We may say, if we please, that all the connecting
links have been lostj but this is begging the whole
question, since nothing but the existence of such links
could render the hypothesis of derivation possible.
Further, the occurrence of any number of successive
yet distinct idpecics would not be the kind of chain
required, or rather would not be a chain at all.

Yet in some respects development is obvious in
creation. Old forms of life are often embryonic, or
resemble the young of modern animals, but enlarged
and exaggerated, as if they had overgrown themselves

THE STOltY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

and had prematurely become adult. Old forms are
often generalized, or less specific in tlieir adaptations
than those of modern times. There is less division of
labour among them. Old forms sometimes not only-
rise to the higher places in their groups, but usurp
attributes which in later times are restricted to their
betters. Old forms are often gigantic in size in com-
parison with thrir modern successors, which, if they
could look back on their predecessors, might say,
" There were giants in those days." Some old forms
have gone onward in successive stages of elevation by
a regular and constant gradation. Others have I'e-
maincd as they were through all the ages. Some have
no equals in their groups in modern days. All these
things speak of order, but of order along with develop-
ment, and this development not evolution ; unless by
this term we understand the emergence into material
facts of the plans of the creative mind. These plans
W3 may hope in some degree to understand, though we
may not be able to comprehend the mode of action of
creative power any more than the mode in which our
own thought and will act upon the machinery of
our own nerves. Still, the power is not the less real,
that we are ignorant of its mode of operation. The
wind bloweth whither it listeth, and we feel its
strength, though we may not be able to calculate the
wind of to-morrow or the winds of last vear. So is the
Spirit of God when it breathes into animals the breath
of life, or the Almighty word when it says, " Let the
waters bring forth.^

CHAPTER V.

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

Paradoxical as it may appear, this period of geological
history has been held as of little account, and has even
been by some geologists regarded as scarcely a distinct
age, just because it was one of the most striking and
important of the whole. The Devonian was an age of
change and transition, in both physical and organic
existence ; and an age which introduced, in the
Northern hemisphere at least, more varied conditions
of land and water and climate than had previously
existed. Hence, over large areas of our continents,
its deposits are irregular and locally diverse ; and
the duration and importance of the period are to be
measured rather by the changes and alterations of
previous formations, and the ejection of masses of
molten rock from beneath, than by a series of 'fossil-
iferous deposits. Nevertheless, in some regions in
North America and Eastern Europe, the formations of
this era are of vast extent and volume, those of North
America being estimated at the enormous thickness of
15,000 feet, while they are spread over areas of almost
continental breadth.

At the close of the Upper Silurian, the vast con-
tinental plateaus of the northern hemisphere were
almost wholly submerged. No previous marine lime-

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

ilii

iiiiii

stone spreads more widely than that of the Upper
Silurian, and in no previous period have we much less
evidence of the existence of dry land ; yet before the
end of the period we observe, in a few fragments
of land plants scattered here and there in the marine
limestones — ^evidence that islands rose amid the waste
of waters. As it is said that the sailors of Columbus
saw the first indications of the still unseen Western
Continent in drift canes, and fragments of trees float-
ing in mid ocean, so the voyager through the Silurian
seas finds his approach to the verdant shores of the
Devonian presaged by a few drift plants borne from
shores yet below the horizon. The small remains
of land in the Upper Silurian were apparently limited
to certain clusters of islands in the north-eastern part
of America and north-western part of Europe, with
perhaps some in the intervening Atlantic. On these
limited surfaces grew the first land plants certainly
known to us — herbs and trees allied to the modern
club- mosses, and perhaps forests of trees allied to the
pines, though of humbler type ; and this wide Upper
Silurian sea, with archipelagos of wooded islands, may
have continued for a long time. But with the begin-
ning of the Devonian, indications of an unstable
condition of the earth's crust began to develop them-
selves. New lands were upheaved ; great shallow,
muddy, and sandy flats were deposited around them;
the domains of corals and sea- weeds were contracted ;
and on banks, and in shallows and estuaries, there
swarmed shoals of fishes of many species, and some of

'in

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

them of most remarkable organization. On the
ma'gins of these waters stretched vast swamps,
covered with a rank vegetation.

But the period wr.s one of powerful igneous
.activity. Volcanoes poured out their molten rocks
over sea and land, and injected huge dykes of trap
into the newly-formed beds. The land was shaken
with earthquake throes, and was subject to many
upheavals and subsidences. Violent waves desolated
the coasts, throwing sand and gravel over the flats,
and teariog up newly-deposited beds ; and poisonous
exhalations, or sudden changes of level, often proved
fatal to immense shoals of tishes. Tliis was the
time of the Lower Devonian, and it is marked, both
in the old world a,nd the new, by extensive deposits
of sandstones and conglomerates.

But the changes going on at the surface were only
symptomatic of those occurring beneath. The im-
mense accumulations of Silurian sediment had by
this time so overweighted certain portions of the
crust, that great quantities of aqueous sediment had
been pressed downward into the heated bowels of
the earth, and were undergoing, under an enormous
weight of superincumbent material, a process of bak-
ing and semi-fusion. This process was of course ex-
tremely active along the margins of the old Silurian
plateaus, and led to great elevation of land, while in
the more central parts of the plateaus the oceanic con-
'litions still continued; and in the Middle Devonian,
in America at least, one of the most remarkable and

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

intorosting coral limestones in the world — tlio corni-
ferous limestono — was deposited. In process of time,
however, thoso clear waters Locamo shallow, and were
invaded by muddy sediments ; and in the Uppor
Devonian th.o swampy flats and muddy shallows return
in full force, and in some degree anticipate the still
greater areas of this kind which existed in the suc-
ceeding Coal formation.

Such is a brief sketch of the Devonian, or, as it may
be better called in America, from the vast develop-
ment of its beds on the south side of Lak6 Erie, the
Erian formation. In America the marine beds of
the Devonian were deposited on the same great con-
tinental plateau which supported the seas of the
Upper and Lower Silurian, and the beds were thicker
towards the cast and thinned towards the west, as in
the case of the older series. But in the Devonian
there was much land in the north-cast of America ;
and on the eastern margin of this land, as in Gaspu
and New Brunswick, the deposits throughout the
whole period were sandstones- and shales, without
the great coral limestones of the central plateau.
Something of the same kind occurred in Europe,
where, however, the area of Devonian sea was smaller.
There the fossiliferous limestones of the Middle
Devonian in Devon, in the Eifel district, in France
and in Kussia, represent the great cor^iferous lime-
stone of America; while the sandstones of South
Wales, of Ireland, and of Scotland, resemble the
local conditions of Gaspe and New Brunswick, and

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

belonged to a similar area in the north-west of
Europe, in which shallow water and land conditions
prevailed during the whole of the Devonian, and
which was perhaps connected witli the corresponding
region in J<]astern America by a North Atlantic archi-
pelago, now submerged. This whole subject is so
important to the knowledge of the Devonian, and of
geology in general, that I may bo pardoned for
introducing it hero in a tabular form, taking the
European series from Etheridgo's excellent and
exhaustive paper in the "Journal of the Geological
Society." *. .. /

DEVONIAN OR ERIAN.

Divisions.

CENTUAli AHEAS.

Upper

Middle

Lower

Devon.

Pilton group : —
Brown calcareous
shales, brown and
yellow sandstone.
Land plants ayd
marine shells.

Ilfracombe group :-
Grey and red sand-
stones and flags,
calcareous slates
and limestones,
with corals, etc.

Lynton group : —
lied and purple
sandstones. Ma-
rine shells, etc.

Rhen. PrusHla.

Clymenia, Cypri-
dina, etc. Shales,
limestones, and
sandstones.

Plants and ma-
rine shells.

Eifel limestone,
Calceola shales,
etc.

Corals, shells, etc.

Coblentz and Wis-
senbach shales,
Rhenish grey-
wacke, Spirifer
sandstone.

Marine shells.

New York.

Chemung and Port-
age. {Sandstones
and shales.

Plants and marine
shells.

Hamilton shales,
and Corniferous
or cherty lime-
stone.

Many corals and
shells, also plants.

Schoharie and
Caudagalli grits.
Oriskany saud-
stoiies.

Marine shells.

TIIK STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Divisions.

Upper

Middle H

Lower -

Mauginal aheas.

Scotland.

Yellow and red

sandstonts.
Fishes and plants.

Red shales and
sandstones, and
conglomerates.

Caithness flags.

Fishes and plants.

Flagstones, shales
and conglomer-
ates.

Fishes and plants.

Ireland.

GaRp6 and New
BrunHwlck.

Yellow and red

sandstones, etc.
Plants, fishes, etc.

Grits and sand-
stones of Dingle.

Glengariff grits,
etc.

Red and grey
sandstones, grits
and shales, and
conglomerates of
Ga8p6 and Mis-
peck. Plants.

Grey and Red
sandstone'i, and
grey and dark
shales. Gasp6
and St. John.

Many plants and
fishes.

Sandstone and
conglomerate.

Plants and fishes.

Gaspe and St.
John.

A glance at this table suffices to show that when
we read Hugh Miller's graphic descriptions of the
Old Eed Sandstone of Scotland, with its numerous
and wonderful fishes, we have before us a formation
altogether distinct from that of Devonshire or the
Eifel. But the one represents the shallow, and the
othcx' the deeper seas of the same period. We
learn this L careful tracing of the beds to their junc-
tion with corresponding series, and by the occasional
occurrence of the characteristic fishes of the Scottish
strata in the Fnglish and German beds. In like
manner a geologist who explores the Gaspe sand-
stones or the New Brunswick shales has under his

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

consideration a group of beds very dissimilar from
that which he would have to study on the shores of
Lake Erie. But here again identity of relations to
the Silurian below and the carboniferous above,
shows the contemporaneousness of the beds, and this
is confirmed by the occurrence in both series of some
of the same plants and shells anc .shes.

It will further be observed that it is in the
middle that the greatest difference occurs. Sand and
mud and pebble-banks were almost universal over
our two great continental plateaus in the Older and
Newer Devonian. But in the Middle there were in
some places deeper waters v/ith coral reefs, in others
shallow flats and swamps rich in vegetation. Herein
we see the greater variety and richness of the De-
vonian. Had we lived in that age, we should not
have seen great continents like those that now exist,
but we could have roamed over lovely islands with
breezy hills and dense lowland jungles, and we could
have sailed over blue coral seas, glowing below with
all the fanciful forms and brilliant colours of polyp
life, and filled with active and beautiful fishes.
Especially did all these conditions culminate in the
Middle Devonian, when what are now the continental
areas of the 7Jorthern hemisphere must have much
resembled the present insular and oceanic reigons
of the South Pacific.

Out of the rich a,nd varied life of the Devonian I
may select for illustration its corals, its crustaceans,
its fishes, its plantS;, and its insects.

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THE DEVONIAN AGE.

The central limestones of the Devonian may be
regarded as the head-quarters of the peculiar types
of coral characteristic of the Palgeozoic age. Here
they were not only vastly numerous, but present
some of their grandest and also their most peculiar
forms. Edwards and Haime, in their " Monograph
of British Fossil Corals/^ in 1854, enumerate one
hundred and fifty well-ascertained species, and the
number has since been largely increased; I have
no doubt that my friend Dr. Bigsby, in his forth-
coming "Thesaurus Devonicus,^' will more than
double it. In the Devonian limestones of England,
as for instance at Torquay, the specimens, though
abundant and well preserved as to their internal
structure, are too firmly imbedded in the rock to
show their external forms. In the Devonian of the
continent of Europe much finer specimens occur ; but,
perhaps, in no part of the ^orld is there so clear an
exhibition of them as in the Devonian limestones of
the United States and Canada. Sir Charles Lyell thus
expresses his admiration of the exposure of these
corals, which he saw at the falls of the Ohio, near
Louisville. He says, "Although the water was not
at its lowest, I saw a grand display of what may h?
termed an ancient coral-i^ef, formed by zoophytes
which flourished in a sea of earlier date than the
Carboniferous period. Tho ledges of hori'.onta
limestone, over which the water flows, belong to
the Devonir.n group, and the softer parts of the stone
have decomposed and wasted away, so that the

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

harder calcareous corals stand out in relief. Many
branches of these zoophytes project from their erect
stems precisely as if they were living. Among other
species I observed large masses, not less than five
feet in diameter, of Favosites Gotlilandica, with its
beautiful honeycomb structure well displayed. There
was also the cup-shaped Cyathojyhyllum, and the
delicate network of Fenestella, and that elegant and
well-known European species of fossil, the chain coral,
Catenipora escharoidcs, with a profusion of others which
it would be tedious to all but the geologist to enume-
rate. Although hundreds of fine specimens have
been detached from these rocks to enrich the museums
of Europe and America, another crop is constantly
working its way out under the action of the stream,
and of the sun and rain in the warm season when
the channel is laid dry."* These limestones have
.been estimated to extend, as an almost continuous
coral reef, over the enormous area of five hundred
thousand square miles of the now dry and inland
surface of the great American continental plateau.
The limestones described by Sir Charles are known
in the Western States as the '" Cliff limestone." In
the State of New York and in Western Canada the
" Corniferous limestone," so called from the masses
of hornstone, like the flint of the English chalk,
contained in it, presents still more remarkable
features. The corals which it contains have been

* "Travels in North America," second series.

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

replaced by the siliceous or flinty matter in sucli a
manner that^ when the surrounding limestone weathers
away, they remain projecting in relief in all the
beauty of their original forms. Not only so, but on
the surface of the country they remain as hard
siliceous stones, and may be found in ploughing the
soil and in stone fences and roadside heaps, so that
tons of them could often be collected over a very
limited space. When onlj partly disengaged from
the matrix, the process may be compk ed by im-
mersing them in a dilute acid. The beauty of these
specimens when thus prepared is very great — not
at all inferior to that of modern corals, which they
often much resemble in general form, though dif-
fering in details of structure. One of the most
common forms is that of the Favositcs, or honeycomb
coral, presenting regular hexagonal cells with trans-
verse floors or tabulae. Of these there are several
species, usually flat or massive in form; but one
species, F. po^ymoiylia, branches out like the modern
stag-horn corals. Another curious form, MichtUna,
looks exactly like a mass of the papery cells of the
great American hornet in a petrified state, and the
convex floors simulate the covers of the cells, so that
it is quite common to find them called fossil wasps'
nests. Some of ^he largest belong to thi gerus
Vliilipsastrea or Smithia, which Hugh Miller I193
immortalized by comparing its crowded stars, with
confluent rays, to the once-popular calico pattern
known as "Lane's net" — a singular instance of the

THE STORY OF THE EABTH AND MAN.

accidental concurrence of a natural and artificial design.
Another very common type is that of the conical
Zaphrentls, with a deep cut at top to lodge the body
of the animal, whose radiating chambers are faithfully
represented by its delicate lamell93. Perhaps the
most delicate of the whole is the 8 y ring o^ or a, with
its cylindrical worm-like pipes bound together by
transverse processes, and which sometimes can be
dissolved out in all its fragile perfection by the action
of an acid on a mass of Corniferous limestone filled
with these corals in a silicified state.

These Devonian corals, like those of the Silurian,
belong to the great extinct groups of Tabulate and
Rugose corals ; groups which present, on the one hand,
points of resemblance to the ordinary coral animals of
the modern seas, and, on the other, to those somewhat
exceptional corals, the Millepores, which are produced
by another kind of polyp, the Hydroids. Some of
them obviously combine properties belonging to both,
as, for example, the radiating partitions with the
arrangement of the parts in multiples of four, the
horizontal floors, and the external solid wall ; and this
fact countenances the conclusion that in these old
corals we have a group of high and complex organiz-
ation, combining properties now divided between two
gre-it groups of animals, neither of them probably,
either in their stony skeletons or the soft parts of the
animal, of as high organization as their Palceozoic
predecessors. This sort of disintegration of compo-
site types, or dissolution of old partnerships, seems

THE DEVONIAN *.aE.

to have been no unusual occurrence in tlie history of
life.*

If the Devonian witnessed the culmination of the
Palaeozoic corals, its later stages saw the final de-
cadence of the great dynasty of the Trilobites. Of
these creatures there are in the Devonian some large
and ornate species, remarkable for their spines and
tubercles ; as if in this, the latter day of their do-
minion, they had fallen into habits of luxurious deco-
ration unknown to their sterner predecessors, and at
the same time had found it necessary to surround
their now disputed privileges with new safeguards of
defensive armour. Not improbably the decadence
of the Trilobites may have been connected with the
introduction of the numerous and formidable fishes of
the period.

But while the venerable race of the Trilobites was
preparing to fight its last and unsuccessful battle,
another and scarcely less ancient tribe of crustaceans,
the Eurypterids, already strong in the Silurian, was
armed with new and formidable powers. The
Pterygotus anglicus, which should have been named
scoticus, since its head-quarters are in Scotland, was
in point of size the greatest of known crustaceans,
recent or fossil. According to Mr. Henry Woodward,
who has published an admirable description and
figures of the creature in the Palaeontographical

* Verril has suggested that the Tabulata may be divided
into two groups, one referable to Actinoids, the other to
Hydroids.

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Society's Memoirs, it must have been six feet in
length, and nearly two feet in breadth. Its antennae
were, unlike the harmless feelers of modern Crustacea,
armed with powerful claws. Two great eyes stood
in the front of the head, and two smaller ones on
the top. It had four pairs of great serrated jaws,
the largest as wide as a man^s hand. At the sides
were a pair of powerful paddles, capable of urging
it s"^,"!! / through the water as it pursued its prey ;
and when attacked by any predaceous fish, it could
strike the water with its broad tail, terminated by a
great flat " telson,'' and retreat backward with the
rapidity of an arrow. Woodward says it must have
been the '^ shark of the Devonian seas ; " rather, it was
the great champion of the more ancient family of the
lobsters, set to arrest, if possible, the encroachments
of the coming shirks.

The Trilobites and Eurypterids constitute a hard
case for the derivationists. Unlike those Melchi-
sedeks, the fishes of the Silurian, which are without
father or mother, the Devonian crustaceans may boast
of their descent, but they have no descendants. No
distinct link connects them with any modern crusta-
ceans except the Limuli, or horse-shoe crabs; and here
the connection is most puzzling, for while there
seems some intelligible resemblance between the adult
Eurypterids and the horse- shoe, or king-crabs, the
latter, in their younger state, rather resemble Trilo-
bites, as Dr. Packard has recently shown. Thus
the two great tribes of Eurypterids and Trilobites

iiil

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

have united in tli3 small modern group of king-crabs,
while on the other hand, there are points of resemblance,
as already stated, between Trilobites and Isopods, and
the king-crabs had already begun to exist, since one
species is now known in the Upper Silurian. So
puzzling are these various relationships, that one
naturalist of the derivationist school has recently
attempted to solve the difficulty by suggesting that
the Trilobites are allied to the spiders ! Thus nature
sports with oui? theories, showing us in some cases, as
in the corals and fishes, partnerships split up into
individuals, and in others distinct lines of being con-
verging and becoming lost in one slender thread.
Barraude, the great palaeontologist of Bohemia, has
recently, in an elaborate memoir on the Trilobites,
traced these and other points through all their struc-
tures and their whole succession in geological time
thereby elaborating a most powerful inductive argu-
ment against the theory of evolution, and concluding
that, so far from the history of these creatures favour-
ing such a theory, it seems as if expressly contrived
to exclude its possibility.

But, while the gigantic Eurypterids and ornate
Trilobites of the Devonian were rapidly approaching
their end, a few despised little crustaceans, — repre-
sented by the Am^liifeltis of New Brunswick and
Kampecaris of Scotland, — were obscurely laying the
foundation of a new line of beings, that of the Stoma-
pods, destined to culminate in the Squillas and their
alhes, which, however diflferent in structure, are

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

practically tho Eurypterids of the modern ocean. So
change the dynasties of men and animals.

" Thou takost away their breath, they die,

They return to their dust ;
• Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit,

They arc created ;
Thou renewest the form of the earth."

The reign of fishes began in the Upper Silurian, for
in the rocks of this age, more especially in England,
several species have been found. They occur, how-
ever, only in the newer beds of this formation, and
are not of largo size, nor very abundant. It is to be
obs(^ved that, in so far as the fragments discovered
can be interpreted, they indicate the existence already
of two distinct types of fishes, the Ganoids, or gar-
fishes, protected with bony plates and scales, and the
Placoids, or shark -like fishes ; and that in the existing
world these fishes are regarded as occupying a high
place in their class. Further, these two groups of
fishes are those which throughout a large portion of
geological time continue to prevail to the exclusion
of other types, the ordinary bony fishes having been
introduced only in comparatively recent periods.
"With the Devonian, however, there comes a vast
increase to the finny armies ; and so characteristic
are these that the Devonian has been called the age
of fishes par excellence, and we must try, with the
help of our illustration, to paint these old inhabitants
of the waters as distinctly as we can. Among the

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

most ancient and curious of these fishes are those
singular forms covered with broad plates, of which
the Pteraspis of the Upper Silurian is the herald, and
which are represented in the Lower Devonian by
several distinct genera. Of these, one of the most
curious is the GephalaspiSf or buckler-hea''. dis-
tinguished by its broad flat head, rounded in front
and prolonged at the sides into two great spines,
which project far beyond the sides of the com-
paratively slender body. This fish, it may be men-
tioned, is the type of a family highly characteristic
of the Lower Devonian, as well as of the Upper *
Silurian, and all of which are provided with large
plate-like cephalic coverings, sometimes with a Jong
snout in front, and, in so far as is known, a com-
paratively weak body and tail. They were all pro-
bably ground-living creatures, feeding on worms and
shell-fishes, and "rooting" for these in the mud, or
burrowing therein for their safety. In these respects
they have a most curious analogy to the Trilobites,,
which in habits they must have greatly resembled,
though belonging by their structure to an entirely
diff*erent and much higher class. So close is this
resemblance, that their head-shields used to be mis-
taken for those of Trilobites. The case is one of
those curious analogies which often occur in nature,
and which must always be distinguished from the
true affinities which rest on structural resemblances.
Another group of small fishes, likewise cuirassed in
bony armour of plates, may be represented by the

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Pterichthys, witli its two strong bony fins at the sides,
which may have served for swimming, but probably
also for defence, and for creeping on or sliovelling
up the mud at the bottom of the sea. But, besides
the Ganoids which were armed in plated cuirasses,
there were others, active and voracious, clad in
shining enamelled scales, like the bony pikes of the
American rivers and the Fohjpterus c/i the Nile.
Some of these, like the Diplacanthiis, or ^' double-
spine,^' were of small size, and chiefly remarkable
for their sharp defensive bony spines. Others, like
Holoptychms (wrinkled-scale) and Osteolcpis (bone-
scale), were strongly built, and sometimes of great
size. One Eussian species of Asterolepis (star-scale)
is supposed to have been twenty feet in length, and
furnished with strong and trenchant teeth in two
rows. These greiit fishes afford a good reason for
the spines and ai'mour-plates of the contemporary
trilobites and smaller fishes. Just as man has been
endeavouring to invent armour impenetrable to shot,
for soldiers and for ships, and, on the other hand,
shot and shells that can penetrate any armour, so
nature has always preset ':ed the spectacle of the
most perfect defensive apparatus matched with the
most perfect weapons for destruction. In the class
of fishes, no age of the world is more eminent in
these respects than the Devonian.* In addition

* Many of these were discovered and successfully displayed
and described by Hugh Miller, and are graphically portrayed
in his celebrated work on the " Old Red Sandstone," publifihed
in 1811.

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

to these fishes, there were others, represented prin-
cipally by their strong bony spines, which must
have been allied to some of the families of modern
sharks, most of them, however, probably to that com-
paratively harmless tribe which, furnished with flat
teeth, prey upon shell-fishes. There are other fishes
difficult to place in our systems of classification ; and
among these an eminent example is the huge
Dlnichthys of Newberry, from the Hamilton group of
Ohio. The head of this creature is more than three
feet long and eighteen inches broad, with the bones
extraordinarily strong and massive. In the upper
jaw, in addition to strong teeth, there were in front
two huge sabre-shaped tusks or incisors, each nearly a
foot long ; and corresponding to these in the massive
lower jaw were two closely joined conical tusks, fitting
between those of the upper jaw. No other fish
presents so frightful an apparatus for destruction ; and
if, as is probable, this was attached to a powerful
body, perhaps thirty feet in length, and capable of
rapid motion through the water, we cannot imagine
any creature so strong or so well armed as to cope
with the mighty Dlnichthys.

The difference between the fishes of the Devonian
and those of the modern seas is well marked by the
fact that, while the ordinary bony fishes now amount
to probably 9^000 species,^ and tl^^ gapoid fishes to
less than thiri;v, tlie finnv tribes of vhe Devonian are
predominantly ganoids, and none of the ordin^-ry type
are known. .Ti:>'Vltafc is this related, with reference

100

THE STORY OF THE EARfH AND MAN.

to conditions of existence ? Two explanations, dif-
ferent yet mutually connected, may be suggested.
One is that armour was especially useful in the
Devonian as a means of defence from the larger pre-
daceous species, and the gigantic crustaceans of the
period. That this was the case may bo inferred from
the conditions of existence of some modern ganoids.
The common bony pike of Canada {Lepidostcas) , fre-
quenting shallow and stagnant waters, seems to be
especially exposed to injury from its enemies. Con-
sequently, while it is rare to find an ordinary fish
showing any tTaces of wounds, a large proportion of
the specimens of the bony pike which I have ex-
amined have scars on their scales, indicating injuries
which they have experienced, and which possibly, to
fishes not so well armed, might have proved fatal.
Again, in the modern Amia, or mud-fish, in the bony
pike and Polypterus, there is an ext^-emely large air-
bladder, amply supplied with blood-vessels, and even
divided into cells or chambers, and communicating
with the mouth by an " air-duct." This organ is
unquestionably in function a lung, and enables the
animal to dispense in some degree with the use of its
gills, which of course depend for their supply of vital
air on the small quantity of oxygen dissolved in the
water. Hence, by the power of partially breathing
air, there fishes ca'n live in stagnant and badly aerated
waters, where t^the** 'fi^^h^s would 'pensh. In the case
of the Amia, "thef ff'rui+tint'' uoisea' which it utters,
its habit of frequenting the muddy creeks of swamps,

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

101

and its possession of gill-cleaners, correspond with
this view. It is possible that the Devonian fishes
possessed this serai-reptilian respiration; and if so,
they would \ a better adapted than other fishes to
live in water contaminated with organic matter in a
state of decay, or in waters rich in carbonic acid or
deficient in oxygen. Possibly the palaeozoic waters,
as well as the palaeozoic atmosphere, were less rich in
pure oxygen than those of the presort world; and it
is certain that, in many of the beds in which the
smaller Devonian fishes abound, there was so much
decaying vegetable matter as to make it probable
that the water was unfit for the ordinary fishes.
Thus, though at first sight the possession of external
armour and means to respire air, in the case of these
peculiar fishes, may seem to have no direct connection
with each other, their obvious correlation in some
modern ganoids may have had its parallel on a more
extensive scale among their ancient relatives. Just
as the modern gar-fish, by virtue of its lungs, can
live in stagnant shallows and hunt frogs, but on that
account needs strong armour to defend it against the
foes that assail it in such places; so in the Devonian
the capacity to inhabit unaerated water and defensive
plates and scales may have been alike necessary,
especially to the feebler tribes of fishes. We shall
find that in the succeeding carboniferous period there
is equally good evidence of this.

We have reserved little space for the Devonian
plants and insects ; but we may notice both in a walk

102

THE STORY OP THE EAETH AND MAN.

through a Devonian forest, in which we may include
the vege cation of the several subordinate periods into
which this great era was divisible. The Devonian
woods were probably, like those of the succeeding
carboniferous period, dense and dark, composed of
but few species of plants, and these somewhat mono-
tonous in appearance, and spreading out into broad
swampy jungles, encroaching on the shallow bays and
estuaries. Landing on one of these flats, we may
first cast our eyes over a wide expanse, covered with
"what at a distance we might regard as reeds or rushes.
But on a near approach they appear very dijBferent;
rising in slender, graceful stems, they fork again and
again, and their thin branches are sparsely covered
with minute needle-like leaves, while the young shoots
curl over in graceful tresses, and the older are covered
with little oval fruits, or spore-cases ; for these plants
are cryptogamous, or flowerless. This singular vege-
tation stretches for miles along the muddy flats, and
rises to a height of two or three feet from, a knotted
mass of cylindrical roots or root-stocks, twining like
snakes through and over the soil. This plant may,
according as we are influenced by its fruit or struc-
ture, be regarded as allied to the modern club-mosses
or the modern pill-worts. It is Psilophyton, in every
country one of the most characteristic plants of the
period, though, when imperfectly preserved, often
relegated by careless and unskilled observers to the
all-engulfing group of fucoids. A little further inland
we see a grove of graceful trees, forking like Fsi-

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

103

loj^hyton, but of grander dimensions^ and with the
branches covered with linear leaves, and sometimes
terminated by cones. These are Lejpidodendra, gigan-

Fig. 12.— VKGKTATIOMT OF TUB DBVONIAW.

To the 'left are Culamltes; next to these, Leptophleum ; in the centre are
Lepidodcndron, Sigillaria, and a Pine. Below are I'sUophyton, Cordaitea, Ferns.
md. AsterophylUtea.

104

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

tic club-mosses, which were developed to still greater
dimensions in the coal period. Near these we may-
see a still more curious tree, more erect in its growth,
with rounded and somewhat rigid leaves and cones
of different form, and with huge cable-like roots,
penetrating the mud, and pitted with the marks of
long rootlets. This is Cydostigma, a plant near to
the LGjoidodendroTij but distinct, and peculiar to the
Devonian. Some of its species attain to the dimen-
sions of considerable trees ; others are small and
shrubby. Another small tree, sc lewhat liKe the
others, but with very long shaggy leaves, and its
bark curiously marked with regular diamond-shaped
scars, is the Leptophleum. All these plants are pro-
bably allied to our modern club-mosses, which are,
however, also represented by some low and creeping
species cleaving to the ground. A little further, and
we reach a dense clump of Sujillarice, with tall sparsely
forking stems, and ribbed with ridges holding rows
of leaf-scars — a group of plants which we shall have
further occasion to notice in the coal formation ; and
here is an extensive jungle of CalamiteSf gigantic
and overgrown mares'-tails, allies of the modern
equisetums.

Amidst these trees, every open glade is filled with
delicate ferns of marvellous grace and beauty ; and
here and there a tree-fern rears its head, crowned
with its spreading and graceful leaves, and its trunk
clad with a shaggy mass of aerial roots — an old
botanical device, used in these ancient times, as well

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

105

as now, to strengthen and protect the stems of trees
not fitted for lateral expansion. Beyond this mass
of vegetation, and rising on the slopes of the distant
hills, we see great trees that look like pines. We
cannot approach them more nearly; but here on the
margin of a creek we see some drift-trunks, that
have doubtless been carried down by a land flood.
One of them is certainly a pine, in form and structure
of its wood very like those now living in the southern
hemisphere ; it is a Badoxylon. Another is different,
its sides rough and gnarled, and marked with huge
irregular ridges; its wood loose, porous, and stringy,
more like the bark of modern pines, yet having rings
of growth and a true bark of its own, aud sending
forth large branches and roots. It is the strange and
mysterious Prototaxites, one of the wonders of the
Devonian land, and whose leaves and fruits would
be worth their weight in gold in our museums, could
we only procure them. A solitary fragment further
indicates that in the yet unpenetrated solitudes of the
Devonian forests there may be other trees more like
our ordinary familiar friends of the modern woods ;
but of these we know as yet but little. What in-
habitants have these forests ? All that we yet know
are a few large insects, relatives of our modern May-
flies, .flitting with broad veined wings over the
stagnant waters in which their worm-like larv89 dwell,
and one species at least assuming one of the properties
of the grasshopper tribe, and enlivening the otherwise
silent groves with a cricket-like chirp, the oldest

106

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

music of living things that geology as yet reveals to
us ; and this, not by the hearing of the sound itself,
but by the poor remains of the instrument attached
to a remnant of a wing from the Devonian shales of
New Brunswick.

A remarkable illustration of the abundance of cer-
tain plants in the Devonian, and also of the slow and
gradual accumulation of some of its beds, is furnished
by layers of fossil spore- cases, or the minute sacs
which contain the microscopic germs of club-mosses
and similar plants. In the American forests, in
spring, the yellow pollen-grains of spruces and pines
sometimes drift away in such quantities in the breeze
that they fall in dense showers, popularly called
showers of sulphur; and this vegetable sulphur,
falling in lakes and ponds, is drifted to the shore
in great sheets and swathes. The same thing appears
to have occurred in the Devonian, not with the pollen
of flowering plants, but with the similar light spores
and spore-cases of species of Lepidodendron and
allied trees. In a bed of shale, at Kettle Point, Lake
Huron, from 12 to 14 feet thick, not only are the
surfaces of the beds dotted over with minute round
spore-cases, but, on making a section for the micro-
scope, the substance of each layer is seen to be filled
with them; and still more minute bodies, probably
the escaped spores, are seen to fill up their interstices.
The quantity of these minute bodies is so great that
the shale is combustible, and burns with much flame.
A bed of this nature must have been formed in

THE DEVONIAN AGE.

107

shallow and still water, on the margin of an extensive
jungle or forest ; and as the spore-cases are similar
to those of the Lepidodendra of the coal-measures,
the trees were probably of this kind. Year after year,
as the spores became ripe, they were wafted away, and
fell in vast quantities into the water, to be mixed with
the fine mud there accumulating. When we come to
the coal period, we shall see that such beds of spore-
cases occur there also, and that they have even been
supposed to be mainly instrumental in the accumula-
tion of certain beds of coal. Their importance in this
respect may have been exaggerated, but the fact of
their occurrence in immense quantities in certain coals
and shales is indisputable.

This is but a slender sketch of the Devonian
forests ; but we shall find many of the same forms of
plants in the carboniferous period which succeeds.
With one thought we may close. We are prone to
ask for reasons md uses for things, but sometimes
we cannot be satisfied. Of what use were the De-
vonian forests ? They did not, like those of the coal
formation, accumulate rich beds of -.oal for the use
of man. Except possibly a few insects, we know
no animals that subsisted on their produce, nor was
there any rational being to admire their beauty.
Their use, except as helping us in these last days to
complete the order of the vegetable kingdom as it
has existed in geological time, is a mystery. We can
hut fall back on that ascription of praise to Him " who
liveth for ever and ever/' on the part of the heavenly

108

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

elders who cast down their crowns before the throne,
and say, " Thou art worthy, 0 Lord, to receive the
glory, and the honour, and the might ; because Thou
didst create all things, and by reason of Thy will they
are and were created."

CHAPTER VI.

THE CAEBONirEROUS AGE.

That age of the world's history which, from its rich-
ness in accumulations of vegetable matter destined
to be converted into coal, has been named the Car-
boniferous, is in relation to living beings the most
complete and noble of the Palaeozoic periods. In it
those varied arrangements of land and water which
had been increasing in perfection in the previous
periods, attained to their highest development. In
it the forms of animal and plant life that had been
becoming more numerous and varied from the Eozoic
onward, culminated. The Permian which succeeded
was but the decadence of the Carboniferous, prepara-
tory to the introduction of a new order of things.
Thus the Carboniferous was to the previous periods
what the Modern is to the preceding Tertiary and
Mesozoic ages — the summation and completion of
them all, and the embodiment of their highest excel-
lence. If the world's history had closed with the
Carboniferous, a naturalist, knowing nothing further,
would have been obliged to admit that it had already
fulfilled all the promise of its earlier years. It is im-
portant to remember this, since we shall find ourselves
entering on an entirely new scene in the Mesozoic

110

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN,

:i I

period, and since this character of the Carboniferous,
as well as its varied conditions and products, may
excuse us for dwelling on it a little longer than on
the others. On the other hand, the immense economic
importance of the coal formation, and the interesting
points connected with it, have made the Carboniferous
more familiar to general readers than most other
geological periods, so that we may select points less
common and well-known for illustration. Popular
expositions of geology are, however, generally so one-
sided and so distorted by the prevalent straining after
effect, that the true aspect of this age is perhaps not
much better known than that of others less frequently
described.

Let us first consider the Carboniferous geography
of the northern hemisphere ; and in doing so we may
begin with a fact concerning the preceding sje. One
of the most remarkable features of the Newer De-
vonian is the immense quantity of red rocks, particu-
larly red sandstones, contained in it. Red sandstones,
it is true, occur in older formations, but comparatively
rarely ; their great head- quarters, both in Europe and
America, in so far as the Palaeozoic is concerned, are
in the Upper Devonian. Now red sandstone is an
infallible mark of rapid deposition, and therefore of
active physical change. If we examine the grains
of sand in a red sandstone, we shall find that they
are stained or coated, externally, with the peroxide
of iron, or iron rust ; and that this coating, with per-
haps a portion of the same substance in the inter-

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

Ill

veiling cement, is the cause of the colour. In finer
sandstones and red clays the same condition exists,
though less distinctly perceptible. Consequently, if
red sands and clays are long abraded or scoured in
water, or are subjected to any chemical agent capable
of dissolving the iron, they cease to be red, and re-
sume their natural grey or white colour. Now in
nature, in addition to mechanical abrasion, there is a
chemical cause most potent in bleaching red rocks,
namely, the presence of vegetable or animal matter
in a state of decay. Without entering into chemical
details, we may content ourselves with the fact that
organic matter decaying in contact with peroxide of
iron tends to take oxygen from it, and then to dis-
solve it in the state of protoxide, while the oxygen
set free aids the decay. Carrying this fact with us^
we may next affirm that iron is so plentiful in the
crust of the earth that nearly all sands and clays
when first produced from the weathering of rocks
are stained with it, and that when this weathering
takes place in the air, the iron is always in the state
of peroxide. More especially does this apply to the
greater number of igneous or volcanic rocks, which
nearly always weather brown or red. Now premising
that the original condition of sediment is that of
being reddened with iron, and that it may lose this
by abrasion, or by the action of organic matter, it
follows that when sand has been produced by decay
of rocks in the air, and when it is rapidly washed
into the sea and deposited there, red beds will result.

■n

112

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

For instance, in the Bay of Fundy, whoso rapid tides
cut away the red rocks of its shores and deposit their
materials quickly, red mud and sand constitute the
modern deposit. On the other hand, when the red
sand and mud are long washed about, their red matter
may aisappear ; and when the deposition is slow and
accompanied with the presence of organic matter, the
red colour is not only removed, but is replaced by the
dark tints due to carbon. Thus, in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence, where red rocks similar to those of the Bay
of Fundy are being more slowly wasted, and deposited
in the presence of sea-weeds and other vegetable sub-
stances, the resulting sands and clays are white and
grey or blackened in colour. An intermediate condi-
tion is sometimes observed, in which red beds are
stained with grey spots and lines, where sea-weeds
or land-plants have rested on them. I have speci-
mens of Devonian red shale with the forms of fern
leaves, the substance of which has entirely perished,
traced most delicately upon them in greenish marks.

It follows from these facts that extensive and thick
deposits of red beds evidence sub-aerial decay of
rocks, followed by comparatively rapid deposition in
water, and that such red rocks will usually contain
few fossils, not only because of their rapid deposition,
but because the few organic fragments deposited with
them will probably have been destroyed by the
chemical action of the superabundant oxide of iron,
which, so to speak, '' iron-moulds '' them, just as
stains of iron eat holes out of linen. Now when Sir

THE CARBONIFERODS AGE.

113

Roderick Murchlson tells us of 10,000 feet in thick-
ness of red iron-stained rocks in the old red sand-
stone of England, we can see in this the evidence of
rapid aqueous deposition, going on for a very long
time, and baring vast areas of former land surface.
Consequently we have proof of changes of level and
immense and rapid denudation — a conclusion further
confirmed by the apparent unconformity of different
members of the series to each other in some parts of
the British Islands, the lower beds having been tilted
up before the newer were deposited. Such was the
state of affairs very generally at the close of the
Devonian, and it appears to have been accompanied
with some degree of subsidence of the land, succeeded
by re-elevation at the beginning of the Carboniferous,
when many and perhaps large islands and chains of
islands were raised out of the sea, along whose mar-
gins there were extensive volcanic eruptions, evi-
denced by the dykes of trap traversing the Devonian,,
and the beds of old lava interstratified in the lower
part of the Carboniferous, where also the occurrence
of thick beds of conglomerate or pebble-rock indicates
the tempestuous action of the sea.

But a careful study of the Lower Carboniferous
beds, where their margins rest upon the islands of
older rocks, shows great varieties in these old shores.
In some places there were shingly beaches ; in others,
extensive sand-banks ; in others, swampy flats clothed
with vegetation, and sometimes bearing peaty beds,
still preserved as small seams of coal. The bays and

114

THE STOBY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

creeks swarmed with fishes. A fe^^v sluggish reptiles
crept along the muddy or sandy shores, and out s'
ward weie great banks and reefs of coral and shells
in the clear blue sea. The whole aspect of nature,
taken in a general view, in the Older Carboniferous
period, must have much resembled that at present
seen among the islands of the southern hemisphere.
And the plants and animals, though different, were
more like those of the modern South Pacific than any
others now living.

As the age wore on, the continents were slowly
lifted out of the water, and the great continental
plateaus were changed from coral seas into swampy
flats or low uplands, studded in many places with
shallow lakes, and penetrated with numerous creeks
and sluggish streams. In the eastern continent these
land surfaces prevailed extensively, more especially
in the west ; and in America they spread both east-
ward and westward from the Appalachian ridge, until
only a long north and south Mediterranean, running
pa-^allel to the Kocky Mountains, remained of the
former wide internal ocean. On this new and low
land, comparable with the " Sylvas " of the South
American continent, flourished the wondrous vegeta-
tion of the Coal period, and were introduced the new
land animals, whose presence distinguishes the close
of the Palaeozoic.

After a vast lapse of time, in which only slow and
gradual subsidence occurred, a more rapid settlement
of the continental areas brought the greater part of

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

115

the oncG fertile plains of the coal formation again
under the vvaters; and shifting sand-bau. , and
muddy tides engulfed and buried the remains of the
old forests, and heaped on them a mass of sediment,
which, like the weights of a botanical press, flattened
and compressed the vegetable dSbris preserved in the
leaves of the coal formation strata. Then came on
that strange und terrible Permian period, which, like
the more modern boulder-formation, marked the death
of one ago and the birth of another.

The succession just sketched is the normal one;
but the terms in which it has been described show
that it cannot l)e universal. There are many places
in which tlie whole thickness of the Carboniferous is
filled with fossils of the land, and of estuaries and
creeks. There are places, on the otlier hand, where
the deep sea appears to liave continued during the
whole period. In America this is seen on the grand-
est scale in the absence of the marine members
along the western slopes of the Appalachians, and the
almost exclusive prevalence of marine beds in the far
west, where the great Carboniferous Mediterranean of
America spread itself, and continued uninterruptedly
into the succeeding Permian period.

In our survey of the Carboniferous age, though
there are peculiarities in the life of its older, middle,
and newer divisions, we may take the great coal
measures of the middle portion as the type of the
land life of the period, and the great limestones of
the lower portion as that of the marine life ; and as

116

THE STCTIY OP THE EARxH AND MAN.

11 I

the former is in this period by far the most important,
we may begin with it. Before doing so, however, to
prevent misapprehension, it is necessary to remind the
reader that the.-Flora of the Middle Coal Period is but
one of a succession of related floras that reach from
the Upper Silurian to the Permian. The meagre flora
of club-mosses and their allies in the Upper Silurian
and Lower Devonian was succeeded by a compara-
tively rich and varied assemblage of plants in the
Middle Devonian. The Upper Devonian was a period
of decadence, and in the Lower Carboniferous we have
another feeble beginning, presenting features some-
what different from those of the Upper Devonian.
This was the time of the Culm of Germany, the
Tweedian formation of the North of England and
South of Scotland, and the Lower Coal formation of
Nova Scotia. It was a period eminently rich in Lepi-
dodendra. It was followed by the m-.,gnificent flora
of the Middle Coal formation, and then there was a
time of decadence in the Upper Coal formation and
only a slight revival in the Permian.

In the present condition of our civilization, coal is
the most important product which the bowels of the
earth afford to man. And though there are pro-
ductive beds of coal in most of the later geological
formations, down to the peats of the modern period,
which are only unconsolidated coals, yet the coal of
the Carboniferous age is the earliest valuable coal
in point of time, and by far the most important in
point of quantity. Mineral coal may be defined to

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

117

be vegetable matter which has been buried in the
strata of the earth^s crust, and there subjected to
certain chemical and mechanical changes. The proof
of its vegetable origin will grow upon us as we pro-
ceed. The chemical changes which it has under-
gone are not very material. Wood or bark, taken as
an example of ordinary vegetable matter, consists of
carbon or charcoal, with the gases hydrogen and
oxygen. Coal has merely parted with a portion of
these ingredients in the course of a slow and imper-
fect putrefaction, so that it comes to have much less
oxygen and considerably less hydrogen than wood,
and it has been blackened by the disengagement of
a quantity of free carbon. The more bituminous
flamiug coals have a larger amount of residual hydro-
gen. In the anthracite coals the process of carbonis-
ation has proceeded further, and little remains but
charcoal in a dense and compact form. In canne
coals, and ia certain bituminous shales, on the con-
trary, the process seems to have taken place entirely .
under water, by which putrefaction has been modified,
so that a larger proportion than usual of hydrogen
has been retained. The mechanical change which
the coal has experienced consists in the flattening
and hardening effect of the immense pressure of
thousands of feet of superincumbent rock, which has
crushed together the cell-walls of the vegetable
matter, and reduced what was originally a pulpy
mass of cellular tissue to the condition of a hard
laminated rock. To understand this, perhaps the

118

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

simplest way is to compare under the microscope a
transverse section of recent pine-wood with a similar
section of a pine trunk compressed into brown coal
or jet. In the one the tissue appears as a series of
meshes with thin woody walls and comparatively wide
cavities for the transmission of the sap. In the other
the walls of the cells have been forced into direct
contact, and in some cases have altogether lost their
separate forms, and have been consolidated into a
perfectly compact structureless mass.

With regard i^ its mode of occurrence, coal ' is
found in beds ranging in vertical thickness from less
than an inch to more than thirty feet, and of wide
horizontal extent. Many such beds usually occur in
the thickness of the coal formation, or "coal measures,"
as che miners call it, separated from each other by
beds of sandstone and compressed clay or shale.
Very often the coal occurs in groups of several beds,
somewhat close to each other and separated from other
groups by " barren measures " of considerable thick-
ness. In examining a bed of coal, where it is exposed
in a cutting or shore cliff, we nearly always find that
the bed below it, or the " underclay," as it is termed
by miners, is a sort of fossil soil, filled with roots and
rootlets. On this rests the coal, which, when wo
examine it closely, is found to consist of successive
thin layers of hard coal of different qualities as to
lustre and purity, and with intervening laminae of
a dusty fibrous substance, like charcoal, called
*%other coal^^ by miners, and sometimes mineral

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

1>19

charcoal. Thin partings of dark shale also occur,
and these usually present marks and impressions of
the stems and leaves of plants. Above the coal is
its ^'roof^' of hardened clay or sandstone, and this
generally holds great quantities of remains of plants,
and sometimes large stumps of trees with their bark
converted into coal, and the hollow once occupied
with wood filled with sandstone, while their roots
spread over the surface of the coal. Such fossil
forests of erect stumps are also found at various
levels in the coal measures, resting directly on under-
clays without any coals. A bed of coal would thus
appear to be a fossil bog or swamp.

This much being premised about the general nature
of the sooty blocks which fill our coal-scuttles, we
may now transport ourselves into the forests and
bogs of the coal formation, and make acquaintance
with this old vegetation, while it still waved its
foliage in the breeze and drank in the sunshine and
showers. We are in the midst of one of those great
low plains formed by the elevation of the former
sea bed. The sun pours down its fervent rays upon
us, and the atmosphere, being loaded with vapour,
and probably more rich in carbonic acid than that
of the present world, the heat is as it were accu-
mulated and kept near the surface, producing a
close and stifling atmosphere like that of a tropical
swamp. This damp and oppressive air is, however,
most favourable to the growth of the strange and
grotesque trees which tower over our heads, and

120

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

to the millions of delicate ferns and club-mosses, not
unlike those of our modern woods, which carpet the
ground. Around us for hundreds of miles spreads
a dense and monotonous forest, with here and there
open spaces occupied by ponds and sluggish streams,
whose edges are bordered with immense savannahs
of reed-like plants, springing from the wet and boggy-
soil. Everything bespeaks a rank exuberance of
vegetable growth ; and if we were to dig downward
into the soil, we should find a thick bed of vegetable
mould evidencing the prevalence of such conditions
for ages. But the time will come when this immense
flat will meet with the fate which in modern times
befel a large district at the mouth of the Inclu3.
Quietly, or with earthquake shocks, it will sink
under the waters; fishes and mollusks will swarm
where trees grew, beds of sand and mud will be
deposited by the water, inclosing and preserving
the remains of the vegetation, and in some places
surrounding and imbedding the still erect trunks
of trees. Many feet of such deposits may be formed,
and our forest surface, with its rich bed of vegetable
mould, has been covered up and is in process of
transformation into coal ; while in course of time
the shallow waters being filled up with deposit, or
a slight re-elevation occurring, a new forest exactly
like the last will flourish on the same spot. Such
changes would be far beyond the compass of the
life even of a Methuselah ; but had we lived in the
Coal period, we might have seen all stages of these

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

J21

processes contemporaneously in different parts of
either of the great continents.

But let us consider the actual forms of vegetation
presented to us in the Coal period, as we can restore
them from the fragments preserved to us in the
beds of sandstone and shale, and as we would have
seen them in our imaginary excursion through the
Carboniferous forests. To do this we must first
glance slightly at the great subdivisions of modern
plants, which we may arrange in such a way as to
give an easy means for comparison of the aspects
of the vegetable kingdom in ancient and modern
times. In doing this I shall avail myself of an
extract from a previous publication of my own on
this subject.

" The modern flora of the earth admits of a grand
twofold division into the Phcenog anions, or flowering
and seed-bearing plants, and the Cryptogamous, or
flowerless and spore-bearing plants. In the former
series, we have, first, those higher plants which start
in life with two seed-leaves, and have stems with
distinct bark, wood, and pith — the Exogens ; secondly,
those similar plants which begin life with one seed-
leaf only, and have no distinction of bark, wood,
and pith, in the stem — the Endogens ; and, thirdly,
a peculiar group starting with two or several seed-
leaves, and having a stem with bark, wood, and pith,
but with very imperfect flowers, and wood of much
simpler structure than either of the others — the
Gijmnosperms. To the first of these groups or classes

122

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

belong most of tte ordinary trees of temperate
climates. To the second belong the palms and
allied trees found in tropical climates. To the third
belong the pines and cycads. In the second or
Cryptogamous series we have also three classes, —
(1.) The Acrocjens, or ferns and club-mosses, with
stems having true vessels marked on the sides with
cross-bars — the Scalariform vessels. (2.) The Ano-
phytes, or mosses and their allies, with stems and
leaves, but no vessels. (3.) The Thallophijtes, or
lichens, fungi, sea- weeds, etc., without true stems
and leaves.

" In the existing climates of the earth we find
these classes of plants variously distributed as to
relative numbers. In some, pines predominate. In
others, palms and tree-ferns form a considerable
part of the forest vegetation. In others, the ordinary
exogenous trees predominate, almost to the ex-
clusion of others. In some Arctic and Alpine
regions, mosses and lichens prevail. In the Coal
period we have found none of the higher Exogens,
though one species is known in the Devonian, and
only a few obscure indications of the presence of
Endogens ; but Gymnosperms abound, and are
highly characteristic. On the other hand, we have
no mosses or lichens, and very few algae, but a
great number of ferns and Lycopodiacege or club-
mosses. Thus the coal formation period is botanically
a meeting-place of the lower Phsenogams and the
higher Cryptogams, and presents many forms which,

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

123

when imperfectly known, have puzzled botanists in
regard to their position in one or other series. In
the present world, the flora most akin to that of
the Coal period is that of moist and warm islands
in the southern hemisphere. It is not properly a
tropical flora, nor is it the flora of a cold region,
but rather indicative of a moist and equable climate.
In accordance with this is the fact that the equable
but not warm climate of the southern hemisphere
at present (which is owing principally to its small
extent of land) enables sub-tropical plants to extend
into high latitudes. In the Coal period this uni-
formity was evidently still more marked, since we
find similar plants extending from regions within the
Arctic circle to others near to the tropics. Still we
must bear in mind that we may often be mistaken
in reasoning as to the temperature rec uired by
extinct species of plants differing from tti-^se now
in existence. Further, we must not assume that
the climatal conditions of the northern hemisphere
were in the Coal period at all similar to those which
now prevail. As Sir Charles Lyell has argued, a
less amount of land in the higher latitudes would
greatly modify climates, and there is every reason
to believe that in the Coal period there was less
land than now. It has been shown by Tyndall that
a very small additional amount of carbonic acid in
the atmosphere would, by obstructing the radiation
of heat from the earth, produce almost the eff*ect
of a glass roof or conservatory, extending over the

124

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

wliole world. There is mucli in tlie structure of tbe
leaves of the coal plants^ as well as in the vast amount
of carbon which they accumulated in the form of coal,
and the characteristics of the animal life of the pe-
riod, to indicate, on independent grounds, that the
Carboniferous atmosphere differed from that of the
present world in this way, or in the presence of more
carbonic acid — a substance now existing in the very
minute proportion of one-thousandth of the whole
by weight, a quantity adapted to the present require-
ments of vegetable and animal life, but probably not
to those of the Coal period.

Returning from this digression to the forests of
the Coal period, we may first notice that which is the
most conspicuous and abundant tree in the swampy
levels — the Sigillaria or seal-tree, so called from the
stamp-like marks left by the fall of its leaves — a plant
which has caused much discussion as to its affinities.
Some regard it as a gymnosperm, others as a crypto-
gam. Most probably we have under this name trees
allied in part to both groups, and which, when better
known, may bridge over the interval between them.
These trees present tall pillar-like trunks, often ribbed
vertically with raised bands, and marked with rows
of scars left by the fallen leaves. They are sometimes
branchless, or divide at top into a few thick limbs,
covered with long rigid grass-like foliage. On their
branches they bear long slender spikes of fruit, and
we may conjecture that quantities of nut-like seeds
scattered over the ground around their trunks are

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

125

their produce. If we approach one of these trees
closely, more especially a young specuuen not yet
furrowed by age, we are amazed to observe t^ ., accu-
rate regularity and curious forms of the leaf-scars,
and the regular ribbing, so very different from that of
our ordinary forest trees. If we cut into its stem, we
are still further astonished at its singular structure.
Externally it has a firm and hard rind. Within this
is a great thickness of soft cellular inner bark, tra-
versed by large bundles of tough fibres. In the centre
is a core or axis of woody matter very slender in pro-
portion to the thickness of the trunk, and still further
reduced in strength by a large cellular pith. Thus a
great stem four or five feet in diameter is little else
than a mass of cellular tissue, altogether unfit to form a
mast or beam, but excellently adapted, when flattened
and carbonised, to blaze upon our winter hearth as
a flake of coal. The roots of these trees were perhaps
more singular than their stems ; spreading widely in
the soft soil by regular bifurcation, they ran out in
long snake-like cords, studded all over with thick
cylindrical rootlets, which spread from them in every
direction. They resembled in form, and probably in
function, those cable-like root-stocks of the pond-lilies
which run through the slime of lakes, but the struc-
ture of the rootlets was precisely that of those of some
modern Cycads. It was long before these singular
roots were known to belong to a tree. They wore
supposed to be the branches of some creeping aquatic
plant, and botanists objected to the idea of their being

iiiiiiiil

Fig. 13. — GHOrP OF CABB0NIFEE0U8 PLANTS, EESTOEBD FBOM ACTUAL SPECIMENS.

(a) Calamites (type of C. Suckovii). (b) Lepidofloios, or Ulodendhon. (•')
SiGiLLARiA (type of S. reni/onnis) . (d) (type of S. elcgans). (e) Lepidodendeon
(type of L. corfugatum), (/) Megaphyton (type of M. magnificum). (g) Cob-
DAiTES, or PrcHifOPHYLLUM (type of C. borassi/olia).

THE C\EBONIFEROUS AGE.

127

roots ; but at length their connection with Sigillaria
was observed simultaneously by Mr. Binney, in Lan-
cashire, and by Mr. Richard Brown, in Capo Breton,
and it has been confirmed by many subsequently ob-
served facts. This connection, when once established,
farther explained the reabv^n of the almost universal
occurrence of Stigmaria, as these roots were called,
under the coal beds j while trunks of the same plants
were the most abundant fossils of their partings and
roofs. The growth of successive generations of Sigil-
lariao was, in fact, found to be the principal cause
of the accumulation of a bed of coal. Two species
form the central figures in our illustration.

Along with the trees last mentioned, we observe
others of a more graceful and branching form, the
successors of those Lepidodendra already noticed in
the Devonian, and which still abound in the Carboni-
ferous, and attain to larger dimensions than their
older relations, though they are certainly more abund-
ant and characteristic in the lower portions of the
carboniferous. Relatives, as already stated, of our
modern club-mosses, now represented only by com-
paratively insignificant species, they constitute the
culmination of that type, which thus had attained
its acme very long ago, though it still continues to
exist under depauperated forms. They all branched
by bifurcation, sometimes into the most graceful and
delicate sprays. They had narrow slender leaves, placed
in close spirals on the branches. They bore their
spores in scaly cones. Their roots were similar to

128

THE STORY Op THE EARTH AND MAN.

Stigmaria in general appearance, though differing in
details. In the coal period there were several generic
forms of these plants, all attaining to the dimensions
of trees. Like the Sigillariao, they contributed to
the materials of the coal; and one mode of this has
recently attracted some attention. It is the accumu-
lation of their spores and spore-cases already referred
to in speaking of the Devonian, and which was in the
Carboniferous so considerable as to constitute an im-
portant feature locally in some beds of coal. A similar
modern accumulation of spore-cases of tree-ferns
occurs in Tasmania ; but both in the Modern and the
Carboniferous, such beds are exceptional; though
wherever spore-cases exist as a considerable consti-
tuent of coal, from their composition they give to it
a highly bituminous character, an effect, however,
which is equally produced by the hard scales support-
ing fhe spores, and by the outer epidermal tissues
"^^ plants when these predominate in the coal, more

^ecially by the thick corky outer bark of Sigillaria.
In short, the corky substance of bark and similar
vegetable tissues, from its highly carbonaceous cha-
racter, its indestructibility, and its difficult permea-
bility by water carrying mineral matter in solution;
is the best of all materials for the production of coal;
and the microscope shows that of this the principal
part of the coal is actually composed.

In the wide, open forest glades, tree-ferns almost
precisely similar to those of the modern tropics reared
their leafy crowns. But among them was one peculiar

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

129

type, in wliich the fronds were borne in pairs on
opposite sides of the stem, leaving when they fell two
rows of large horseshoe-shaped scars marking the sides
of the trunk. Botanists, who havo been puzzled
with these plants almost as much as with the Stig-
maria, havo supposed these scars to be marks of
branches, of cones, and even of aerial roots ; but
specimens in my collection prove conclusively that
the stem of this genus was a great caudex made up of
the bases of two rows of huge leaves cemented toge-
ther probably by intervening cellular tissue. As in
the Devonian and in modern times, the stems of the
tree-ferns of the Carboniferous strengthened them-
selves by immense bundles of cord-like aerial roots,
which look like enormous fossil brooms, and are known
under the name Psaronius.

We have only time to glance at the vast brakes of
tall Calamites which fringe the Sigillaria woods, and
stretch far seaward over tidal flats. They were allied
to modern Mares' Tails or Equisetums, but were of
gigantic size, and much more wood\'^ structure of stem.
The Calamites grew on wet mud and sand-flats, and
also in swamps ; and they appear to have been espe-
cially adapted to take root in and clotho and mat
together soft sludgy material recently deposited or
in process of deposition. When the seed or spore
of a Calamite had taken root, it probably produced
a little low whorl of leaves surrounding one small
joint, from which another and another, widening in
size, arose, producing a cylindr-^^l stem, tapering to

130

THE STOEY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

a point below. To strengthen the unstable base^ the
lower joints, especially if the mud had bee.a, accumu-
lating around the plant, shot out long roots instead of
leaves, while secondary stems grew out of the sides
at the surface of the soil, and in time there was a stool
of Or'imites, with tufts of long roots stretching down-
wards, like an immense brush, into the mud. When
Calamites thus grew on inundated flats, they would,
by causing the water to stagnate, promote the eleva-
tion of the surface by new deposits, so that their
stems gradually became buried ; but this only favoured
their growth, for they continually pushed out new
stems, while the old buried ones shot out bundles
of roots instead of regular whorls of leaves.

The Calamites, growing in vast fields along the
margins of the Sigillaria forests, must have greatly
protected these from the effects of inundations, and
by collecting the mud brought down by streams ia
times of flood, must have done much to prevent the
intrusion of earthy deposits among the vegetable
matter. Their chief office, therefore, as coal-pro-
ducers, seems to have been to form for the Sigillaria
forests those reedy fringes which, when inundations
took place, would exclude mud, and prevent that
mixture of earthy matter in the coal which would have
rendered it too impure for use. Quantities of frag-
ments of their stems can, however, be detected by the
microscope in most coals.

The modern Mares' Tails have thin-walled hollow
stems, and some of the gigantic calamites of the coal

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

131

resembled them in this. But others, to which the
name Galamodendron, or Reed-tree, has been given,
had stems with thick woody walls of a remarkable
structure, which, while similar in plan to that of the
Mares' Tails, was much more perfect in its develop-
ment. Professor Williamson has shown that there
were forms intervening between these extremes ; and
thus in the calamites and calamodendrons we have
another example of the exaltation in ancient times
of a type now of humble structure ; or, in other words,
of a comprehensive type, low in the modern world, but
in older periods taking to itself by anticipation the
properties afterward confined to higher forms. The
gigantic club-mosses of the Coal period constitute a
similar example, and it is very curious that both of
these types have been degraded in tho modern world,
though retaining preciselv their general aspect^ while
the tree-ferns contemporary with them in the Palaeo-
zoic still survive in all their original grandeur.

Rarely in the swampy flats, perhaps more frequently
in the uplands, grew great pines of several kinds ;
trees capable of doing as good service for planks and
beams as many of their modern successors, but which
lived before their time, and do not appear even to
have aided much in the formation of coal. These
pines of the Coal-period seem to have closely resem-
bled some species still living in the southern hemi-
sphere ; and, like the ferns, they present to us a vege-
table type which has endured through vast periods
of time almost unchanged. Indeed, in the Middle

132

THE STORY OP THE EAETH AND MAN.

Ill

[| !

Devonian we have pines almost as closely resembling
those of the Modern world as do those of the Coal
period. It is in accordance with this long duration of
the ferns and pines, that they are plants now of world-
wide distribution — suited to all climates and stations.
Capacity to exist under varied conditions is near akin
to capacity to survive cosmical changes. A botanist in
the strange and monstrous woods which we have tried
to describe, would probably have found many curious
things among the smaller herbaceous plants, and
might have gathered several precursors of the modern
Exogens and Ehdogens which have not been preserved
to us as fossils, or are known only as obscure frag-
ments. But incomplete though our picture neces-
sarily is, and obscured by the dust of time, it may
serve in some degree to render green to our eyes
those truly primeval forests which treasured up for our
long winter nights the Palaeozoic sunshine, and estab-
lished for us those storehouses of heat-giving material
which work our engines and propel our ships and
carriages. Truly they lived not in vain, both as real-
izing for us a type of vegetation which otherwise we
could not have imagined, and as preparing the most
important of all the substrata of our modern arts and
manufactures. In this last regard even the vegetable
waste of the old coal swamps was most precious to us,
as the means of producing the clay iron ores of the
coal measures. I may close this notice of the Carbo-
niferous forests with a suggestive extract from a paper
by Professor Huxley in the Contemjporary Review : —

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

133

■m

"Nature is never in a hurry, and seems to have

had always before her eyes the adage, ' Keep a thing

long enough, and you will find a use for it.' She has

kept her beds of coal for millions of years without

being able to find much use for them ; she has sent

hem down beneath the sea, and the sea-beasts could

nake nothing of them ; she has raised them up into

Iry land and laid the black veins bare, and still for

iges and ages there was no living thing on the face

')f the earth that could see any sort of value in them ;

and it was only the other day, so to speak, that she

turned a new creature out of her workshop, who by

degrees acquired sufiicient wits to make a fire, and

then to discover that the black rock would burn.

*' I suppose that nineteen hundred years ago, when
Julius Caesar was good enough to deal with Britain
as we have dealt with New Zealand, the primeval
Briton, blue with cold and woad, may have known
that the strange black stone, of which he found lumps
here and there in his wanderings, would burn, and
so help to warm his body and cook his food. Saxon,
Dane, and Norman swarmed into the land. The
English people grew into a powerful nation, and
Nature still waited for a return for the capital she had
invested in the ancient club-mosses. The eighteenth
century arrived, and with it James Watt. The brain
of that man was the spore out of which was developed
the steam-engine, and all the prodigious trees and
branches of modern industry which have grown out

of this. But coal is as much an essential cjondition of

134

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

"111! IIP I

this growtli and development as carbonic acid is for
that of a club -moss. Wanting the coal, we could not
have smelted the iron needed to make our engines,
nor have worked our engines when we had got them.
But take away the engines, and the great towns of
Yorkshire and Lancashire vanish like a dream. Manu-
factures give place to agriculture and pasture, and not
ten men could live where now ten thousand are amply
supported.

"Thus all this abundant wealth of money and of
vivid life is Nature's investment in club-mosses and
the like so long ago. But what becomes of the coal
which is burnt in yielding the interest ? Heat comes
out of it, light comes out of it, and if we could gather
together all that goes up the chimney and all that
remains in the grate of a thoroughly-burnt coal fire,
we should find ourselves in possession of a quantity
of carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and mineral
matters, exactly equal in weight to the coal. But
these are the very matters with which Nature supplied
the club-moss which made the coal. She is paid back
principal and interest at the same time; and she
straightway invests the carbonic acid, the water, and
the ammonia in new forms of life, feeding with them
the plants that now live. Thrifty Nature ! surely no
prodigal, but most notable of housekeepers !"

All this is true and admirably put. Its one weak
point is the poetical personification of Nature as an
efficient planner of the whole. Such an imaginary
goddess is a mere superstition, unknown alike to

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

135

science and theology. Surely it is more rational to
hold that the mind which can utilize the coal and
understand the manner of its formation, is itself made
in the image and likeness of the Supreme Creative
Spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being,
who knows the end from the beginning, whose power
is the origin of natural forces, whose wisdom is the
source of laws ar^d correlations of laws, and whose
great plan is .-^^ .'ent alike in the order of nature
of the Palaeozoic world and of the modern world, as
well as in the i tidtion of these to each other.

In C e Carboniferous, as in the Devonian age,
insects existed, and in greater numbers. The winged
insects of the period, so far as known, belong to three
of the nine or ten orders into which modern insects
are usually divided. Conspicuous among them are
representatives of our well-known domestic pests the
cockroaches, which thus belong geologically to a very
old family. The Carboniferous roaches had not the
advantage of haunting our larders, but they had
abundance of vegetable food in the rank forests of
their time, and no doubt lived much as the numerous
wild out-of-door species of this family now do. It is,
however, a curious fact that a group of insects created
so long ago, should prove themselves capable of the
kind of domestication to which these creatures attain
in our modern days; and that, had we lived even so far
back as the coal period, we might have been liable to
the attacks of this particular kind of pest. Another
group, represented by many species in the coal

ilfil" !1

liliilli

136

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

forests^ was that of tlie May-flies and shad-flies, or
ephemeras, which spend their earlier days under
water, feeding on vegetable matter, and afi'ording food
to many fresh-water fishes — a use which they no
doubt served in the coal period also. Some of them
were giants in their way, being probably seven inches
in expanse of wing, and their larvae must have been
choice morsels to the ganoid fishes, and would have
afforded abundant bait had there been anglers in
those days. Another group of insects was that of the
weevils, a family of beetles, whose grubs must have
found plenty of nuts and fruits to devour, without
attracting the wrathful attentions of any gardener or
orchardist.

A curious and exceptional little group of creatures
in the present world is that of the galley-worms or
millipedes; wingless, many -jointed, and many-footed
crawlers, resembling worms, but more allied to
insects. These animals seem to have swarmed in the
coal forests, and perhaps attained their maximum
numbers and importance in this period, though they
still remain, a relic of an ancient comprehensive type.
I have myself found specimens referred by Mr.
Scudder, a most competent entomologist, to two
genera and five species, in a few decayed fossil stumps
in Nova Scotia, and several others have been dis-
covered in other parts of the world. It is not
wonderful that animals like these, feeding on decayed
vegetable matter, should have flourished in the
luxuriant Sigillaria swamps. A few species of scor-

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

137

pions and spiders, very like those of the modern
world, have been found in the coal measures, both in
Europe and America ; so that while we know of no
enemy of the Devonian insects except the fishes, we
know in addition to these in the Carboniferous the
spiders and their allies, and the smaller reptiles or
batrachians to be noticed in the sequel. With refer-
ence to the latter, it is a curious fact that one of the
first fragments of a winged insect found in the coal-
fields of America was a part of a head and some other
remains contained in the coprolites or excrementitious
matter of one of the smaller fossil reptiles. It is
perhaps equally interesting that this head shows one
of the compound facetted eyes as perfectly developed
as those of any modern Neuropter, a group of insects
remarkable even in the present world for their large
and complex organs of vision. We may pause here to
note that, just as in the Primordial we already have
the Trilobites presenting all the modifications of which
the type is susceptible, so in the Carboniferous we
have in the case of the terrestrial articulates a similar
fact — highly specialised forms like the beetles, the
spiders, and the scorpions, already existing along
with comprehensive forms like the millipedes. Let
us formulate the law of creation which the Primordial
trilobites, the Devonian fishes, and the Carboniferous
club-mosses and insects have taught us : it is, that
every new type rapidly attains its maximum of de-
velopment in magnitude and variety of forms, and then
remains stationary, or even retrogrades, in subsequent

138

THE STOET OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

ages. We may connect this with other laws in the
sequel.

In the coal measures we also meet, for the first
time in our ascending progress, the land snails so
familiar now in every part of the world, and which
are represented by two little species found in the coal
formation of Nova Scotia. The figures of these must
speak for themselves ; but the fact of their occurrence
here and the mode of their preservation require some
detailed mention. The great province of the MoUusks
we have carried with us since we met with the Lingulas
in the Primordial, but all its members have been
aquatic, and probably marine. For the first time, in
the Carboniferous period, snails emerge from the
waters, and walk upon the ground and breathe air;
for, like the modern land snails, these creatures no
doubt had air- sacks instead of gills. They come
suddenly upon us — two species at once, and these
representing two distinct forms of the snail tribe, the
elongated and the rounded. They were very numer-
ous. In the beds where they occur, probably
thousands of specimens, more or less perfect, could
be collected. Were they the first-born of land snails ?
It would be rash to affirm this, more especially since
in all the coal-fields of the world no specimens have
been found except at one locality in Nova Scotia ;* and
in all the succeeding beds we meet with no more till
we have reached a comparatively modern time. Yet

* Bradley has recently announced the discovery of other
species in the coal-field of Illinois.

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

139

it is very unlikely that these creatures were in the
coal period limited to one country, and that, after
that period, they dropped out of existence for long
ages, and then reappeared. Still it may have been so.

THE TWO OLDEST LAND SNAILS.

Fig. 14. — Pupa Vetusta, Dawson,
(a) Natural size, (b) Enlarged, (c) Apex, enlarged, (d) Sculpture, magnified.

Pig. 16. — Conulus Priscus, Carpenter,
(o) Specimen enlarged, (h) Sculptm-e, magnified. . •

There are cases of geographical limitation quite as
curious now. Here again another peculiarity meets

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

iii

liiliii!!!

us. If those are really the oldest land snails, it is
curious that they are so small, — so much inferior to
many of their modern successors even in the same
latitudes. The climate of the coal period must have
suited them, and there was plenty of vegetable food,
though perhaps not the richest or most tender. There
is no excuse for them in their outward circumstances.
Why, then, unlike so many other creatures, do they
enter on existence in this poor and sneaking way.
We must here for their benefit modify in two ways
the statement broadly made in a previous chapter,
that new types come in under forms of great magni-
tude. First, we often have, in advance of the main in-
road of a new horde of animals, a few insignificant
stragglers as a sort of prelude to the rest — precursors
intimating beforehand what is to follow. We shall
find this to be the case with the little reptiles of the
coal, and the little mammals of the Trias, preceding
the greater forms which subsequently set in. Se-
condly, this seems to be more applicable in the case of
, land animals than in the case of those of the waters.
To the waters was the fiat to bring forth living things
issued. They have always kept to themselves the
most gigantic forms of life ; and it seems as if new
forms of life entering on the land had to begin in a
small way and took more time to culminate.

The circumstances in which the first specimens of
Carboniferous snails and gally-worms were found are
so peculiar and so characteristic of the coal formation,
that I must pause here to notice them, and to make of

THE OP.BONIFEROUS AGE.

141

them an iutroduction to the next group of creatures
wo have to consider. In the coal formation in all
parts of the world it is not unusual, as stated already
in a previous page, to find erect trees or stumps
of trees, usually Sigillaria), standing where they grew ;
and where the beds are exposed in coast cliffs, or road
cuttings, or mines, these fossil trees can bo extracted
from the matrix and examined. They usually consist
of an outer cylinder of coal representing the outer
bark, while the space within, once occupied by the
inner bark and wood, is filled with sandstone, some-
times roughly arranged in layers, the lowest of which
is usually mixed with coaly matter or mineral charcoal
derived from the fallen remains of the decayed wood,
a kind of deposit which affords to the fossil botanist
one of the best modes of investigating the tissues of
these trees. These fossil stumps are not uncommon in
the roofs of the coal-seams. In some places they are
known to the miners as '^ coal pipes," and are dreaded
by them in consequence of the accidents which occur
from their suddenly falling after the coal which sup-
ported them has been removed. An old friend and
helper of mine in Carboniferous explorations had a
lively remembrance of the fact that one of these old
trees, falling into the mine in which he was working,
h?d crushed his leg and given him a limp for life ; and
if he had been a few inches nearer to it would have
broken his back.

The manner in which such trees become fossilized
may be explained as follows : — Imagine a forest of

142

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Sigillariac growing on a low flat. This becomes
submerged by subsidence or inundation, the soil is
buried under several feet of sand or mud, and the
trees killed by this agency stand up as bare and
lifeless trunks. The waters subside, and the trees
rapidly decay, the larvas of wood-boring insects per-
haps aiding in the process, as they now do in the
American woods. The dense coaly outer bark alone
resists decomposition, and stands as a hollow cylinder
until prostrated by the wind or by the waters of
another inundation, while perhaps a second forest or
jungle has sprung up on the new surface. When it
falls, the part buried in the soil becomes an open hole,
with a heap of shreds of wood and bark in the bottom.
Such a place becomes a fit retreat for gally-worms
and land-snails j and reptiles pursuing such animals,
or pursued by their own enemies, or heedlessly
scrambling {tmong the fallen trunks, may easily fall
into such holes and remain as prisoners. I remember
to have observed, when a boy, a row of post-holes
dug across a pasture-field and left open for a few days,
and that in almost every hole one or two toads wer^
prisoners. This was the fate which must have often
befallen the smaller reptiles of the coal forests in the
natural post-holes left by the decay of the Sigillarias.
Yet it may be readily understood that the combination
of circumstances which would efi'ect this result must
have been rare, and consequently this curious fact has
been as yet observed only in the coal formation of
Nova Scotia; and in it only in one locality, and in

THE CABBONIF£BOUS AQE.

143

tliis in one only out of more than sixty bods in which
erect trees have been found. But these hollow trees
must be filled up in order to preserve their contents ;
and as inundation and subsequent decay have been the
grave-diggers for the reptiles, so inundations filled up
their graves with sand, to be subsequently hardened
into sandstone, burying up at the same time the newer
vegetation which had grown upon the former surface.
The idea that something interesting might be found in
these erect stumps, first occurred to Sir C. Lyell and
the writer while exploring the beautiful coast cliff's
of Western Nova Scotia in 1851; and it was in ex-
amining the fragments scattered on the beach that
we found the bones of the first Carboniferous reptile
discovered in America, and the shell of the oldest
known land snail.

These were not, however, the earliest known in-
stances of Carboniferous reptiles. In 1841, Sir William
Logan found footprints of a reptile at Horton Bluff", in
Nova' Scotia, in rocks of Lower Carboniferous age.
In 1844, Yon Dechen found reptilian bones in the coal-
field of Saarbruck ; and in the same year Dr. King
found reptilian footprints in the Carboniferous of
Pennsylvania. Like Kobinson Crusoe on his desert
island, we saw the footprints before we knew the
animals that produced them; and the fact that there
were marks on a slab of shale or sandstone that must
Lu ^^e been made by an animal walking on feet, was as
clear and startling a revelation of the advent of a new
and higher form of life, as were the footprints of Man

144

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Friday. Within the thirty years since the discovery
of the first slab of footprints, the knowledge of coal
formation reptiles has grown apace. I can scarcely at
present sura up exactly the number of species, but
may estimate it at thirty-five at least. I must, how-
ever, here crave pardon of some of my friends for the
use of the word reptile. In my younger days frogs
and toads and newts used to be reptiles ; now we are
told that they are more like fishes, and ought to be
called Batrachians or Amphibians, whereas reptiles are
a higher type, more akin to birds than to these lower
and more grovelling creatures. The truth is, that the
old class Reptilia bridges over the space between the
fishes and the birds, and it is in some degree a matter
of taste whether we make a strong line at the two
ends of it alone, or add another line in the middle. I
object to the latter course, however, in the period of
the world's history of which I am now writing, since I
am sure that there were animals in those days which
were batrachians in some points and true reptiles in
others ; while there are some of them in regard to
which it is quite uncertain whether they are nearer to
the one group or the other. Although, therefore,
naturalists, with the added Hght and penetration
which thoy obtain by striding on to the Mesozoic
and Modern periods, may despise my old-fashioned
grovellers among the mire of the coal-swamps, I
shall, for convenience, persist in calling them reptiles
in a general way, and shall bring out whatever claims
1 can to justify this title for some of them at least.

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

145

Perhaps tlie most fish-like of the whole are the
curious creatures from the coal measures of Saarbruck,
first found by Von Dechen, and which constitute the
genus Archegosaurus. Their large heads, short necks,
supports for permanont gills, feeble limbs, and long
tails for swimming, show that they were aquatic
creatures presenting many points of resemblance to
the ganoid fishes with which they must have asso-
ciated ; still they were higher than these in possessing
lungs and true feet, though perhaps better adapted
for swimming than even for creeping.

From these creatures the other coal reptiles diverge,
and ascend along two lines of progress, the one lead-
ing to gigantic crocodile -like animals provided with
powerful jaws and teeth, and probably haunting the
margins of the waters and preying on fishes; the
other leading to small and delicate lizard-like species,
with well-developed limbs, large ribs, and ornate
horny scales and spines, living on land and feeding
on insects and similar creatures.

In the first direction we have a considerable num-
ber of species found in the Jarrow coal-field in Ireland,
and described by Professor Huxley. Some of them
were like snakes in their general form, others more
like lizards. Still higher stand such animals as
Baphetes and Eosaurus from the Nova Scotia coal-field
and Anfhracosaurus from that of Scotland. The style
and habits of these creatures it is easy to understand,
however much haggling the comparative anatomists
may make over their bones. They were animals of

146

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

various size, ranging from a foot to at least ten feet
in length, the body generally lizard-like in form,
* with stout limbs and a flattened tail useful in swim-
ming. Their heads were flat, stout, and massive, with

Pig, 16. — BESTOH.VTIONS OF BAPHETES, DENDHEBPETOIf, nTT,OWOMrS, AND HTLEK-
PEXOIf, WITH CAEBONIFEEOU8 PLANTS IN THE DISTANCE.

large teeth, strengthened by the ' isertion and con-
volution of plates of enamel. The fore limbs were
probably larger than the hind limbs, the better to
enable them to raise themselves out of the water.

THE CAEBONIFEROUS AGE.

147

The belly was strengthened by bony plates and closely
imbricated scales, to resist, perhaps, the attacks of
fishes from beneath, and to enable them without
injury to drag their heavy bodies over trunks of trees
and brushwood, whether in the water or on the land.
Their general aspect and mode of life were therefore
by no means unlike those of modern alligators ; and
in the vast swamps of the coal measures, full of ponds
and sluggish streams swarming with fish, such crea-
tures must have found a most suitable habitat, and
probably existed in great numbers, basking on the
muddy banks, surging through the waters, and filling
the air with their bellowings. The most curious point
about these creatures is, that while rigid anatomy
regards them as allied in structure more to frogs and
toads and newts than to true lizards, it is obvious to
common sense that they were practically crocodiles;
and even anatomy must admit that their great ribs
.and breastplates, and powerful teeth and limbs, in-
dicate a respiration, circulation, and general vitality,
quite as high as those of the proper reptiles. Hence,
it happens that very difi'erent views are stated as to
their afiinities ; questions into which we need nc ti now
enter, satisfied with the knowledge of the general ap-
pearance and mode of life of these harbingers of the
reptilian life of the succeeding geological periods.

In the other direction, wo find several animals of
small size but better developed limbs, leading to a
group of graceful little creatures, quite as perplexing
with regard to affinities as those first mentioned, but

148

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

tending towards tho smaller lizards of the modem
world. At the top of these I may place the genus
Ilylonomus from hollow fossil trees of Nova Scotia,
of which two species are represented as restored in
our illustration. In these restorations I have adhered
as faithfully as possible to the proportions of parts as
seen in my specimens. Imagine a little animal six
or seven inches long, with small short head, not so
flat as those of most lizards, but with a raised fore-
head, giving it an aspect of some intelligence. Its
general form is that of a lizard, but with the hind
feet somewhat large, to aid it in leaping and standing
erect, and long and flexible toes. Its belly is covered
with bony scales, its sides with bright and probably
coloured scale armour of horny consistency, and its
neck and back adorned with horny crests, tubercles,
and pendants. It runs, leaps, and glides through the
herbage of the coal forests, intent on the pursuit of
snails and insects, its eye glancing and its bright
scales shining in the sun. This is a picture of the
best known species of Hylonomus drawn from the
life. Yet the anatomist, when he examines the im-
perfectly-ossified joints of its backbone, and the
double joint at the back of its skull, will ^^ell you
that it is after all little better than a mere newt, an
ass in a lion^s skin, a jackdaw with borrowed feathers,
and that it has no right to have fine scales, or to
be able to run on the land. It may be so; but I may
plead in its behalf, that in the old coal times, when
reptiles with properly-made skeletons had not been

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

149

created, the next best animals may have been entitled
to wear their clothes and to assume their functions as
well. In short, functionally or officially, our ancient
batrachians were reptiles; in point of rank, as mea-
sured by typo of skeleton, they belonged to a lower
grade. To this view of the case I think most natural-
ists will agree, and they will also admit that the pro-
gress of our views has been in this direction, since
the first discovery of Carboniferous air-breathing
vertebrates. In evidence of this I may quote from
Professor Huxloy^s description of his recently found
species.* After noticing the prevalent views that the
coal reptiles were of low organization, he says : '^ Dis-
coveries in the Nova Scotia coal-fields first shook
this view, which ceased to be tenable when the great
Antltracosaurus of the Scotch coal-field was found to
have well-ossified biconcave vertebrae."

The present writer may, however, be suspected of
a tendency to extend forms of life backward in time,
since it has fallen to his lot to be concerned in this
process of stretching backward in several cases. Ho
has named and described the oldest known animal.
He has described the oldest true exogen, and the
oldest known pine-tree. Ho was concerned in the
discovery of the oldest known land snails, and found
the oldest millipedes. He has just described the
oldest bituminous bed composed of spore-cases, and
he claims that his genus Hylonomus includes the

Geological Magazine, vol. iii.

150

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

oldest animals wliicli liavo a fair claim to be considered
reptiles. Still this discovery of old things comes
rather of fortune and careful search than of a desire
to innovate ; and a distinction should be drawn be-
tween that kind of novelty which consists in the
development of new truths, and that which consists
in the invention of new fancies, or the revival of old
ones. There is too much of this last at present; and
it would be a more promising line of work for our
younger naturalists, if they would patiently and
honestly question nature, instead of trying to extort
astounding revelations by throwing her on the rack
of their own imaginations.

We may pause here a moment to contemplate the
greatness of the fact we have been studying — the
introduction into our world of the earliest known
vertebrate animals which could open their nostrils
and literally "breathe the breath of life.^' All pre-
vious animals that we know, except a few Devonian
insects, had respired in the water by means of gills
or similar appai-atus. Now we not only have the
little land snails, with their imperfect substitutes for
lungs, but animals which must have been able to draw
in the vital air into capacious chambered lungs, and
with this power must have enjoyed a far higher and
more active style of vitality ; and must have pos-
sessed the faculty of uttering truly vocal sounds.
What wondrous possibilities unknown to these crea-
tures, perhaps only dimly perceived by such rational
intelligences as may have watched the growth of our

THE CARBONIFEEOUS AGE.

151

young world, were implied in these gifts. It is one
of the remarkable points in the history of creation in
Genesis, that this step of the creative work is emphat-
ically marked. Of all the creatures we have noticed
up to this point, it is stated that God said, " Let the
waters bring them forth," — but it is said that " God
created" great reptiles [tanninim) .'^ No doubt these
" great tanninim" culminate in the succeeding Meso-
zoic age, but their first introduction dates as far back
as the Carboniferous; and this introduction was em-
phatically a creation, as being the commencement of
a new feature among living beings. What further
differences may be implied in the formula), " Let the
waters produce" and " God created," we do not know;
very probably he who wrote the words did not fully
know. But if we could give a scientific expression
to this difierence, and specify the cases to which its
terms apply, we might be able to solve one of the
most vexed questions of biology.

Let us observe, however, that even here, where, if
anywhere, we have actual creation, especial pains are
taken to bridge over the gap, and to prevent any
appearance of discontinuity in the work. The ganoid
fishes of the coal period very probably had, like their
modern congeners, well-developed air-bladders, serv-
ing to some extent, though very imperfectly, as lungs.
Tlie humbler and more aquatic reptiles of the period
retained the gills, and also some of the other features

* Not " whales," as in our version.

152

THE STOEY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

of the fishes ; so that, like some modern creatures of
their class, they stood, as to respiration, on two stools,
and seemed unwilling altogether to commit them-
selves to the new mode of life in the uncongenial ele-
ment of air. Even the larger and more lizard-like of
the coal reptiles may — though this we do not certainly
know, and in some cases there are reasons for doubting
it — have passed the earliest stage of their lives in the
water as gilled tadpoles, in the manner of our modern
frogs. Thus at the very point where one of the
greatest advances of animal life has its origin, we
have no sudden stop, but an inclined plane ; and yet,
as I have elsewhere endeavoured to show by argu-
ments which cannot be repeated here,* we have not a
shadow of reason to conclude that, in the coal period,
fishes were transmuted into reptiles.

But the reader may be wearied with our long
sojourn in the pestilential atmosphere of the coal
swamps, and in the company of their low-browtd and
squalid inhabitants. Let us turn for a little to the
sea, and notice the animal life of the great coral reefs
and shell beds preserved for us in the Carboniferous
limestone. Before doing so, one point merits atten-
tion. The coal formation for the first time distinctly
presents to us the now familiar differences in the
inhabitants of the open sea and those of creeks, estu-
aries and lakes. Such distinctions are unknown to
us in the Silurian. There all is sea. They begin to

* " Air-breathers of the Coal Period," p. 77.

THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE.

153

appear in tlio Devonian, in the shallow fish-banks and
the Anodon-like bivalves found with fossil plants.
In the coal period they become very manifest. The
animals found in the shales with the coal are all, even
the aquatic ones, distinct from those of the open seas
of the period. Some of them may have lived in salt
or brackish water, but not in the open sea. They are
creatures of still and shallow waters. It is true that
in some coal-fields marine beds occur in the coal
measures with their characteristic fossils, but those
are quite distinct from the usual animal remains of
the coal-fields, and mark occasional overflows of the
sea, owing to subsidence of the land. It is important
to notice this geographical difference, marking the
greater specialisation and division of labour, if wc
may so speak, that was in the process of introduction.
The sea of the Carboniferous period presented in
the main similar great groups of animals to those of
the Devonian, represented however by different
species. We may notice merely some of the salient
points of resemblance or difference. ITie old types
of corals continue in great force ; but it is their last
time, for they rapidly decay in the succeeding Per-
mian and disappear. The Crinoids are as numerous
and beautiful as in any other period, and here for the
first time we meet with the new and higher type of
the sea-urchin, in large and beautiful species. One
curious group, that of the FentremiteSj a sort of larval
form, is known here alone. Among the lamp-shells
we may note, as peculiarly and abundantly Carboni-

154

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

fcrous, those with one valve very convex and the
other very concave and anchored in the mud by long
spines instead of a peduncle attached to stones and
rocks.* There are many beautiful shells allied to
modern scallops, and not a few sea-snails of various
sorts. The grand Orthocoratites of the Silurian di-
minish in size preparatory to their disappearance in
the Permian, and the more modern typo of Nautilus
and its allies becomes prevalent. Among the Crus-
taceans we may notice the appearance of the Limulus,
or king-crab, of which the single little species de-
scribed by Woodward from the Upper Silurian may
be regarded as merely a prophecy. It is curious that
the Carboniferous king-crabs are very small, appa-
rently another case of a new form appearing in
humble guise; but as the young of modern king-
crabs haunt creeks and swampy flats, while the adults
live in the sea, it may be that only the young of the
Carboniferous species are yet known to us, the speci-
mens found being mostly in beds likely to be fre-
quented by the young rather than by the full-grown
individuals.

The old order of the Trilobites, which has accom-
panied us from Primordial times, here fails us, and a
few depauperated species alone remain, the sole sur-
vivors of their ancient race — small, unornamented, and
feeble representatives of a once numerous and influen-
tial tribe. How strange that a group of creatures so
numerous and apparently so well adapted to conditions

* The Productida9.

THE CAEBONIPEROUS AGE.

155

of existencG which still continue in the soa, should
thus die out, while the little bivalved crustaceans,
which began life almost as far back and lived on the
same sea-floors with the Trilobitcs, should still abound
in all our seas ; and while the king-crabs, of precisely
similar habits with the Trilobites, should apparently
begin to prosper. Equally strange is the fate of the
groat swimming Eurypterids which we saw in the
Devonian. They also continue, but in diminished
force, in the Carboniferous, and there lay down for
ever their well-jointed cuirasses and formidable wea-
pons, while a few little shrimp-like creatures, their '
contemporaries, form the small point of the wedge
of our great tribes of squillas and crabs and lobsters.
Some years ago the late lamented palaoontologist,
Salter, a man who scarcely leaves his equal in his
department, in conjunction with Mr. Henry Wood-
ward, prepared a sort of genealogical chart of the
Crustacea on which these facts are exhibited. Some
new species have since been discovered, and a little
additional light about affinities has been obtained ;
but taken as it stands, the history of the Crustacea as
there shown in one glance, has in it more teaching
on the philosophy of creation than I have been able
to find in many ponderous quartos of tenfold its pre-
tensions. Had Salter been enabled, with the aid of
other specialists like Woodward, to complete similar
charts of other classes of invertebrate animals, scien-
tific palaeontology in England would have been further
advanced than it is likely to be in the next ten years.

156

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN,

To return to our Trilobites : one of tlie most re-
markable points in their history is their appearance
in full force in the Primordial. In these rocks wo
have some of the largest in size — some species of
Paradoxidcs being nearly two feet long, and some of
the very smallest. We have some with the most nu-
merous joints, others with the fewest ; some with very
large tails, others with very small; some with no
ornamentation, others very ornate; some with large
eyes, others with none that have been made out,
though it is scarcely probable that they were wholly
blind. They increased in numbers and variety through
the Silurian and Devonian, and then suddenly drop
off at the end of the Lower Carboniferous. Through-
out th . whole term of existence they kept rigidly
to that type of the mud-plough which the king-crab
still retains, and which renders the anterior extrem-
ity so ditlierent from that of the ordinary Crustacea.
They constitute one of the few cases in which we seem
to see before us the whole history of an animal type ;
and the more we look into that history, the more do
we wonder at their inscrutable introduction, the unity
and variety mingled in their progress, and their
strange and apparently untimely end. I have already
referred (page 95) to the use which Barrande makes
of this as an argument against theories of evolution;
but must refer to his work for the details.

One word more I must say before leaving their
graves. I have reason to believe that they were
not only the diggers of the. burrows, and of the

THE CARBONIFEROUS AOE.

157

ladder-tracks and pitted tracks * of tlio Silurian and
Primordial, but that with the strokes of their rounded
or spinous tails, tho digging of their snouts, and the
hoc-work of their hard upper lips, or Ilypostomes,
they rar ^0 nearly all those strange marks in tho Pri-
mordial mud which have been referred to fucoids, and
even to higher plants. The Trilobites worked over
all tho mud bottoms of tho Primordial, even in places
where no remains of them occur, and the peculiarities
of the markings which they left are to be explained
only by a consideration of the structures of individual
species.

I had almost lost sight of the fishes of the Carboni-
ferous period, but after saying so much of those of
the Devonian, it would be unfair to leave their suc-
cessors altogether unnoticed. In the Carboniferous
we lose those broad-snouted plate-covered species
that form so conspicuous a feature in the Devonian ;
and whatever its meaning, it is surely no accident
that these mud-burrowing fishes should decay along
with those crustacean mud-burrowers, the Trilobites.
But swarms of fishes remain, confined, as in tho De-
vonian, wholly to the two '".ders of the Gar-fishes
(Ganoids) and the sharks {Placolds). In the former
we have a multitude of small and beautiful species
haunting the creeks and ponds of the coal swamps,
and leaving vast quantities of their remains in the
shaly and even coaly beds formed in such places.
Such were the pretty, graceful fishes of the genera

* OUmactichnites and Proticlmites.

158

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Palceoniscus and Amhlyptcrus. Pursuing and feeding
on these were larger ganoids, armed with strong bony-
scales, and formidable conical or sharp-edged teeth.
Of these were Uhizodus and Awolepis. There were
besides multitudes of sharks whose remains consist
almost wholly of their teeth and spines, their cartila-
ginous skeletons having perished. One group was
allied to the few species of modern sharks whoso
mouths are paved with flat teeth for crushing shells.
These were the most abundant sharks of the Carboni-
ferous— slow and greedy monsters, haunting shell
banks and coral reefs, and grinding remorselessly all
the shell-fishes that came in their way. There were
also sharks furnished with sharp and trenchant teeth,
which must have been the foes of the smaller mailed
fishes, pursuing them into creeks and muddy shallows,
and if we may judge from the quantity of their re-
mains in some of these places, sometimes perishing
in their eager efibrts. On the whole, the fishes of the
Carboniferous were, in regard to their general type, a
continuation of those of the Devonian, but the sharks
and the scaly ganoids were relatively more numerous.
They differed from our modern fishes in the absence
of the ordinary horny-scaled type to which all our
more common fishes belong, and in the prevalence of
that style of tail which has been termed " heterocer-
cal,'' in which the continuation of the backbone forms
the upper lobe of the tail, a style which, if we may
judge from modern examples, gives more power of
upward and downward movement, and is especially

THE CAEBONIFEROUS AGE.

159

suitable to fishes which search for food only at the
bottom, or only above the surface of the waters.

Most reluctantly I must here leave one of the most
remarkable periods of the worldV: history, and reserve
to our next chapter the summation of the history of
the older world of life in its concluding stage, the
Permian.

CHAPTER VII.

Illfl

THE PEEMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALEOZOIC.

The immense swamps and low forest-clad plains
which occupied the continental areas of the Northern
Hemisphere, and which we now know extended also
into the regions south of the equator, appear at the
close of the Carboniferous age to have again sunk
beneath the waves, or to have relapsed into the con-
dition of sand and gravel banks ; for a great thickness
of such deposits rests on the coal measures and con-
stitutes the upper coal formation, the upper "barren
measures'^ of the coal-miners. There is something
grand in the idea of this subsidence of a world of
animal and vegetable life beneath the w.'.ters. The
process was very slow, — so slow that at first vegetable
growth and deposition of silt kept pace with it ; and
this is the reason of the immense series of deposits,
in some places nearly 15,000 feet thick, which inclose
or rest upon the coal beds ; but at length it became
more rapid, so that forests and their inhabitants
perished, and the wild surf drifted sand and pebbles
over their former abodes. So the Carboniferous
world, like that of Noah, being overflowed with
water, perished. But it was not a wicked world
drowned for its sins, but merely an old and neces-
sarily preliminary system, which had fully served its

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALEOZOIC. 161

purpose j and, like the stubble of last year, must be
turned under by the plough that it mjiy make way
for a new verdure. The plough passed over it, and
the winter of the Permian came, and then the spring
of a new age.

The Permian and the succeeding Triassic are some-
what chilly and desolate periods of the earth's history.
The one is the twilight of the Palaeozoic day, the other
is the dawn of the Mesozoic. Yet to the philosophical
geologist no ages excel them in interest. They are
times of transition, when old dynasties and races pass
away and are replaced by new and vigorous successors,
founding new empires and introducing new modes of
life and action.

Three great leading points merit our attention in
entering: on the Permian ao^e. The first is the earth-
movements of the period. The second is the resulting
mineral characteristics of the deposits formed. The
third is the aspect of the animal and vegetable life ol'
this age in their relation more especially to those which
preceded.

With respect to the first point above named, the
earth's crust was subjected in the Permian period to
some of the grandest movements which have occurred
in the whole course of geologic time, and we can fix
the limits of these, in Europe and America at least,
with some distinctness. If we examine the Permian
rocks in England and Germany, we shall find that
everywhere they lie on the upturned edges of the
preceding Carboniferous beds. In other words, the

<;e(i^

PERillAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALiEOZOIC. 163

latter have been tlirown into a series of folds, and tlie
tops of these folds have been more or less worn away
before the Permian beds were placed on them. But
if we pass on to the eastward, in the great plain
between the Volga and the Ural mountains, where, in
the " ancient kingdom of Perm," the greatest known
area of these rocks is found, an area equal in extent to
twice that of France, and which Sir 11. I. Murchison,
who first proposed the name, took as the typical
district, we find, on the contrary, that the Permian and
Carboniferous are conformable to one another. If
nov/ we cross the Atlantic and inquire how the case
stands in America, we shall find it precisely the same.
Here the great succession of earth-waves constituting
the Appalachian Mountains rises abruptly at the eastern
edge of the continent, and becomes flatter and flatter,
until, in the broad plains west of the Mississippi, the
Permian beds appear, as in Russia, resting upon the
Carboniferous so quietly that it is not always easy to
draw a line of separation between them. As Dana
has remarked, we find at the western side of Europe
and the eastern side of America, great disturbances
iuuagurating the Permian period ; and in the interior
of both, in the plains between the Volga and the Ural
ill one, and between the Mississippi and Rocky Moun-
tains in the othcx, an entire absence of these disturb-
ances. The main difference is, that in eastern America
the whole Carbonife ous areas have apparently been so
raised up that no Permian was de}> itc 1 cu them,
while in Europe considerable patches of the disturbed

]6-i

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

areas became or remained submerged. Another
American geologist has Largely illustrated the fact
that the movements which threw up the Appalachian
folds were strongest to the eastward, and that the
ridges of rock are steepest on their west sides, the
force which caused them acting from the direction of
the sea. It seems as if the Atlantic area had wanted
elbow-room, and had crushed up the edges of the
continents next to it. In other words, in the lapse of
the Palaeozoic ages the nucleus of the earth had shrunk
away from its coating of rocky layers, which again
collapsed into great wrinkles.

Such a process may seem difficult of comprehension.
To understand it we must bear in mind some of its
conditions. First, the amount of this wrinkling was
extremely small relatively to the mass of the earth.
In the diagram on page 162 it is greatly exag-
gerated, yet is seen to be quite insignificant, however
gigantic in comparison with microscopic weaklings
like ourselves. Secondly, it was probably extremely
slow. Beds of solid rock cannot be suddenly bent into
great folds without breaking, and the abruptness of
some of the folds may be seen from our figure, copied
from Rogers (page 1G2), of some of the foldings of the
Appalachian Mountains. Thirdly, the older rocks
below the Carboniferous and Uio Devonian must have
been in a softened and plastic state, and so capable of
filling up the vacancies left by the bending of the hard
crust above. In evidence of this, we have in the Lower
Permian immense volcanic ejections — lavas and other

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE TAL.'EOZOIC. 105

molten rocks spewed out to the surface from tlie
softened and molten masses below. Fourthly, the
basin of the Atlantic must have been sufficiently strong
to resist the immense lateral pressure, so that the
yielding was all concentrated on the weaker parts cf
the crust near the old fractures at the margins of the
great continents. In these places also, as we have
seen in previous papers, the greatest thickness of
deposits had been formed; so that there was great
downward pressure, and probably, also, greater soften-
ing of the lower part of the crust. Fifthly, as sug-
gested in a previous chapter, the folding of the earth's
crust may have resulted from the continued shrinkage
of its interior in consequence of cooling, leading after
long intervals to collapse of the surface. Astronomers
have, however, suggested another cause. . The earth
bulges at the equator, and is flattened at the poles in
consequence of, or in connection with, the swiftness
of its rotation; but it has been shown that the rotation
of the earth is being very gradually lessened by the
attraction of the moon.* Pierce has recently brought
forward the idea f that this diminution of rotation, by
causing the crust to subside in the equatorial regions
and expand in the polar, might produce the move-
ments observed ; and which, according to Lesley, have
amounted in the whole course of geological time to
about two per cent, of the diameter of our globe. We

* Sir William Thomsvin, who quotes Adams and Delaunay.
t " Nature," February, 1871.

'■■

llllj

^G6

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

thus have two causes, oitlicr of wlucli seems sufficient
to produce tlie effect.

Viewed in tliis way, tbe great disturbances at the
close of the Palaoozoic period constitute one of tlie
most instructive examples in the whole history of the
rartli of that process of collapse to which the crust
was subject after long intervals, and of which no
equally great instance occurs except at the close of
the Laurentian and the close of the Mesozoic. The
mineral peculiarities of the Permian are also accounted
for by the above considerations. Let us now notice
some of these. In nearly all parts of the world the
Permian presents thick beds of red sandstone and
conglomerate as marked ingredients. These, as we
liave already seen, are indications of rapid deposition
accompanying changes of level. In the Permian, as
elsewhere, these beds are accompanied by volcanic
rocks, indicating the subterranean causes of the dis-
turbances. Agnin, these rocks are chiefly abundant in
those regions, like Western Europe, where the physical
changes were at a maximum. Another remarkable
feature of the Permian rocks is the occurrence of great
beds of magnesian limestone, or dolomite. In England,
the thick yellow magnesian limestone, the outcrop of
whicli crosses in nearly a straight line through Dur-
ham, Yorkshire, and Nottingham, marks the edge of
a great Permian sea extending far to the eastward.
In tbe marls and sandstones of the Permian pjriod
there is also much gypsum. Now, chemistry shows iis
that magnesian limestones and gypsums are likely to

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PAL^^i^OZOIC. 1G7

be deposited where sea water, wliicli always contains
salts of magnesia, is evaporating in limited or circum-
scribed areas into wliicli carbonate of lime and carbon-
ate of soda are being carried by streams from tlie land
or springs from below;* and it is also to be observed
that solutions of sulphuric acid, and probably also of
sulphate of magnesia, are characteristic products of
igneous activity. Hence we find in various geological
periods magnesian limestones occurring as a deposit in
limited shallow sea basins, and also in connection with
volcanic breccias. Now these were obviously the new
Permian conditions of what had once been the wide
flat areas of the Carboniferous period. Still further,
we find in Europe, as characteristic of this period,
beds impregnated with metallic salts, especially of
copper. Of this kind are very markedly the copper
slates of Thuringia. Such beds are not, any more
than magnesian limestones, limited to this age; but
they are eminently characteristic of it. To produce
them it is required that water should bring forth from
the earth's crust large quantities of metallic salts, and
that these should come into contact with vegetable
matters in limited submerged areas, so that sulphates
of the metals should be deoxidized into sulphides. A
somewhat different chemical process, as already ex-
plained, was very active in the coal period, and was
connected with the production of its iron ores ; but,
in the Permian, profound and extensive fractures
opened up the way to the deep seats of copper and

* Hunt, " Silliman's Journal," 1859 and 186G.

1G8

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

other metals, to enrich the copper slate and its associ-
ated beds. It is also to be observed that the alkaline
springs and waters which contain carbonate of soda,
very frequently hold various metallic salts; so that
where, owing to the action of such waters, magnesian
limestone is being deposited, we may expect also to
find various metallic ores.

Let us sum up shortly this history. We have fold-
ings of the earth's crust, causing volcanic action and
producing limited and shallow sea-basins, and at the
same time causing the evolution of alkaline and metal-
liferous springs. The union of these mechanical and
chemical causes explains at once the conglomerates,
the red sandstones, the trap rocks, the magnesian lime-
stones, the gypsum, and the metalliferous beds of the
Permian. The same considerations explain the occur-
rence of similar deposits in various other ages of the
earth's history; though, perhaps, in none of these
were they so general over the Northern Hemisphere as
in the Permian.

From the size of the stones in some of the Permian
conglomerates, and their scratched surfaces, it has
been supposed that there were in this period, on the
margins of the continents, mountains sufficiently high
to have snow-clad summits, and to send down glaciers,
bearing rocks and stones to the sea, on which may
have floated, as now in the North Atlantic, huge ice-
bergs.* This would be quite in accordance with the

* Ramsay has ably illustrated this in the Permian conglomer-
ates of England.

PHRMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALJEOZOIC. 169

groat elevation of laud which we know actually occur-
red ; and the existence of snow-clad mountains along
with volcanoes would be a union of fire and frost of
which we still have examples in some parts of the
earth's surface, and this ia proximity to forms of
vegetable life very similiar to those which we know
existed in the Permian.

With the exception of a few small and worthless
beds in Russia, the Permian is not known to contain
any coal. The great swamps of the coal period had
disappeared. In part they were raised up into
rugged mountains. In part thoy were sunken into
shallow sea areas. Thus, while there was much dry
land, there was little opportunity for coal production,
or for the existence of those rank forests which had
accumulated so much vegetable matter in the Car-
boniferous age. In like manner the fauna of the
Permian waters is poor. According to Murchison,
the Permian limestones of Europe have afforded little
mere than one-third as many species of fossils as the
older Carboniferous. The fossils themselves also have
a ,^tuuted and depauperated aspect, indicating con-
difioiDS of existence unfavourable to them. This is
curiously seen in contrasting Davidson's beautiful il-
lustrations of the British Lamp-shells of the Permian
and Carbcmiferous periods. Another illustrative fact
is the exceptionally small size of the fossils even in
limestones of the Carboniferous period when these are
associated with gypsum, red sandstones, and magne-
sian minerals ; as, for instance, those of some parts of

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THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

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Nova Scotia. In truth, the peculiar chemical condi-
tions conducive to the production of magnesian lime-
stones and gypsum are not favourable to animal life,
though no doubt compatible with its existence. Hence
the rich fauna of the Carboniferous seas died out in the
Permian, and was not renewed; and the Atlantic areas
of the period are unknown to us. They were, how-
ever, probably very deep and abrupt in slope, and not
rich in life. This would be especially the case if they
were desolated by cold ice-laden currents.

During the Permian period there was in each of
our continental areas a somewhat extensive inland sea.
That of Western America was a northward extension
of the Gulf of Mexico. That of Eastern Europe
was a northward extension of the Euxine and Caspian.
In both, the deposits formed were very similar — mag-
nesian limestones, sandstones, conglomerates, marls,
and gypsums. In both, these alternate in such a way
as to show that there were frequent oscillations of
level, producing alternately shallow and deep waters.
In both, the animal remains are of similar species, iu
many instances even identical. But in the areas inter-
vening between these sea basins and the Atlantic the
conditions were somewhat diiferent. In Europe the
land was interrupted by considerable water areas, not
lakes, but inland sea basins ; sometimes probably con-
nected with the open sea, sometimes isolated. In these
were deposited the magnesian limestone and its
associated beds in England, and the Zechstein and
Kothcliegende with their associates in Germany. In

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PAL^:OZOIC. 171

America tlie case was diflPerent. In all that immense
area wliich extends from the Atlantic to the plains
east 01* the Mississippi, we know no Permian rocks,
unless a portion of those reckoned as Upper Carboni-
ferous, or Permo-carboniferous in Northern Nova
Scotia, and Prince Edward Islai-d, s^iould be included
in this group. If such existed, they may possibly be
covered up in some places by more modern deposits,
or may have been swept away by denudation in the
intervening ages ; but even in these cases we should
expect to find some visible remains of them. Their
entire absence would seem to indicate that a vast, and
in many parts rugged and elevated, continent repre-
sented North America in the Permian period. Yet if
so, that great continent is an absolute blank to us.
We know nothing of the animals or plants which may
have lived on it, nor do we even know with certaintv
that it had active volcanoes, or snow-clad mountains
sending down glaciers.

Our picture of the Permian World has not been
inviting, yet in many respects it was a world more like
that in which we live than was any previous one. It
certainly presented more of variety and grand physical
features than any of the previous ages ; and we might
have expected that on its wide and varied continents
some new and higher forms' of life would have been
introduced. But it seems rather to have been intended
CO blot out the old Palaeozoic life, as an arrangement
which had been fully tried and served its end, prepara-
tory to a new beginning in the succeeding age.

172

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Still the Permian has some life features of its own,
and we must now tu n to these. The first is the oc-
currei'3e here, not only of tbe representatives of the
great Batrachians of the coal period, but of true rep-
tiles, acknowledged to be such by all naturalists. The
animals of the genus Protorosaurus, found in rocks of
this age both in England and Germany, were highly-
organised lizards, having socketed teeth like those of
crocodiles, and well-developed limbs, with long tails,
perhaps adapted for swimming. They have, however,
biconcave vertebrae like the lizard-like animals of the
coal already mentioned, which, indeed, in their general
form and appearanc3, they must have very closely
resembled. The Protorosaurs were not of great size ;
but they must have been creatures of more stately gait
than their Carboniferous predecessors, and they serve
to connect them with the new and greater reptiles of
the next period.

Another interesting feature of the Permian is its
flora, which, in so far as known, is closely related to
that of the coal period, though the species are regarded
as different; some of the forms, however, being so
similar as to be possibly identical. In a picture of the
Permian flora we should perhaps place in the fore-
ground the tree-ferns, which seem to have been very
abundant, and furnished with dense clusters of aerial
roots to enable them to withstand the storms of this
boisterous age. The tree-ferns, now so plentiful in the
southern hemisphere, should be regarded as one of the
permanent vegetable institutions of our world — those

W^S^'tI ]

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OP THE PALAEOZOIC. 173

of the far-back Lower Devonian, and of all intervening
ages up to the present day, having been very much
aUke. The great reed-like Calamites have had a dif-
ferent fate. In their grander forms they make their
last appearance in the Permian, where they culminate
ir. great ribbed stems, sometimes nearly a foot in
diameter, and probably of immense height. The brakes
of these huge mares' -tails which overspread the lower
levels of the Permian in Europe, would have been to
us what the hayfields of Brobdingnag were to Gulliver.
The Lepidodendra also swarmed, though in diminished
force ; but the great Sigillariae of the coal are absent,
or only doubtfully present. Another feature of the
Permian \/oods was the presence of many pine-trees
different in aspect from those of the coal period. Some
of these are remarkable for their slender and delicate
branches and foliage.* Others have more dense and
scaly leaves, and thick short cones. f Both of these
styles of pines are regarded as distinct, on the one
hand, from those of the coal formation, and on the
other from those of the succeeding Trias. I have
shown, however, many years ago, that in the upper
coal formation of America there are branches of pine-
trees very similar to Walchia, and, on the other hand,
the Permian pines are not very remote in form and
structure from some of their modern relations. The
pines of the first of the above-mentioned types
(Walchia) may indeed bo regarded as allies of the
modern Araucarian pines of the southern hemisphere,

* Walchia. f Ulmannia.

174

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

and of the old conifers of the Carboniferous. Those of
the second type (Ulmannia) may be referred to the
same gronp with the magnificent Sequoias or Red-
woods of California.

It is a curious indication of the doubts which some-
times rest on fossil botany, that some of the branches
of these Permian pines, w.i.en imperfectly preserved,
have been described as sea-weeds, while others have
been regarded as club-mosses. It is true^ however,
that the resemblance of some of them to the latter
class of plants is very greai ; and were there no older
pines, we might be pardoned for imagining in the Per-
mian a transition from club-mosses to pines. Un-
fortunately, however, we have pines nearly as far back
in geological time as we have club-mosses ; and, in so
far as we know, no more like the latter than are the
pines of the Permian, so that this connection fails us.
In all probability the Permian forests are much less
perfectly known to us than, those of the coal period, so
that we can scarcely make comparisons. It appears
certain, however, that the Permian plants are much
more closely related to the coal plants than to those of
the next succeeding epoch, and that they are not so
much a transition from the one to the other as the
finishing of the older period to make way for the newer.

But we must reserve some space for a few remarks
on the progress and termination of the Palaeozoic as
a whole, and on the place which it occupies in the
world's history. These remarks we may group around
the central question. What is the meaning or value of

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OP THE PALEOZOIC. 175

an age or period in the history of tlio earth, as these
terms are understood by geologists ? In most geolo-
gical books terms referring to time aro employed very
loosely. Period, epoch, age, system, series, formation,
and similar terms, are used or abused in a manner
which only the indefiniteness of our conceptions can
excuse. •

A great American geologist* has made an attempt

to remedy this by attaching definite values to such

words as those above mentioned. In his system the

greater divisions of the history were " Times : " thus

the Eozoic was a time and the Palaeozoic was a time.

The larger divisions of the times are "Ages:" thus

the Lower and Upper Silurian, the Devonian, and

the Carboniferous are ages, which are equivalent in

the main to what English geologists call Systems of

Formations. Ages, again, may be divided into

" Periods:" thus, in the Upper Silurian, the Ludlow

of England, or Lower Helderberg of America, would

constitute a period. These periods may again be

divided into ^' Epochs," which are equivalent to what

English geologists call Formations, a term referring

not directly to the time elapsed, but to the work done

in it. Now this mode of regarding geological time

introduces many thoughts as to the nature of our

chronology and matters relating to it. A '' time " in

geology is an extremely long time, and the Palaeozoic

was perhaps the longest of the whole. By the close

of the Palaeozoic nine-tenths of all the rocks we know

* Dana.

170

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

in the earth's crust were formed. At least this is the
case if we reckon mere thickness. For aught that
we know, the Eozoic time may have accumulated as
much rock as the Palaeozoic; but leaving this out of
the question, the rocks of the Palaeozoic are vastly
thicker than those of the Mesozoic and Cainozoic
united. Thus the earth's history seems to have
dragged slowly in its earlier stages, or to have
become accelerated in its latter times. To place it
in another point of view, life changes were greater
relatively to merely physical changes in the later
than in the earlier times.

The same law seems to have obtained within the
Palaeozoic time itself. Its older periods, as the
Cambrian and Lower Silurian, present immense
thicknesses of rock with little changes in life. Its
later periods, the Carboniferous and Permian, have
greater life-revolution relatively to less thickness of
deposits. This again was evidently related to tho
growing complexity and variety of geographical con-
ditions, which went on increasing all the way up to
the Permian, when they attained their maximum for
the Palaeozoic time.

Again, each age was signalized, over the two great
continental plateaus, by a like series of elevations and
depressions. We may regard the Siluro- Cambrian,
the Silurian, the Devonian, the Carboniferous, and Per-
mian, as each of them a distinct age. Each of these
began with physical disturbances and coarse shallow-
water deposits. In each this was succeeded by sub-

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OP THE PALAEOZOIC. 177

siilence and by a sea area tenanted by corals and
shell-fishes. In eacli case this was followed by a
re-elevation, leading to a second but slow and partial
subsidence, to be followed by the great re-elevation
preparatory to tlie next period. Thus we have
throughout the Palaeozoic a series of cycles of
physical change which we may liken to gigantic
pulsations of the thick hide of mother earth. The
final catastrophe of the Permian collapse was quite
different in kir.d from these pulsations as well as
much greater in degree. The Cambrian or Prim-
ordial does not apparently present a perfect cycle
of this kind, perhaps because in that early period
the continental plateaus were not yet definitely
formed, and thus its beds are rather portions of the
general oceanic deposit. In this respect it is analo-
gous in geological relations to the chalk formation
of a later age, though very different in material.
The Cambrian may, however, yet vindicate its claim
to be regarded as a dofinite cycle ; and the lecent
discoveries of Hicks in North Wales, have proved
the existence of a rich marine fauna far down in the
lower part of this system. It is also to be observed
that the peculiar character of the Cambrian, as an
oceanic bottom rather than a continental plateau,
has formed an important element in the difficulties
in establishing it as a distinct group; just as a
similar difficulty in the caso of the chalk has led
to a recent controversy about the continuance of the
conditions of that period into modern times.

178

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

But in each of the great successive heaves or pul-
sations of the Pakeozoic earth, there was a growing
balance in favour of the land as compared with the
water. In each successive movement more and more
elevated land was thrown up, until the Permian flexures
finally fixed the forms of our continents. This may be
made evident to the eve in a series of curves, as in the
following diagram, in which I have endeavoured to
allow the recurrence of similar conditions in each of
the great periods of the Palaeozoic, and thus their
equivalency to each other as cycles of the earth's
history. *

There is thus in these great continental changes a
law of recurrence and a law of progress ; but as to tho
efficient causes of the phenomena we have as yet liti e
information. It seems that original fractures and
shrinkages of the crust were concerned in forming the
continental areas at first. Once formed, unequal
burdening of the earth's still plastic mass by deposits
of sediment in the waters, and unequal expansion by
the heating and crystallization of immense thicknesses
of the sediment, may have done the rest; but the re-
sults are surprisingly regular to be produced by such
causes. We shall also find that similar cycles can bo
observed in the geological ages which succeeded the
Palaeozoic. Geologists have hitherto for the most part
been content to assign these movements to caujes
purely terrestrial ; but it is diflficult to avoid the sus-
picion that the succession of geological cycles must
have depended on some recurring astronomical force

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iniiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiii!

180

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

tending to cause tlie weaker parts of the earth's crust
alternately to rise and subside at regular intervals of
time. Herschel, Adhcmar, and more recently Croll,
have directed attention to astronomical cycles supposed
to have important influences on the temperature of the
earth. Whether these or othe^ changes may have
acted on the equilibrium of its crust is a question well
worthy of attention, as its solution might give us an
astronomical measure of geological time. This question,
however, the geologist must refer to the astronomer.

There are two notes of caution which must here be
given to the reader. First, it is not intended to apply
the doctrine of continental oscillations to the great
oceanic areas. Whether they became shallower or
deeper, their conditions would be different from those
which occurred in the great shallow plateaus, and these
conditions are little known to us. Further, throughout
the Palaeozoic period, the oscillations do not seem to
have been sufficient to reverse the positions of the
oceans and continents. Secondly, it is not meant to
affirm that the great Permian plications were so wide-
spread m their effects as to produce a universal de-
struction of life. On the contrary, after they hacj
occurred, remnants of the Carboniferous fauna still
flourished even on surfaces of the continents, and

possibly the inhabitants of the deep ocean were little
affected by these great movements. True it is that the
life of the Palaeozoic terminates with the Permian, but
not by a great and catacl -jiic overthrow.

We know something at least of the general laws of

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OP THE PALEOZOIC. 181

continental oscillations during the Palaaozoic. Do we
know anything of law in the case of life ? The question
raises so many and diverse considerations that it seems
vain to treat it in the end of a chapter ; still we must
try to outline it ^vith at least a few touches.

First, then, tli'^ life of the Palaeozoic was remarkable,
as compared with that of the present woix ., in pre-
senting a great prevalence of animals and plants of
synthetic types, as they are called by Agassiz — that is,
of creatures comprehending in one the properties of
several groups which were to exist as distinct in the .
future. Such types are also sometimes called em-
bryonic, because the young of animals and plants oftc^n
show these comprehensive features. Such types were
the old corals, presenting points of alliance with two
distinct groups now widely separated ; the old Trilo-
bites, half king-crabs and half Isopods ; the Amphibians
of the coal, part fish, part newt, and part crocodile ; the
Sigillarise, part club-mosses and part pines ; the Ortho-
ceratites, half nautili and half cuttle-fishes. I proposed,
ia the illustration in a former article, to give a restora-
tion of one of the curious creatures last mentioned, the
Orthoceratites ; but on attempting this, with the idea
that, as usually supposed, they were straight Nautili,
it appeared that the narrow aperture, the small outer
chamber, the thin outer wall, often apparently only mem-
branous, and the large siphuncle, would scarcely admit
of this; and I finished by representing it as something
like a modern squid; perhaps wrongly, but it was
evidently somewhere between them and the Nautili.

182

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Secondly, these synthetic types often belonged to
the upper part of a lower group, or to the lower part
of an upper group. Hence in one point of view they
may be regarded as of high grade, in another as of low
grade, and they are often large in size or in vegetative
development.* From this law have arisen many con-
troversie about the grade and classification of the
Palieozoic animals and plants.

Thirdly, extinctions of species occur in every great
oscillation of the continental areas, but some species
reappear after such oscillations, and the same genus
often recurs under new specific forms. Families snd
orders, such as those of the Trilobites and Orthocera-
tites, appear to have a grand and gradual culmination
and decqiidence extending over severcil successive
periods, or even over the whole stretch of the Palaeo-
zoic time. Toward the close of the Palseozoic, while
all the species disappear, some whole families and
orders are altogether dropped, and, being chiefly
synthetic groups, are replaced by more specialised
types, some of which, however, make small beginnings
alongside of the more general typep which are passing
:iway. Our diagram (page 183) illustrates these points.

Fourthly, the progress in animal life in the Palaeozoic
related chicflv to the lower or invertebrate tribes, and

* It seems, indeed, as if the new synthetic forms intermediate
between great groups were oiten large in size, while the new
special types came in as small species. There are some remark-
able cases of this in the plant world ; though here we have such
examples as the pines and tree-ferns continuing almost un-
changed from an early Palaeozoic period until now.

1 ..'^-y-TfT

184,

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

to the two lower classes of the vertebrates. The oldest
animal known to us is not only a creature of the
simplest structure, but also a representative of that
great and on the whole low type of animal life, in^ which
the parts are arranged around a central axis, and not
on that plan of bilateral symmetry which constitutes
one great leading distinction of the higher animals.
With the Cambrian, bilateral animals abound and be-
long to two very distinct lines of progress — the one,
the Mollusks, showing the nutritive organs more fully
developed — the other, the Articulates, having the
organs of sense and of locomotion more fully organized.
These three great types shared the world among them
throughout tbe earlier Palaeozoic time, and only in its
later ages began to be dominated by the higher types
of fishes and reptiles. In so far as we know, it re-
mained for the Mesozoic to introduce the birds and
mammals. In plant life the changes were less marked,
though here also there is progress — land plants appear
to begin, not with the lowest forms, but with the highest
types of the lower of the two great series into which
the vegetable kingdom is divided. From this they
rapidly rise to a full development of the lowest type of
the flowering plants, the pines and their allies, and
there the progress ceases ; for the known representativef
of the higher plants are extremely few and apparently
of little importance.

Fifthly, in general the history tells of a continued
series of alternate victories and defeats of the species
that had their birth on the land and in the shallow

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALJilOZOIC. 185

waters, and those wliicli were born in the ocean depths.
The former spread themselves widely after every up-
heaval, and then by every subsidence were driven back
to their mountain fastnesses. The latter perished from
the continental plateaus at every upheaval, but climbed
again in new hordes and reoccupied the ground after
every subsidence. But just as in human history every
victory or defeat urges on the progress of events, and
develops the great plan of God's providence in the
elevation of man; so here every succeeding change
brings in new and higher actors on the stage, and the
scheme of creation moves on in a grand and steady
progress towards the more varied and elevated life of
the Modern World.

But, after all, how little do we know of these laws,
which are only beginning to dawn on the minds of
naturalists ; and which the imperfections of our classi-
fication and nomenclature, and the defects in our know-
ledge of fossil species, render very dim and uncertain.
All that appears settled is the existence of a definite
plan, working over long ages, and connected with the
most remarkable correlation of physical and organic
change : going on with regular march throughout the
Palaeozoic, and then brought to a close to make room
for another great succession. This following Mesozoic
time niust next engage our atf°ntion.

We may close for the present with presenting to
tlio eye in tabular form the periods over which wo
liave passed. The table on page 187, and the
diagram (page 179), mutually illustrate each other;

186

THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

and it will be seen that eacli age corstitutes a
cycle, similar in its leading features to the other'
cycles, while each is distinguished by some important
fact in relation to the introduction of living beings.
In this table I have, with Mr. Hull,* for simplicity,
arranged the formations of each age under three
periods — an older, middle, and newer. Of these,
however, the last or newest is in each case so im-
portant and varied as to merit division into two, in
the manner which I have suggested in previous pub-
lications for the Palasozoic rocks of North America.f
Under each period I have endeavoured to give some
characteristic example from Europe and America,
except where, as in the case of the coal formation,
the same names are used on both continents. Such
a table as this, it must be observed, is only tentative,
and may admit of important modifications. The
Laurentian more especially may admit of division
into several ages; and a separate age may be found
to intervene between it and the Cambrian. The
reader will please observe that this table refers to
the changes on the continental plateaus ; and that
on both of these each age was introduced with shallow
water and usually coarse deposits, succeeded by
deeper water and finer beds, usually limestones, and
these by a mi^ied formation returning to the shallow
water and coarse deposits of the older period of the
age. This last kind of deposition culminates in the
great swamps of the coal formation.

* " Quarterly Journal of Science," July, 1869.
t " Acadian Geology," p. 137.

PERMIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALEOZOIC. 187

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CHAPTEH VIII.

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

Physically, the transition from the Permian to the
Trias is easy. ^^ the dompin of life a great gulf lies
between ; and the geologist whose mind is filled with
the forms of the Pal930zoic period, on rising into
the next succeeding beds, feels himself a sort of
Pip Van Winkle, who has slept a hundred years and
awakes in a new world. The geography of our
continents seems indeed to have changed little from
the time of the Permian to that next succeeding
group which all geologists recognise as the beginning
of the Mesozoic or Middle A ,e of the world's history,
the Triassic period. Where best developed, as in
Germany, it gives us the usual threefold series, con-
glomerates and sandstones below, a shelly limestone
in the middle, and sandstones and marls above.
Curiously enough, the Germans, recognising this
tripartite character here more distinctly than in their
other formations, named this the Trias or triple group,
a name which it still retains, though as we have
seen it is by no means the earliest of the triple groups
of strata. In England, where the middle limestone
is absent, it is a " New Eed Sandstone," and the
same name may be appropriately extended to Eastern
America, where bright red sandstones are a charac-

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

189

teristic feature. In the Trias, as in the Permian,
the continents of the northern hemisphere presented
large land areas, and there were lagoons and land-
locked seas in which gypsum, magnesian limestones,
and rock salt were thrown down, a very eminent
example of which is afforded by the great salt deposits
of Cheshire. There were also tremendous outbursts
of igneous activity along the margins of the con-
tinents, more especially in Eastern America. But with
all this there was a rich land flora and a wonderful
exuberance of new animal life on the land; and in
places there were even swamps in which pure and
valuable beds of coal, comparable with those of the
old coal formation, were deposited.

The triple division of the Trias as a cycle of the
earth's history, and its local imperfection, are well
seen in the European development of the group,
thus : —

German Series.

French Series.

English Series.

Keuper, Sandstone and ")
Shale j

2Iuschelkalk, Lime- ")
stone and Dolomite j

Bunter, Sandstone and ")
Conglomerate j

Marnes Irisees

Calcaire Coquillier
Gres bioarrc

rSaliferous and gypse-
} ous Shales and Sand-
er stones.

Wanting.

( Sandstone and Con-
\ glomerate.

The Trias is succeeded by a great and complex
system of formations, usually known as the Jurassic,
from its admirable development and exposure in the

190

THE STOKY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

range of tlio Jura ; but wliicli tlie Englisli geologists
often name the " Oolitic," from the occurrence in it
of beds of Oolite or roe-stone. This rock, of which
the beautiful cream-coloured limestone of Bath is an
illustration, consists of an infinity of little spheres,
like seeds or the roe of a fish. Under the microscope
these are seen to present concentric layers, each with
a radiating fibrous structure, and often to have a
minute grain of sand or fragment of shell in the
centre. They are, in short, miniature concretions,
produced by the aggregation of the calcareous matter
around centres, by a process of molecular attraction
to which fine sediments, and especially those con-
taining much lime, are very prone. This style of
limestone is very abundant in the Jurassic system,
but it is not confined to it. I have seen very perfect
Oolites in the Silurian and the Carboniferous. The
Jurassic series, as developed in England, may be
divided into three triplets or cycles of beds, in the
following way : —

Upper Jurassic

Purbeck Beds.
Portland Limestone,
Portland Sand.

iKimmeridge Clay, etc.
Coral Rag, Limestone.
Lower Calcareous Grit, Oxford Clay, etc.

Lower Jurassic*

ICornbrash and Forest Marble.
Great and inferior Oolite, Limestone.
Lias Clays and Limestones.

These rocks occupy a large space in England, as

* This last group is very complex, and might perhaps admit of sub-
division, locally at least, into subordinate cycles.

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

191

the names above given will serve to show; and they
are also largely distributed over the continent of
Europe and Asia — which had evidently three great
and long-continued dips under water, indicated by
the three great limestones. In America the case
was different. The Jurassic has not been distinctly
recognised in any part of the eastern coast of that
continent, which then perhaps extended farther into
the Atlantic than it does at present; so that no
marine beds were formed on its eastern border. But
in the west, along the base of the Rocky Mountains
and also in the Arctic area, there were Jurassic seas
of large extent, swarming with characteristic animals.
At the close of the Jurassic period our continents
seem to have been even more extensive than at pre-
sent. In England and the neighbouring parts of
the continent of Europe, according to Lyell, the
freshwater and estuarine beds known as the Wealden
have been traced 320 miles from west to east, and
200 miles from north-west to south-east, and their
thickness in one part of this area is estimated at no
less than 2,000 feet. Such a deposit is comparable
in extent with the deltas of such great rivers as the
Niger or even the Mississippi, and implies the exist-
ence of a continent much more extensive and more
uniform in drainage than Europe as it at present
exists. Lyell even speculates on the possible exist-
ence of an Atlantic continent west of Europe.
America also at this time had, as already stated,
attained to even more than its present extension

192

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

eastwards. Thus this later Jurassic period was the
culmination of the Mesozoio, the peiiod of its most
perfect continental development, corresponding in this
to the Carboniferous in the Palaeozoic.

The next or closing period of this great Mesozoic
time brought a wondrous change. In the Cretaceous
period, so called from the vast deposits of chalk };y
which it is characterized, the continents sunk an they
had never sunk before, so that vast spaces of the great
continental plateaus were brought down, for the first
time since the Laurentian, to the condition of abyssal
depths, tenanted by such creatures as live in the
deepest recesses of our modern oceans. This great
depression afifected Europe more severely than Ame-
rica ; the depression of the latter being not only less,
but somewhat later in date. In Europe, at the period
of greatest submergence, the hills of Scandinavia and
of Britain, and the Urals, perhaps alone stood out of
the sea. The Alps and their related mountains, and
even the Himalayas, were not yet born, for they have
on their high summits deep-sea beds of the Cretaceous
and even of later date. In America, +he Appalachians
and the old Laurentian ranges remained above water ;
but the Rocky Mountains and the Andes were in
great part submerged, and a great Cretaceous sea
extended from the Appalachians westward to the
Pacific, and southward to the Gulf of Mexico, openinor
probably to the North into the Arctic Ocean.

This great depression must have been of very long
continuance, since in Western Europe it sufficed for

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

193

tlio production of nearly 1,000 feet in thickness of
chalk, a rock which, being composed almost entirely
of microscopic shells, is, as we shall see in the sequel,
necessarily of extremely slow growth. If we regard
the Cretaceous group as one of our great ages or
cycles, it soems to be incomplete. The sandstones
and clays known as the Greensand and Gault con-
stitute its lower or shallow-water member. The chalk
is its middle or deep-sea member, but the upper
shallow-water member is missing, or only very locally
and imperfectly developed. And the oldest of the
succeeding Tertiary deposits, which indicate much
less continuous marine conditions, rest on the chalk,
as if the great and deep sea of the Cretacecus age
had been suddenly upheaved into land. This abrupt
termination of the last cycle of the Mesozoic is obvi-
ously the reason of the otherwise inexplicable fact
that the prevalent life of the period ceases at the top
of the chalk, and is exchanged immediately and with-
out any transition for the very dififerent fauna of the
Tertiary. This further accords with the fact that the
Cretaceous subsidence ended in another great crum-
pling of the crust, like that which distinguished the
Permian. By this the Mesozoic time was terminated
and the Cainozoic inaugurated; while the Eocky
Mountains, the Andes, the Alps, and the Himalayas,
rose to importance as great mountain ranges, and the
continents were again braced up to retain a condition
of comparative equ'Hbrium during that later period of
the earth's dhionologj to which we ourselves belong.

K:i|

THE MESOZOIC AGES..

195

Was tho length of the Mosozoic time equal to that
of the Palaeozoic ? Measured by recurring cycles it
was. In tho latter period ve find five great cycles,
from the Lower Silurian to the Permian inclusive.
So in the IV^osozoic we have five also, from the Trias
to the Cretaceous inclusive. We have a right to
reckon these cycles as ages or great years of the
earth ; and so reckoning them, tlie Mesozoic time may
have bee: I as long as tho Palieozoic. But if we take
another criterion the result will be different. The
thickness of the deposits in the Pala3ozoic as com-
pared with the Mesozoic, where these are severally
best developed, may be estimated as at least four or
fi\re to one; so that if we suppose tho bods to have
been formed with equal rapidity in the two great
periods, then the older of the two was between four
and five times as long as the latter, which would
indeed be only a little greater than one of the separate
ages of the Palaeozoic. Either, therefore, the deposits
took place with greater rapidity in the Palaeozoic, or
that period was by much the longer of the two. This,
it will be observed, is only another aspect of the great
laws of geological sequence referred to in our last
paper.

Let us look into this question a little more minutely.
If the several pulsations of our continents depended
upon any regularly recurring astronomical or terres-
trial change, then they must represent, at least
approximately, equal portions of time, and this, if
proved, would settle the question in favour of an

196

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

equal duration of tliese two great eras of the earth's
history. But as we cannot yet prove this, we may
consider what lighi; we can derive from the nature of
the rocks produced. These may be roughly classified
as of two kinds : First, the beds of sediment, sand,
clay, etc., accumulated by the slow chemical decay of
rocks and the mechanical agency of water. Secondly,
the beds formed by accumulation of the harder and
less perishable parts of living beings, of which the
limestones are the chief. With reference to the first
of these kinds of deposit, the action of the atmosphere
and rains on rocks in the earlier times might have
been somewhat more powerful if there was more car-
bonic acid in the atmosphere, that substance being t le
most efficient agent In the chemical decay of rocks.
It might have been somewhat more powerful if there
was a greater rainfall. It must, on the other hand,
have been lessened by the apparently more equable
temperature which then prevailed. These differences
might pe?'haps nearly balance one another. Then the
rocks of the older time were quite as intractable as
those of the newer, and they were probably neither so
high nor so extensive. Further, the dips and emer-
gences of the great continental plateaus were equally
numerous in the two great periods, though they were
probably, with the exception of the latest one of each,
more complete in the older period. In so far, then, as
deposition of sediment is concerned, these considera-
tions would scarcely lead us to infer that it was more
rapid in the Palaeozoic. But the Paljeozoic sediments

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

197

may be estimated in the aggregate at about 50,000
feet in thickness, while those of the Mesozoic scarcely
reach 8,000. We might, therefore, infer that the
Palaeozoic period was perhaps five or six times as long
as the Mosozoic.

If we take the second class of rocks, the limestones,
and suppose these to have been accumulated by the
slow growth of corals, shells, etc., in the sea, we
might, at first sight, suppose that Palaeozoic animals
would not grow or accumulate limestone faster than
their Mesozoic Guccessors. We must, however, con-
sider here the probability that the older oceans con-
tained more lime in solution than those which now
exist, and that the equable temperature and exten-
sive submerged plateaus gave very favourable con-
ditions for the lower animals of the sea, so that it
would perhaps be fair to allow a somewhat more
rapid rate of growth of limestone for the Palaeozoic.
Now the actual proportions of limestone may be
roughly stated at 13,000 feet in the Palaeozoic, and
3,000 feet in the Mesozoic, which would give a pro-
poi'tion of about four and a quarter to one ; and as a
foot of limestone may be supposed on the average to
require five times as long for its formation as a foot
of sediment, this would give an even greater abso-
lute excess in favour of the Palaeozoic on the evidence
of the limestones — an excess probably far too great
to be accounted for by any more favourable condi-
tions for the secretion of carbonate of lime by maiine
animals.

198

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

The data for such calculations are very uncertain;
and three elements of additional uncertainty closely
related to each other must also be noticed. The first
is the unknown length of thf^ intervals in which no
deposition whatever may have been taking place
over the areas open to our investigation. The second
is the varying amounts in which material once de-
posited may have been swept away by water. The
third is the amount of difference that may have
resulted from the progressive change of the geo-
graphical features of our continents. These uncer-
tainties would all tend to diminish our estimate
of the relative length of the Mesozoic. Lastly, the
changes that have taken place in living beings,
though a good measure of the lapse of time, cannot be
taken as a criterion here, since there is much reason to
believe that more rapid changes of physical conditions
act as an inducing cause of rapid changes of life.

On the whole, then, taking such facts as we have,
and making large deductions for the several causes
tending to exaggerate our conception of Paleeozoic
time, we can scarcely doubt that the Palaeozoic may
have been three times as long as the Mesozoic. If
so, the continental pulsations, and the changes in
animal and vegetable life, must have gone on with
accelerated rapidity in the later period, — a conclusion
to which we shall again have occasion to refer when
we arrive at the consideration of the Tertiary or
Neozoic time, and the age of man, and the probable
duration of the order of things under which we live.

^T"^!

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

199

I have given this preliminary sketch of the whole
Mesozoic time, because we cannot here, as in the
Palaeozoic, take up each age separately ; and now we
must try to picture to ourselves the life and action of
these ages. In doing so we may look at, first, the
plant life of this period; second, animal life on the
land ; and third, animal life in the waters and in the
ocean depths.

The Mesozoic shores were clothed with an abund-
ant flora, which changed considerately in its form
during the lapse of this long time; but yet it has a
character of its own distinct from that of the previous
Pala30zoic and the succeeding Tertiary. Perhaps no
feature of this period is more characteristic than the
great abundance of those singular plants, the cycads,
which in the modern flora are placed near to the
pines, but in their appearance and habit more
resemble palms, and which in the modern world are
chiefly found in the tropical and warm temperate
zones of Asia and America. No plants certainly of
this order occur in the Carboniferous, where their
nearest allies are perhaps some of the Sigillariae ; and
in the modern time the cycads are not so abundant,
nor do they occur at all in climates where their
predecessors appear to have abounded. In the. quar-
ries of the island of Portland, we have a remarkable
evidence of this in beds with numerous stems of
cycads still in situ in the soil in which they grew,
and associated with stumps of pines which seem to
have flourished along with them. In further illustra-

l\\:i

200

THE STORY OF THS EARTH AND MAN.

tion of this pointy I may refer to the fact that Car-
ruthers, in a recent paper, catalogues twenty-five
British species belonging to eight genera — a fact
which markedly characterizes the British flora of the
Mesozoic period. These plants will therefore occupy
a prominent place in our restoration of the Mesozoic
landscape, and we should give especial prominence to
the beautiful species Williamsonia gigas, discovered
by the eminent botanist whose name it bears, and
restored in his paper on the plant in the " Linnasan
Transactions." These plants, with pines and gigantic
equisetums, prevailed greatly in the earlier Mesozoic
flora, but as the time wore on, various kinds of
endogens, resembling the palms and the screw-pines
of the tropical islands, were introduced, and toward
its close some representatives of the exogens very
like our ordinary trees. Among these we find for
the first time in our upward progress in the history
of the earth, species of our familiar oaks, figs, and
walnut, along with some trees now confined to Aus-
tralia and the Capo of Good Hope, as the banksias
and "silver-trees," and their allies. In America a
large number of the genera of the modern trees are
present, and even some of those now peculiar to
America, as the tulip-trees and sweet-gums. These
forests of the later Mesozoic must therefore have
been as gay with flowers and as beautiful in foliage
as those of the modern world, and there is evidence
that they swarmed with insect life. Further, the
Mesozoic plants produced in some places beds of coal

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

201

comparable in value and thickness to those of the old
coal formation. Of this kind are the coal beds of
Brora in Sutherlandshire, those of Richmond in
Virginia, and Deep River in N. Carolina, those of
Vancouver's Island, and a large part of those of
China. To the same age have been referred some at
least of the coal beds of Australia and India. So
important a're these beds in China, that had geology-
originated in that country, the Mesozoic might have
been c^ir age of coal.

If the forests, of the Mesozoic present a great
advance over those of the Palaeozoic, so do the
animals of the land, which now embrace all the great
types of vertebrate life. Some of these creatures
have left strange evidence of their existence in their
footprints on the sand and clay, now cemented into
beds of hard rock excavated by the quarryman. If
we had landed on some wide i^niddy Mesozoic shore,
we might have found it marked in all directions with
animal footprints. Some of these are shaped much
like a human hand. The creature that made tMs
mark was a gigantic successor of the crocodilian
newts or labyrinthodonts of the Carboniferous, and
this type seems to have attained its maximum in this
period, where one species. Labyrinth odon giganteus,
had great teeth three or *our inches in length, and
presenting in their cross section the most complicated
foldings of enamel imaginable. But we may see on
the shores still more remarkable footprints. They
indicate biped and three-toed animals of gigantic

202

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

size, with a stride perhaps six feet in length. Were
they enormous birds ? If so, the birds of this age
must have been giants which would dwarf even our
ostriches. But as we walk along the shore we see
many other impressions, some of them much smaller
and different in form. Some, again, very similar in
other respects, have four toes; and, more wonderful
still, in tracing up some of the tracks, we find that
here and there the creature has put down on the ground
a sort of four-fingered hand, while some of these
animals seem to have trailed long tails behind them.
What were these portentous creatures — bird, beast,
or reptile ? The answer has been given to us by
their bones, as studied by Von Meyer and Owen, and
more recently by Huxley and Cope. We thus have
brought before us the Dinosaurs — the terrible Saurians
— of the Mesozoic age, the noblest of the Tanninim
of old. These creatures constitute numerous genera
and species, some of gigantic size, others compara-
tively small; — some harmless browsers on plants,
others terrible renders of living flesh; but all re-
markable for presenting a higher type of reptile
organization than any now existing, and approach-
ing in some respects to the birds and in others to the
mammalia. Let us take one example of each of the
principal groups. And first marches before us the
Iguanodon or his relation Hadrosaiirus — a gigantic
biped, twenty feet or more in height, with enormous
legs shaped like those of an ostrich, but of elephant-
ine thickness. It strides along, not by leaps like a

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

203

! :angaroo, but with slow and stately tread, occasionally
resting, and supporting itself on the tripe d formed
by its hind limbs and a huge tail, like uhe inverted
trunk of a tree. The upper part of its body becomes
small and slender, and its head, of diminutive size
and mild aspect, is furnished with teeth for munching
the leaves and fruits of trees, which it can easily
reach with its small fore-limbs, or hands, as it walks
through the woods. The outward appearance of
these creatures we do not certainly know. It is not
likely that they had bony plates like crocodiles, but
they may have shone resplendent in horny scale
armour of varied hues. But another and more dread-
ful form rises before us. It is Mcgalosaurus or perhaps
Lcclaps. Here we have a creature of equally gigantic
size and biped habits ; but it is much more agile, and
runs with great swiftness or advances by huge leaps,
and its feet and hands are armed with strong curved
claws ; while its mouth has a formidable armature of
sharp-edged and pointed teeth. It is a type of a
group of biped bird-like lizards, the most terrible
and formidable of rapacious animals that the earth
lias ever seen. Some of these creatures, in their
short deep jaws and heads, resembled the great car-
nivorous mammals of modern times, while all in the
structure of their limbs had a strange and grotesque
resemblance to the birds. Nearly all naturalists re-
gard them as reptiles; but in their circulation and
respiration they must have approached to the mam-
Daalia, and their general habit of body recalls that of

Pvi"

h\ ' ■■■

204

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

the kangaroos. They were no doubt oviparous ; and
this, with their biped habit, seems to explain the
strong resemblance of their hind quarters to those of
birds. Had we seen the eagle-clawed Laolaps rushing
on his prey; throwing his huge bulk perhaps thirty
feet through the air, and crushing to the earth under
his gigantic talons some feebler Hadrosaur, we should
have shudderingly preferred the companionship of
modern wolves and tigers to that of those savage
and gigantic monsters of the Mesozoic.

We must not leave the great land-lizards of the
reptilian age, without some notice of that Goliath of
the race which, by a singular misnomer, has received
the appellation of Geteosaurus or " Whale-Saurian/'
It was first introduced to naturalists by the discovery
of a few enormous vertebras in the English Oolite;
and as these in size and form seemed best to fit an
aquatic creature, it was named in accordance with
this view. But subsequent discoveries have shown
that, incredible though this at first appeared, the
animal had limbs fitted for walking on the land.
Professor Phillips has been most successful in col-
lecting and restoring the remains of Geteosaurus,
and devotes to its history a long and interesting
section of his "Geology of Oxford." The size of
the animal may be estimated, from the fact that its
thigh-bone is sixty-four inches long, and thick in
proportion. From this and other fragments of the
skeleton, we learn that this huge monster must have
stood ten feet high when on all fours, and that its

^•f

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

205

length could not have been less than fifty feet ; per-
haps much more. From a single tooth, which has
been found, it seems to have been herbivorous; and
it was probably a sort of reptilian Hippopotamus,
living on the rich herbage by the sides of streams
and marshes, and perhaps sometimes taking to the
water, where the strokes of its powerful tail would
enable it to move more rapidly than on the land.
In structure, it seems to have been a composite
creature, resembling in many points the contemporary
Dinosaurs; but in others, approaching to the croco-
diles and the lizards.

But the wonders of Mesozoic reptiles are not yet
exhausted. While noticing numerous crocodiles and
lizard-like creatures, and several kinds of tortoises,
we are startled by what seems a flight of great bats,
wheeling and screaming overhead, pouncing on
smaller creatures of their own kind, as hawks seize
sparrows and partridges, and perhaps diving into
the sea for fish. These were the Pterodactyl es, the
reptile bats of the Mesozoic. They fly by means of
a membrane stretched on a monstrously enlarged
little finger, while the other fingers of the fore limb
are left free to be used as hands or feet. To move
these wings, they had large breast-muscles like those
of birds. In their general structure, they were
lizards, but no doubt of far higher organization
than any animals of this order now living; and in
accordance with this, the interior of their skull shows
that they must have had a brain comparable with

206

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

that of birds, which they rivalled in energy and
intelligence. Some of them were larger than the
largest modern birds of prey, others were like pigeons
and snipes in size. Specimen-a in the Cambridge
Museum indicate one species twenty feet in the
expanse of its wings. Cope has recently described an
equally gigantic species from the Mesozoic of Western
America, and fragments of much larger species are
said to exist.* Imagine such a creature, a flying
dragon, with vast skinny wings, its body, perhaps,
covered with scales, both wings and feet armed witli
strong claws, and with long jaws furnished with
sharp teeth. Nothing can be conceived more strange
and frightful. Some of them had the hind limbs
long, like wading birds. Some had short legs,
adapted perhaps for perching. They could probably
fold up their wings, and walk on all fours. Their
skeleton, like that of birds, was very light, yet strong;
and the hollow bones have pores, which show that, as
in birds, air could be introduced into them from the
lungs. This proves a circulation resembling that of
birds, and warm blood. Indeed, in many respects,
these creature^ bridge over the space between the
birds and the reptiles. "That they lived,^' says
Seeley, "exclusively upon land or in the air is im-
probable, considering the circumstances under which
their remains are found. It is likely that they
haunted the sea-shores ; and while sometimes rowing
themselves over the water with their powerful wings,

* Seelej: ** OrnitJiosauriaJ'

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

207

used the wing membrane, as does the bat, to enclose
the prey and bring it to the mouth. The large
Pterodactyles probably pursued a more substantial
prey than dragon-flies. Their teeth were well suited
for fish; but probably fowl and small mammal, and
even fruits, made a variety in their food. As the
lord of the cliff, it may bo supposed to have taken
toll of all animals that could be conquered with tooth
and nail. From its brain, it might be regarded as an
intelligent animal. The jaws present indications of
having been sheathed with a horny coyering, and
some species show a rugose anterior termination of
the snout, suggestive of fleshy lips like those of the
bat, and which may have been similarly used to
stretch and clean the wing-membrane."

Here, however, perched on the trees, we see true
birds. At least they have beaks, and are clothed
with feathers. But they have very strange wings,
the feathers all secondaries^ without any large quills,
and several fingers with claws at the angle of the
wing, so that though less useful as wings, they
served the double purpose of wing and hand. More
strange still, the -tail was long and flexible, like that
of a lizard, with the feathers arranged in rows along
its sides. If the lizards of this strange and uncertain
time had wings like bats, the birds had tails and
hands like lizards. This was in short the special
age of reptiles, when animals of that class usurped
the powers which rightfully belonged to creatures
yet in their nonage, the true birds and mammals of

208

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

our modern days, while the birds were compelled to
assume some reptilian traits.

Yet, strange to say, representatives of the higher
creatures destined to inherit the earth at a later date
actually existed. Toward the close of the Mesozoic
wo find birds approaching to those of our own day,
and almost at the beginning of the time there were
small mammals, remains of which are found both in
the earlier and later formations of the Mesozoic, hut
which never seem to have thriven ; at least so far as
the introduction of large and important species is
concerned. Traversing the Mesozoic woods, we might
see here and there little hairy creatures, which would
strike a naturalist as allies of the modern bandicoots,
kangaroo rats, and myrmecobius of Australia; and
closer study would confirm this impression, thougli
showing differences of detail. In their teeth, their
size, and general form, and probably in their pouched
or marsupial reproduction, these animals were early
representatives of the smaller quadrupef's of the
Austral continent, creatures which are not only small
but of low org. .nisation in their class.

One of these mammals, known to us only by its
teeth, and well named Microlestes, the "little thief,"
sneaks into existence, so to speak, in the Trias of
Europe, while another very similar, Bromatliemm,
appears in rocks of similar age in America ; and this
is the small beginning of the great class Mammalia,
destined in its quadrupedal forms to culminate in the
elephants and their contemporaries in the Tertiary

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

209

period. Wlio that saw them trodden under foot by
*' *) reptile aristocracy of the Mesozoic could have
divined their destiny ? But, notwithstandi Ag the
struggle for existence, the weakest does not always
''go to the wall." The weak things of this world
are often chosen to confound those that are mighty ;
and the little quadrupeds of the Mesozoic are an
allegory. They may typify the true, the good, and
the hopeful, mildly and humbly asserting themselves
in the world that now is, in the presence of the
dragon monsters of pride and violence, which in the
days to come they will overthrow. Physically the
Mesozoic has passed away, but still exists morally in
an age of evil reptiles, whose end is as certain as
that of the great Dinosaurs of the old world.

The Mesozoic mammals are among the most inter-
esting foss'Is known to us. In a recent memoir by
Professor C'wen, thirty-three species are indicated — all,
or nearly all. Marsupial — all small — all closely allied
to modern Australian animals ; some herbivorous,
some probably carnivorous. Owen informs us that
these animals are not merely marsupials, but mar-
supials of low grade, a point in which, however,
Huxley differs somewhat in opinion. They are at
least not lower than some that still exist, and not so
low as those lowest of mammals in Modern Australia,
the duck-billed platypus and the echidna. Owen
further supposes that they were possibly the first
mammals, and not only the predecessors but the pro-
genitors of the modern marsupials. If so, we have

i<^:

210

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

* •

the singular fact that they not only did not improve
throughout the vast Mesozoio time, but that they have
been in the progress of subsequent geological ages
expelled out of the great eastern continent, and, with
the exception of the American opossums, banished,
like convicts, to Australia. Yet, notwithstanding their
multiplied travels and long experiences, they have
made little advance. It thus seems that the Mesozoic
mammals were, from the evolutionist point of view, a
decided failure, and the work of introducing mammals
had to be done over again in the Tertiary ; and then,
as we shtiil find, in a very different way. If nothing
more, however, the Mesozoic mammals were a mute
prophecy of a better time, a protest that the age of
reptiles was an imperfect age, and that better things
were in store for the world. Moses seems to have
been more hopeful of them than Owen or even Huxley
would have been. He says that God " created *' the
great Tanninim, the Dinosaurs and their allies, but
only " made '' the mammals of the following creative
day j so that when Microlestes and his companions
quietly and unnoticed presented themselves in the
Mesozoic, they would appear in some way to have
obviated, in the case of the tertiary mammals, the
necessity of a repetition of the greater intervention
implied in the word " create." How that was effected
none of us know ; but, perhaps, we may know here-
after. - -

CHAPTER IX.

THE MESOzoic AGES — {continued).

The waters of the Mesozoic period present features
quite as remarkable as the land. In our survey of
their teeming multitudes, we indeed scarcely know
where to begin or whither to turn. Let us look first
at the higher or more noble inhabitant^ of the waters.
And here, just as in the case of the greater animals
of the land, the Mesozoic was emphatically an age of
reptiles. In the modern world the highest animals
the sea are mammals, and these belong to three great
and somewhat diverse groups. The first is that of the
seals and their allies, the walruses, sea-lions, etc. The
second is that of the whales and dolphins and por-
poises. The third is that of the manatees, or dugongs.
All these creatures breathe air, and bring forth their
young alive, and nourish them with milk. Yet they
all live habitually or constantly in the water. Be-
tween these aquatic mammals and the fishes, we have
some aquatic reptiles — ^as the turtles, snd a few sea-
snakes and sea-lizards, and crocodiles ; but the
number of these is comparatively small, and in the
more temperate latitudes there are scarcely any of
them. __^ .... . - -

All this was different in the Mesozoic. In so far as
we know, there were no representatives of the seals

212

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

and whales and their allies, but there were vast nnm-
bers of marine reptiles, and many of these of gigantic
size. Britain at present does not possess one large
reptile, and no marine reptile whatever. In the
Mesozoic, in addition to the great Dinosaurs and
Pterodactyls of the land, it had at least fifty or sixty
species of aquatic reptiles, besides many turtles. Some
of these were comparable in size with our modern
whales, and armed with tremendous powers of destruc-
tion. America is not relatively rich in remains of
Mesozoic Saurians, yet while ix^o existing fauna of the
temperate parts of North America is nearly destitute
of aquatic reptiles, with the exception of the turtles,
it can boast, according to Copers lists, about fifty
Mesozoic species, many of them of gigantic size, and
the number of known species is increasing every year.
When it is taken in connection with these statistics,
that while we know all the modern species, we know
but a small percentage of the fossils, the discrepancy
becomes still more startling. Further, from the num-
ber of specimens and fragments found, it is obvious
that these great aquatic saurians were by no means
rare ; and that some of the species at least must have
been very abundant. Could we have taken our post
on the Mesozoic shore, or sailed over its waters, we
should have found ourselves in the midst of swarms of
these strange, often hideous, and always grotesque
creatures.

Let us consider for a little some of the more con-
spicuous forms, referring to our illustration for their

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

213

portraits. Every text-book figures the well-known
types of the genera Ichthijosaurus and Plesiosaurus ;
we need scarcely, therefore, dwell on them, except to
state that the catalogues of British fossils include
eleven species of the former genus and eighteen of the
latter. We may, however, notice some of the less
familiar points of comparison of the two genera*
Both were aquatic, and probably marine. Both swam
by means of paddles ; both were carnivorous, and
probably fed principally upon fishes ; both were pro-
per reptiles, and breathed air, and had large and
capacious lungs. Yet with these points in common,
no two animals could have been more different in
detail. The Ichthyosaurus had an enormous head,
with powerful jaws, furnished with numerous and
strong teeth. Its great eyes, strengthened by a circle
of bony plates, exceeded in dimensions, and probably
in power of vision under water, those of any other
animal, recent or fossil. Its neck was short, its trunk
massive, with paddles or swimming limbs of compara-
tively small size, and a long tail, probably furnished
with a caudal fin or paddle for propulsion through the
water. The Plesiosaur, on the other hand, had a
small and delicate head, with slender teeth and small
eyes. Its neck, of great length and with numerous
joints, resembled the body of a serpent. Its trunk,
short, compact, and inflexible, was furnished with
large and strong paddles, and ivs tail was too short to
be of any service except for steering. Compared with
the Ichthyosaur, it was what the giraffe is to the

- ♦

"BBPI

214

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

rhinoceros, or the swan to the porpoise. Two fisher-
men so variously and differently fitted for their work
it would be difficult to imagine. But these differences
were obviously related to corresponding differences in
food and habit. The Ichthyosaur was fitted to
struggle with the waves of the stormy sea, to roll
therein like modern whales and grampuses, to seize
and devour great fishes, and to dive for them into the
depths; and its great armour-plated eyes must have
been well adapted for vision in the deeper waters.
The Plesiosaur, on the contrary, was fitted for com-
paratively still and shallow waters; swimming near
the surface with its graceful neck curving aloft, it
could dart at the smaller fishes on the surface, or
stretch its long neck downward in search of those
near the bottom. The Ichthyosaurs rolled like por-
poises in the surf of the Liassic coral reefs and the
waves beyond ; the Plesiosaurs careered gracefully in
the quiet waters within. Both had their beginning at
the same time in the earlier Mesozoic, and both found
a common and final grave in its later sediments.
Some of the species were of very moderate size, but
there were Ichthyosaurs twenty five feet long, and
Plesiosaurs at least eighteen feet in length.

Another strange and monstrous group of creatures,
the Elasmosaurs and their allies, combined the long
neck of Plesiosaurs with the swimming tail of Ichthyo-
saurs, the latter enormously elongated, so that these
creatures were sometimes fifty feet in length, and
whale-like in the dimensions of their bodies. It is

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

215

curious that these composite creatures belong to a
later period of the Mesozoio than the typical Ichthyo-
saurs and Plesiosaurs, as if the characters at one
time separated in these genera had united in their
successors.

One of the relatives of the Plesiosaurs, the Pliosaur,
of which genus several species of great size are known,
perhaps realized in the highest degree possible the
idea of a huge marine predaceous reptile. The head
in some of the species was eight feet in length, armed
with conical teeth a foot long. The neck was not
only long, but massive and powerful, the paddles, four
in number, were six or seven feet in length and musl
have urged the vast bulk of the animal, perhaps forty
fei^t in extent, through the water with prodigious
speed. The capacious chest and great ribs show a
powerful heart and lungs. Imagine such a creature
raising its huge head twelve feet or more out of water,
and rushing after its prey, impelled wdth perhaps the
most powerful oars ever possessed by any animal.
We may be thankful thc^ such monsters, more terrible
than even the fabled sea-serpent, are unknown in our
days. B^ickland, I think, at one time indulged in the
jeu d'esprit of supposing an Ichthyosaur lecturing on
the human skull. " You will at once perceive," said
the lecturer, ''that the skull before us belonged to
one of the lower orders of animals. The teeth are
very insignificant, the power of the jaws trifling, and
altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could
have procured food." We cannot retort on the

216

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Ichthyosaur and his contemporaries, for we can see
that they were admirably fitted for the work they had
in hand ; but we can see that had man been so un-
fortunate as to have lived in their days, he might have
been anything but the lord of creation.

But there were sea-serpents as well as other mon-
sters in the Mesozoic seas. Many years ago the Lower
Cretaceous beds of St. Peter's Mount, near Maestricht,
afforded a skull three feet in length, of massive pro-
portions, and furnished with strong conical teeth, to
which the name Mosascmrus Camperi was given. The
skull and other parts of the skeleton found with it,
were held to indicate a large aquatic reptile, but its
precise position in its class was long a subject of dis-
pute. Faujas held it to be a crocodile ; Camper,
Cuvier, and Owen regarded it as a gigantic lizard.
More recently, additional specimens, especially those
found in the Cretaceous formations of North America,
have thrown new light upon its structure, and have
shown it to present a singular combination of the cha-
racter of serpents, lizards, and of the great sea saurians
already referred to. Some parts of the head and the
articulation of the jaws, in important points resemble
those of serpents, while in other respects the head is
that of a gigantic lizard. The body and tail are
greatly lengthened out, having more than a hundred
vertebral joints, and in one of the larger species at-
taining the length of eighty feet. The trunk itself is
much elongated, and with ribs like those of a snake.
There are no walking feet, but a pair of fins or paddles

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

217

like those of Ichthyosaurus. Cope, who has described
these great creatures as they occur in the Cretaceous
of the United States, thus sketches the Mosasaur : " It
was a long and slender reptile, with a pair of powerful
paddles in front, a moderately long neck, and flat
pointed head. The very long tail was flat and deep,
like that of a great eel, forming a powerful pro-
peller. The arches of the vertebral column were more
extensively interlocked than in any other reptiles
except the snakes. In the related genus CUdastes
this structure is as fully developed as in the serpents,
so that we can picture to ourselves its well-known con-
sequences j their rapid progress through the water by
lateral undulations, their lithe motions on the land, the
rapid stroke, the ready coil, or the elevation of the head
and vertebral column, literally a living pillar, towering
above the waves or the thickets of the shore swamps."
As in serpents, the mouth was wide in its gape,
and the lower jaw capable of a certain separation from
the skull to admit of swallowing large prey. Besides
this the lower jaw had an additional peculiarity, seen
iu some snakes, namely, a joint in the middle of the
jaw enabling its sides to expand, so that the food
might be swallowed '^ between the branches of the
jaw.'" Perhaps no creatures more fully realize in
tlieir enormous length and terrible powers the great
Tanninim (the stretched-out or extended reptiles) of
tilt fifth day of the Mosaic record, than the Mosa-
saurus and Elasmosaurus. When Mr. Cope showed
me, a few years ago, a nearly complete skeleton

218

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

of Elasmosaurus, whicli for want of space he had
stretched on a gallery along two sides of a large room,
I could not help suggesting to him that the name of
the creature should be Teinosaurus * instead of that
which he had given. Marsh has recently ascertained
that the Mosasaurs were covered in part at least with
bory scales.

These animals may serve as specimens of the
reptJian giants of the Mesozoic seas; but before
leaving them we must at least invite attention to
the remarkable fact that they were contemporary
with species which represent the more common
aquatic reptiles of the modern world. In other
words, the monsters which we have described ex-
isted over and above a far more abundant popu-
lation of crocodiles and turtles than the modern
waters can boast. The crocodiles were represented
both in Europe and America by numerous and
large species, most of them with long snouts like
the modern Gavials, a few with broad heads like
those of the alligators. The turtles again presented
not only many species, but most of the aquatic
subdivisions of the group known in modern times,
as for instance the Emydes or ordinary fresh- water
forms, the snapping turtles, and the soft-shelled
turtles. Cope says that the Cretaceous of New
Jersey alone affords twenty species, one of them
a snapping turtle six feet in length. Owen records

*Heb. Tanan; Gr. Teino, Tanuo ; Sansc. Tanu; Lat. Tendo.
— Ges. Lex.

« o •-♦.
O-cp?

<D tH be

220

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

above a dozen largo species from the Upper Meso-
zoic of England, and dates the first appearance of
the turtles in England about the time of the
l*ortland stone, or in the upper half of the Meso-
zoic ; but footprints supposed to be those of turtles
are found- as far back as the Trias. Perhaps no
typo of modern reptiles is more curiously special-
ized than these animals, yet we thus find them
contemporaneous with many generalized types, and
entering into existence perhaps as soon as they.
The turtles did not culminate in the Mesozoic, but
go on to be represented by more numerous and
larger species in the Tertiary and Modern. In the
case of the crocodiles, while they attained perhaps
a maximum toward the end of the Mesozoic, it
was in a peculiar form. The crocodiles of this
old time had vertebrae with a hollow at each end
like the fishes, or with a projection in the front.
At the end of the Mesozoic this was changed, and
they assumed a better-knit back, with joints having
a ball behind and a socket in front. In the
Cretaceous age, species having these two kinds of
backbone were contemporaneous. Perhaps this im-
provement in the crocodilian back had something
to do with the persistence of this type after so
many others of the sea-lizards of the Mesozoic
had passed away.

Of the fishes of the Mesozoic we need only say
that they were very abundant, and consisted of
sharks and ganoids of various types, until near

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

221

the close of the period, when the ordinary horny-
scaled fishes, such as abound in our present seas,
appear to have been introduced. One curious point
of difference is that the unequally lobed tail of
the Pal890zoic fishes is dropped in the case of the
greater part of the ganoids, and replaced by the
squarely-cut tail prevalent in moder^ times.

In the sub-kingdom of the MoUusca many im-
portant revolutions occurred. Among the lamp-
shells a little Leptaena, no bigger than a pea, is
the last and depauperated representative of a great
Palaeozoic family. Another, that of the Spirifers,
still shows a few species in the Lower Mesozoic.
Others, like Rhynchonella, and Terebratula, continue
through the period, and extend into the Modern.
Passing over the ordinary bivalves and sea-snails,
which i the main conform to those of our own
time, we find perhaps the most wonderful changes
among the relatives of the cuttle-fishes and Nautili.
As far back as the Silurian we find the giant
Orthoceratites contemporary with Nautili, very like
those of the present ocean. With the close of the
Palaeozoic, however, the Orthoceratites and their
allies disappear, while the Nautili continue, and are
reinforced by multitudes of new forms of spiral
chambered shells, some of them more wonderful
and beautiful than any of those which either pre-
ceded or followed them. Supreme among these is
the great group of the Ammonites, — beautifully
spiral shells, thin and pearly like the Nautilus, and

222

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

chambered like it, so as to serve as a float, but
far more elaborately constructed, inasmuch as the
chambers were not simply curved, but crimped and
convoluted, so as to give the outer wall much more
effectual support. This outer wall, too, was worked
into ornamental ribs and bands, which not only
gave it exquisite beauty, but contributed to com-
bir > strength to resist pressure with the lightness
necessary to a float. In some of these points it
is true the Gyroceras and Goniatites of the Palas-
ozoic partially anticipated them, but much less per-
fectly. The animals which inhabited these shells
must have been similar to that of Nautilus, but
fiomewhat different in the proportion of parts. They
must have had the same power of rising and sink-
ing in the water, but the mechanical construction
of their shells was so much more perfect rela-
tively to this end, that they were probably more
active and locomotive than the Nautili. They must
have swarmed in the Mesozoic seas, some beds of
limesto^ d shale being filled with them; and

as .4.8 eight hundred species of this family

are .iieved to be known, including, however, such
forms as the Baculites or straight Ammonites, bear-
ing to them perhaps a relation similar to that of
Orthoceras to Nautilus. Further, some of the Am-
monites are of gigantic size, one species being
three feet in diameter, while others are very minute.
The whole family of Ammonitids, which begins to
be in force in the Trias, disappears at the end of

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

223

the Mesozoic, so that this may be called the special
age of Ammonites as well as of reptiles.

Further, this time was likewise distinguished by
the introduction of true cuttle-fishes, the most re-
markable of which were those furnished with tho
internal supports or "bones,'' known as Belemnltes,
from a fancied resemblance to javelins or thunder-
bolts, a comparison at least as baseless as that
often made in EnglaL'^. of the Ammonites to fossil
snakes. The shell of the Belemnite is a most cu-
rious structure. Its usual general shape is a pointed
cylinder or elongated cone. At top it has a deep
cavity for the reception of certain of the viscera
of the animal. Below this is a conical series of
chambers, the Phragmacone ; and the lower half of
the shell is composed of a solid shelly mass or
guard, which, in its structuro of radiating fibres
and concentric layers, resembles a stalactite, or a
petrified piece of exogenous wood. This structuro
was an internal shell or support like those of the
modern cuttle-fishes; but it is difficult to account
for its peculiarities, so much more complex than
in any existing species. The most rational suppo-
sition seems to be that it was intended to serve
the triple purpose of a support, r. float, and a sinker.
Unlike the shell of a Nautilus, if thrown into the
water it would no doubt have sunk, and with the
pointed end first. Consequently, it was not a float
simply, but a float and sinker combined, and its
effect must have been to keep the animal at the

224

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

bottom, with its head upward. The Belemnite was
therefore an exceptional cuttle-fish, inteuded to
stand erect on the sea-bottom and probably to dart
upward in search of its prey ; for the suckers and
hooks with which its arms were furnished slio^
that, like other cuttle-fishes, it was carnivorous and
predaceous. Q^^e guard may have been less pon-
derous when recent than in the fossil specimens,
and in some species it was of small size or slender,
and in others it was hollow. Possibly, also, the
soft tissues of the animal were not dense, and it
may have had swimming fins at the sides. In any
case they must have been active creatures, and
no doubt could dart backward by expelling water
from their gill chamber, while we know that they
had ink-bags, provided with that wonderfully di-
vided pigment, inimitable by art, with which the
modern Sepia darkens the water to shelter itself
from its enemies. The Belemnites must have
swarmed in the Mesozoic seas; and as squids and
cuttles now afford choice morsels to the larger
fishes, so did the Belemnites in their day. There
is evidence that even the great sea-lizards did not
disdain to feed on them. "We can imagine a great
shoal of these creatures darting up and down,
seizing with their ten hooked arms their finny or
crustacean prey. In an instant a great fish or
saurian darts down among them ; they blacken the
water with a tliick cloud of inky secretion and
disperse on all sides, while their enemy, blindly

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

225

was

to
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seizing a few moutlifuls, returns sullenly to the
surface. A great number of species of Belemnites
and allied animals have been described; but it is
probcible that in naming them too little regard has
been paid to distinctions of age and sex. The
Belemnites were for the most part small creatures ;
but there is evidence that there existed with them
some larger and more formidable cuttles ; and it
is worthy of note that, in several of these, the
arms, as in the Belemnites, were furnished with
hooks as well as suckers, an exceptional arrange-
ment in their modern allies. It is probable that
while the four-gilled or shell-bearing cuttles culmi-
nated in size and perfection in the Ammonitids of
the Mesozoic, the modern cuttles of the two-gilled
and shell-less type are grander in dimensions than
their Mesozoic predecessors. It is, however, not a
little singular that a group so peculiar and appar-
ently so well provided with means, both of offence
and defence, as the Belemnites, should come in and
go out with the Mesozoic, and that the Nautiloid
group, after attaining to the magnitude and com-
plexity of the great Ammonites, should retreat to
a few species of diminutive and simply-constructed
Nautili ; and in doing so should return to one of
the old types dating as far back as the older Paloo-
ozoic, and continuing unchanged through all the
intervening time.

The Crustaceans of the Mesozoic had lost all the
antique peculiarities of the older time, and had so

T-J,

226

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

much of the aspect of those of the present day,
that an ordinary obseiTer, if he could be shown a
quantity of Jurassic or Cretaceous crabs, lobsters,
and shrimps, would not readily recognise the differ-
ence, which did noi) exceed what occurs in distant
geographical regions in the present day. The same
remark may be made as to the corals of the
Mesozoic; and with some limitations, as to the
star-fishes and sea-urchins, which latter are espe-
cially numerous and varied in the Cretaceous age.
In short, all the invertebrate forms of life, and
the fishes and reptiles among the vertebrates, had
already attained their maximum elevation in the
Mesozoic ; and some of them have subsequently
sunk considerably in absolute as well as relative
importance.

In the course of the Mesozoic, as indicated in the
last chapter, there had been several great depressions
and re-elevations of the Continental Areas. But these
had been of the same quiet and partial character with
those of the Paleeozoic, and it was not until the close
of the Mesozoic time, in the Cretaceous age, that a
great and exceptional subsidence involved for a long
period the areas of our present continents in a sub-
mergence wider and deeper than any that had pre-
viously occurred since the dry land first rose out of
the waters.

Every one knows the great chalk beds which ap-
pear in the south of England, and which have given its
namo to the latest ago of the Mesozoic. This great

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

227

deposit of liglit-coloured and usually soft calcareous
matter attains in some places to tlie enormous thick-
ness of 1,000 feet. Nor is it limited in extent.
According to Lyell, its European distribution is from
Ireland to tlie Crimea, a distance of 1,140 geo-
graphical miles ; and from the south of France to
Sweden, a distance of 840 geographical miles. Simi-
lar rocks, though not in all cases of the precise nature
of chalk, occur extensively in Asia and in Africa, and
also in North and South America.

But what is chalk ? It was, though one of the most
familiar, one of the most inscrutable of rocks, until
the microscope revealed its structure. The softer
varieties, gently grated or kneaded down in water, or
the harder varieties cut in thin slices, show a con-
geries of microscopic chambered shells belonging to '
the humble and simple group of Protozoa. These
shells and their fragments constitute the material of
the ordinary chalk. With these are numerous spicules
of sponges and silicious cell-walls of the minute one-
celled plants called Diatoms. Further, the flinty
matter of these organisms has by the law of molecular
attraction been collected into concretions, which are
the flints of the chalk. Such a rock is necessarily
oceanic; but more than this, it is abyssal. Laborious
dredging has shown that similar matter is now being
formed only in the deep bed of the ocean, whither no
sand or mud is drifted from the land, and where the
countless hosts of microscopic shell-bearing protozoa
continually drop their little skeletons on the bottom,

228

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

slowly accumulating a chalky mud or slime. That
such a rock should occur over vast areas of the con-
tinental plateaus, that both in Europe and America it
should be found to cover the tops of hills several
thousand feet high, and that its thickness should
amount to several hundreds of feet, are facts which
evidence a revolution more stupendous perhaps than
that at the close of the Palaeozoic. For the first time
since the Laurentian, the great continental plateaus
changed places with the abysses of the ocean, and the
successors of the Laurentian Eozoon again reigned on
surfaces which through the whole lapse of Palaeozoic
and Mesozoic time had been separated more or less
from that deep ocean out of which they rose at first.
This great Cretaceous subsidence was different from
the disturbances of the Permian age. There was at
first no crumpling of the crust, but merely a slow
and long-continued sinking of the land areas, followed,
however, by crumpling of the most stupendous cha-
racter, which led at the close of the Cretaceous and
in the earlier Tertiary to the formation of what are
now the greatest mountain chains in the world. As
examples may be mentioned the Himalaya, the
Andes, and the Alps, on all which the deep-sea beds
of the Cretaceous are seen at great elevations. In
Europe this depression was almost universal, only very
limited areas remaining out of water. In America
a large tract remained above water in the region of
the Appalachians. This gives us some clue to the
phenomena. The great Permian collapse led to the

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

229

crampling-iip of the Appalachians and tlie CTralSj and
the older hills of Western Europe. The Cretaceous
collapse led to the crumpling of the great N.W. and
S.E. chain of the Rocky Mountains and Andes, and
to that of the east and west chains of the south of
Asia and Europe. The cause was probably in both
cases the same ; but the crust gave way in a different
part, and owing to this there was a greater amount
of submergence of our fam^'^ . continental plateaus
in the Cretaceous than in the Ji'ermian.

Another remarkable indico,.: jn of the nature of the
Cretaceous subsidence is the occurrence of beds filled
with grains of the mineral Glauconite or '' green-
sand." ThbGe grains are not properly sand, but little
concretions, which form in the bottom of the deep sea,
often filling and taking casts of the interior and fine
tubes of Foraminiferal shells. Now this Glauconite,
a hydrous silicate of iron and potash, is akin to similar
materials found filling the pores of fossils in Silurian
beds. It is also akin to the Serpentine filling the
pores of Eozoon in the Laurentian. Such materials
are formed only in the deeper parts of the ocean,
and apparently most abundantly where currents of
warm water are flowing at the surface, as in the area
of the Gulf Stream. Thus, not only in the prevalence
of Foraminifera, but in the formation of hydrous sili-
cates, does the Cretaceous recall the Laurentian. Such
materials had no doubt been forming, and such animals
hving in the ocean depths, all through the intervening
ages, but with the exception of a few and merely

wmm

230

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

local instances, we know nothing of them, till the
great subsidence and re -elevation of the Cretaceous
again allows them to ascend to the continental
plateaus, and again introduces us to this branch of
the world-making process.

The attention recently drawn to these facts by the
researches of Dr. Carpenter and others, and especially
the similarity in mineral character and organic re-
mains of some of the deposits now forming in the
Atlantic and those of the chalk, have caused it to be
affirmed that in the bed of the Atlantic these con-
ditions of life and deposit have continued from the
Cretaceous up to the present time, or as it has been
expressed, that '' we are still living in the Cretaceous
epoch." Now, this is true or false just as we apply
the statement. We have seen that the distinction be-
tween abyssal areas, continental oceanic plateaus, and
land surfaces has extended through the whole lapse
of geological time. In this broad sense we may be
said to be still living in the Laurentian epoch. In
other words, the whole plan of the earth^s develop-
ment is one and the same, and each class of general
condition once introduced is permanent somewhere.
But in another important sense we are not living in
the Cretaceous epoch; otherwise the present site of
London would be a thousand fathoms deep in the
ocean ; the Ichthyosaurs and Ammonites would be dis-
porting themselves in the water, and the huge Dino-
saurs and strange Pterodactyls living on the land. The
Italian peasant is still in many important points living

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

231

in the period of the old Roman Empire. The Arab
of the desert remains in the Patriarchal period, and
there are some tribes not yet beyond the primitive age
of stone. But the world moves, nevertheless, and the
era of Victoria is not that of the Plantagenets or of
Julius Cassar. So while we may admit that certain of
the conditions of the Cretaceous seas still prevail in
the bed of the present ocean, we must maintain that
nearly all else is changed, and that the very existence
of the partial similarity is of itself the most con-
clusive proof of the general want of resemblance, and
of the thorough character of the changes which have
occurred.

The duration of the Cretaceous subsidence must
have been very great. We do not know the rate
at which the Foraminifera accumulate calcareous mud.
In some places, where currents heap up their shells,
they may be gathered rapidly ; but on the average of
the ocean bed, a foot of such material must indicate the
lapse of ages very long when compared with those of
modern history. We need not wonder, therefore, that
while some forms of deep-sea Cretaceous life, especially
of the lower grades, seem to have continued to our
time, the inhabitants of the shallow waters and the
land have perished ; and that the Neozoic or Tertiary
period introduces us to a new world of living beings.
I say we need not wonder ; yet there is no reason
why we should expect this as a necessary consequence.
As the Cretaceous deluge rose over the continents of
the Mesozoic, the great sea saurians might have fol-

232

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

lowed. Those of the land might have retreated to
the tracts still remaining out of water, and when the
dry land again appeared in the earlier Tertiary, they
might again have replenished the earth, and we might
thus have truly been living in the Reptilian age up to
this day. But it was not so. The old world again
perished, and the dawn of the Tertiary shows to us at
once the dynasties of the Mammalian age, which was
to culminate in the introduction of man. With the
great Cretaceous subsidence the curtain falls upon the
age of reptiles, and when it rises again, after the vast
interval occupied in the deposition of the greensand
and chalk, the scene has entirely changed. There
are new mountains and new plains, forests of different
type, and animals such as no previous age had

seen.

How strange and inexplicable is this perishing of
types in the geological ages ! Some we could well
spare. We would not wish to have our coasts in-
fested by terrible sea saurians, or our forests by car-
nivorous Dinosaurs. Yet why should these tyrants
of creation so utterly disappear without waiting for
us to make war on them ? Other types we mourn.
How glorious would the hundreds of species of Am-
monites have shone in the cases of our museums, had
they still lived ! What images of beauty would they
have afforded to the poets who have made so much of
the comparatively humble Nautilus ! How perfectly,
too, were they furnished with all those mechanical
appliances for their ocean life, which are bestowed

THE MESOZOIC AGES.

233

only with a niggardly hand on their successors !
Nature gives us no explanation of the mystery.

" From scarpM cliff and quarried stone,
. She cries — *A thousand types are gone.' "

But why or how one was taken and another left she
is silent, and I believe must continue to be so, because
the causes, whether efScient or final, are beyond her
sphere. If we wish for a full explanation, we must
leave Nature, and ascend to the higher domain of the
Spiritual.

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CHAPTER X.

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

Between the Mcsozoic and the next succeeding time,
which may bo known as the Neozoic or Tertiary,*
there is in the arrangements of most geologists a great
break in the succession of life ; and undoubtedly the
widespread and deep subsidence of the Cretaceous,
followed by the elevation of land on a great scale at
the beginning of the next period, is a physical cause
sufficient to account for vast life changes. Yet we
must not forget to consider that even in the Cre-
taceous itself there were new features beginning to
appear. Let us note in this way, in the first place,
the introduction of the familiar generic forms of exo-
genous trees. Next we may mention the decided
prevalence of the modern types of coral animals and of
a great number of modern generic forms of mollusks.
Then we have the establishment of the modem tribes
of lobsters and crabs, and the appearance of nearly all
the orders of insects. Among vertebrates, the ordi-
nary fishes are now introduced. Modern orders of

* The former name is related to PalaBOzoic and Mesozoic, the
latter to the older terms Primary and Secondary. For the
sake of euphony we shall use both. The term Neozoic was
proposed by Edward Forbes for the Mesozoic and Cainozoic
combined ; but I use it here as a more euphonious and accurate
term for the Cainozoic alone.

23G

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

^^HKI

reptiles, as the crocodiles and cliolonians, had already
appeared, aud tlio first mammals, llencefortli the
progress of organic nature lies chiefly in tho dropping
of many Mesozoic forms and in tho introduction of the
higher tribes of nuunnials and of man.

It is further to be observed that the new things
introduced in the later Mesozoic came in little by little
in the progress of the period, and anticipated tho great
physical changes occurring at its close. On tho other
hand, while many family and oven generic types pass
over from the Mesozoic to the earlier Tertiary, very
few species do so. It would seem, therefore, as if
changes of species were more strictly subordinate to
physical revolutions than were changes of genera and
orders — those last overriding under different* specific
forms many minor vicissitudes, and only in part being
overwhelmed in tho grander revolutions of the earth.

Both in Europe and America there is evidence of
great changes of level at tho beginning of the Ter-
tiary. In the west of Europe beds often of shallow-
water or even fresh-water origin fill the hollows in
the bent Cretaceous strata. This is manifestly the
case with the formations of the London and Paris
basins, contemporaneous but detached deposits of the
Tertiary age, lying in depressions of the chalk. Still
this does not imply much want of conformity, and
according to the best explorers of those Alpine regions
in which both the Mesozoic and Tertiary beds have
been thrown up to great elevations, they are in the
main conformable to one another. Something of the

THE NEOZOIC AOES.

237

same kind occurs in America. On bbo Atlantic coast
the marine bods of the Older Tertiary cover the Creta-
ceous, and little elevation seems to have occurred,
rurtlior west the elevation increases, and in the upper
part of the valley of the Mississippi it amounts to
1700 feet. Still farther west, in the region of the
Rocky Mountains, there is evidence of elevation to the
extent of as much as 7000 feet. Throughout all these
regions scarcely any disturbance of the old Cretaceous
sea-bottom seems to have occurred until after the
deposition of the older Tertiary, so that there was first
n slow and general elevation of the Cretaceous ocean
bottom, succeeded by gigantic folds and fractures, and
extensive extravasations of the bowels of the earth in
molten rocks, in the course of the succeeding Tertiary
ago. These great physical changes inaugurated the
new and higher life of the Tertiary, just as the similar
changes in the Permian did tliat of the Mesozoic.

The beginning of these movements consisted of a
great and gradual elevation of the northern parts of
both the Old and New Continents out of the sea,
whereby a much greater land surface was produced,
and such changes of depth and direction of currents
in the ocean as must have very much modified the
conditions of marine life. The effect of all these
changes in the aggregate was to cause a more varied
and variable climate, and to convert vast areas pre-
viously tenanted by marine animals into the abodes of
tvaimals and plants of the land, and of estuaries, lakes,
and shallow waters. Still, however, very large areas

238

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

now continental were under tbe sea. As tlie Tertiary
period advanced, these latter areas were elevated, and
in many cases were folded up into high, mountains.
This produced further changes of climate and habitat
of animals, and finally brought our continents into all
the variety of surface which they now present, and
which fits them so well for the habitation of the higher
animals and of man.

The thoughtful reader will observe that it follows
from the above statements that the partial distribu-
tion and diversity in difierent localities which apply to
the deposits of such ages as the Permian and the Trias
apply also to the earlier Tertiary ; u,nd as the conti-
nents, notwithstanding some dips under water, have
retained their present forms since the beginning of
the Tertiary, it follows that these beds are more defi-
nitely related to existing geographical conditions than
are those of the older periods, and that the more
extensive marine deposits of the Tertiary are, to a
great extent, unknown to us. This has naturally led
to some difficulty in the classification of Neozoic
deposits — those of some of the Tertiary ages being
very patchy and irregular, while others spread very
widely. In consequence of this. Sir Charles Lyell, to
whom we owe verv much of our definite knowledj^e of
this period, has proposed a subdivision based on the
percentage of recent and fossil animals. In other
words, he takes it for granted that a deposit which
contains more numerous species of animals still living
than another, may be judged on that account to be

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

239

defi-
tlian
more
to a
ly led
eozoic
being
very
^ell, to
idge of
■on the
otlier
wliicli
living
to Vie

more recent. Sucli a mode of estimation is, no doubt,
to some extent arbitrary; but in the main, wlien it
can be tested by the superposition of deposits, it has
proved itself reliable. Further, it brings before us
this remarkable fact, that while in the older periods
all the animals whose remains we find are extinct as
species, so soon as we enter on the Neozoic we find
some which still continue to our time — at first only a
very few, but in later and later beds in gradually
increasing percentage, till the fossil and extinct wholly
disappear in the recent and living.

The Lyellian classification of the Tertiary will
therefore stand as in the following table, bearing in
mind that the percentage of fossils is taken from
marine forms, and mainly from mollusks, and that the
system has in some cases been modified by strati-
graphical evidence : —

'PosT-PLiocENE, including that which immediate-
ly precedes the Modern. In this the shells,
etc., are recent, the Mammalia in part ex-
tinct.
Pliocene, or more recent age. In this the
Tertiary, or ) majority of shells found are recent in the
Neozoic Time.V upper beds. In the lower beds the extinct
I become predominant.
Miocene, or less recent. In this the large

majority of shells found are extinct.
Eocene, the dawn of the recent. In this only a
y few rece" ' shells occur.

If we attempt to divide the Tertiary time into ages
corresponding to those of the older times, we are met

240

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

^""^^^^-.s.,

by the difficulty that as the continents have retained
their present forms and characters to a great extent
throughout this time, we fail to find those evidences
of long-continued submergences of the whole conti-
nental plateaus, or very large portions of them, whicb
we have found so very valuable in the Palaeozoic and
Mesozoic. In the Eocene, however, we shall discover
one very instructive case in the great Nummulitic
Limestone. In the Miocene and Pliocene the oscilla-
tions seem to have been slight and partial. In the
Post-pliocene we have the great subsidence of the
glacial drift ; but that seems to have been a compara-
tively rapid dip, though of long duration when mea-
sured by human history; not allowing time for the
formation of great limestones, but only of fossiliferous
sands and clays, which require comparatively short
time for their deposition. If then we ask as to the
duration of the Neozoic, I answer that we have not a
definite measure of its ages, if it had any ; and that it
is possible that the Neozoic may have as yet had but
one age, which closed with the great drift period, and
that we are now only in the beginning of its second
age. Some geologists, impressed with this compara-
tive shortness of the Tertiary, connect it with Meso-
zoic, grouping both together. This, however, is
obviously unnatural. The Mesozoic time certainly
terminated with the Cretaceous, and what folhws
belongs to a distinct aeon.

But we must now try to paint the character of this
new and peculiar time ; and this may perhaps be best

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

241

done in the following sketches: 1. The seas of the
Eocene. 2. Mammals from the Eocene to the Modern.
3. Tertiary floras. 4. The Glacial period. 5. The
Advent of Man.

The great elevation of the continents which closed
the Cretaceous was followed by a partial and unequal
subsidence, affecting principally the more southern
parts of the land of the northern hemisphere. Thus,
a wide sea area stretched across all the south of
Europe and Asia, and separated the northern part of
North America from what of land existed in the
southern hemisphere. This is the age of the great
Nummulitic Limestones of Europe, Africa, and Asia,
and the Orbitoidal Limestones of North America. The
names are derived from the prevalence of certain
forms of those humble shell-bearing protozoa which
we first met with in the Laurentian, and which we
have found to be instrumental in building up the
chalk, the Foraminifera of zoologists. (Fig. p. 243.)
But in the Eocene the species of the chalk were re-
placed by certain broad flat forms, the appearance of
which is expressed by the term nummulite, or money-
stone; the rock appearing to be made up of fossils,
somewhat resembling shillings, sixpences, or three-
penny pieces, according to the size of the shells, each
of which includes a vast number of small concentric
chambers, which during life were filled with the soft
jelly of the animal. The nummulite limestone was
undoubtedly oceanic, and the other shells contained
in it are marine species. After what we have already

242

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

seen we do not need this limestone to convince us of
the continent-building powers of tho oceanic protozoa ;
but the distribution of these limestones, and the ele-
vation which they attain, furnish the most striking-
proofs that we can imagine of the changes which the
earth's crust has undergone in times geologically
modern, and also of the extreme newness of man and
his works. Large portions of those countries wbicli
constitute the earliest seats of man in Southern Europe,
Northern Africa, and Western and Southern Asia,
are built upon the old nummulitic sea-bottom. The
Egyptians and many other ancient nations quarried it
for their oldest buildings. In some of these regions it
attains a thickness of several thousand feet, eviden-
cing a lapse of time in its accumulation equal to that
implied in the chalk itself. In tho Swiss Alps it
reaches a height above the sea of 10,000 feet, and it
enters largely into the structure of the Carpathians
and Pyrenees. In Thibet it has been observed at an
elevation of 16,500 feet above the sea. Thus we learn
that at a time no more geologically remote than the
Eocene Tertiary, lands now of this great elevation
were in the bottom of the deep sea; and this not
merely for a little time, but during a time sufficient
for the slow accumulation of hundreds of feet of rock,
made up of the shells of successive generations of
animals. If geology presented to us no other revela-
tion than this one fact, it would alone constitute one
of the most stupendous pictures in physical geography
which could be presented to the imagination. I beg

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

243

leave here to present to the reader a little illustration
of the limestone-making Foraminifera of the Creta-

FORAMIlflFEHAL BOCK-BUILDEBS.

A. Nummulites Itevigata — Eocene.

B. The same, showing chambered interior,

C. MiUoline limestone, magnified — p]oceno, Paris.

D. Hard Chalk, section magnified— Cretaceous.

ceous and Eocene seas. In the middle above is a
nummulite of the natural size. Below is another,
sliced to show its internal chambers. At one side is a
magnified section of the common building stone of
Paris, the milioline limestone of the Eocene, so called
from its immense abundance of microscopic shells of
tlie genus Miliolina. At the other side is a magnified
section of one of the harder varieties of chalk, ground
so thin as to become transparent,* and mounted in
Canada balsam. It shows many microscopic cham-
* As for instance that of the Giant's Causeway, Antrim.

iii

244

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

bered shells of Foraminifera. These may serve ag
illustrations of the functions of these humble inhabi-
tants of the sea as accumulators of calcareous matter.
It is further interesting to remark that some of the
beds of nummulitic limestone are so completely filled
'with these shells, that we might from detached speci-
mens suppose that they belonged to sea-bottoms
whereon no other form of life was present. Yet some
beds of this age are remarkably rich in other fossils.
Lyell states that as many as six hundred species of
shells have been found in the principal limestone of
the Paris basin alone ; and the lower Eocene beds
afford remains of fishes, of reptiles, of birds, and of
mammals. Among the latter are the bones of gigan-
tic whales, of which one of the most remarkable is the
Zeuglodon of Alabama, a creature sometimes seventy
feet in length, and which replaces in the Tertiary the
great Elasmosanrs and Ichthyosaurs of the Mesozoic,
marking the advent, even in the sea, of the age of
Mammals as distinguished from the age of Reptiles.

This fact leads us naturally to consider in the second
place the mammalia, and other land animals of the
Tertiary. At the beginning of the period we meet
with that higher group of mammals, not pouched,
which now prevails. Among the oldest of these
Tertiary beasts are Coryj^hodon, an animal related to
the Modern Tapirs, and Ardocijon, a creature related
to the bears and racoons. These animals represent
respectively the Pachyderms, or thick-skinned mam-
malsj and the ordinary Carnivora. Contemporary with

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

245

or shortly succeeding these, were species representing
the Rodents, or gnawing animals, and many other
creatures of the group Pachydermata, allied to the
Modern Tapirs and Hogs, as well as several additional
carnivorous quadrupeds. Thus at the very beginning
of the Tertiary period we enter on the age of mammals.
It may be well, however, to take these animals some-
what in chronological order.

If the old Egyptian, by quarrying the nummulite
limestone, bore unconscious testimony to the recent
origin of man (whose remains are wholly absent from
the Tertiary deposits), so did the ancient Britons and
Gauls, when they laid the first rude foundations of
future capitals on the banks of the Thames and of
the Seine. Both cities lie in basins of Eocene Tertiary,
occupying hollows in the chalk. Under London there
is principally a thick bed of clay, the '^ London clay,"
attaining a thickness of five hundred feet. This bed
is obviously marine, containing numerous species of
sea shells ; but it must have been deposited near land,
as it also holds many fossil fruits and other remains of
plants to which we shall refer in the sequel, and the
boues of several species of large animals. Among
these the old reptiles of the Mesozoic are repre-
sented by the vertebrae of a supposed ''sea snake ^'
(Pal^ophis) thirteen feet long, and species of crocodile
allied both to the alligators and the gavials. But be-
sides these there are bones of several animals allied
to the hog and tapir, and also a species of opossum.
These remains must be drift carcases from neighbour-

246

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

ing shores, and tliey show first the elevation of the old
deep-sea bottom represented by the chalk, so that part
of it became dry land ; next, the peopling of that land
by tribes of animals and plants unknown to the Meso-
zoic ; and lastly, that a warm climate must have existed,
enabling England at this time to support many types
of animals and plants now proper to intertropical
regions. As Lyell well remarks, it is most interesting
to observe that these beds belong to the beginning
of the Tertiary, that they are older than those great
nummulite limestones to which we have referred, and
that they are older than the principal mountain chains
of Europe and Asia. They show that no sooner was
the Cretaceous sea dried from off the new land, than
there were abundance of animals and plants ready to
occupy it, and these not the survivors of the flora and
fauna of the Wealden, but a new creation. The men-
tion of the deposit last named places this in a striking
light. We have seen that the Wealden beds, under
the chalk, represent a Mesozoic estuary, and in it we
have the remains of the animals and plants of the land
that then was. The great Cretaceous subsidence inter-
vened, and in the London clay we have an estuary of
the Eocene. But if we pass through the galleries of
a museum where these formations are represented,
though we know that both existed in the same locality
under a warm climate, we see that they belong to two
different worlds, the one to that of the Dinosaurs, the
Ammonites, the Cycads, and the minute Marsupials of
the Mesozoic, the other to that of the Pachyderms, the
Palms, and the Nautili of the Tertiary.

mm^]

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

247

The London clay is lower Eocene ; but in the beds
of the Isle of Wight and neighbouring parts of the
South of England, we have the middle and upper mem-
bers of the series. They are not, however, so largely
developed as in the Paris basin, where, resting on the
equivalent of the London clay, we have a thick marine
limestone, the Calcaire Grossier, abounding in marine
remains, and in some beds composed of shells of
foraminifera. The sea in which this limestone was de-
posited, a portion no doubt of the groat Atlantic area
of the period, became shallow, so that beds of sand
succeeded those of limestone, and finally it was dried
up into lake basins, in which gypsum, magnesian sedi-
ments, and siliceous limestone were deposited. These
lakes or ponds must at some period have resembled
the American " salt-licks," and were no doubt resorted
to by animals from all the surrounding country in
search of the saline mud and water which they afforded.
Hence in some marly beds intervening between the
layers of gypsum, numerous footprints occur, exactly
like those already noticed in the Trias. Had there
been a Nimrod in those days to watch with bow or
boomerang by the muddy shore, he would have seen
herds of heavy short-legged and three-hoofed monsters
(Palseotherium), with large heads and long snouts,
probably scantily covered with sleek hair, and closely
resembling the Modern Tapirs of South America and
India, laboriously wading through the mud, and
grunting with indolent delight as they rolled them-
selves in the cool saline slime. Others more lisrht and

mmmm

■Ml

248

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

graceful, combining some features of the antelope with
those of the Tapir (Anoplotherium) ran in herds over
the drier ridges, or sometimes timidly approached the
treacherous clay, tempted by the saline waters. Other
creatures representing the Modern Damans or Conies
— " feeble folk " which, with the aspect of hares, have
the structure of Pachyderms — were also present.
Creatures of these types constituted the great majority
of the animals of the Parisian Eocene lakes ; but there
were also Carnivorous animals allied to the hytena,
the wolf, and the opossum, which prowled along the
shores by night to seize unwary wanderers, or to prey
on the carcases of animals mired in the sloughs.
Wading birds equal in size to the ostrich also stalked
through the shallows, and tortoises crawled over the
mud.

Lyell mentions the discovery of some bones of one
of these gigantic birds (Gastornis) in a bed of the
rolled chalk flints which form the base of the Paris
series, resting immediately on the chalk ; one of the
first inhabitants perhaps to people some island of
chalk just emerged from the waters, and under which
lay the bones of the mighty Dinosaurs, and in vrhich
were embedded those of sea birds that had ranged,
like the albatross and petrel, over the wide expanse
of the Cretaceous ocean. These waders, however, like
the tortoises and crocodiles and small marsupial
mammals, form a link of connection in type at least
between the Eocene and the Cretaceous, for bones of
wading birds have been found in the Greepi sands

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

249

indicating their existence before the close of the
Mesozoic.

The researches of Baron Cuvier in the bones col-
lected in the quarries of Montmartre were regarded as
an astonishing triumph of comparative anatomy ; and
familiar as we now are with similar and yet more dif-
ficult achievements, we can yet afford to regard with
admiration the work of the great French naturalist
as it is recorded in its collected form in his " Ee-
cherches sur les Ossemens Fossilcs," published in
1812. His clear and philosophical views as to the
plan perceptible in nature, his admirable powers of
classification, his acute perception of the correlation
of parts in animals, his nice discrimination of the
resemblances and differences of fossil and recent
s^tructures, and of the uses of these, — all mark him
as one of the greatest minds ever devoted to the
study of natural science. It is obvious, that had
his intellect been occupied by the evolutionist meta-
physics which pass for natural science with too many
in our day, he would have effected comparatively
little ; and instead of the magnificent museum in the
'^ Regno Animal " and the " Ossemens Fossiles," we
might have had wearisome speculations on the de-
rivation of species. It is reason for profound thank-
fulness that it was not so; and also that so many
great observers and thinkers of our day, like Sedg-
wick, Murchison, Lyell, Owen, Dana, and Agassiz,
liave been allowed to work out their researches almost
to completion before the advent of those poisoned

250

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

streams <ind mepliitic vapours which threaten the
intellectual obscuration of those who should be thoir
successors.

If we pass from the Eocene to the Miocene, still
confining ourselves mainly to mammalian life, we find
three remarkable points of difference — (1) Whereas
the Eocene mammals are remarkable for adherence to
one general type, viz., that group of pachyderms most
regular and complete in its dentition, we now find a
great number of more specialised and peculiar forms;
(2) We find in the lattei* period a far greater propor-
tion of large carnivorous animals ; (3) We find much
greater variety of mammals than either in the Eocene
or the Modern, and a remnrkable abundance of species
of gigantic size. The Miocene is thus apparently the
culminating age of the mammalia, in so far as physical
development is concerned ; and this, as we shall find,
accords with its remarkably genial climate and exu-
berant vegetation.

In Europe, the beds of this age present, for the
first time, examples of the monkeys, represented by
two generic typos, both of them apparently related
to the modern long-armed species, or Gibbons.
Among carnivorous animals we have cat-like crea-
tures, one of which is the terrible Macliairodus, dis-
tinguished from all modern animals of its group by
the long sabre-shaped canines of its upper jaw, fitting
it to pull down and destroy those large pachyderms
which could have easily shaken pff a lion or a tiger.
Here also we have the elephants, represented by

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

251

several species now extinct; the mastodon, a great,
coarsely-built, hog-liko elephant, some species of
which had tusks both in tha upper and lower jaw ;
the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and tho horse, all
of extinct species. Wt have also giratfes, stags, and
antelopes, the first ruminants known to us, and a
great variety of smaller and less noteworthy crea-
tures. Here also, for the first time, wo find the
carious and exceptional . group of Edentates, repre-
sented by a large ant-eater. Of all the animals of
the European Miocono, the most wonderful and un-
like any modern beast, is the Dinotherium, found in
the Miocene of Epplesheim in Germany; and de-
scribed by Kaup. Some doubt rests on tho form
and affinities of the animal; but we may reasonably
take it, as restored by its describer, and currently
reproduced in popular books, to have been a quad-
ruped of somewhat elephantine form. Some years
ago, however, a huge haunch bone, supposed to be-
long to this creature, was discovered in the South of
France ; and from this it was inferred that the
Dinothere may have been a marsupial or ]f )uched
animal, perhaps allied in form and habits to the
kangaroos. The skull is three feet four inches in
length; and when provided with its soft parts, in-
cluding a snout or trunk in front, it must have been
at least five or six feet long. Such a head, if it
belonged to a quadruped of ordinary proportions,
must represent an animal as large in proportion to
our elephant as an elephant to an ox. But its size

252

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

is not its most remarkable feature. It has two large
tusks firmly implanted in strong bony sockets; but
they are attached to the end of the lower jaw and
point downward at right angles to it, so that the
lower jaw forms a sort of double-pointed pickaxe of
great size and strength. This might have been used
as a weapon; or, if the creature was aquatic, as a
grappling iron to hold by the bank, or by floating
timber; but more probably it was a grubbing-hoe
for digging up roots or loosening the bases of trees
whicii the animal might afterward pull down to devour
thenx. However this may be, the creature laboured
under the mechanical disadvantage of having to lift
an immense weight in the process of mastication, and
of being unable to bring its mouth to the ground, or
to bite or grasp anything with the front of its jaws.
To make up for this, it had muscles of enormous
power on the sides of the head attached to great
projecting processes ; and it had a thick but flexible
proboscis, to place in its mouth the food grubbed up
by its tusks. Taken altogether, the Dinothere is per-
haps the most remarkable of mammals, fossil or re-
cent ; and if the rest of its frame were as extraordi-
nary as its skull, we have pro) ably as yet but a faint
conception of its peculiarities. We may apply to it,
with added force, the admiring ejaculation of Job,
when he describes the strength of the hippopotamus,
*' He is the chief of the ways of God. He who made
him, gave him his sword.''

In Asia, tho Siwalik hills aSbrded to Falconer and

.'TOTCT.iiiywiiaTOTywpmgwwHNttii

254

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

Cautley one of the most remarkable exhibitions of
Miocene animals in the world. These hills form a
ridge subordinate to the Himalayan chain; and rise
to a height of 2,000 to 3,000 feet. In the Miocene
period, they were sandy and pebbly shores and banks
lying at the foot of the then infant Himalayas, which,
with t.'ie table-lands to the north, probably formed a
somewhat narrow east and west continental mass or
large island. As a mere example of the marvelloas
fauna which inhabited this Miocene land, it has
afforded remains of seven species of elephants, masto-
dons, and allied animals ; one of them, the E. Ganesa,
with tusks ten feet and a half long, and twenty- six
inches in circumference at the base. Besides these
there are five species of rhinoceros, three of horse
and allied animak, four or more of hippopotamus,
and species of camel, giraffe, antelope, sheep, ox, and
many other genera, as well as numerous large and
formidable beasts of prey. There is also an ostrich ;
and, among other reptiles, a tortoise having a shell
twelve feet in length, and this huge roof must have
covered an animal eighteen feet long and seven feet
high. Among the more remarkable of the Siwahk
animals is the SlvatherivAii, a gigantic four-horned
antelope or deer, supposed to have been of elephantine
size, and of great power and swiftness ; and to
have presented features connecting the ruminants
and pachyderms. Our restoration of this creature
is to isome extent conjectural; and a remarkably
artistic, and probably more accurate, restoration of the

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

255

animal has recently been published by Dr» Murie, in
the Geological Magazine. We justly regard the
Mammalian fauna of modern India as one of the
noblest in the world; but it is paltry in comparison
with that of the much more limited Miocene India;
even if we suppose, contrary to all probability, that
we know most of the animals of the latter. But if
we consider the likelihood that we do not yet know a
tenth of the Miocene animals, the contrast becomes
vastly greater.

Miocene America is scarcely behind the Old World
in the development of its land animals. From one
locality in Nebraska, Leidy described in 1852 fifteen
species of large quadrupeds ; and the number has
since been considerably increased. Among these are
species of Rhinoceros, Pala3otherium, and Machairo-
dus ; and one animal, the Titanotherium, allied to the
European Anoplothere, is said to have attained a
length of eighteen feet and a height of nine, its
jaws alone being five feet long.

In the illustration, I have grouped some of the
characteristic Mammalian forms of the Miocene, as
we can restore them from their scattered bones,
more or less conjecturally ; but could we have seen
them march before us in all their majesty, like the
Edenic animals before Adam, I feel persuaded that
our impressions of this wonderful age would have
far exceeded anything that we can derive either
from words or illu^.trations. I insist on this the
more that the Miocene happens to be very slenderly

■*ws~i^.^^t^fjfr^: MjiiFiwfmwat'gmsww

256

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

represented in Britain; and scarcely at all in north-
eastern America; and hence has not impressed the
imagination of the English race so strongly as its
importance justifies.

The next succeeding period, that of the Pliocene,
continues the conditions of the last, but with signs
of decadence. Many of the old gigantic pachyderms
have disappeared ; and in their stead some familiar
modern genera were introduced. The Pliocene was
terminated by the cold or glacial period, in which a
remarkable lowering of temperature occurred over all
the northern hemisphere, accompanied, at least in a
portion of the time, by a very general and great
subsidence, which laid all the lower parts of our
continents under water. This terminated much of
the life of the Pliocene, and replaced it with boreal
and Arctic forms, some of them, like the great hairy
Siberian mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, fit
successors of the gigantic Miocene fauna. How it
happened that such creatures were continued during
the Post-pliocene cold, we cannot understand till we
have the Tertiary vegetation before us. It must
suffice now to say, that as the temperatura was
modified, and the land rose, and the Modern period
was inaugurated, these animals passed away, autl
those of the present time remained.

Perhaps the most remarkable fact connected with
this change, is that stated by Pictet, that all the
modern European mammals are direct descendants
of Post-pliocene species; but that in the Post-plio-

umum

«'PK;»5».i^';T.=-iiw^-'. '

.7-3"rif*»»»ww»—

THE NEOZOIC AGES,

257

cene they were associated with many other species;
and these, often of great dimensions, now extinct.
In other words, the time from the PHocene to the
Modern, has been a time of diminution of species,
while that from the Eocene to the Miocene was a
time of rapid introduction of new species. Thus the
Tertiary fauna cuhninated in the Miocene. Yet,
strange though this may appear, Man himself, the
latest and noblest of all, would seem to have been a
product of the later stages of the time of decadence.
I propose, however, to return to the animals imme-
diately preceding man and his contemporaries, after
we have noticed the Tertiary flora and the Glacial
period.

CHAPTER XI.

THE NEOZOIC AGES — (continued).

Plant-life in the Tertiary approaches very nearly to
that of the Modern World, in so far as its leading
types are concerned ; but in its distribution geographi-
cally it was wonderfully different from that with which
we are at present familiar. Fov example, in the Isle
of Sheppey, at the mouth of the Thames, are beds of
'' London clay," full of fossil nuts ; and these, instead
of being hazel nuts and acorns, belong to palms allied
to species now found in the Philippine Islands and
Bengal, while with them are numerous cone-like fruits
belonging to the Proteacesa (banksias, silver-trees,
wagenbooms, etc.), a group of trees now confined to
Australia and South Africa, but which in the Northern
Hemisphere had already, as stated in a previous paper,
made their appearance in the Cretaceous, and were
abundant in the Eocene. The state of preservation
of these fruits shows that they were not drifted far ;
and in some beds in Hampshire, also of Eocene age,
the leaves of similar plants occur along with species of
fig, cinnamon, and other forms equally Australian or
Indian. In America, especially in the west, there are
thick and widely-distributed beds of lignite or imper-
fect coal of the Eocene period ; but the plants found

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

259

in tlie American Eocene are more like those of the
European Miocene or the Modern American flora, a fact
to which we must revert immediately.

In Europe, while the Eocene plants resemble those
of Australia, when we ascend into the Miocene they
resemble those of America, though still retaining
some of the Australian forms. In the leaf-beds of
the Isle of Mull, — where beds of vegetable mould and
leaves were covered up with the erupted matter of a
volcano belonging to a great series of such eruptions
which produced the basaltic cliffs of Antrim and of
Staffa, — and at Bovey, in Devonshire, where Miocene
plants have accumulated in many thick beds of lignite,
the prevailing plants are sequoias or red-woods, vines,
figs, cinnamons, etc. In the sandstones at the base
of the Alps similar plants and also palms of American
types occur. In the Upper Miocene beds of CEningen
in the Rhine valley, nearly five hundred species of
plants have been found, and include such familiar
forms as the maples, plane-trees, cypress, elm, and
sweet-gum, more American, however, than European
in their aspect. It thus appears that the Miocene
flora of Europe resembles that of America at pre-
sent, while the Eocene flora of Europe resembles
that of Australia, and the Eocene flora of America,
ab well as the modern, resembles the Miocene of
Europe. In other words, the changes of the flora
liave been more rapid in Europe than in America and
probably slowest of all in Australia. The Eastern
Continent has thus taken the lead in rapidity of

260

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAX.

change in the Tertiary period^ and it has done so in
animals as well as in plants.

The following description of the flora of Bovey is
given, with slight alteration, in the words of Dr.
Heer, in his memoir on that district. The woods
that covered the slopes consisted mainly of a huge
pine-tree (sequoia), whose figure resembled in all
probability its highly-admired cousin, the giant
Wellingtonia of California. The leafy trees of most
frequent occurrence were the cinnamon and an ever-
green oak like those now seen in Mexico. The ever-
green figs, the custard apples, and allies of the Cape
jasmine, were rarer. The trees were festooned with
vines, beside which the prickly rotang palm twined
its snake-like form. In the shade of the forest throve
numerous ferns, one species of which formed trees of
imposing grandeur, and there were masses of under-
wood belonging to various species of Nyssa, like the
tupelos and sour-gums of North A.merica. This is a
true picture, based on actual facts, of the vegetation
of England in the Miocene age.

But all the other wonders of the Miocene flora are
thrown into the shade by the discoveries of plants of
this age which have recently been made in Greenland,
a region now bound up in what we poetically call
eternal ice, but which in the Miocene was a fair and
verdant land, rejoicing in a mild climate and rich
vegetation. The beds containing these specimens
occur in various places in North Greenland ; and the
principal locality, Atane-Kerdluk, is in lat. 70 N.,

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

261

and at an elevation of more than a thousand feet above
the sea. The plants occur abundantly in sandstone
and clay bedsj and the manner in which delicate leaves
and fruits are preserved shows that they have not been
far water-borne, a conclusion which is confirmed by
the occurrence of beds of lignite of considerable thick-
ness, and which are evidently peaty accumulations
containing trunks of trees. The collections made
have enabled Heer to catalogue 137 species, all of
them of forms proper to temperate, or even warm
regions, and mostly American in character. As
many as forty-six of the species already referred to as
occurring at Bovey Tracey and CEningen occur also
in the Greenland beds. Among the plants are many
species of pines, some of them of large size ; and the
beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, maples, walnuts, limes,
magnolias, and vines are apparently as well repre-
sented as in the warm temperate zone of America at
the present day. This wonderful flora was not a
merely local phenomenon, for similar plants are found
in Spitzbergen in lat. 78° 56'. It is to be further
observed, that while the general characters of these
ancient Arctic plants imply a large amount of summer
heat and light, the evergreens equally imply a mild
winter. Further, though animal remains are not
found with these plants, it is probable that so rich a
supply of vegetable food was not unutilised, and that
wc shall some time find that there was an Arctic fauna
corresponding to the Arctic flora. How such a
climate could exist in Greenland and Spitzbergen is

li!!ir

262

THE STORY OV THE EARTH AND MAN.

still a mystery. It has, however, been suggested that
this effect might result from the concurrence of such
astronomical conditions in connection with the eccen-
tricity of the earth's orbit as would give the greatest
amount of warmth in the Northern Hemisphere with
such distribution of land and water as would give the
least amount of cold northern land and the most
favourable arrangement of the warm surface currents
of the ocean.*

Before leaving these Miocene plants, I must refer
to a paragraph which Dr. Heer has thought it neces-
sary to insert in his memoir on the Greenland flora,
and which curiously illustrates the feebleness of what
with some men passes for science. He says : " In
conclusion, I beg to offer a few remarks on the amount
of certainty in identification which the determination
of fossil plants is able to afford us. We know that
the flowers, fruits, and seeds are more important as
characteristics than the leaves. There are many
genera of which the leaves are variable, and conse-
quently would be likely to lead us astray if we trusted
in them alone. However, many characters of the
form and venation of leaves are well-known to be
characteristic of certain genera, and can therefore
afford us characters of great value for their recogni-
tion.'' In a similar apologetic style he proceeds
through several sentences to plead the cause of his
Greenland leaves. That he should have to do so is
strange,, unless indeed the botany known to those for

* Croll and Lyell.

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

263

whom he writes is no more thau that which a school-
girl learns in her few lessons in dissecting a buttercup
or daisy. It is easy for scientific triflers to exhibit
collections of plants in which species of different
genera and families are so similar in their leaves that a
careless observer would mistake one for the other, or
to get up composite leaves in part of one species and
in part of another, and yet seeming the same, and in
this way to underrate the labours of painstaking
observers like Heer. But it is nevertheless true that
in any of these leaves, not only are there good charac-
ters by which they can be recognised, but that a
single breathing pore, or a single hair, or a few cells,
or a bit of epidermis not larger than a pin^s head,
should enable any one who understands his business to
see as great differences as a merely superficial botanist
would see between the flower of a rantraculus and that
of a strawberry. Heer himself, and the same applies
to all other competent students of fossil plants, has
almost invariably found his determinations from mere
fragments of leaves confirmed when more character-
istic parts were afterwards discovered. It is high
time, in the interests of geology, that botanists should
learn that constancy and correlation of parts are laws
in the plant as well as in the animal ; and this they can
learn only by working more diligently with the micro-
scope. I would, however, go further than this, and
maintain that, in regard to some of the most im-
portant geological conclusions to be derived from
fossils, even the leaves of plants are vastly more

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264

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

valuable than the hard parts of animals. For in-
stance, the bones of elephants and rhinoceroses found
in Greenland would not prove a warm climate;
because the creatures might have been protected from
cold with hair like that of the musk-sheep, and they
might have had facilities for annual migrations like
the bisons. The occurrence of bones of reindeer in
France does not prove that its climate was like that of
Lapland ; but only that it was wooded, and that the
animals could rove at will to the hills and to the coast.
But, on the other hand, the remains of an evergreen
oak in Greenland constitute absolute proof of a warm
and equable climate ; and the occurrence of leaves of
the dwarf birch in France constitutes a proof of a cool
climate, worth more than that which can be derived
from the bones of millions of reindeer and musk-sheep.
Still further, in all those greater and more difficult
questions of geology which relate to the emergence
and submergence of land areas, and to the geographi-
cal conditions of past geological periods, the evidence
of plants, especially when rooted in place, is of far
more value than that of animals, though it has yet
been very little used.

This digression prepares the way for the question :
Was the Miocene period on the whole a better age
of the world than that in which we live ? In some
respects it was. Obviously there was in the Northern
Hemisphere a vast surface of land under a mild and
equable climate, and clothed with a rich and varied
vegetation. Had we lived in the Miocene, we might

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

265

have sat under our vine and fig-tree equally in Green-
land and Spitzbergen and in those more southern
climes to which this privilege is now restricted. We
might have enjoyed a great variety of rich and nutri-
tive fruits, and, if sufficiently muscular, and able to
cope with the gigantic mammals of the period, we
might have engaged in either the life of +^^he hunter or
that of the agriculturist under advantages which we
do not now possess. On the whole, the Miocene
presents to us in these respects the perfection of the
Neozoic time, and its culmination in so far as the
nobler forms of brute animals and of plants are con-
cerned. Had men existed in those days, however,
they should have been, in order to suit the conditions
suri'ounding them, a race of giants ; and they would
probably have felt the want of many of those more
modern species belonging to the flora and fauna of
Europe and Western Asia on which man has so much
depended for his civilization. Some reasons have
been adduced for the belief that in the Miocene and
Eocene there were intervals of cold climate ; but the
evidence of this may be merely local and exceptional,
and does not interfere with the broad characteristics of
the age as sketched above.

The warm climate and rich vegetation of the
Miocene extended far into the Pliocene, with charac-
ters very similar to those already stated; but as the
Pliocene age went on, cold and frost settled down
upon the Northern Hemisphere, and a remarkable
change took place in its vegetable productions. For

266

THE STOEY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

example, in tlie somewliat celebrated ''forest bed" of
Cromer, in Norfolk, '^^hicii is regarded as Newer
Pliocene, we have lost all the foreign and warm-
climate plants of the Miocene, and find the familiar
Scotch firs and other plants of the Modern British
flora. The animals, however, retain their former
types ; for two species of elephant, a hippopotamus,
and a rhinoceros are found in connection with these
plants. This is another evidence, in addition to those
above referred to, that plants are better thermometers
to indicate geological and climatal change than
animals. This Pliocene refrigeration appears to have
gone on increasing into the next or Post-pliocene age,
and attained its maximum in the Glacial period, when,
as many geologists think, our continents were, even
in the temperate latitudes, covered with a sheet of
ice like that which now clothes Greenland. Then
occurred a very general subsidence, in which they
were submerged under the waters of a cold icy sea,
tenanted by marine animals now belonging to boreal
and arctic regions. After this last great plunge-bath
they rose to constitute the dry land of man and his
contemporaries. Let us close this part of the subject
with one striking illustration from Heer's memoir on
Bovey Tracey. At this place, above the great series
of clays and lignites containing the Miocene plants
already described, is a thick covering of clay, gravel,
and stones, evidently of much later date. This also
contains some plants ; but instead of the figs, and
cinnamons, and evergreen oaks, they are the petty

■WTi

THE NEOZOIC Aata.

267

lifilii

dwarf birch of Scandinavia and tlie Highland hills,
and three willows, one of them the little Arctic and
Alpine creeping willow. Thus we have in the south
of England a transition in the course of the Pliocene
period, from a climate nmch milder than that of
Modern England to one almost Arctic in its character.
Our next topic for consideration is one of the most
^ vexed questions among geologists, the Glacial period
which immediately preceded the Advent of Man. In
treating of this it will be safest first to sketch the
actual appearances which present themselves, and
then to draw such pictures as we can of the conditions
which they represent. The most recent and super-
ficial covering of the earth^s crust is usually composed
of rock material more or less ground up and wea-
thered. This may, with reference to its geological
character and origin, be considered as of three kinds..
It may be merely the rock weathered and decomposed
to a certain extent in situ ; or it may be alluvial
matter carried or deposited by existing streams or
tides, or by the rains j or, lastly, it may bo material
evidencing the operation of causes not now in action.
This last constitutes what has been called drift or
diluvial detritus, and is that with which we have now
to do. Such drift, thei , is very widely distributed on
our continents in the higher latitudes. In the North-
ern Hemisphere it extends from the Arctic regions
to about 50° of north latitude in Europe, and as low
as 40"^ in North America; and it occurs south of
similar parallels in the Southern Hemisphere. Farther

268

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

towards the equator tlian tlie latitudes indicated, we
do not find tlie proper drift deposits, but merely
weathered rocks or alluvia, or old sea bottoms raised
up. This limitation of the drift, at the very outset
gives it the character of a deposit in some way con-
nected with the Polar cold. Besides this, the general
transport of stones and other material in the northern
regions has been to the south ; hence in the Northern
Hemisphere this deposit may be called the Northern
Drift.

If now we take a typical locality of this formation,
such, for instance, as we may find in Scotland, or
Scandinavia, or Canada, we shall find it to consist of
three members, as follows : —

3. Superficial Sands or Gravels.

2. Stratified Clays.

1. Till or Boulder Clay.

This arrangement may locally be more complicated,
or it may be deficient in one of its members. The
boulder clay may, for example, be underlaid by
stratified sand or gravel, or even by peaty deposits;
it may be intermixea with layers of clay or sand; the
stratified clay or the boulder clay may be absent, or
may be uncovered by any upper member. Still we
may take the typical series as above stated, and in-
quire as to its characters and teaching.

The lower member, or boulder clay, is a very
remarkable kind of deposit, consisting of a paste
which may graduate from tough clay to loose sand,

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

269

[, we
erely
aised
lutset
con-
3neral
tliern
[•them
\rtliern

lation,
,iid, or
isist of

plicated,
The
laid by
eposits ;
Liid; the
bsent, or
Still we
and inl-

and which holds large angular and rounded stones
or boulders confusedly intermixed ; these stones may
be either from the rocks found in the immediate
vicinity of their present position, or at great distances.
This mass is usually destitute of any lamination or
subordinate stratification, whence it is often called
Uiistratified Drift, and is of very variable thickness,
often occurring in very thick beds in valleys, and
being comparatively thin or absent on intervening
hills. Further, if we examine the stones contained
in the boulder clay, we shall find thao they are often
scratched or striated and grooved; and when we
remove the clay from the rock surfaces on which
it rests, we find these in like manner striated,
grooved and polished. These phenomena, viz., of
polished and striated rocks and stones, are similar to
those produced by those great sliding masses of ice,.
the glaciers of Alpine regioLS, which in a small way
and in narrow and elevated valleys, act on the rocks
and stones in this manner, though they cannot form
deposits precisely analogous to the boulder clay,
owinj^f to the wasting away of much of the finer
material by the torrents, and the heaping of the
coarser detritus in ridges and piles. Further, we
have in Greenland a continental mass, with all its
valleys thus filled with slowly-moving ice, and from
this there drift ofi" immense ice-islands, which con-
tinue at least the mud-and-stone-depositing process,
and possibly also the grinding process, over the sea
bottom. So far all geologists are agreed; but here

270

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

they diverge into two schools. One of these, that
of the Glacier theorists, holds that the boulder clay-
is the product of land-ice; and this requires the
supposition that at the time when it was deposited
the whole of our continents north of 40° or 50° was
in th3 condition of Greenland at present. This is,
however, a hypothesis so inconvenient, not to say
improbable, that many hesitate to accept it, and
prefer to believe that in the so-called Glacial period
the land was submerged, and that icebergs then as
now drifted from the north in obedience to the
Arctic currents, and produced the effects observed.
It would be tedious to go into all the arguments of
the advocates of glaciers and icebergs, and I shall
not attempt this, more especially as the only way to
decide the question is to observe carefully the facts
in every particular locality, and inquire as to tLe
conclusions fairly deducible. With the view of aiding
such a solution, however, I may state a few general
principles applicable to the appearances observed.
We may then suppose that boulder clay may be
formed in three ways. (1) It may be deposited ou
land, as what is called the bottom moraine of a land
glacier. (2) It may be deposited in the se^ when
such a glacier ends on the coast. (3) It may be
deposited by the melting or grounding on muddy
bottoms of the iceberg masses floated off from the
end of such a glacier. It is altogether likely, from
the observations recently made in Greenland, that in
that country such a deposit is being formed in all

) say
, and
)eriod

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

271

these ways. In like manner, fhe ancient boulder
clay may have been formed in one or more of these
ways in any given locality where it occurs, though it
may be difficult in many instances to indicate the
precise mode. There are, however, certain criteria
which may be applied to the determination of its
origin, and T may state a few cf these, which are tho
results of my own experience. (1) Where the boulder
clay contains marine shells, or rounded stones which if
exposed to the air would have been cracked to pieces,
decomposed, or oxidized, it must have been formed
under water. Where the conditions are the reverse of
these, it may have been formed on land. (2) When
the striations and transport of materials do not con-
form to the levels of the country, and take that direc-
tion, usually N.E. and s.w., which the Arctic current
would take if the country were submerged, tho pro-
bability is that it was deposited in the sea. Where,
however, the striation and transport take the course of
existing valleys, more especially in hilly regions, the
contrary may be inferred. (3) Where most of the
material, more especially the large stones, has been
carried to great distances from its original site,
especially over plains or up slopes, it has probably
been sea-borne. Where it is mostly local, local ice-
action may be inferred. Other criteria may be stated,
but these are sufficient for our present purpose. Their
application in eveiy special case I do not presume to
make; but I am convinced that when applied to
those regions in Eastern America with which I am

272

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

familiar, they necessitate the conclusion that in the
period of extreme refrigeration, the greater part of
the land was under water, and such hills and moun-
tains as remained were little Greenlands, covered with
ice and sending down glaciers to the sea. In hilly
and brokan regions, therefore, and especially at con-
siderable elevations, we find indications of glacier
action; on the great plains, on the contrary, the
indications are those of marine glaciation and trans-
port. This last statement, I believe, applies to the
mountains and plains of Europe and Asia as well as of
America.

This view requires not only the supposition of great
refrigeration, but of a grcpt subsidence of the land in
the temperate latitudes, with large residual islands
and hills in the Arctic regions. That such subsidence
actually took place is proved, not only by the frequent
occurrence of marine shells in the boulder clay itself,
but also by the occurrence of stratified marine
clays filled with shells, often of deep-water species,
immediately over that deposit. Further, the shells,
and also occasional land plants found in these beds,
indicate a cold climate and much cold fresh water
pouring into the sea from melting ice and snow. In
Canada these marine clays have been traced up to
elevations of 600 feet, and in Great Britain deposits
of this kind occur on one of the mountains cf Wales
at the height of 1300 feet above the level of the sea.
Nor is it to be supposed that this level marks the
extreme height of the Post -pliocene waters, for drift

THE NEOZOIC AQES.

273

material not explicable by glaciers, and evidences of
marine erosion, occur at still higher levels, and it is
natural that on high and exposed points fewer remains
of f ossiliferous beds should be left than in plains and
valleys.

At the present day the coasts of Britain and other
parts of Western Europe enjoy an exceptionally warm
temperature, owing to the warm currents of the
Atlantic being thrown on them, and the warm and
moist Atlantic air flowing over them, under the influ-
ence of the prevailing westerly winds. These advan-
tages are not possessed by the eastern coast of North
America, nor by some deep channels in the sea, along
which the cold northern currents flow under the
warmer water. Hence these last-mentioned localities
pre inhabited by boreal shells much farther south than
such species extend on the coasts and banks of Great
Britain. In the Glacial period this exceptional advan-
tage was lost, and while the American seas, as judged
by their marine animals, were somewhat colder than
at present, the British seas were proportionally much
more cooled down. No doubt, however, there were
warmer and colder areas, determined by depth and
prevailing currents, and as these changed their
position in elevation and subsidence of the land,
alternations and even mixtures of the inhabitants of
cold and warm water resulted, which have often been
very puzzling to geologists.

I havw taken the series of drift deposits seen in
Britain and in Canada as typical, and the previous

274

THE STOEY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

discussion lias had reference to thoin. But it would
be unfair not to inform the reader that this succession
of deposits after all belon 's to the margins of our con-
tinents rather than to their great central areas. This
is the case at least in North America, where in the
region of the great lakes the oldest glaciated surfaces
are overlaid by thick beds of stratified clay, without
marine fossils, and often without either stones or
boulders, though these sometimes occur, especially
toward the north. The clay, however, contain^,
drifted fragments of coniferous trees. Above this
clay are sand and gravel, and the principal deposit
of travelled stones r-nd boulders rests on these. I
cannot affirm that a similar succession occurs on tho
great inland plains of Europe and Asia ; but I think
it probable that to some extent it does. The ex-
planation of this inland drift by the advocates of a
great continental glacier is as follows: (1) In the
Pliocene period the continents were higher than
at present, and many deep valleys, since filled up,
wero cut in them. (2) In the Post-pliocene these
elevated continents became covered with ice, by the
movement of which the valleys were deepened and
the surf^jces striated. (3) This ice-period was followed
by a depressioi and submergence, in which the cJays
were deposited, filling up old channels, and much
changing the levels of the land. Lastly, as the land
rose again from this submergence, sand and gravel
were deposited, an(? oulders scattered over the surface
by floating ice.

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

275

Duld
ision
coa-
This
I the
faces
tliout
sa or
scially
atain"^.
) tiiis
Leposit
5se. I
on tlio
'. think
he ex-
es of a
In the
f than
led up,
e these
by the
led and
followed
he clays
d mncli
the land
d gravel
e surface

The advocates of floating ico as distinguished from a
continental glacier, merely dispense with the latter,
and affirm that the striation under the clay, as well as
that connected with the later boulders, is the effect of
floating bergs. The occurrence of so much drift wood
in the clay favours their view, as it is more likely
that there ^ ould be islands clothed "4th trees in the
sea, than that these should exist ii^mediately after
the country had been mantled in ice. The want of
marine shells is a difficulty in either view, but may
be accounted for by the rapid deposition of the clay
and the slow spreadiug of marine animals over a sub-
merged continent under unfavourable conditions of
climate.

In any case the reader will please observe that
theorists must account for both the interior and
marginal forms of these deposits. Let us tabulate the-
facts and the modes of accounting for them.

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

.— c «

O 1

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00 tf "TS

•

-a
o

•

• i-t

-4-3

o3
O

<D
O
hH

o
S

03
03

Much floating Ice an

Glaciers.
Submergence of P

Land.

Erosion by atmo
agencies and ace
tion of decompose

land,
antle

-3

<o 9

^■s

1—.

«<-• "S

o ^

Submergence
Great contic
of Ice.

Erosion by
Glacier.

o3
<i>

f. •

OQ .-S

•-'2

^ m

n3 g

fl o3

.-« £

.d b

• IH ""^

•

•<

Terraces and R
Beaches.

and and Gravel, wi
Shells and Boulde

tratified Clay wit

Shells,
oulder Clay with o

out Sea Shells,
triated Rocks.

Id channels, etc.,
ting previous dry

OQ (^ OQ

. . .

=*^ m

-<
P4

.ndGla

Rocks

Gravel

li Drif
Stonei

•4-= "^

03 oj

ersa
and
and

nnelg, indie
r level of tb

dBould

Stones

a Sand 1

d Clay
, and a
toulders
Rocks.

<D rrt m rrt

03 0)

tratifi
Woo
and

triate

rfl .a

rave
ciat(
trati

p—H

1 H ^

CQ CO

■*»
at

-.^
• fh

■%

«
Ol

00 .

«4H 03

S 5

2 "

c a

^ «

* o
a

'■^'*'ij

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

277

-*^

•F-t

»— •

a
•3

tt-1

■^

S s

o K

c s)

<U O
• o

This table will suffice at least to reduce the great
glacier controversy to its narrowest limits, when we
have added the one further consideration that glaciers
are the parents of icebergs, and that the question is
not of one or the other exclusively, but of the relative
predominance of the one or the other in certain given
times and places. Both theories admit a great Post-
pliocene subsidence. The abettors of glaciers can
urge the elevation of the surface, the supposed
powers of glaciers as eroding agents, and the trans-
port of boulders. Those whose theoretical views lean
to floating ice, believe that they can equally account
for these phenomena, and can urge in support of their
theory the occurrence of drift wood in the inland clay
and boulder clay, and of sea-shells in the marginal
clay and boulder clay, and the atmospheric decomposi-
tion of rock in the Pliocene period, as a source of the
material of the clays, while to sir 'lar causes they can
attribute the erosion of the deep valleys piled with
the Post-pliocene deposits. They can also maintain
that the general direction of striation and drift im-
plies the action of sea currents, while they appeal to
local glaciers to account for special cases of glaciated
rocks at the higher levels.

How long our continental platfjaus remained under
the icy seas of the Glacial period we do not know.
Relatively to human chronology, ic was no doubt a
long time ; but short in comparison with those older
subsidences in which the great Palaeozoic limestones
were produced. At length, however, the change

in '

■I

278

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

came. Slowly and gradually, or by intermittent lifts,
the land rose ; and as it did so, shallow- water sands
and gravels were deposited on the surface of the deep-
sea clays, and the sides of the hills were cut into
inland cliffs and terraces, marking the stages of reces-
sion of the waters. At length, when the process was
complete, our present continents stood forth in their
existing proportions ready for the occupancy of man.

The picture which these changes present to the
imagination is one of the most extraordinary in all
geological history. We have been familiar with the
idea of worlds drowned in water, and the primeval
incandescent earth shows us the possibility of our
globe being melted with fervent heat ; but here we
have a world apparently frozen out — destroyed by
cold, or doubly destroyed by ice and water. Let us
endeavour to realise this revolution, as it may have
occurred in any of the temperate regions of the
Northern Hemisphere, thickly peopled with the
magnificent animals that had come down from the
grand old Miocene time. Gradually the warm and
equable temperature gives place to cold winters and
chilly wet summers. The more tender animals die
out, and the less hardy plants begin to be winter-
killed, or to fail to perfect their fruits. As the forests
are thus decimated, other and hardier species replace
those which disappear. The animals which have had
to confine themselves to sheltered spots, or which
have perished through cold or want of food, are re-
placed by others migrating from the mountains, or

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

279

from colder regions. Some, perhaps, in the course
of generations, become dwarfed in stature, and
covered with more shaggy fur. Permanent snow at
length appears upon the hill-tops, and glaciers plough
their way downward, devastating the forests, en-
croaching on the fertile plains, and at length reaching
the heads of the bays and fiords. While snow and
ice are thus encroaching from above, the land is
subsiding, and the sea is advancing upon it, while
great icebergs drifting on the coasts still further
reduce the temperature. Torrents and avalanches
from the hills carry mud and gravel over the plains.
Peat bogs accumulate in the hollows. Glaciers heap
up confused masses of moraine, and the advancing
sea piles up stones and shingle to be imbedded in mud
on its further advance, while boreal marine animals
invade the now submerged plains. At length the ice
and water meet everywhere, or leave only a few green
strips where hardy Arctic plants still survive, and a
few well-clad animals manage to protract their exist-
ence. Perhaps even these are overwhelmed, and the
curtain of the Glacial winter falls over the fair scenery
of the Pliocene. In every locality thus invaded by an
apparently perpetual winter, some species of land
animals must have perished. Others may have mi-
grated to more genial climes, others under depaupe-
rated and hardy varietal forms may have continued
successfully to struggle for existence. The general
result must have been greatly to diminish the nobler
forms of life, and to encourage only those fitted

280

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

for the most rigorous climates and least productive
soils.

Could we have visited the wc^ld in this dreary
period, and have witnessed the decadence and death
of that brilliant and magnificent flora and fauna
which we have traced upward from the Eocene, we
might well have despaired of the earth's destinies, and
have fancied it the sport of some malignant demon ;
or have supposed that in the contest between the
powers of destruction and those of renovation the
former had finally gained the victory. We must
observe, however, that the suSering in such a proces?
is less than we might suppose. So long as animals
could exist, they would continue to enjoy life. The
conditions unfavourable to them would be equally or
more so to their natural enemies. Only the last
survivors would meet with what might be regarded
as a tragical end. As one description of animal
became extinct, another was prepared to occupy its
room. If elephants and rhinoceroses perished from
the land, countless herds of walruses and seals took
their places. If gay insects died and disappeared,
shell-fishes and sea-stars were their successors.

Thus in nature there is life even in death, and
constant er joyment even when old systems are passing
away. But could we have survived the Glacial period,
we should have seen a reason for its apparently
wholesale destruction. Out of that chaos came at
length an Eden; and just as the Permian prepared
the way for the Mesozoic, so the glaciers and icebergs

THE NEOZOIC AGES.

281

from

took

)eared,

of the Post-pliocene were tlie plouglishare of God
preparing the earth for the time when, with a flora
and fauna more beautiful and useful, if less magni-
ficent than that of the Tertiary, it became as the
garden of the Lord, fitted for the reception of His
image and likeness, immortal and intelligent Man.
We need not, however, with one modern school of
philosophy, regard man himself as but a descendant
of Miocene apes, scourged into reason and humanity
by the struggle for existence in the Glacial period.
We mav be content to consider him as a son of God,
and to study in the succeeding chapters that renewal
of the Post-pliocene world which preceded and
heralded his advent. '

In the meantime, our illustration,* borrowed in part
from the magnificent representation of the Post-
pliocene fauna of England, by the great restorer of
extinct animals, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, may serve
to give some idea of the grand and massive forms of
animal life which, even in the higher latitudes, sur-
vived the Post-pliocene cold, and only decayed and
disappeared under that amelioration of physical con-
ditions which marks the introduction of the human
period.

* Page 301. '

imwm

, lii^

PIMliiWli

CHAPTEE XII.

CLOSE OP THE POST-PLIOCENE, AND ADVENT OP MAN.

In closing these sketches it may seem unsatisfactory
not to link the geological ages with the modern
period in which we live; yet, perhaps, nothing is
more complicated or encompassed with greater diffi-
culties or uncertainties. The geologist, emerging
from the study of the older monuments of the earth's
history, and working with the methods of physical
science, here meets face to face the archasologist and
historian, who have been tracing back in the opposite
direction, and with veiy different appliances, the
stream of human history and tradition. In such
circumstances conflicts may occur, or at least the two
paths of inquiry may refuse to connect themselves
without concessions unpleasant to the pursuers of one
or both. Further, it is just at this meeting-place that
the dim candle of traditional lore is almost burnt out
in the hand of the antiquary, and that the geologist
finds his monumental evidence becoming more scanty
and less distinct. We cannot hope as yet to dispel all
the shadows that haunt this obscure domain, but can
at least point out some of the paths which traverse it.
In attempting this, we may first classify the time
involved as follows : — (1) The earlier Post-pliocene

-P-r^,

CLOSE OF POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN.

283

period of geology may be called the Glacial era. It is
that of a cold climate, aocompanied by glaciation and
boulder deposits. (2) The later Post-pliocene mt y be
called the Post-glaciai era. It is that of re-elevation of
the continents and restoration of a mild tempera-
ture. It connects itself with the pre -historic period
of the archaeologist, inasmuch as remains of man and
his works are apparently included in the same deposits
which hold the bones of Post-glacial animals. (3) The
Modern era is that of secular human history.

It may be stated with certainty that the Pliocene
period of geology affords no trace of human remains
or implements ; and the same may I think be
affirmed of the period of glaciation and subsidence
which constitutes the earlier Post-pliocene. With
the rise of the landoub of the Glacial sea indica-
tions of man are believed to appear, along with
remains of several mammalian species now his con-
temporaries. ArchoBology and geology thus meet
somewhere in the pre-historic period of the former,
and in the Post-glacial of the latter. Wherever,
therefore, human" history extends farthest back, and
geological formations of the most modern periods
exist and have been explored, we may expect best to
define their junctions. Unfortunately it happens
that our information on these points is still very
incomplete and locally limited. In many extensive
regions, like America and Australia, while the geo-
logical record is somewhat complete, the historic
record extends back at most a few centuries, and the

1284

TEE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

pre-hidtoric monuments are of uncertain date. In
other countries, as in Western Asia and Egypt,
where the historic record extends very far back, the
geology is less perfectly known. At the present
moment, therefore, the main battle-field of these
controversies is in Western Europe, where, though
history scarce extends farther back than the time of
the Eoman Eepub.ic, the geologic record is very
complete, and has been explored with some thorough- ,
ness. It is obvious, however, that we thus have to
face the question at a point where the pre-historic
gap is necessarily very wide.

Taking England as an example, all before the
Koman invasion is pre-historic, and with regard to
this pre-historic period the evidence that we can
obtain is chiefly of a geological character. The pre-
historic men are essentially fossils. We know of
them merely what can be learned from their bones
and implements embedded in the soil or in the
earth of the caverns in which some of them shel-
tered themselves. For the origin and date of these
deposits the antiquary must go to the geologist,
and he imitates the geologist in arranging his
human fossils under such names as the ''Palaeo-
lithic," or period of rude stone implements ; the
" Neolithic," or period of polished stone implements;
the Bronze Period, and the Iron Period; though
inasmuch as higher and lower states of the arts
seem always to have coexisted, and the time in-
volved is comparatively short, these periods are of

CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN.

285

far less value than those of geology. In Britain
the age of iron is in the main historic. That of
bronze goes back to the times of early Phcenician
trade with the south of England. That of stone,
while locally extending far into the succeeding ages,
reaches back into an unknown antiquity, and is, as
we shall see in the sequel, probably divided into
Uvo by a great physical change, though not in the
abrupt and arbitrary way sometimes assumed by
those who base their classification solely on the
rude or polished character of stone implements.
We must not forget, however, that in Western
Asia the ages of bronze and iron may have begun
two thousand years at least earlier than in Britain,
and that in some parts of America the Palaeolithic
age of chipped stone implements still continues.
We must also bear in mind that when the archse-
logist appeals to the geologist for aid, he thereby
leaves that kind of investigation in which dates are
settled by years, for that in which they are
marked merely by successive physical and organic
changes.

Turning, then, to our familiar geological methods,
and confining ourselves mainly to the Northern
Hemisphere and to Western Europe, two pictures
present themselves to us : (1 ) The physical changes
preceding the advent of man ; (2) The decadence of
the land animals of the Post-pliocene age, and the
appearance of those of the modern.

In the last chapter I had to introduce the reader

III

li^iiii

1(1'

286

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

to a great and terrible revolution, whereby the old
Pliocene continents, with all their wealth of animals
and plants, became sealed up in a mantle of Green-
land ice, or, slowly sinking beneath the level of
the sea, were transformed into an ocean-bottom
over which icebergs bore their freight of clay and
boulders. We also saw that as the Post-pliocene
age advanced, the latter condition prevailed, until
the waters stood more than a thousand fee'^ deep
over the plai?.is of Europe. In this great glacial
submergence, which closed the earlier Post-pliocene
period, and over vast areas of the Northern Hemi-
sphere, terminated the existence of many of the
noblest forms of life, it is believed that man had
no share. We have, at least as yet, no record of
his presence.

Out of these waters the land again rose slowly
and intermittently, so that the receding waves
worked even out of hard rocks ranges of coast
cliff which the further elevation converted into
inland terraces, and that the clay and stones de-
posited by the Glacial waters werr in many places
worked over and rearranged by the tides and waves
of the shallowing sea before they were permanently
raised up to undergo the action of the rains and
streams, while long banks of sand and gravel were
stretched across plains and the mouths of valleys,
constituting " kames,'' or " eskers,^^ only to be
distinguished from moraines of glaciers by the stra-
tified arrangement of their materials.

^-J'

CLOSE OF POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OF MAN.

287

Further, as the land rose, its surface was greatly
and rapidly modified by rains and streams. There
is the amplest evidence, both in Europe and America,
that at this time the erosion by these means was
enormous in comparison with anything wo now ex-
perience. The rainfall must have been excessive,
the volume of water in the streams very great ; and
the facilities for cutting channels in the old Pliocene
valleys, filled to the brim with mud and boulder-clay,
were unprecedented. While the area of the land
was still limited, much of it would bo high and
broken, and it would have all the dampness of an
insular climate. As it rose in height, plains which
had, while under the sea, been loaded with the
debris swept from the land, would be raised up to
experience river erosion. It was the spring-time of
the Glacial era, a spring eminent for its melting
snows, its rains, and its river floods.* To an ob-
server living at this time it would have seemed as
if the slow process of moulding the continents was
being pushed forward with unexampled rapidity.
The valleys were ploughed out and cleansed, the
plains levelled and overspread with beds of alluvium,
giving new features of beauty and utility to the land,
and preparing the way for the life of the Modern
period, as if to make up for the time which had
been lost in the dreary Glacial age. It will readily
be understood how puzzling these deposits have

* Mr. Tylor ha^i well designated this period as the Pluvial
age. Journal of the Geological Society, 1870.

288

THB STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

been to geologists, especially to those who fail to
present to their min( s the true conditions of the
period; and how difficult it is to separate the river
alluvia of this age from the deposits in the seas
and estuaries, and these again from the older Glacial
beds. Further, in not a few instances the animals
of a cold climate must have lived in close prox-
imity to those which belonged to ameliorated con-
ditions, and the fossils of the older Post-pliocene
must often, in the process of sorting by water,
have been mixed with those of the newer.

Many years ago the brilliant and penetrating in-
tellect of Edward Forbes was directed to the question
of the maximum extent of the later Post-pliocene or
Post-glacial land; and his investigations into the
distribution of the European flora, in connection with
the phenomena of submerged terrestrial surfaces, led
to tl^e belief that the land had risen until it was both
higher and more extensive than at present. At the
time of greatest elevation, England way joined to the
continent of Europe by a level plain, and a similar
plain connected Ireland with its sister islands. Over
these plains the plants constituting the " Germanic "
flora spread themselves into the area of the British
Islands, and herds of mammoth, rhinoceros, and Irish
elk wandered and extended their range from east to
west. The dedi>ctions of Forbes have been confirmed
and extended by others; and it can scarcely be
doubted that in the Post-glacial era, the land re-
gained fully the extent which it had possessed in the

CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN.

289

time of the Pliocene. In these circumstances the
loftier hills might still reach the limits of perpetual
snow, but their glaciers would no longer descend to
tho sea. What are n w the beds of shallow seas
would be vast wooded plains, drained by magnificent
rivers, m \ose main courses are now submerged, and
only their branches remain as separate and distinct
streams. The cold but equable climate of the Post-
pliocene would now be exchanged for warm summers,
alternating with sharp winters, whose severity would
be mitigated by tho dense forest covering, which
would also contribute to the due supply of moisture,
preventing the surface from being burnt into arid
plains.

It seems not improbable that it -r^as when the
continents had attained to their greatest extension,
and when animal and vegetable life had again over-
spread the new land to its utmost limits, that man
was introduced on the eastern continent, and with
him several mammalian species, not known in the
Pliocene period, and some of which, as the sheep,
the goat, the ox, and the dog, have ever since been
his companions and humble allies. These, at least
in the west of Europe, were the " Palaeolithic " men,
the makers of the oldest flint implements ; and armed
with these, they had to assert the mastery of man
over broader lands than we now possess, and over
many species of great animals now extinct. In thus
writing, I assume the accuracy of the inferences from
the occurrence of worked stones with the bones of.

290

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

'J?ost- glacial animpis, whicli must have lived dunnf^
the condition of our continents above referred to. If
these inferences are well founded, not only did man
exist at this time, but man not even varietally distinct
from modern European races. But if man really-
appeared in Europe in the Post-glacial era, he was
destined to be exposed to one great natural vicissi-
tude before his permanent establishment in the world.
The land had reached its maximum elevation, but its
foundations, " standing in the water and out of the
water," were not yet securely settled, and it had to
take one more plunge-bath before attaining its
modern fixity. This seems to have been a com-
paratively rapid subsidence and re-elevation, leaving
but slender traces of its occurrence, but changing to
some extent the levels of the continents, and failing
to restore them fully to their former elevation, so that
large areas of the lower grounds still remained under
the sea. If, as the greater number of geologists now
Ijclieve, man was then on the earth, it is not im-
possible that this constituted the deluge recorded in
that remarkable " log book *' of Noah preserved to us
in Genesis, and of which the memory remains in the
traditions of most ancient nations. This is at least
the geological deluge which separates the Post-glacial
period from the Modern, and the earlier from the
later pre-historic period of the archaeologists.*

* I have long thought that the narrative in Gen. vii. and
viii. can be understood only on the supposition that it is a
contemporary journal or log of an eye-witness incorporated by

CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN. 291

nng

man
tinct
•ecally
was
cissi-

ut its

>f tlie

lad to

,g its
corn-
ea ving

jing to
failing

so tliat
under
bs now
ot im-
ded in
d to us
in tlie
at least
.Macial
;oni tlie
its* ■ •

vii. and
it it 13 a
orated by

■ Yery important questions of time are involved in
this idea of Post-glacial man, and much will depend,
in the solution of these, on the views which we adopt
as to the rate of subsidence and elevation of the land.
If, with the majority of Bricish geologists, we hold
that it is to be measured by those slow movements
now in progress, the time required will bo long. If,
with most Continental and some American geologists,
we believe in paroxysmal movements of elevation and
depression, it may be much reduced. We have seen
in the progress of o.ir inquiries that the movements
of the continents seem to have occurred with acceler-
ated rapidity in the more modern periods. Wo have
also seen that these movements might depend on the
slow contraction of the earth's crust due to cooling,
but that the effects of this contraction might manifest
themselves only at intervals. We have further seen
that the gradual retardation of the rotation of the
earth furnishes a cause capable of producing eleva-
tion and subsidence of the land, and that this also
might be manifested at longer or shorter intervals,
according to the strength and resisting power of the
crust. Under the influence of this retardation, so
long as the crust of the earth did not give way, the
waters would be driven toward the poles, and the

the author of Genesis in his work. The dates of the rising and
fall of the water, the note of soundings over the hill-tops when
the maximum was attained, and many other details, as well as
thp whole tone of the narrative, seem to require this supposi-
tion, which also removes all the difficulties of interpretation
which have been so much felt. .

292

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

northern land would be submerged ; but so soon as
the tension became so great as to rupture the solid
shell, the equatorial regions would collapse, and the
northern land would again be raised. The subsidence
would be gradual, the elevation paroxysmal, and
perhaps intermittent. Let us suppose that this was
what occurred in the Glacial period, and that the
land had attained to its maximum elevation. This
might not prove to be permanent; the new balance
of the crust might be liable to local or general
disturbance in a minor degree, leading to subsidence
and partial re -elevation, following the great Post-
glacial elevation. There is, therefore, nothing un-
reasonable in that view which makes the subsidence
and re-elevation at the close of the Post-glacial
period somewhat abrupt, at least when compared
with some more ancient movements.

But what is the evidence of the deposits formed at
this period ? Here we meet with results most diverse
and contradictory, but I think there can be little
doubt that on this kind of evidence the time required
for the Post-glacial period has been greatly exagger-
ated, especially by those geologists who refuse to
receive such views as to subsidence and elevation as
those above stated. The calculations of long time
based on the gravels of the Somme, on the cone of
the Tiniere, on the peat bogs of France and Denmark,
on certain cavern deposits, have all been shown to be
more or less at fault; and possibly none of these
reach further back than the six or seven thousand

*-p

CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE— ADVENT OF MAN. 293

years wLicli, according to Dr. Andrews, have elapsed
since tlie close of the boulder-clay deposits in
America.* I a,m aware that such a statement will
be regarded with surprise by many in England,
where even the popular literature has been penetrated
with the idea of a duration of the human period
immensely long in comparison with what used to be
the popular belief; but I feel convinced that the
scientific pendulum must swing backward in this
direction nearer to its old position. Let us look at a
few of the facts. Much use has been made of the
" cone " or delta of the Tiniere on the eastern side of
the Lake of Geneva, as an illustration of the duration
of the Modern period. This little stream has de-
posited at its mouth a mass of debris carried down
from the hills. This being cut through by a railway,
is found to contain Roman remains to a depth of four
feet, bronze implements to a depth of ten feet, stone
implements at a depth of nineteen feet. The deposit
ceased about three hundred years ago, and calculating
1300 to 1500 years for the Roman period, we should
ha e 7000 to 10,000 years as the age of the cone.
But before the formation of the present cone, another
had been formed twelve times as large. Thus for the
two cones together, a duration of more than 90,000
years is claimed. It appears, however, that this cal-
culation has been made irrespective of two essential
elements in the question. No allowance has been
made for the fact that the inner layers of a cone are

* " Transactions, Chicago Academy," 1871.

294

THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

necessarily smaller than the outer ; nor for the further
fact that the older cone belongs to a distinct time
(the pluvial age already referred to), when the rainfall
was much larger, and the transporting power of the
torrent great in proportion. Making allowance for
these conditions, the age of the newer cone, that
holding human remains, falls between 4000 and 5000
years. The peat bed of Abbeville, in the north of
France, has grown at the rate of one and a half to
two inches in a century. Being twenty-six feet in
thickness, the time occupied in its growth must havi
amounted to 20,000 years; and yet it is probably
newer than some of the gravels on the same river
containing flint implements. But the composition of
the Abbeville peat shows that it is a forest peat, and
the erect stems preserved in it prove that in the first
instance it must have grown at the rate of about three
feet in a century, and after the destruction of the
forest its rate of increase down to the present time
diminished rapidly almost to nothing. Its age is
thus reduced to perhaps less than 4000 years. In
1865 I had an opportunity to examine the now
celebrated gravels of St. Acheul, on the Somme, by
some supposed to go back to a very ancient period.
With the papers of Prestwich and other able obser-
vers in my hand, I could conclude merely that the
undisturbed gravels were older than the Roman
period, but how much older only detailed topographical
surveys could prove; and that taking into account
the probabilities of a different level of the land, a

mmmmm

CLOSE OF POST-PLIOCENE — ^ADVENT OP MAN.

395

woocled condition of the country, a greater rainfall,
and a glacial filling of the Somme valley with clay
and stones subsequently cut out by running water,
the gravels could scarcely be older than the Abbeville
peat. To have published such views in England
would have been simply to have delivered myself
into the hands of the Philistines. I therefore con-
tented myself with recording my opinion in Canada.
Tylor * and Andrews f have, however, I think,
subsequently shown that my impressions were correct.
In like manner, I fall to perceive, — and I think all
American geologists acquainted with the pre-liistoric
monuments of the western continent must agree with
me, — any evidence of great antiquity in the caves of
Belgium and England, the kitchen-middens of Den-
mark, the rock-shelters of France, the lake habita-
tions of Switzerland. At the same time, I would,
disclaim all attempt to resolve their dates into precise
terms of years. I may merely add, that the elaborate
and careful observations of Dr. Andrews on the raised
beaches of Lake Michigan, — observations of a much
more precise character than any which, in so far as I
know, have been made of such deposits in Europe, —
enable him to calculate the time which has elapsed
since North America rose out of the waters of the
Glacial period as between 5500 and 7500 years.
This fixes at least the possible duration of the human
period in North America, though I believe there are

* " Journal of Geological Society," vol. xxv.
t " Silliman's Journal," 1868. ',

VBIHBI

20G

THE STORY OF THE EARTH A.ND MAN.

other lines of evidence wliicli would reduce the resi-
dence of man in America to a much shorter time.
Longer periods have, it is true, been deduced from
the delta of the Mississippi and the gorge of Niagara;
but the deposits of the former have been found by
Hilgard to be in great part marine, and the exca-
vation of the latter began at a period probably long
anterior to the advent of man.

But another question remains. From the simi-
larities existing in the animals and plants of regions
in the southern hemisphere now widely separated by
the ocean, it has been inferred that Post-pliocene
land of great extent existe(L there ; and that on this
.land men may have lived \^^^re the continents of
the northern hemisphere were ready for them. It
has even been supposed that, inasmuch as the flora
and fauna of Australia have an aspect like that of the
Eocene Tertiary, and very low forms of man exist
in that part of the world, these low races are the
oldest of all, and may date from Tertiary times.
Positive evidence of this, however, there is none.
These races have no monuments ; nor, so far as
known, have they left their remains in Post-pliocene
deposits. It depends on the assumptions that the
ruder races of men are the oldest; and that man
has no greater migratory powers than other animals.
The first is probably false, as being contrary to
history; and also to the testimony of palaeontology
with reference to the laws of creation. The second
is certainly fake ; for we know that man has managed

•srjT

CLOSE OF POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OF MAN.

297

to associate himself "with every existing fauna and
flora, even in modern times; and that the most
modern races have pitched their tents amid treo-
ferns and Proteacese, and have hunted kangaroos
and emus. Further, when we consider that the pro-
ductions of the southern hemisphere are not only
more antique than those of the northern, but, on the
whole, less suited for the comfortable subsistence of
man and the animals most useful to him; and that
the Post-pliocene animals of the southern hemisphere
were of similar t'^pes with their modern successors,
we are the less in ' '^d to believe that these regions
would be selected as "^adle of the human race.

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CHAPTER XIII.

CLOSE OF THE POST-PLIOCENE, AND ADVENT OF MAN.

{Continued.)

Turning from these difficult questions of time, we
may now look at the assemblage of land-animals
presented by the Post-glacial period. Here, for the
first time in the great scries of continental eleva-
tions and depressions, we find the newly-emerging
land peopled with familiar forms. Ne.'irly all the
modern European animals have left their bones in
the clays, gravels, and cavern deposits which belong
to this period; but with them are others cither not
now found within the limits of temperate Europe,
or altogether extinct. Thus the I'emarkable fact
comes out, that the uprising land was peopled at
first with a more abundant fauna than that which
it now sustains, and that many species, and among
these some of the largest and most powerful, have
been weeded out, either before the advent of man
or it the changes which immediately succeeded that
event. That in the Post-glacial period so many
noble animal species should have been overthrown
in the struggle for existence, without leaving any
successors, at least in Europe, is one of the most
remarkable phenomena in the history of life on our
planet.

100

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

According to Pictet,* tho Post-glacial beds of
Europe afford ninety-eight species of mammals, of
which fifty-seven still live there, the remainder being
either locally or wholly extinct. According to Mr.
Boyd Dawkins,t in Great Britain about twelve Plio-
cene species survived the Glacial period, and re-
appeared in the British Islands in the Post-glacial.
To these were added forty-one species — making in
all f fty-three, whose remains are found in the gravels
and caves of the latter period. Of those, in the
Modern period twenty-eight, or rather more than
one-half, survive, fourteen are wholly extinct, and
eleven are locally extinct.

Among the extinct beasts, were some of very
remarkable character. There were two or more spe-
cies of elephant, which seem in this age to have
overspread, in vast herds, all the plains of Northern
Europe and Asia; and one of which we know, from
the perfect specimen found embedded in the frozen
soil of Siberia, lived till a very modern period; and
was clothed with long hair and fur, fitting it for a
cold climate. There were also three or four species
of rhinoceros, one of which at least (the R. Ticlio-
rhinus) was clad with wool like the great Siberian
mammoth. With these was a huge hippopotamus
{H. major), whose head- quarters would, however,
seem to have been farther south than England, or

* PalsBontologie.

t " Journal of Geological Society," and Palasontographical
Society's publications.

-(||!^iii!I)pi|||('i'?il!(«ip

itfl

302

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

'J
■I

whicli porliiips inhabited cliiefly tlio swamps along
the largo rivers running through an^as now under
the sea. The occurrence of such an animal shows
an abundant vegetation, and a climate so mild, that
the rivers were not covered with heavy ice in winter ;
for the supposition that this old hippopotamus was
a migratory animal seems very unlikely. Another
animal of this time, was the magnificent deer, known
as the Irish elk; and which perhaps had its prin-
cipal abode on the great plain which is now the Irish
Sea. The terrible machairodus, or cymetar-toothed
tiger, was continued from the Pliocene j and in addition
to species of bear still living, there was a species of
gigantic size, probably now extinct, the cave bear.
Evidences are accumulating, to show that all or nearly
all these survived until the human period.

If we turn now to those rnimals which are only
locally extinct, we meet with some strange, and at
first sight puzzling anomalies. Some of these are
creatures now limited to climates much colder than
that of Britain. Others now belong to warmer cli-
mates. Conspicuous among the former are the musk-
sheep, the elk, the reindeer, the glutton, and the
lemming. Among the latter, we see the panther,
the lion, and the Cape hyena. That animals now so
widely separated as the musk-sheep of Arctic Amenica
and the hyena of South Africa, could ever have in-
habited the same forests, seems a dream of the wildest
fancy, Yet it is not difficult to find a probable solu-
tion of the mystery. In North America, at the pre-

•'»

CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OF MAN.

803

sent day, the puma, or American Hon, comes up to
tlio same latitudes with the caribou, or reindeer, and
moose; and in Asia, the tiger extends it? migrations
into the abodes of boreol animals in the plains of
Siberia. Even in Europe, within the historic period,
the reindeer inhabited the forests of Germany; and
the lion extended its range nearly as far northward.
The explanation lies in the co-existence of a densely
wooded country with a temperate climate ; the forests
affording to southern animals shelter from the cold of
winter ; and equally to the northern- animals protec-
tion from the heat of summer. Hence our wonder
at this association of animals of diverse habitudes as
to climate, is merely a prejudice arising from the
present exceptional condition of Europe. Still it is
possible that changes unfavourable to some of these
animals, were in progress before the arrival of man,
with his clearings and forest fires and other dis-
turbing agencies. Even in America, the megalonyx,
or gigantic sloth, the mammoth, the mastodon, the fossil
horse, and many other creatures, disappeared before
the Modern period ; and on both continents the great
Post-glacial subsidence or deluge may have swep
away some of the species. Such a supposition seems
necessary to account for the phenomena of the gravel
and cave deposits of England, and Cope has recently
suggested it in explanation of similar storehouses of
fossil animals in America.*

* Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, April,
1871.

lililiiillii ili^

30i

THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

Among the many pictures wliich this fertile subject
calls up, perhaps none is more curious than that pre-
sented by the Post-glacial cavern deposits. We may
close our survey of this period with the exploration
of one of these strange repositories; and may select
Kent's Hole at Torquay, so carefully excavated and
illumined with the magnesium light of scientific in-
quiry by Mr. Pengelly and a committee of the British
Association.

The somewhat extensive and ramifying cavern of
Kent's Hole is an irregular excavation, evidently
due partly to fissures in limestone rock, and partly to
the erosive action of water enlarging such fissures
into chambers and galleries. At what time it was
originally cut we do not know, but it must have
existed as a cavern at the close of the Pliocene or
beginning of the Post-pliocene period, since which
time it has been receiving a series of deposits which
have quite filled up some of its smaller branches.

First and lowest, according to Mr. Pengelly, is a
" breccia," or mass of broken and rounded stones,
with hardened red clay filling the interstices. Most of
the stones are of the rock which forms the roof and
walls of the cave, but many, especially the rounded
ones, are from more distant parts of the surrounding
country. In this mass, the depth of which is un-
known, are numerous bones, all of one kind of animal,
the cave bear, a creature which seems to have lived in
Western Europe from the close of the Pliocene down
to the modern period. It must have been one of the

CLOSE OJ) post-pliocene — ADVENT OF MAN. 305

earliest and most permanent tenants of Kent's Kole at
a time wlien its lower chambe.^s were still filled with
water. Next above the breccia is a floor of " stalag-
mite/' or stony carbonate of lime, deposited from the
drippings of the roof, and in some places three feet
thick. Tliis also contains bones of the cave bear,
deposited when there was less access of water to the
cavern. Mr. Pengelly infers the existence of man at
this time from a single flint flake and a single flint
chip found in these beds ; but mere flakes and chips of
flint are too often natural to warrant such a conclusion.
After the old stalagmite floor above mentioned was
formed, the cave again received deposits of muddy
water and stones; but now a change occurs in the
remains embedded. This stony clay, or " cave earth,"
has yielded an immense quantity of teeth and bones, in-
cluding those of the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, hyena,
cave bear, reindeer, and Irish elk. With these were
found weapons of chipped flint, and harpoons, needles,
and bodkins of bone, precisely similar to those of the
North American Indians and other rude races. The
" cave earth " is four feet or more in thickness. It is
not stratified, and contains many fallen fragments of
rock, rounded stones, and broken pieces of stalagmite.
It also has patches of the excrement of hyenas, which
the explorers suppose to indicate the temporary resi-
dence of these inimals ; and in one spot, near the top, is
a limited layer of burnt wood, with remains which in-
dicate the cooking and eating of repasts of animal food
by man. It is clear that when this bed was formed

306

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

the cavern was liable to be inundated with muddy-
water, carrying stones and other heavy objects, and
breaking up in places the old stalagmite floor. One of
the most puzzling features, especially to those who
take an exclusively uniformitarian view, is, that the
entrance of water-borne mud and stones implies a
level of the bottom of the water in the neighbouring
valleys of about 100 feet above its present height.
The cave earth is covered by a second crust of stalag-
mite, less dense and thick than that below, and con-
taining only a few bones, ..Lloh are of the same
general character with those below, but include a frag-
ment of a human jaw with teeth. Evidently, when this
stalagmite was formed, the influx of water-borne
materials had ceased, or nearly so ; but whether the
animals previously occupying the country still con-
tinued in it, or only accidental bones, etc., were
introduced into the cave or lifted from the bed below,
does not appear.

The next bed marks a new change. It is a layer
of black mould from three to ten inches thick. Its
microscopic structure does not seem to have been
examined ; but it is probably a forest soil, introduced
by growth, by water, by wind, and by ingress of
animals, at a time when the cave was nearly in its
present state, and the surrounding country densely
wooded. This bed contains bones of animals, all of
them modern, and works of art ranging from the old
British times before the Koman invasion up to the
porter-bottles and dropped halfpence of modern visi-

CLOSE OF rOST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OF MAN. 307

tors. Lastly, in and upon the black mould are many
fallen blocks from the roof of the cave.

There can be no doubt that this cave and the neigh-
bouring one of Brixham have done very much to
impress the minds of British geologists with ideas of
the great antiquity of man, and they have, more than
any other Post-glacial monuments, shown the persis-
tence of some animals now extinct up to the human
age. Of precise data for determining time, they have,
however, given nothing. The only measures which
seem to have been applied, namely, the rate of
growth of stalagmite and the ^ate of erosion of the
neighbouring valleys, are, from the very sequence
of the deposits, obviously worthless; and the only
apparently available constant measure, namely, the
fall of blocks from the roof, seems not yet to have
been applied. We are therefore quite uncertain as to
the number of centuries involved in the filling of this
cave, and must remain so until a surer system of cal-
culation is adopted. We may, however, attempt to
sketch the series of events which it indicates.

The animals found in Kent^s Hole are all " Post-
glacial." They therefore inhabited the country after
it rose from the great Glacial submergence. Perhaps
the first colonists of the coasts of Devonshire in this
period were the cave bears, migrating on floating ice,
and subsisting, like the Arctic bear, and the black
bears of Anticosti, on fish, and on the garbage cast
up by the sea. They found Kent's Hole a sea-side
cavern, with perhaps some of its galleries still full of

308

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

water, and filling with breccia, with whicli the bones
of dead bears became mixed. As the land rose, these
creatures for the most part betook themselves to lower
levels, and in process of time the cavern stood upon a
hill-side, perhaps several hundreds of feet above the
sea ; and the mountain torrents, their beds not yet
emptied of glacial detritus, washed into it stones and
mud and ca,rcases of animals of many species which
had now swarmed across the plains elevated out of the
sea, and multiplied in the land. This was the time of
the cave earth ; and before its deposit was completed,
though how long before, a confused and often-dis-
turbed bed of this kind cannot tell, man himself seems
to have been added to the inhabitants of the British
land. In pursuit of game he sometimes ascended the
valleys beyond the cavern, or even penetrated into its
outer chambers ; or perhaps there were even in
those days rude and savage hill-men, inhabiting the
forests and warring with the more cultivated denizens
of plains below, which are now deep under the waters.
Their weapons, lost in hunting, or buried in the flesh
of wounded animals which crept to the streams to
assuage their thirst, are those found in the cave
earth. The absence of human bones may merely show
that the mighty hunters of those days were too hardy,
athletic, and intelligent, often to perish from accidental
causes, and that they did not use this cavern for a
place of burial. But the land again subsided. The
valley of that now nameless river, of which the Rhine,
the Thames, and the Severn may have alike been tribu-

CLOSE OF POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN.

309

taries, disappeared under the sea; and some tribe,
driven from the lower lands, took refage in this cave,
now again near the encroaching waves, and left there
the remains of their last repasts ere they were driven
farther inland or engulfed in the waters. For a time
the cavern may have been wholly submerged, and the
charcoal of the extinguished fires became covered with
its thin coating of clay. But er j long it re-emerged to
form part of an island, long barren and desolate ; and
the valleys having been cut deeper by the receding
waters, it no longer received muddy deposits, and
the crust formed by drippings from its roof contained
only bones and pebbles washed by rains or occasional
land floods from its own clay deposits. Finally, the
modern forests overspread the land, and were tenanted
by the modern animals. Man returned to use the
cavern again as a place of refuge or habitation, and to
leave there the relics contained in the black earth.
This seems at present the only intelligible history of
this curious cave ard others resembling it ; though,
when we consider the imperfection of the results
obtained even by a large amount of labour, and the
difficult and confused character of the deposits in this
and similar caves, too much value should not be
attached to such histories, which may at any time be
contradicted or modified by new facts or diSerent
explanations of those already known. The time in-
volved depends very much, as already stated, on the
question whether we regard the Post-glacial sub-
sidence and re-elevation as somewhat sudden, or as

liiliitiil

310

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

^^nl

occupying long dges at the slow rate at which some
parts of our continents are now rising or sinking.*

Such are the glimpses, obscure though stimulating
to the imagination, which geology can give of the cir-
cumstances attending the appearance of man in Western
Europe. How far we are from being able to account
for his origin, or to give its circumstances and relative
dates for the whole world, the reader will readily
understand. Still it is something to know that there
is an intelligible meeting-place of the later geological
ages and the age of man, and that it is one inviting to
many and hopeful researches. It is curious also to find
that the few monuments disinterred by geology, the
antediluvian record of Holy Scripture, and the golden
age of heathen tradition, seem alike to point to
similar physical conditions, and to that simple state
of the arts of life in which " gold and wampum
and flint stones " f constituted the chief material
treasures of the earliest tribes of men. They also
point to the immeasurable elevation, then as now, of
man over his brute rivals for the dominion of the
earth. To the naturalist this subject opens up most
inviting yet most difficult paths of research, to be

* Another element in this is also the question raised by
Dawkins, Geikie, and others as to subdivisions of the Post-
glacial period and intermissions of the Glacial cold. After
careful consideration of these views, however, I cannot consider
them as of much importance.

t So I read the " gold, bedolah, and shoham " of the descrip-
tion of Eden in Genesis ii. — the oldest literary record of the
stone age.

CLOSE OP POST- PLIOCENE — ADVENT OF MAN. 3ll

entered on with caution and reverence, rather than in
the bold and dashing spirit of many modern attempts.
The Christian, on his part, may feel satisfied that the
scattered monumental relics of the caves and gravels
will tell no story very different from that which he has
long believed on other evidence, nor anything incon-
sistent with those views of man's heavenly origin
and destiny which have been the most precious inheri-
tance of the greatest and best minds of every age,
from that early pre-historic period when men, '' palaeo-
lithic " men, no doubt, began to " invoke the name of
Jehovah,^' the coming Saviour, down to those times
when life and immortality are brought to light, for all
who will see, by the Saviour already come.

In completing this series of pictures, I wish
emphatically to insist on the imperfection of the
sketches which I have been able to present, and which
are less, in comparison with the grand march of the
creative work, even as now imperfectly known to
science, than the roughest pencilling of a child
when compared with a finished picture. If they
have any popular value, it will be in presenting
such a broad general view of a great subject as may
induce further study to fill up the details. If they
have any scientific value, it will be in removing the
minds of British students for a little from the too ex-
clusive study of their own limited marginal area, which
has been to them too much the " celestial empire ''
around which all other countries must be arranged,
and in divesting the subject of the special colour-

312

THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

Ill

ing given to it by certain prominent cliques and
parties.

Geology as a science is at present in a peculiar and
somewhat exceptional state. Under tlie influence of
a few men of commanding genius belonging to tlie
generation now passing away, it has made so gigantic
conquests that its armies have broken up into bands
of specialists, little better than scientific banditti,
liable to be beaten in detail, and prone to commit
outrages on common sense and good taste, which
bring their otherwise good cause into disrepute.
The leaders of these bands are, many of them, good
soldiers, but few of them fitted to be general officers,
and none of them able to reunite our scattered de-
tachments. We need larger minds, of broader cul-
ture and wider sympathies, to organise and rule the
lands which we have subdued, and to lead on to
further conquests.

In the present state of natural science in Britain,
this evil is perhaps to be remedied only by providing
a wider and deeper culture for our young men. Few
of our present workers have enjoyed that thorough
training in mental as well as physical science, which
is necessary to enable men even of great powers to
take large and lofty views of the scheme of nature.
Hence we often find men who are fair workers in
limited departments, reasoning most illogically, taking
narrow and local views, elevating the exception into
the rule, led away by baseless metaphysical subtleties,
quarrelling with men who look at their specialties

CLOSE or POST-PLIOCENE — ADVENT OF MAN.

313

from a different point of view, and even striving (xnd
plotting for the advancement of their own hobbies.
Such defects certainly mar much of the scientific
work now being done. In the more advanced walks
of scientific research, they are to some extent neutral-
ised by that free discussion which true science always
fosters ; though even here they sometimes vexatiously
arrest the progress of truth, or open floodgates of
error which it may require much labour to close. But
in public lectures and popular publications they run
riot, and are stimulated by the mistaken opposition of
narrow-minded good men, by the love of the new and
sensational, and by the rivalry of men struggling for
place and position. To launch a clever and startling
fallacy which will float for a week and stir up a hard
fight, seems almost as great a triumph as the dis-
covery of an important fact or law; and the honest
student is distracted with the multitude of doctrines,
and hustled aside by the crowd of ambitious ground-
lings.

The only remedy in the case is a higher and more
general scientific education ; and yet I do not wonder
that many good men object to this, simply because
of the difficulty of finding honest and competent
teachers, themselves well grounded in their subjects,
and free from that too common insanity of specialists
and half-educated men, which impels them to run
amuck at everything that does not depend on their
own methods of research. This is a difficulty which
can be met in our time only by the general good

' III Si W\

314

THE STOEY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

sense and right feeling of the community taking a
firm hold of the matter, and insisting on the or-
ganization and extension of the higher scientific
education, as well as that of a more elementary-
character, under the management of able and sane
men. Yet even if not so counteracted, present follies
will pass away, and a new and better state of natural
science will arise in the future, by its own internal
development. Science cannot long successfully isolate
itself from God. Its life lies in the fact that it is the
exponent of the plans and works of the great Creative
Will. It must, in spite of itself, serve His purposes,
by dispelling blighting ignorance and superstition,
by lighting the way to successive triumphs of human
skill over the powers of nature, and by guarding men
from the evils that flow from infringement of natural
laws. And it cannot fail, as it approaches nearer to
the boundaries of that which may be known by finite
minds, to be humbled by the contemplation of the
infinite, and to recognise therein that intelligence of
which the human mind is but the image and shadow.

It may be that theologians also are needed who shall
be fit to take the place of Moses to our generation, in
teaching it again the very elements of natural theo-
logy; but let them not look upon science as a cold
and godless demon, holding forth to the world a
poisoned cup cunningly compounded of truth and
falsehood; but rather as the natural ally and as-
sociate of the gospel of salvation. The matter is so
put in one of those visions which close the canon of

CLOSE OP POST-PLIOCENE — AE\:3NT OF MAN. 315

revelation, when the prophet sees a mighty angel
having the ''everlasting gospel to preach;" but he
begins his proclamation by calling on men to
''worship Him that made heaven and earth and the
sea and the fountains of waters.'' M.e^' must know
God as the Creator even before they seek Him as
a benefactor and redeemer. Thus religion must go
hand in hand with all true and honest science. In
this way only may we look forward to a time when
a more exact and large-minded science shall be in
perfect accord with a more pure and spiritual
Christianity, when the natural and the spiritual shall
be seen to be the necessary complements of each
other, and when we shall hear no more of reconcilia-
tions betv n science and theology, because there
will be no quarrels to reconcile. Already, even in
the present chaos of scientific and religious opinion,
indications can be seen by the observant, that the
Divine Spirit of order is breathing on the mass, and
will evolve from it new and beautiful worlds of
mental and spiritual existence.

11^

CHAPTER XIV.

PEIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN
THEORIES AS TO HIS ORIGIN.

The geological record, as we have been reading it,
introduces us to primitive man, but gives us no
distinct information as to his origin. Tradition and
revelation have, it is true, their solutions of the
mystery, but there are, and always have been, many
who will not take these on trust, but must grope for
themselves with the taper of science or philosophy
into the dark caverns whence issue the springs of
humanity. In former times it was philosophic specu-
lation alone which lent its dim and uncertain light to
these bold inquirers , but in our day the new and
startling disco' '^Vs in physics, chemistry, and biology
have flash^"^ ,vith an unexpected brilliancy, and

have at ' served to dazzle the eyes and encourage

the hopes of the curious, and to lead to explorations
more bold and systematic than any previously under-
taken. Thus has been born amongst us, or rather
renewed, for it is a very old thing, that evolutionist
philosophy, which has been well characterised as the
*^ baldest of all the philosophies which have sprung up
in our world," and which solves the question of human
origin by the assumption that human nature exists
potentially in mere inorganic matter, and that a chain

PRIMITIVE MAN.

317

of spontaneous derivation connects incandescent mole-
cules or star-dust with the world, and with man
himself.

This evolutionist doctrine is itself one of the
strangest phenomena of humanity. It existed, and
most naturally, in the oldest philosophy and poetry,
in connection with the c^'udest and most uncritical
attempts of the human mind to grasp the system of
nature ; but that in our day a system destitute of
any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague
analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary
and artificial coherence of its own parts, should be
accepted as a philosophy, and should find able ad-
herents to string upon its thread of hypotheses our
vast and weighty stores of knowledge, is surpassingly
strange. It seems to indicate that the accumulated
facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its
capacity for generalisation; and but for the vigour
which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an
indication that the human mind has fallen into a
state of senility, and in its dotage mistakes for s.-^ience
the imaginations which were the dreams of its youth.

In many respects these speculatiois are important
and worthy of the attention of thinking men. They
seek to revolutionise the religious beliefs of the world,
and if accepted would destroy most of the existing
theology and philosophy. They indicate tendencies
among scientific thinkers, which, though probably
temporary, must, before they disappear, descend to
lower strata, and reproduce themselves ir ifrosser

318

THE STOKY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

forms, and with, most serious effects on the whole
structure of society. With one class of minds they
constitute a sort of religion, which so far satisfies the
craving for truths higher than those which relate to
immediate wants and pleasures. With another and
perhaps larger class, .^ey are accepted as affording a
welcome deliverance from all scruples of conscience
and fears of a hereafter. In the domain of science
evolutionism has like tendencies. It reduces the posi-
tion of man, who becomes a descendant of inferior
animals, and a mere term in a series whose end is
unknown. It removes from the study of nature the
ideas of final cause and purpose ; and the evolutionist,
instead of regarding the world as a work of consum-
mate plan, skill, and adjustment, approaches nature as
he would a chaos of fallen rocks, which may present
forms of castles and grotesque profiles of men and
animals, but they are all fortuitous and without
significance. It obliterates the fine perception of
difierences from the mind of the naturalist, and
resolves all the complicated relations of living things
into some simple idea of descent with modification.
It thus destroys the possibility of a philosophical
classification, reducing all things to a mere series,
and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and
botany, which is already very manifest among the
disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England. The
efiect of this will be, if it proceeds further, in a great
degree to destroy the educational value and popular
interest attaching to these sciences, and to throw them

PEIMITITE MAN.

319

the
The
great
3opular
V them

down at the feet of a system of debased metaphysics.
As redeeming features in all this, are the careful
study of varietal forms, and the inquiries as to the
limits of species, which have sprung from these dis-
cussions, and the harvest of which will be reaped by
the true naturalists of the future.

Thus these theories as to the origin of men and
animals and plants are full of present significance,
and may be studied with profit by all ; and in no part
of their applications more usefully than in that which
relates to man. Let us then inquire, — 1. What is
implied in the idea of evolution as applied to man ?
2. What is implied in the idea of creation ? 3. How
theie several views accord with what we actually know
as the result of scientific investigation ? The first and
second of these questions may well occupy the whole
of this chapter, and we shall be able merely to glance
at their leading aspects. In doing so, it may be well
first to place before us in general terms the several
alternatives which evolutionists off'er, as to the mode in
which the honour of an origin from apes or ape-like
animals can be granted to us, along with the opposite
view as to the independent origin of man which have
been ma'itained either on scientific or scriptural
grounds.

All the evolutionist theories of the origin of man
depend primarily on the possibility of his having
been produced from some of the animals more closely
allied to him, by the causes now in operation which
lead to varietal forms, or by similar causes which have

320

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

n-'

been in operation ; and some attach more and otliers
less weight to certain of these causes, or gratuitously
suppose others not actually known. Of such causes
of change some are internal and others external to
the organism. With respect to the former, one
school assumes an innate tendency in every species to
change in the course of time.* Another believes in
exceptional births, either in the course of ordinary
generation or by the mode of parthenogenesis. f An-
other refers to the known facts of reproductive
acceleration or retardation observed in some humble
creatures. J New forms arising in any of these ways
or fortuitously, may, it is supposed, be perpetuated and
increased and further improved by favouring external
circumstances and the effort of the organism to avail
itself of these, § or by the struggle for existence and
the survival of the fittest. ||

On the other hand, those who believe in the inde-
pendent origin of man admit the above causes as
adequate only to produce mere varieties, liable to
return into the original stock. They may either
hold that man has appeared as a product of special
and miraculous creation, or that he has been created
mediately by the operation of forces also concerned
in the production of other animals, but the precise
nature of which is still unknown to us ; or lastly, they
may hold what seems to be the view favoured by the
book of Genesis, that his bodily form is a product

* Parsons, Owen. f Mivart, Ferris.

X Hyatt and Cope. § Lamarck, etc. || Darwin, etc.

<-^

PEIMITIVE MAN.

321

of mediate creation and his spiritual nature a direct
emanation from his Creator.

The discussion of all these rival theories would
occupy volumes, and to follow them into details
would require investigations which have already
bewildered many minds of some scientific culture.
Further, it is the belief of the wi'iter that this plung-
ing into multitudes of details has been fruitful of
error, and that it will be a better course to endeavour
tc reach the root of the matter by looking at the
foundations of the general doctrine of evolution itself,
and then contrasting it with its rival.

Taking, then, this broad view of the subject, two
great leading alternatives are presented to us. Either
man is an independent product of the will of a
Higher Intelligence, acting directly or through the
laws and materials of his own institution and produc-
tion, or he has been produced by an unconscious
evolution from lower things. It is true that many evo-
lutionists, either unwilling to offend, or not perceiving
the logical consequences of their own hypothesis,
endeavour to steer a middle course, and to maintain
that the Creator has proceeded by way of evolution.
But the bare, hard logic of Spencer, the greatest Eng-
hsh authority on evolution, leaves no place for this com-
promise, and shows that the theory, carried out to its
legitimate consequences, excludes the knowledge of a
Creator and the possibility of His work. We have,
therefore, to choose between evolution and creation ;
bearing in mind, however, that there may be a place

322

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

in nature for evolution, properly limited, as well as for
other things, and that the idea of creation by no means
excludes law and second causes.

Limiting ourselves in the first place to theories
of evolution, and to these as explaining the origin
of species of living beings, and especially of man,
we naturally first inquire as to the basis on which
they are founded. Now no one pretends that they
rest on facts actually observed, for no one has ever
observed the production of even one species. Nor
do they even rest, like the deductions of theoretical
geology, on the extension into past time of causes
of change now seen to be in action. Their proba-
bility depends entirely on their capacity to account
hypothetically for certain relations of living creatures
to each other, and to the world without; and the
strongest point of the arguments of their advocates is
the accumulation of cases of such relations supposed
to be accounted for. Such being the kind of argu-
ment with which we have to deal, we may first
inquire what we are required to believe as conditions
of the action of evolution, and secondly, to what ex
tent it actually does explain the phenomena.

In the first place, as evolutionists, we are required
to assume certain forces, or materials, or both, with
which evolution shall begin. Darwin, in his Origin
of Species, went so far as to assume the existence of
a few of the simpler types of animals ; but this view,
of course, was only a temporary resting-place for his
theory. Others assume a primitive protoplasm, or

PRIMITIVE UAV,.

323

physical basis of life, and arbitrarily assigning to
this substance properties now divided between or-
ganised and unorganised, and between dead and
living matter, find no difficulty in deducing all plants
and animals from it. Still, even this cannot have
been the ultimate material. It must have been
evolved from something. We '*ce thus brought
back to certain molecules oi ...tr-dust, or certain
conflicting forces, which must have had self-exist-
ence, and must have potentially included all subse-
quent creatures. Othcjrwise, if with Spencer we
hold that God is '^unknowable,'' and creation "un-
thinkable,'' we are left suspended on nothing over
a bottomless void, and must adopt as the initial
proposition of our philosophy, that all things were
made out of nothing, and by nothing; unless we
prefer to doubt whether anything exists, and to
push the doctrine of relativity to the unscientific
extreme of believing that we can study the relations
of things non-existent or unknown. So we must
allow the evolutionist some small capital to start
with; observing, however, that self -existent matter
in a state of endless evolution is something of which
we cannot possibly have any definite conception.

Being granted thus much, the evolutionist next
proceeds to demand that we shall also believe in the
indefinite variability of material things, and shall set
aside all idea that there is any difference in kind
between the different substances which we know.
They must all be mutually convertible, or at least

324

THE STORY OP THE EAETH AND MAN.

derivable from some primitive material. It is true
that this is contrary to experience. The chemist
holds that matter is of different kinds, that one
element cannot be converted into another; and he
would probably smile if told that, even in the lapse
of enormous periods of time, limestone could be
evolved out of silica. He may think that this is
very different from the idea that a snail can be
evolved from an oyster, or a bird from a reptile.
But the zoologist will inform him that species of
animals are only variable within certain limits, and
are not tran&mutable, in so far as experience and
experiment are concerned. They have theii' allotro-
pic forms, but cannot be changed into one another.

But if we grant this second demand, the evolutionist
has a third in stcre for us. We must also admit that
by some inevitable necessity the changes of things
must in the main take place in one directictn, from
the more simple to the more complex, from the lower
to the higher. At first sight this seems not only to
follow from the previous assumptions, but to accord
with observation. Do not all living things rise from
a simpler to a more complex state ? has not the
history of the earth displayed a gradually increasing
elevation and complexity? But, on the other hand,
the complex organism becoming mature, resolves
itself again into the simple germ, and finally is dis-
solved into its constituent elements. The complex
returns into the simple, and what we see is not an
evolution, but a revolution. In like manner, in

PRIMITIVE MAN.

325

geological time, the tendency seems to be ever to
disintegi.tion and decay. This we see everywhere,
and find that elevation occurs only by the introduc-
tion of new species in a way which is jiot obvious,
and which may rather imply the intervention of a
cause from without ; so that here also we are required
to admit as a general principle what is contrary to
experience.

If, however, we grant the evolutionist these pos-
tulates, we must next allow him to take the facts of
botany and zoology out of their ordinary connection,
and thread them like a string of beads, as Herbert
Spencer has done in his "Biology,^' on the threefold
cord thus fashioned. This done, we next find, as
might have been expected, certain gaps or breaks
which require to be cunningly filled with artificial
material, in order to give an appearance of continuity
to the whole.

The first of these gaps which we notice is that
between dead and living matter. It is easy to fill
this with such a term as protoplasm, which includes
matter both dead and living, and so to ignore this
distinction ; but practically we do not yet know as a
possible thing the elevation of matter, without the
agency of a previous living organism, from that plane
in which it is subject merely to physical force, ana is
unorganised, to that where it becomes organised, and
lives. Under that strange hypothesis of the origin
of life from meteors, with which Sir William Thomson
closed his address at a late meeting of the British

'ill

1 ■
i

i'' liiit

iliiili

326

THE STOET OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

frt

Association, there was concealed a cutting sarcasm
which the evolutionists felt. It reminded them that
the men who evolve all things from physical forces
do not yet know how these forces can produce the
phenomena of life even in its humblest forms. It
is true that the scientific world has been again and
again startled by the announcement of the produc-
tion of some of the lowest forms of life, either from
dead organic matter, or from merely mineral sub-
stances ; but in every case heretofore the effort has
proved as vain as the analogies attempted to be set
up between the formation of crystals and that of
organized tissues are fallacious.

A second gap is that which separates vegetable and
animal life. These are necessarily the converse of
each other, the one deoxidizes and accumulates, the
other oxidizes and expends. Only in reproduction
or decay does the plant simulate the action of the
animal, and the animal never in its simplest forms
assumes the functions of the plant. Those obscure
cases in the humbler spheres of animal and vegetable
life which have been supposed to show a union of
the two kingdoms, disappear on investigation. This
gap can, I believe, be filled up only by an appeal to
our ignorance. There may be, or may have been,
some simple creature unknown to us, on the extreme
verge of the plant kingdom, that was capable of
passing the limit and becoming an animal. But no
proof of this exists. It is true that the primitive
germs of many kinds of humble plants and animals

PRIMITIVE MAN.

327

are so mucli alike, that much confusion has arisen in
tracing their development. It is also true that some
of these creatures can subsist under very dissimilar
conditions, and in very diverse states, and that under
the specious nam^ of Biology,* we sometimes find a
mass of these confusions, inaccurate observations and
varietal differences made to do duty for scientific facts.
But all this does not invalidate the grand primary
distinction between the animal and the plant, which
should be thoroughly taught and illustrated to all
young naturalists, as one of the best antidotes to
the fallacies of the evolutionist school.

A third is that between any species of animal or
plant and any other species. It was this gap, and
this only, which Darwin undertook to fill up by his
great work on the origin of species, but, notwith-
standing the immense amount of material thus ex-
pended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must be

* It is doubtful whether men who deny the existence of vital
force have a right to call their science " Biology," any more
than atheists have to call their doctrine " Theology ; " and it is
certain that the assumption of a science of Biology as distinct
from Phytology and Zoology, or including both, is of the
nature of a " pious fraud " on the part of the more enlightened
evolutionists. The objections stated in the text, to what have
been called Archebiosis and Heterogenesis seem perfectly ap-
plicable, in so far as I can judge from a friendly review by
Wallace, to the mass of heterogeneous material accumulated
by Dr. Bastian in his recent volumes. The conclusions of
this writer, would also, if established, involve evolution in a
fatal emharras des richesses, by the hourly production during
all geological time, of millions of new forms all capable of
indefinite development.

!!iiyiii«ii I-

328

iTHE STORY OP THE EAETH AND MAN.

:iu'

admitted that no case has been ascertained in which
an individual of one species has transgressed the
limits between it and other species. However ex-
tensive the varieties produced by artificial breeding,
. the essential characters of the species remain, and
even its minor characters may bo reproduced, while
the barriers established in nature between species by
the laws of their reproduction, seem to be absolute.

With regard to species, however, it must be
observed that naturalists are not agreed as to what
constitutes a species. Many so-called species are
probably races or varieties, and one benefit of these
.inquiries has been to direct attention to the proper
discrimination of species from varieties among animals
and plants. The loose discrimination of species, and
the tendency to multiply names, have done much to
promote evolutionist views ; but the researches of the
. evolutionists themselves have shown that we must
abandon transmutation of true species as a thing of
the present; and if we imagine it to have occurred,
must refer it to the past.

Another gap is that between the nature of the
animal and the self-conscious, reasoning, moral nature
of man. We not only have no proof that any animal
can, by any force in itself, or by any merely physical
influences from withoat, rise to such a condition;
but the thing is in the highest degree improbable.
It is easy to affirm, with the grosser materialists, that
thought is a secretion of brain, as bile is of the
liver; but a moment^s thought shows that no real

PRIMITIVE MAN.

analogy obtains between the cases. We may vaguely
suppose, with Darwin, that the continual exercise of
such powers as animals possess, may have developed
those of man. But our experience of animals shows
that their intelligence differs essentially from that of
man, being a closed circle ever returning into itself,
while that of man is progressive, inventive, and ac-
cumulative, and can no more be correlated with that
of the animal than the vital phenomena of the animal
with those of the plant. Nor can the gap between
the higher religious and moral sentiments of man,
and the instinctive affections of the brutes, be filled
up with that miserable ape imagined by Lubbock,
which, crossed in love, or pining with cold and
hunger, conceived, for the first time in its poor
addled pate, ^^the dread of evil to come," and so
became the father of theology. This conception,
which Darwin gravely adopts, would be most ludi-
crous, but for the frightful picture which it gives
of the aspect in which religion appears to the mind
of the evolutionist.

The reader will now readily perceive that the sim-
plicity and completeness of the evolutionist theory
entirely disappear when we consider the unproved
assumptions on which it is based, and its failure to
connect with each other some of the most important
facts in nature : that, in short, it is not in any true
sense a philosophy, but merely an arbitrary arrange-
ment of facts in accordance with a number of unproved
hypotheses. Such philosophies, "falsely so called,"

330

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

■i 1

■il
■I

liavc existed ever since man began to reason on nature,
and this last of them is one of the weakest and most
pernicious of the whole. Let the reader take up
either of Darwin^s great books, or Spencer's " Bio-
logy/' and merely ask himself as he reads each para-
graph, "What is assumed here and what is proved?"
and he will find the whole fabric melt away like a
vision. He will find, however, one difference between
these writers. Darwin always states facts carefully
and accurately, and when he comes to a difficulty
tries to meet it fairly. Spencer often exaggerates or
extenuates with reference to bis facts, and uses the
arts of the dialectician where argument fails.

Many naturalists who should know better are puz-
zled with the great array oi; facts presented by
evolutionists ; and while their better judgment causes
them to doubt as to the possibility of the structures
which they study being produced by such blind and
material processes, are forced to admit that there
must surely be something in a theory so confidently
asserted, supported by so great names, and by such
an imposing array of relations which it can explain.
They would be relieved from their weak concessions
were they to study carefully a few of the instances
adduced, and to consider how easy it is by a little
ingenuity to group undoubted facts around a false
theory. I could wish to present here illustrations of
this, which abound in every part of the works I have
referred to, but space will not permit. One or two
must suffice. The first may be taken from one of

PRIMITIVE MAN.

331

the strong points often dwelt on by Spencer in his
" Biology. ^'^

"But the experiences which most clearly illustmte
to us the process of general evolution are our ex-
periences of special evolution, repeated in every plant
and animal. Each organism exhibits, within a short
space of time, a series of changes which, when sup-
posed to occupy a period indefinitely great and to
go on in various ways instead of one, may give us
a tolerably clear conception of organic evolution in
general. In an individual development we have com-
pressed into a comparatively infinitesimal space a
series of metamorphoses equally vast with those
which the hypothesis of evolution assumes to have
taken place during those unmeasurable epochs that
the earth^s crust tells us of. A tree differs from a
seed immeasurably in every respect — in bulk, in
structure, in colour, iu form, in specific gravity, in
chemical composition : differs so greatly that no
visible resemblance of any kind can be pointed out
between them. Yet is the one changed in the
course of a few years into the other ; changed so
gradually that at no moment can it oe said. Now
the seed ceases to be and the tree exists.' Wliat
can be more widely contrasted than a newly-born
child and the small gelatinous spherule constituting
the human ovum ? The infant is so complex in
structure that a cyclopaedia is needed to describe its
constituent parts. The germinal vesicle is so simple

o " Principles of Biology," § 118.

I' !!!ir

332

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

If 1

that it may be defined in a line. ... If a single
cell under appropriate conditions becomes a man in
the space of a few years, there can surely be no diffi-
culty in understanding how, under appropriate con-
ditions, a cell may in the course of untold millions of
years p^ive origin to the human race.^^

"It is true that many minds are so unfurnished
with those experiences of nature, out of which this
conception is built, that they find difficulty in form-
ing it. . . . To such the hypothesis that by any
series of changes a protozoan should ever give origin
to a mammal seems grotesque — as grotesque as did
Galileo^s assertion of the earth/s movement seem to
tha Aristoteleans ; or as grotesque as the assertion
of the earth^s sphericity seems now to the New
Zealanders.^'

I quote the above as a specimen of evolutionist
reasoning from the hand of a master, and as referring
to one of the corner-stones of this strange philosophy.
I may remark with respect to it, in the first place,
that it assumes those ^' conditions '^ of evolution to
which I have already referred. In the second place,
it is full of inaccurate statements of fact, all in a
direction tending to favour the hypothesis. For ex-
ample, a tree does not difier " immeasurably '' from a
seed, especially if the seed is of the same species of
tree, for the principal parts of the tree and its
principal chemical constituents already exist and can
be detected in the seed, and unless it were so, the
development of the tree from the seed cc^ild not take

■1

PRIMITIVE MAN.

OOO

place. Besides, the seed itself is not a tiling self-
existent or fortuitous. The production of a seed
without a previous tree of the same kind is quite as
difficult to suppose as the production of a tree^ with-
out a previous seed containing its living embryo. In
the third place, the whole argument is one of analogy.
The germ becomes a mature animal, passing through
mq-ny intermediate stages, therefore the animal may
have descended from some creature which when
mature was as simple as the germ. The value of
such an analogy depends altogether on the similarity
of the " conditions,^' which, in such a case, are really
the efficient causes at work. The germ of a mammal
becomes developed by the nourishment supplied from
the system of a parent, which itself produced the
germ, and into whose likeness the young animal is
destined to grow. These are the '^appropriate con-
ditioiis^' of its development. But when our author
assumes from this other " appropriate conditions,^' by
which an organism, which on the hypothesis is not a
germ but a matm'e animal, shall be developed into the
likeness of something diffi)rent from its parent, he
oversteps the bounds of legit^'mate analogy. Further,
the reproduction of the nnimal, as observed, is a
closed series, beginning at the embryo and returning
thither again ; the evolution attempted to be estab-
lished is a progressive series going on from one stage
to another. A reproductive circle once established
obeys certain definite laws, but its origin, or how it
can leave itb orbit and revolve in some other, we

334

THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

cannot explain witliout the introduction of some new-
efficient cause. The one term of the analogy is a
revolution, and the other is an evolution. The re-
volution within the circle of the reproduction of the
species gives no evidence that at some point the body
will fly off at a tangent, and does not even inform us
whether it is making progress in space. Even if it
is so making progress, its orbit of revolution may
remain the same. But it may be said the reproduc-
tion of the species is not in a circle but in a spiraL
Within the limit of experience it is not so, since,
however it may undulate, it always returns into
itself. But supposing it to be a spiral, it may ascend
or descend, or expand and contract ; but this does
not connect it with other similar spirals, the separate
origin of which is to be separately accounted for.

I have quoted the latter part of the passage because
it is characteristic of evolutionists to decry the intel-
ligence of those who differ from them. Now it is fair
to admit that it requires some intelligence and some
knowledge of nature to produce or even to understand
such analogies as those of Mr. Spencer and his fol-
lowers, but it is no less true that a deeper insight
into the study of nature may not only enable us to
understand these analogies, but to detect their
fallacies. I am sorry to say, however, that at pre-
sent the hypothesis of evolution is giving so str ng
a colouring to much of popular and even academic
teaching, more especially in the easy and flippant
conversion of the facts of embryology into instances

rPJMITIVE MAN.

335

new

is a
3 re-
£ the
body
?m u3
1 if it
. may
roduc-
spiral.

since,
3 into
ascend
is does
eparate

because
intel-
is fail-
Id some
orstand
his fol-
insiglit
.e us to
[t ttieir
at pre-
str ng
icademic
flippant
Lstances

of evolution on the plan of the above extract, that the
Spencerians may not long have to complain of want
of faith and appreciation on the part of the improved
apes whom they are kind enough to instruct as to
their lowly origin.

The mention of " appropriate conditions ^' in the

above extract reminds me of another fatal objection

to evolution which its advocates continually overlook.

An animal or plant advancing from maturity to the

adult state is in every stage of its progress a complete

and symmetrical organism, correlated in all its parts

and adapted to surrounding conditions. Suppose it

to become modified in any way, to ever so small an

extent, the whole of these relations are disturbed.

If the modification is internal and spontaneous, there

is no guarantee that it will suit the vastly numerous

external agencies to which the creature is subjected.

If it is produced by agencies from without, there is

no guarantee that it will accord with the internal

relations of the parts modified. The probabilities are

incalculably great against the occurrence of many

such disturbances without the breaking up altogether

of the nice adjustment of parts and conditions. This

is no doubt one reason of the extinction of so many

species in geological time, and also of the strong

tendency of every species to spring back to its normal

condition when in any way artificially caused to vary.

It is also connected with the otherwise mysterious law

of the constant transmission of all the characters of

the parent.

ill iir

336

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

Spencer and Darwin occasionally see this difficulty,
though they habitually neglect it in their reasonings.
Spencer even tries to turn one part of it to account as
follows : —

" Suppose the head of a mammal to become very
much more weighty — what must be the indirect re-
sults? The muscles of the neck are put to greater
exertions; and the vertebras have to bear additional
tensions and pressures caused both by the increased
weight of the head and the stronger contraction of
muscles that support and move the head.'' He goes
on to say that the processes of the vertebrae will have
augmented strains put upon them, the thoracic region
and fore limbs will have to be enlarged, and even the
hind limbs may require modification to facilitate |^loco-
motion. He concludes : " Any one who compares the
outline of the bison with that of its congener, the
ox, will clearly see how profoundly a heavier head
affects the entire osseous and muscular system."

We need not stop to mention the usual inaccuracies
as to facts in this paragraph, as, for example, the
support of the head being attributed to muscles
alone, without reference to the strong elastic liga-
ment of the neck. We may first notice the assump-
tion that an animal can acquire a head "very much
more weighty " than that which it had before, a very
improbable supposition, whether as a monstrous birth
or as an effect of external conditions after birth. But
suppose this to have occurred, and what is even less
likely, that the very much heavier head is an advan-

^jl»'

PRIMITIVE MAN.

337

ilty,
ngs.
it as

very
t re-
peater
bional
easetl
on of
3 goes
I have
region
en tlie
3 'Joco-
-es tlie
er, the
head

uracies
)le, the
Unuscles

liga-

issnmp-
y much
I, a very
us birth
h. But
iven less
advan-

tage in some way, what guarantee can evolution give
us that the number of other modifications required
would take place simultaneously with this acquisition ?
It would be easy to show that this would depend
on the concurrence of hundreds of other conditions
within and without the animal, all of which must
co-operate to produce the desired effect, if indeed they
could produce this effect even by their conjoint action,
a power which the writer, it will be observed, quietly
assumes, as well as the probability of the initial
change in the head. Finally, the naivete with which
it is assumed that the bison and the ox are examples
of such an evolution, would be refreshing in these
artificial days, if instances of it did not occur in almost
every page of the writings of evolutionists.

It would only weary the reader to follow evolution
any further into details, especially as my object in
this chapter is to show that generally, and as a
theory of nature and of man, it has no good founda-
tion; but we should not leave the subject without
noting precisely the derivation of man according to
this theory ; and for this purpose I may quote Dar-
win's summary of his conclusions on the subject.*

"Man,'' says Mr. Darwin, "is descended from a
hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed
ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabit-
ant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole
structure had been examined by a naturalist, would
have been classed amongst the quadrumana, as surely

* "Descent of Man," part ii., ch. 21.

338

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

as would the common, and still more ancient, pro-
genitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The
quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably-
derived from an ancient marsupial animal ; and this,
through a long line of diversified forms, either from
some reptile-like or some amphibian -like creature,
and this again from some fish-like animal. In the
dim obscurity of the past we can see that the early
progenitor of all the vertebrata must have been an
aquatic animal, provided with branchice, with the
two sexes united in the same individual, and with
the most important organs of the body (such as
the brain and heart) imperfectly developed. This
animal seems to have been more like the larvae of our
existing marine As cidians than any other form known."
The author of this passage, in condescension to our
weakness of faith, takes us no further back than to an
Ascidian, or "sea-squirt," the resemblance, however,
of which to a vertebrate animal is merely analogical,
and, though a very curious case of analogy, altogether
temporary and belonging to the young state of the
creature, without affecting its adult state or its real
affinities with other mollusks. In order, however,
to get the Ascidian itself, he must assume all the
" conditions " already referred to in the previous part
of this article, and fill most of the gaps. He has,
however, in the " Origin of Species " and " Descent
of Man," attempted merely to fill one of the breaks
in the evolutionary series, that between distinct
pecies, leaving us to receive all the rest on mere

PRIMITIVE MAN.

339

pro-
The
bably
. this,
from
ature,
n tlie
early
en an
h tlie
I with
Lcli as
This
of our
10 wn."
to our
1 to an
)wever,
ogical,
gether
of the
ts real
)wever,
all the
US part
le has,
Descent
breaks
distinct
a mere

faith. Even in respect to the question of species,
in all the long chain between the Ascidian and the
man, he has not certainly established one link; and
in the very last change, that from the ape-like
ancestor, he equally fails to satisfy us as to matters
so trivial as the loss of the hair, which, on the
hypothesis, clothed the pre-human back, and on
matters so weighty as the dawn of human reason
and conscience.

We thus see that evolution as an hypothesis has no
basis in experience or in scientific fact, and that its
imagined series of transmutations has breaks which
cannot be filled. We have now to consider how it
stands with the belief that man has been created by
a higher power. Against this supposition the evolu-
tionists try to create a prejudice in two ways. First,
they maintain with Herbert Spencer that the hypo-
thesis of creation is inconceivable, or, as they say,
'^ unthinkable •/' an assertion which, when examined,
proves to mean only that we do not know perfectly
the details of such an operation, an objection equally
fatal to the origin either of matter or life, on the
hypothesis of evolution. Secondly, they always refer
to creation as if it must be a special miracle, in the
sense of a contravention of or departure from ordinary
natural laws ; but this is an assumption utterly without
proof, since creation may be as much according to law
as evolution, though in either case the precise laws
involved may be very imperfectly known.

How absurd, they say, to imagine an animal created

340

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

at once, fully formed, by a special miracle, instead of
supposing it to be slowly elaborated through countless
ages of evolution. To Darwin the doctrine of crea-
tion is but " a curious illustration of the blindness of
preconceived opinion.^' " These authors/' he says,
" seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation
than at an ordinary birth ; but do they really believe
that at innumerable periods in the earth's history,
certain elemental atoms have been commanded sud-
denly to flash into living tissues ? '' Darwin, with all
his philosophic fairness, sometimes becomes almost
Spencerian in his looseness of expression ; and in the
above extract, the terms " miraculous,'' " innumer-
able," ^' elemental atoms," " suddenly," and " flash,"
all express ideas in no respect necessary to the work of
creation. Those who have no faith in evolution as a
cause of the production of species, may well ask in
return how the evolutionist can prove that creation
must be instantaneous, that it must follow no law, that
it must produce an animal fully formed, that it must
be miraculous. In short, it is a portion of the policy
of evolutionists to endeavour to tie down their oppo-
nents to a purely gratuitous and ignorant view of
creation, and then to attack them in that position.

Wliat, then, is the actual statement of the theory of
creation as it may be held by a modern man of
science ? Simply this ; that all things have been
produced by the Supreme Creative Will, acting either
directly or through the agency of the forces and
materials of His own production.

PRIMITIVE MAN.

311

ad of
itless
crea-

BSS of

says,
nation
elieve
story,
[ sud-
ith all
ilmost
in the
Lumer-
aash/'
^ork of
in as a
ask in
reation
w, that
must

policy
r oppo-
dew of
m.

eory of
nan of

e been
either

es and

This theory does not necessarily affirm that creation
is miraculous, in the sense of being contrary to or
subversive of law ; law and order are as applicable to
creation as to any other process. It does not contradict
the idea of successive creations. There is no necessity
that the process should be instantaneous and without
progression. It does not imply that all kinds of
creation are alike. There may be higher and lower
kinds. It does not exclude the idea of similarity or
dissimilarity of plan and function as to the products
of creation. Distinct products of creation may be
either similar to each other in different degrees, or
dissimilar. It does not even exclude evolution or
derivation to a certain extent : anything once created
may, if sufficiently flexible and elastic, be evolved or
involved in various ways. Indeed, creation and deriva-
tion may, rightly understood, be complementary to
each other. Created things, unless absolutely un-
changeable, must be more or less modified by influences
from within and from without, and derivation or evo-
lution may account for certain subordinate changes
of things already made. Man, for example, may be a
product of creation, yet his creation may have been in
perfect harmony with those laws of procedure which
the Creator has set for His own operations. He may
have been preceded by other creations of things more
or less similar or dissimilar. He may have been
created by the same processes with some or all of
these, or by different means. His body may have
been created in one way, his soul in another. He

342

THE STOKY OF TEE EARTH AND MAN.

may, nay, in all probability would be, part of a plan
of which some parts would approach very near to him
in structure or functions. After his creation, spon-
taneous culture and outward circumstances may have
moulded him into varieties, and given him many
different kinds of speech and of habits. These
points are so obvious to common sense that it would
be quite unnecessary to insist on them, were they
not habitually overlooked or misstated by evolu-
tionists.

The creation hypothesis is also free from some of
the difficulties of evolution. It avoids the absurdity
of an eternal progression from the less to the more
complex. It provides in willj the only source of
power actually known to us hj ordinary experience, an
intelligible origin of nature. It does not require us to
contradict experience by supposing that there are no
differences of kind or essence in things. It does not
require us to assume, contrary to experience, an in-
variable tendency to differentiate and improve. It
does not exact the bridging over of all gaps which
may be found between the several grades of beings
which exist or have existed.

Why, then, are so many men of science disposed to
ignore altogether this view of the matter ? Mainly, I
believe, because, from the training of many of them,
they are absolutely ignorant of the subject, and from
their habits of thought have come to regard physical
force and the laws regulating it as the one power in
nature, and to relegate all spiritual powers or forces,

PRIMITIVE MAN.

343

or, as they have been taught to regard them, " super-
natural *' things, to the domain of the " unknowable/'
Perhaps some portion of the difficulty may be got
over by abandoning altogether the word " super-
natural,'' which has been much misused, and by hokl-
ing nature to represent the whole cosmos, and to in-
clude both the physical and the spiritual, both of them
in the fullest sense subject to law, but each to the law
of its own special nature. I have read somewhere a
story of some ignorant orientals who were induced to
keep a steam-engine supplied with water by the fiction
that it contained a terrible dji7i, or demon, who, if
allowed to become thirsty, would break out and
destroy them all. Had they been enabled to discard
this superstition, and to understand the force of steam,
we can readily imagine that they would now suppose
they knew the whole truth, and might believe that any
one who taught them that the engine was a product of
intelligent design, was only taking them back to the
old doctrine of the thirsty demon of the boiler. This
is, I think, at present, the mental condition of many
scientists with reference to creation.

Here we come to the first demand which the doctrine
of creation makes on us by way of premises. In
order that there may be creation there must be a
primary Self-existent Spirit, whose will is supreme.
The evolutionist cannot refuse to admit this on as good
ground as that on which we hesitate to receive the
postulates of his faith. It is no real objection to say
that a God can be known to us only partially, and.

311

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

with refercnco to His real essence, not at all; since,
even if wo admit this, it is no more than can bo -^aid
of matter and force.

I am not about here to repeat any of the ordinary-
arguments for the existence of a spiritual First Cause,
and Creator of all things, but it may be proper to
bhow that this assumption is not inconsistent with
experience, or with the facts and principles of modern
science. The statement which I would make on this
point shall be in the words of a very old writer, not so
well known as he should be to many who talk volubly
enough about antagonisms between science and Chris-
tianity : " That which is known of God is manifest in
them (in men), for God manifested it unto them. For
since the creation of the jrld His invisible things,
even His eternal power and divinity are plainly seen,
being perceived by means of things that are made.^' *
The statement here is very precise. Certain things
relating to God are manifest within men^s minds, and
are proved by the evidence of His works ; these pro-
perties of God thus manifested being specially His
power or control of all forces, and His divinity or
possession of a nature higher than ours. The argu-
ment of the writer is that all heathens know this ;
and, as a matter of fact, I believe it must be admitted
even by those most sceptical on such points, that some
notion of a divinity has been derived from nature by
men of all nations and tribes, if we except, perhaps, a
few enlightened positivists of this nineteenth century,

* Paul's Epistle to the Eomans, chap. i.

■I

PRIMITIVE M^N.

345

since,

LliiiJiry
Cause,
per to
t with
aodorn
311 this
, not so
v^olubly
. Chris -
if est in
1. For
things,
ly seen,
iide/^ *
things
ds, and
!se pro-
|lly His
uity or
argu-
vv this ;
imitted
[at some
jure by
[•haps, a
century.

whom excess of light has made bhnd. " If the light
that is in man be darkness, how great is that dark-
ness." But then this notion of a God is a very old
and primitive one, and Spencer takes care to inform
us that "first thoughts are either wholly out of
harmony with things, or in very incomplete harmony
with them," and consequently that old beliefs and
generally diffused notions are presumably wrong.

Is it true, however, that the modern knowledge of
nature tends to rob it of a spiritual First Cause ? One
can conceive such a tendency, if all our advances in
knowledge had tended more and more to identify force
with matter in its grosser forms, and to remove more
and more from our mental view those powers which
are not material ; but the very reverse of this is the
case. Modern discovery has tended more and more
to attach importance to certain universally diffused
media v/hich do not seem to be subject to the laws of
ordinary matter, and to prove at once the Protean
character and indestructibility of forces, the aggregate
of which, as acting in the universe, gives us our
nearest approach to the conception of phy :cal omni-
potence. This is what so many of our evolutionists
mean when they indignantly disclaim materialism.
They know that there is a boundless energy beyond
mere matter, and of which matter seems the sport and
toy. Could they conceive of this energy as the ex-
pression of a personal will, they would become theists.

Man himself presents a microcosm of matter and
■force, raised to a higher plane than that of the merely

346

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

chemical and physical. In him we find not merely
that brain and nerve force which is common to him
and lower animals, and which exhibits one of the most
marvellous energies in nature, but we have the higher
force of will and intellect, enabling him to read the
secrets of nature, to seize and combine and utilize its
laws Hke a god, ana like a god to attain to the higher
discernment of good and evil. Nay, more, this power
which resides within man rules with omnipotent
energy the material organism, driving its nerve forces
until cells and fibres are worn out and destroyed,
taxir^ muscles and tendons till they break, impelling
its slave the body even to that which will bring injury
and death itself. Surely, what we thus see in man
must be the image and likeness of the Great Spirit.
We can escape from this conclusion only by one or
other of two assumptions, either of which is rather to
be called a play upon words than a scientific theory.
We may, with a certain class of physicists and phj^sio-
logists, confine our attention wholly to the fire and the
steam, and overlook the engineer. We r^ay assume
that with protoplasm and animal electricity, for
example, we can dispense with life, and not only with
life but with spirit also. Yet he who regards vitality
as an unmeaning word, and yet speaks of " living
protoplasm," and ''^ dead protoplasm," and afiirms thot
between these two states, so different in their pheno-
mena, no chemical or physical difierence exists, is
purely either laughing at us, or committing himself to
what the Duke of Argyll calls a philosophical bull ; and

PRIMITIVE MAN.

34.7

lerely

I him

mosfc

liglier

d the

ze its

lijrlier

power

potent

forces

:royed,

pelling
injury

n man
Spirit.

one or

tlier to
lieory.

physio-

Lind tlie
assume
, for
y wit]^
vitality
^ living
ins that
pheno-
ists, is
nself to
uU ; and

he who shows us that electrical discharges are con-
cerned in muscular contraction, has just as much
proved that there is no need of life or spirit, as the
electrician who has explained the mysteries of the
telegraph has shown that there can be no need of an
operator. Or we may, turning to the opposite extreme,
trust to the metaphysical fallacy of those who affirm
that neither matter, nor force, nor spirit, need concern
them, for that all are merely states of consciousness in
ourselves. But what of the conscious self — this self
which thinks, and which is in relation with surround-
ings which it did not create, and which presumably
did not create it ? and what is the unknown third term
which must have been the means of setting up these
relations ? Here again our blind guides involve us in
an absolute self-contradiction.

Thus we are thrown back on the grand old truth
that man, heathen and savage, or Christian and scien-
tific, opens his eyes on nature and reads therein
both the physical and the spiritual, and in connection
with both of these the power and divinity of an
Almighty Creator. He may at first have many wrong
views both of God and of His works, but as he pene-
trates further into the laws of matter and mind, he
att'iins more just conceptions of their relations to the
Great Centre and Source of all, and instead of being
able to dispense witli creation, he hopes to be able at
length to under id its laws and methods. If un-
happily he abandons this high ambition, and con-
tents himself with mere matter and physical force, he

348

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

W''

cannot rise to the highest development either of
science or philosophy.

It may, however, be said that evolution may admit
all this, and still be held as a scientific doctrine in con-
nection with a modified belief in creation. The work
of actual creation may have been limited to a few
elementary types, and evolution may have done the
rest. Evolutionists may still be theists. We have
already seen that the doctrine, as carried out to its
logical consequences, excludes creation and theism.
It may, however, be shown that even in its more
modified forms, and when held by men who maintain
that they are not atheists, it is practically atheistic,
because excluding the idea of plan and design, and
resolving all things into the action of unintelligent
forces. It is necessary to observe this, because it is
the half-way evolutionism which professes to have a
Creator somewhere behind it, that is most popular;
though it is, if possible, more unphilosophical than
that which professes to set out from absolute and
eternal nonentity, or from self -existent star-dust con-
taining all the possibilities of the universe.

Absolute atheists recognise in Darwinism, for
example, a philosophy which reduces all things to a
" gradual summation of innumerable minute and acci-
dental material operations," and in this they are more
logical than those who seek to reconcile evolution with
design. Huxley, in his " lay sermons," referring to
Paley's avgument for design founded on the structure
of a watch, says that if the watch could be conceived

ler

admit
n con-
3 work
a few
ne tlie
e have
to its
tlieism.
s more
laintain
jlieistic,
orn„ and
^elligent
ise it is
liave a
opular ;
al tliaii
ute and
ust con-

^m,

for

igs to a
md acci-
ivG more
ion witli
rring to
tructure
onceived

rPJMlTIVE MAN.

3i9

to be a product of a less perfect structure improved
by natural selection, it would then appear to be the
" result of a method of trial and error worked by un-
intelligent agents, as likely as of the direct application
of the means appropriate to that end, by an intelligent
agent.'' This is a bold and true assertion of the
actual relation of even this modified evolution to
rational and practical theism, which requires not
merely this God ^' afar off," who has set the stone of
nature rolling and then turned His back upon it, but a
present God, whose will is the law of nature, now as in
times past. The evolutionist is really in a position of
absolute antagonism to the idea of creation, even when
held with all due allowance for the variations of created
things within certain limits.

Perhaps Paley's old illustration of the watch, as
applied by Huxley, may serve to show this as well
as any other. If the imperfect watch, useless as a
time-keeper, is the work of the contriver, and the
perfection of it is the result of unintelligent agents
working fortuitously, then it is clear that creation and
design have a small and evanescent share in the
construction of the fabric of natm^e. But is it really
so ? Can we attribute the perfection of the watch
to " accidental material operations " any more than the
first effort to produce such an instrument ? Paley
himself long ago met this view of the case, but his
argument may b^; extended by the admissions and
pleas of the evolutionists themselves. For example,
the watch is altogether a mechanical thing, and thii

350

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

fact by no means implies that it could not be made by
an intelligent and spiritual designer, yet this assump-
tion that physical laws exclude creation and design
turns up in almost every page of the evolutionists.
Paley has well shown that if the watch contained
within itself machinery for making other watches, this
would not militate against his argument. It would be
so if it could be proved that a piece of metal had
spontaneously produced an imperfect watch, and this
a more perfect one, and so on; but this is precisely
what evolutionists still require to prove with respect
both to the watch and to man. On the other hand
it is no argument for the evolution of the watch
that there may be different kinds of watches, some
more and others less perfect, and that ruder forms may
have preceded the more perfect. This is perfectly
compatible with creation and design. Evolutionists,
however, generally fail to make this distinction. Nor
would it be any proof of the evolution of the watch
to find that, as Spencer would say, it was in perfect
harmony with its environment, as, for instance, that it
kept time with the revolution of the earth, and
contained contrivances to regulate its motion under
different temperatures, unless it could be shown that
the earth's motion and the changes of temperature had
been efficient causes of the motion and the adjustments
of the watch ; otherwise the argument would look
altogether in the direction of design. Nor would it be
fair to shut up the argument of design to the idea that
the watch must have suddenly flashed into existence

PRIMITIVE MAN.

351

ide by-
sump -

iesiga

onists.

tained

;s, this

uld be

al bad

id tbis

'ecisely

respect

r band
watcb

s, some

ms may

erfectly

tionists,

Nor

watcb

perfect

tbat it

tb, and
under

wn tbat
ure bad
stments
Id look
lid it be

Idea tbat
kistence

fully formed and in motion. It would be quite as
much a creation if slowly and laboriously made by
the hand of the artificer, or if more rapidly struck
off by machinery ; and if the latter, it would not follow
that the machine which produced the watch was at all
like the watch itself. It might have been something
very different. Finally, when Spencer tries to cut at
the root of the whole of this argument, by affirming
that man has no more right to reason from himself
with regard to his Maker than a watch would have
to reason from its own mechanical structure and affirm
the like of its maker, he signally fails. If the watch
had such power of reasoning, it would be more than
mechanical, and would be intelligent like its maker;
and in any case, if thus reasoning it came to the
conclusion that it was a result of " accidental material
operations," it would be altogether mistaken. Nor
would it be nearer the truth if it held that it was
a product of spontaneous evolution from an imperfect
and comparatively useless watch that had been made
millions of years before.

We liiive taken this illustration of the watch merely
as given to us by Huxley, and without in the least
seeking to overlook the distinction between a dead
machine and a living organism; but the argument
for creation and design is quite as strong in the case of
the latter, so long as it cannot be [)roved by actual
facta to be a product of deiivation from a distinct
species. This has not been proved either in the case of
man or any other species; and so long as it has not,

352

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

the theory of creation and design is infinitely more
rational and scientific than that of evolution in any
of its forms.

But all this does not relieve us from the question,
How can species be created? — the same question
put to Paul by the sceptics of the first century with
reference to the resurrection — '^ How are the dead
raised, and with what bodies do they come?" I
do not wish to evade this question, whether applied
to man or to a microscopic animalcule, and I would
answer it with the following statements : —

1. The advocate of creation is in this matter in
no worse position than the evolutionist. This we have
already shown, and I may refer here to the fact
that Darwin himself assumes at least one primitive
form of animal and plant life, and he is confessedly
just as little able to imagine this one act of creation
as any other that may be demanded of him.

2. We are not bound to believe that all groups
of individual animals, which naturalists may call
species, have been separate products of creation. Man
himself has by some naturalists been divided into
several species ; but we may well be content to believe
the creation of one primitive form, and the production
of existing races by variation. Every zoologist and
botanist who has studied any group of animals or
plants with care, knows that there are numerous
related forms passing into each other, which some
naturalists might consider to be distinct species, but
which it is certainly not necessary to regard as distinct

PRIMITIVE MAN.

353

more
in any

lestion,
iiestion
'y with
3 dead
?" I
applied
would

itter in
we have
fche fact
)riniitive
fessedly
creation

groups
Lay call
Man
[cd into
believe
loduction
^ist and
imals or
lumerous
jh some
jies, but
distinct

products of creation. Every species is more or less
variable, and this variability may be developed by
different causes. Individuals exposed to unfavourable
conditions will be stunted and depauperated ; those
in more favourable circumstances may be improved
and enlarged. Important changes may thus take
place without transgressing the limits of the species,
or preventing a return to its typical forms ; and the
practice of confounding these more limited changes
with the wider structural and physiological differences
which separate true species is much to be deprecated.
Animals which pass through metamorphoses, or which
are developed through the instrumentality of inter-
mediate forms or " nurses,^' * are not only liable to
be separated by mistake into distinct species, but they
may, under certain circumstances, attain to a premature
inaturity, or may be fixed for a time or permanently
in an immature condition. Further, ppecies, like in-
dividuals, probably have their infancy, maturity,
and decay in gcr)logical time, and may present
differences in these several stages. It is the remainder
of true specific types left after all these sources of
error are removed, that creation has to account for;
and to arrive at this remainder, and to ascertain its
nature and amount^ will require a vast expenditure
of skilful and conscientious labour.

3. Since animals and plants have been introduced
upon our earth in long ^ uccession throughout geologic

* Mr. Mungo ronton, in his book " The Beginning," has
based a theory of derivation on this pecaHarity.

2 A

354

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

time, and this in a somowliat regular manner, we
have a right to assume that their introduction has
been in accordance with a law or plan of creation,
and that this may have included the co-operation of
many efficient causes, and may have differed in its
application to different cases. This is a very old
doctrine of theology, for it appears in the early
chapters of Genesis. There the first aquatic animals,
and man, are said to have been " created ;^^ plants
are said to have been " brought forth by the land ;'*
the mammalia are said to have been " made." In
the more detailed account of the introduction of
man in the second chapter of the same book, he
is said to have been "formed of the dust of the
ground ;" and in regard to his higher spiritual life,
to have had this "breathed inio " him by God. These
are very simple expressions, but they are very precise
and definite in the original, and they imply a diversity
in the creative work. Further, this is in accordance
with the analogy of modern science. How diverse
are the modes of production and development of
animals and plants, though all under one general law ;
and is it not likely that the modes of their first
introduction on the earth were equally diverse ?

4. Our knowledge of the conditions of the origina-
tion of species, is so imperfect that we may possibly
appear for some time to recede from, rather than
to approach to, a solution of the question. In the
infancy of chemistry, it was thought that chemical
elements could be transmuted into each other. The

PRIMITIVE MAN.

355

er, wo
on "has
'eation,
,tioii of
L in its
3ry old
e early
Einimals,
' plants
I land;'*
le." In
ction of
)ook, lie
t of tlie
tual life,
These
J precise

diversity
jcordance
diverse
iment of
leral law ;

-leir first

■0?

origina-
possibly
her than
In the
chemical
Ibher. The

progress of knowledge removed this explanation of
their origin, and has as yet failed to substitute any
other in its place. It may be the same with organic
species. The attempt to account for them by derivation
may prove fallacious, yet it may be some time before
we turn the corner, should this be possible, and enter
the path which actually leads up to their origin.

Lastly, in these circumstances our wisest course
is to take individual species, and to inquire as to
their history in time, and the probable conditions of
their introduction. Such investigations are now being
made by many quiot workers, whose labours are
comparatively little known, and many of whom
are scarcely aware of the importance of what they are
doing toward a knowledge of, at least, the conditions
of creation, wbich is perhaps all that we can at present
hope to reach.

In the next chapter we shall try to sum up what
is known as to man himself, in the conditions of
his first appearance on our earth, as made known
to us by scientific investigation, and explained on
the theory of creation as opposed to evolution.

II H

CHAPTER XV.

PKIMITIVE MAN. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN
THEORIES AS TO HIS ORIGIN — (contiilUbd).

In the previous cliapter we have seen that, on general
grounds, evolution as applied to man is • untenable ;
and that the theory of creation is more rational and
less liable to objection. We may now consider how
the geological and zoological conditions of man's
advent on the earth accord with evolution; and I
think we shall find, as might be expected,, that they
oppose great if not fatal difficulties to this hypothesis.

One of the first and most important facts with
reference to the appearance of man, is that he is
a very recent animal, dating no farther back in
geological time than the Post-glacial period, at the
close of the Tertiary and beginning of the Modern
era of geology. Further, inasmuch as the oldest
known remains of man occur along with those of
animals which still exist, and the majority of which are
probably not of older date, there is but slender proba-
bility that any much older hum^an remains will ever
be found. Now this has a bearing on the question
of the derivation of man, which, though it has not
altogether escaped the attention of the evolutionists,
has not met with sufficient consideration.

PRIMITIVE MAN.

357

MODERN

general
enable ;
•nal and
ler }iow
: man's
; and I
ciat they

thesis.
:ts with
it he is
back in
, at the

Modern
e oldest
those of
^hich are
3r proba-
will ever

question

has not
utionists,

Perhaps the oldest kno-vvn human skull is that which
has been termed the *' Engis " skull, from the cave
of Engis, in Belgium. With reference to this skull,
Professor Huxley ^has candidly admitted that it may
have belonged to an individual of one of the existing
races of men. I have a cast of it on the same shelf
with the skulls of some Algonquin Indians, from
the aboriginal Hochelaga, which preceded Montreal;
and any one acquainted with cranial characters would
readily admit that the ancient Belgian may very
well have been an American Indian ; while on the
other hand his head is not very dissimilar from that
of some modern European races. This Belgian man
is believed to have lived before the mammoth and
the cave-bear had passed away, yet he does not belong
to an extinct species or even variety of man.

Further, as stated in a previous chapter, Pictet
catalogues ninety-eight species of mammals which
inhabited Europe in the Post-glacial period. Of these
fifty-seven still exist unchanged, and the remainder
have disappeared. Not one can be shown to have
been modified into a new form, though some of
them have been obliged, by changes of temperature
and other conditions, to remove into distant and
now widely separated regions. Further, it would
seem that all the existing European mammals ex-
tended back in geological time at least as far
as man, so that since the Post-glacial period no new
species have been introduced in any way. Here
we have a series of facts of the most profound signifi-

imactc evaluation
test target (mt-3)

1.0

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358

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

cance. Fifty- seven parallel lines of descent have in
Europe run on along with man, from the Post-glacial
period, without change or material modification of any
kind. Some of them extend without change even
farther back. Thus man and his companion-mammals
present a series of lines, not converging as if they
pointed to some common progenitor, but strictly
parallel to each other. In other words, if they are
derived forms, their point of derivation from a common
type is pushed back infinitely in geological time. The
absolute duration of the human species does not affect
this argument. If man has existed only six or seven
thousand years, still at the beginning of his existence
he was as distinct from lower animals as he is now,
and shows no signs of gradation into other forms.
If h'^ has really endured since the great Glacial period,
and is to be regarded as a species of a hundred thou-
sand years' continuance, still the fact is the same, and
is, if possible, less favourable to derivation.

Similar facts meet us in other directions. I have
for many years occupied a little of my leisure in
collecting the numerous species of molluscs and other
marine animals existing in a sub -fossil state in the
Post-pliocene clays of Canada, and comparing them
with their modern successors. I do not know how
long these animals have lived. Some of them certainly
go far back into the Tertiary; and recent computations
would place even the Glacial age at a distance from us
of more than a thousand centuries. Yet after carefully
studying about two hundred species, and, of some

PEIMITIVE MAN.

359

of tliese, many hundreds of specimens, I have arrived
at the conclusion that they are absolutely unchanged.
Some of them, it is true, are variable shells, presenting
as many and great varieties as the human race itself;
yet I find that in the Post-pliocene even the varieties
of each species were the same as now, though the
great changes of temperature and elevation which have
occurred, have removed many of them to distant places,
and have made them become locally extinct in regions
over which they once spread. Here again we have an
absolute refusal, on the part of all these animals, to
admit that they are derived, or have tended to sport
into new species. This is also, it is to be observed,
altogether independent of that imperfection of the
geological record of which so much is made ; since we
have abundance of these shells in the Post -pliocene
beds, and in the modern seas, and no one doubts
their continued descent. To what does this point?
Evidently to the conclusion that all these species show
no indication of derivation, or tendency to improve,
but move back in parallel lines to some unknown
creative origin.

If it be objected to this conclusion that absence
of derivation in the Post-pliocene and Modern does
not prove that it may not previously have occurred,
the answer is, that if the evolutionist admits that
for a very long period (and this the only one of which
we have any certain knowledge, and the only one
which concerns man) derivation has been suspended,
he in effect abandons his position. It may, however.

360

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

be objected that what I liave above affirmed of species
may be affirmed of varieties, whinh are admitted to
be derived. For example, it may be said that the
negro variety of man has existed unchanged from
the earliest historic times. It is carious that those
who so often urge this argument as an evidence of the
great antiquity of man, and the slow development
of races, do not see that it proves too much. If
the negro has been the same identical negro as far
back as we can trace him, then his origin must
have been independent, and of the nature of a creation,
or else his duration as a negro must have been in-
definite. What it does provb is a fact equally obvious
from the study of Post-pliocene molluscs and other
fossils, namely, that new species tend rapidly to vary to
the utmost extent of their possible limits, and then
to remain stationary for an indefinite time. Whether
this results from an innate yet limited power of expan-
sion in the species, or from the relations between
it and external influences, it is a fact inconsisteut
with the gradual evolution of new species. Hence
we conclude that the recent origin of man, as revealed
by geology, is, in connection with the above facts, an
absolute bar to the doctrine of derivation.

A second datum furnished to this discussion by
geology and zoology is the negative one that no
link of connection is known between man and any
preceding animal. If we gather his bones and his
implements from the ancient gravel-beds and cave-
earths, we do not find them associated with any

PRIMITIVE MAN.

361

species
tted to
hat tlie
d from
t those
I of the
opment

LCll. If

» as far
n must
reation,
een in-
obvious
i other
I vary to
id then
Whether

expan-
)etween
Qsistent

Hence
evealed
icts, an

ion by-
hat no
ad any
Mid his
I cave-
h. any

creature near of kin, nor do we find any such creature
in those rich Tertiary beds which have yielded so
great harvests of mammalian bones. In the modern'
world we find nothing nearer to him than such anthro-
poid apes as the orangs and gorillas. But the apes,
however nearly allied, cannot be the ancestors of man.
If at all related to him by descent, they are his
brethren or cousins, not his parents ; for they must, on
the evolutionist hypothesis, be themselves the terminal
ends of distinct lines of derivation from previous
forms.

This difficulty is not removed by an appeal to the
imperfection of the geological record. So many
animals contemporary with man are kjiown, both at
the beginning of his geological history and in the
present world, that it would be more than marvellous
if no very near relative had ere this time been dis-
covered at one extreme or the other, or at some
portion of the intervening ages. Further, all the
animals contemporary with man in the Post-glacial
period, so far as is known, are in the same case.
Discoveries of this kind may, however, still be made,
and we may give the evolutionist the benefit of the
possibility. We may affirm, however, that in order
to gain a substratum of fact for his doctrine, he must
find somewhere in the later Tertiary period animals
much nearer to man than are the present anthropoid
apes.

This demand I make advisedly — first, because the
animals in question must precede man in geological

862

THE STORY Oi' THE EARTH AND MAN.

time; and secondly, because the apes_, even if tliey
preceded man, instead of being contemporary with
him, are not near enough to fulfil the required con-
ditions. What is the actual fact with regard to these
animals, so confidently aflfirmed to resemble some
not very remote ancestors of ours ? Zoologically they
are not varieties of the same species with man — they are
not species of the same genus, nor do they belong
to genera of the same family, or even to families of the
same order. These animals are at least ordinally
distinct from us in those grades of groups in which
naturalists arrange animals. I am well aware that
an attempt has been made to group man, apes, and
lemurs in one order of " Primates,'^ and thus to reduce
their difference to the grade of the family; but as
put by its latest and perhaps most able advocate,
the attempt is a decided failure. One has only to read
the concluding chapter of Huxley^s new book on the
anatomy of the vertebrates to be persuaded of this,
more especially if we can take into consideration, in
addition to the many differences indicated, others
which exist but are not mentioned by the author.
Ordinal distinctions among animals are mainly de-
pendent on grade or rank, and are not to be broken
down by obscure resemblances of internal anatomy,
having no relation to this point, but to physiological
features of very secondary importance. Man must, on
all grounds, rank much higher above the apes than
they can do above any other order of mammals.
Even if we refuse to recognise all higher grounds

PRIMITIVE MAN.

363

L if tliey
ary with
red con-
to these
)le some
lally they
-they are
y belong
es of the
ordinally
in which
rare that
ipes, and
to reduce
; but as
advocate,
ly to read
)k on the
1 of this,
ration, in
d, others
e author,
ainly de-
)e broken
anatomy,
siological
must, on
ipes than
mammals,
grounds

of classification, and condescend, with some great
zoologists of our time, to regard nature with the eyes
of mere anatomists, or in the same way that a brick-
layer's apprentice may be supposed to regard distinc-
tions of architectural styles, we can arrive at no otlier
conclusion. Let us imagine an anatomist, liinisolf
neither a man nor a monkey, but a being of some
other grade, and altogether ignorant of the higher
ends and powers of our species, to contemplate merely
the skeleton of a man and that of an ape. He
must necessarily deduce therefrom an ordinal distinc-
tion, even on the one ground of the correlations and
modifications of structure implied in the erect position.
It would indeed be sufficient for this purpose to
consider merely the balancing of the skull on the neck,
or the structure of the foot, and the consequences
fairly deducible from either of them. Nay, were such
imaginary anatomist a derivotionist, and ignorant of
the geological date of his specimens, and as careless
of the differences in respect to brain as some of his
human confreres, he might, referring to the less
specialised condition of man's teeth and foot, conclude,
not thpt man is an improved ape, but that the ape
is a specialised and improved man. He would be
obliged, however, even on this hypothesis, to admit that
there must be a host of missing links. Nor would
these be supplied by the study of the living races of
men, because these want even specific distinctness,
and differ from the apes essentially in those points on
which an ordinal distinction can be fairly based.

364

THE* STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

This isolated position of man tlirougliout the whole
period of his history, grows in importance the more
that it is studied, and can scarcely be the result of
any accident of defective preservation of intermediate
forms. In the meantime, when taken in connection
with the fact previously stated, that man is equally
isolated when he first appears on the stage, it deprives
evolution, as applied to our species, of any precise
scientific basis, whether zoological or geological.

I do not attach any importance whatever, in this
connection, to the likeness in type or plan between
man and other mammals. Evolutionists are in the
habit of taking for granted that this implies derivation,
and of reasoning as if the fact that the human skeleton
is constructed on the same principles as that of an
ape or a dog, must have some connection with a
common ancestry of these animals. This is, however,
as is usual with them, begging the question. Creation,
as well as evolution, admits of similarity of plan.
When Stephenson constructed a locomotive, he availed
himself of the principles and of many of the con-
trivances of previous engines ; but this does not imply
that he took a mine-engine, or a marine -engine_, and
converted it into a railroad-engine. Type or plan,
whether in nature or art, may imply merely a mental
evolution of ideas in the maker, not a derivation of
one object from another.

But while man is related in his type of structure to
the higher animals, his contemporaries, it is unde-
niable that there are certain points in which he con-

PRIMITIVE MAN.

365

tlie whole
tlie more
I result of
serine diate
connection
is equally
it deprives
ay precise
ical.

er, in this
n between
are in the
derivation,
,n skeleton
that of an
on with a
i, however,
Creation,
of plan,
he availed
■ the con-
not imply
gine, and
»e or plan,
f a mental
rivation of

tructure to
t is unde-
3h he con-

stitutes a new cype ; and if this consideration were
properly weighed, I believe it would induce zoolo-
gists, notwithstanding the proverbial humility of the
true man of science, to consider themselves much
more widely separated from the brutes than even by
the ordinal distinction above referred to. I would
state this view of the matter thus : — It is in the
lower animals a law that the bodily frame is provided
with all necessary means of defence and attack, and
with all necessary protection against external influ-
ences and assailants. In a very few cases, we have
partial exceptions to this. A hermit-crab, for in-
stance, has the hinder part of its body unprotected;
and has, instead of armour, the instinct of using the
cast-off shells of molluscs; yet even this animal has
the usual strong claws of a crustacean, for defence
in front. There are only a very few animals in which
instinct thus takes the place of physical contrivances
for defence or attack, and in these we find merely
the usual unvarying instincts of the irrational animal.
But in man, that which is the rare exception in all
other animals, becomes the rule. He has no means
of escape from danger, compared with those enjoyed
by other animals — no defensive armour, no natural
protection from cold or heat, no effective weapons
for attacking other animals. These disabilities would
make him the most helpless of creatures, especially
when taken in connection with his slow growth and
long immaturity. His safety and his dominion over
other animals, are secured by entirely new means,

■ vi:
I

3G6

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

constituting a ^^ new departure " in creation. Contri-
vance and inventive power, enabling him to utilise
the objects and forces of nature, replace in him the
material powers bestowed on lower animals. Obvi-
ously the structure of the human being is related to
this, and so related to it as to place man in a different
category altogether from any other animal.

This consideration makes the derivation of man
from brutes difficult to imagine. None of these
latter appear even able to conceive or understand
the modes of life and action of man. They do not
need to attempt to emulate his powers, for they are
themselves provided for in a different manner. They
have no progressive nature like that of man. Their
relations to things without are altogether limited to
their structures and instincts. Man's relations are
limited only by his powers of knowing and under-
standing. How then is it possible to conceive of an
animal which is, so to speak, a mere living machine,
parting with the physical contrivances necessary to
its existence, and assuming the new role of intelligence
and free action ?

This becomes still more striking if we adopt the
view usually taken by evolutionists, that primitive
man was a ferocious and carnivorous creature, warring
with and overcoming the powerful animals of the Post-
glacial period, and contending with the rigours of a
severe climate. This could certainly not be inferred
from his structure, interpreted by that of the lower
animals, which would inevitably lead to the conclusion

PRIMITIVE MAN.

367

Contri-
to utilise
. him the
;. Obvi-
'clated to
1 dififerent

i of man
of these
nderstand
3y do not
• they are
er. They
m. Their
limited to
itions are
nd under-
eive of an
machine,
3essary to
itelligence

adopt the
primitive

3, warring

the Post-

oiirs of a

! inferred

the lower

conclusion

that he must have been a harmless and frugivorous
creature, fitted to subsist only in the mildest climates,
and where exempt from the attacks of the more
powerful carnivorous animals. No one reasoning on
the purely physical constitution of man, could infer
that he might be a creature more powerful and
ferocious than the lion or the tiger.

It is also worthy of mention that the existence of
primitive man as a savage hunter is, in another point
of view, absolutely opposed to the Darwinian idea of
his origin from a frugivorous ape. These creatures,
while comparatively inofiensive, conform to the general
law of lower animals in having strong jaws and power-
ful canines for defence, hand-like feet to aid them in
securing food, and escaping from their enemies, and
hairy clothing to protect them from cold and heat.
On the hypothesis of evolution we might conceive
that if these creatures were placed in some Eden of
genial warmth, peace, and plenty, which rendered
those appliances unnecessary, they might gradually
lose these now valuable structures, from want of
ne'jessity to use them. But, on the contrary, if such
creatures were obliged to contend against powerful
enemies, and to feed on flesh, all analogy weald lead
us to believe that they would become in their struc-
tures more like carnivorous beasts than men. On
the other hand, the anthropoid apes, in the circum-
stances in which we find them, are not only as un-
progressive as other animals, but little fitted to extend
their range, and less gifted with the power of adapt-

3G8

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

ing themselves to new conditions tlian many other
mammals less resembling man in ei ernal form.

On the Darwinian theory, such primitive men as
geology reveals to us would be more likely to have
originated from bears than apes, and we would be
tempted to wish that man should become extinct, and
that the chance should be given to the mild chim-
panzee or orang to produce by natural selection an
improved and less ferocious humanity for the future.

The only rational hypothesis of human origin in the
present state of our knowledge of this subject is, that
man must have been produced under some circum-
stances in which animal food was not necessary to
him, in which he was exempt from the attacks of
the more formidable animals, and in less need of pro-
tection from the inclemency of the weather than is
the case with any modern apes ; and that his life as a
hunter and warrior began after he had by his know-
ledge and skill secured to himself the means of sub-
duing natare by fo]*ce and cunning. This implies
that man was from the first a rational being, capable
of understanding nature, and ib accords much more
nearly with the old story of Eden in the book of
Genesis, than with any mou ii theories of evolution.

It is due to Mr. Wallace — who, next to Darwin,
has been a leader among English derivationists — to
state that he perceives this difficulty. As a believer
in natural selection, however, it } '^sents itself to his
mind in a peculiar form. He perceives that so soon
as, by the process of evolution, man became a rational

PRIMITIVE MAN.

3G9

my other
m.

3 men as
J to have
would be
tinct, and
ild chim-
ection an
future,
gin in the
ct is, that
3 circum-
sessary to
ittacks of
sd of pro-
^r than is
s life as a
lis know-
ls of sub-
s implies
, capable
uch more

book of
evolution.

Darwin,
Dnists — to
1 believer
elf to his
t so soon
a rational

creature, and acquired his social sympathies, physical
evolution must cease, and must be replaced by inven-
tion, contrivance, and social organisation. Tliis is at
once obvious and undeniable, and it follows that the
natural selection applicable to man, as man, must
relate purely to hiS mental and moral im] ovement.
Wallace, however, fails to comprehend the full sig-
nificance of this feature of the case. Given, a man
destitute of clothing, he may never acquire such
clothing by natural selection, because he will provide
an artificial substitute. He will evolve not into a
hairy animal, but into a weaver and a tailor. Given,
a man destitute of claws and fangs, he will not ac-
quire these, but will manufacture weapons. But then,
on the hypothesis of derivation, this is not what is
given us as the raw material of man, but instead of
this a hairy ape. Admitting the power of natural
selection, we might understand how this ape could
become more hairy, or acquire more formidable
weapons, as it became more exposed to cold, or more
under the necessity of using animal food; but that
it should of itself leave this natural line of develop-
ment and enter on the entirely different line of mental
progress is not conceivable, except as a result of creative
intervention.

Absolute materialists may make light of this diffi-
culty, and may hold that this would imply merely a
change of brain; but even if we admit this, they
fail to show of what use such better brain would
be to a creature retaining the bodily form and in-

2 B

370

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

stincts of the ape, or liow such better brain could
be acquired. But evolutionists are not necessarily
absolute materialists, and Darwin himself labours to
show that the reasoning self-conscious mind, and even
the moral sentiments of man, might be evolved from
rudiments of such powers, perceptible in the lower
animals. Here, however, he leaves the court of
natural science, properly so called, and summons us to
appear before the judgment-seat of philosophy ; and as
naturalists are often bad mental philosophers, and phi-
losophers have often small knowledge of nature, some
advantage results, in the first instance, to the doubtful
cause of evolution. Since, however, mental science
makes much more of the distinctions between the
mind of man and the instinct of animals than natu-
ralists, accustomed to deal merely with the external
organism, can be expected to do, the derivationist,
when his plea is fairly understood, is quite as certain
to lose his cause as when tried by geology and
zoology. He might indeed be left to be dealt
with by mental science on its own ground; and as
our province is to look at the matter from the stand-
point of natural history, we might here close our
inquiry. It may, however, be proper to give some
slight notion of the width of the gulf to be passed
when we suppose the mechanical, unconscious, repeti-
tive nature of the animal to pass over into the con-
dition of an intellectual and n^oral being.

If we take, as the most favourable case for the
evolutionist, the most sagacious of the lower animals

IAN.

PRIMITIVE MAN.

371

brain could
it nocessarily
ilf labours to
ind, and even
evolved from
in the lower
the court of
imraons us to
ophy ; and as
lers, and phi-
nature, some
) the doubtful
lental science
between the
Is than natu-
the external
derivationist,
ite as certain
geology and
to be dealt
)und; and as
om the stand-
}ve close our
o give some
to be passed
3cious, repeti-
into the con-
case for the
ower animals

— the dog, for example — and compare it with the
least elevated condition of the human mind, as ob-
served in the child or the savage, we shall find that
even here there is something more than that ''im-
mense difference in degree," which Darwin himself
admits. Making every allowance for similarities iu
external sense, in certain instinctive powers and appe-
tites ; and even in the power of comparison, and in
certain })assions and affections ; and admitting, though
we cannot be quite certain of this, that in these man
differs from animals only in degree; there remain
other and more important differences, amounting to
the possession, on the part of man, of powers not
existing at all in animals. Of this kind are — first,
the faculty of reaching abstract and general truth,
and consequently of reasoning, in the proper sense
of the term; secondly, in connection w^.h this, the
power of indefinite increase in knowledge, and in
deductions therefrom leading to practical results;
thirdly, the power of expressing thought in speech;
fourthly, the power of arriving at ideas of right and
wrong, and thus becoming a responsible and free
agent. Lastly, we have the conception of higher spi-
ritual intelligence, of supreme power and divinity, and
the consequent feeling of religious obligation. These
powers are evidently different in kind, rather than in
degree, from those of the brute, and cannot be con-
ceived to have arisen frotn the latter, more especially
as one of the distinctive characters of these is their
purely cyclical, repetitive, and unprogressive nature.

tmm

372

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

i .

Sir John Lubbock lias, by a great accumulation of
facts, or supposed facts, bearing on the low mental
condition of savages, endeavoured to bridge over this
chasm. It is obvious, however, from his own data,
that the rudest savages are enabled to subsist only
by the exercise of intellectual gifts far higher than
those of animals; and that if these gifts were
removed from them, they would inevitably perish.
It is equally clear that even the lowest savages are
moral agents; and that not merelj' in their religious
beliefs and conceptions of good and evil, but also
in their moral degradation, they show capacities not
possessed by the brutes. It is also true that most
of these savages are quite as little likely to be speci-
mens of primitive man as are the higher races ; and
that many of them have fallen to so low a level as
to be scarcely capable, of themselves, of rising to a
condition of culture and civilisation. Thus they are
more likely to be degraded races, in " the eddy and
backwater of humanity,^' than examples of the
sources from whence it flowed. And here it must
not be lost sight of, that a being like man has
capacities for degradation commensurate with his
capacities for improvement; and that at any point o
his history we may have to seek the analogues o
primeval man, rather in the average, than the extremes
of the race.

Before leaving this subject, it may be well to con-
sider the fact, that the occurrence of such a being as
man in the last stnges of the world's history is, in

PltlillTlVE MAX.

373

alation of
w mental
over this
Dwn data,
bsist only
^her tlian
ifts were
ly perish.
,vages are
' religious
but also
icities not
that most
» be speci-
•aces; and
a level as
sing to a
they are
eddy and
of the
e it must
man has
with his
y point o
alogues o
extremes

11 to con-
% being as
ory is, in

itself, an argument for the existence of a Supreme
Creator. Man is himself an image and likeness of
God ; and the fact that he can establish relations with
nature l. round him, so as to understand and control
its powers, implies either that he has been evolved as
a soul of nature, by its own blind development, or
that he has originated in the action of a higher being
related to man. The former supposition has been
above shown to be altogether improbable ; so that we
are necessarily thrown back upon the latter. We
must thus resrard man himself as the hiofhest known
work of a spiritual creator, and must infer that he
rightly uses his reason when he infers from nature
the power and divinity of God.

The last point that I think necessary to bring for-
ward here, is the information which geology gives as
to the locality of the introduction of man. There can
be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate
regions of the old continent belonors the honour of
being the cradle of humanity. In these regions are
the oldest historical monuments of our race; here
geology finds the most ancient remains of human
beings; here also seems to be the birthplace of the
fauna and flora most useful and dongenial to man;
and here he attains to his highest pitch of mental
and physical development. This, it is true, by no
means accords with the methods of the dorivationists.
On their theory we should search for the origin of
man rather in those regions where he is most de-
pauperated and degraded, and where his struggles

374

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

for existence are most severe. But it is surely
absurd to affirm of any species of animal or plant
that it must have originated at the limits of its
range, where it can scarcely exist at all. On the
contrary, common sense as well as science requires
us to believe that species must have originated in
those central parts of their distribution where they
enjoy the most favourable circumstances, and must
have extended themselves thence as far as external
conditions would permit. One of the most wretched
varieties of the human race, and as near as any to
the brutes, is that which inhabits Tierra del Fuego,
a country which scarcely affords any of the means
for the comfortable sustenance of man. Would it
not be absolutely impossible that man should have
originated in such a country ? Is it not certain, on
the contrary, that the Fuegian is merely a degraded
variety of the aboriginal American race ? Precisely
the same argument applies to the Austral negro and
the Hottentot. They are all naturally the most
aberrant varieties of man, as being at the extreme
range of his possible extension, and placed in con-
ditions unfavourable, either because of unsuitable
climatal or organic associations. It is true that the
regions most favourable to the anthropoid apes, and
in which they may be presumed to have originated,
are by no means the most favourable to man; but
this only makes it the less likely that man could
have been derived from such a parentage.

While, therefore, the geological date of the appear-

PRIMITIVE MAN.

375

is surely

or plant

.ts of its

On the

requires

^inated in

bere they

a-nd must

I external

wretched

18 any to

3I Fuego,

ae means

Would it

luld have

jrtaiuj on

degraded

Precisely

legro and

he most

extreme

in con-

nsuitable

that the

pes, and

iginated,

lan; but

m could

appear-

ance of man, the want of any link of connection be-
tween him and any preceding animal, and his dis-
similar bodily and mental constitution from any crea-
tures contemporary with him, render his derivation
from apes or other inferior animals in the highest
degree improbable, the locality of his probable origin
confirms this conclusion in the strongest manner. It
also shows that man and the higher apes are not
likely to have originated in the same regions, or
under the same conditions, and that the conditions
of human origin are rather the coincidence of suitable
climatal and organic surroundings than the occurrence
of animals closelv related in structure to man.

Changes of conditions in geological time will not
meet this difficulty. They might lead to migrations,
as they have done in the case of both plants and
animals, but not to anything further. The hyena,
whose bones are found in the English caves, has
been driven by geological changes to South Africa,
but he is still the same hyena. The reindeer which
once roamed in France is still the reindeer in Lap-
land ; and though, under different geological con-
ditions we might imagine the creature to have origi-
nated in the south of Europe, a country not now
suitable to it, this would neither give reason to
believe that any animal now living in the south of
Europe was its progenitor, nor to doubt that it still
remains unchanged in its new habitat. Indeed, the
absence of anything more than merely varietal
change in man and his companion-animals, in con-

376

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

sequeuce of the geological changes and migrations
of the Modern period, furnishes, as already stated,
a strong if not conclusive argument against deriva-
tion ; which here, as elsewhere, only increases our
actual difficulties, while professing to extricate us
from them.

The arguments iu the preceding pages cover only
■a small portion of the extensive field opened up by
this subject. They relate, however, to some of the
prominent and important points, and I trust are
sufficient to show that, as applied to man, the theory
of derivation merely trifles with the great question
of his origin, without approaching to its solution.
I may now, in conclusion, sketc the leading fea-
tures of primitive man, as he appears to us through
the mist of the intervening ages, and compare the
picture with that presented by the oldest historical
records of our race.

Two pictures of primeval man are in our time
before the world. One represents him as the pure
and happy inhabitant of an Eden, free from all the
ills that have afflicted his descendants, and revelling
in the bliss of a golden age. This is the representa-
tion of Holy Scripture, and it is also the dream of
all the poetry and myth of the earlier ages of the
world. It is a beautiful picture, whether we regard
it as founded on historical fact, or derived from God
Himself, or from the yearnings of the higher spiritual
nature of man. The other picture is a joint product

PRIMITIVE MAX.

0-7

ligrations
y stated,
it deriva-
eases our
Ticate us

over only

)d up by

le of tlie

trust are

be theory

question

solution.

iing fea-

tlirougli

ipare the

historical

pur time
he pure
all the
revelling
)resenta-
Iream of
of the
regard
om God
spiritual
product

of modern philosophy and of antiquarian research.
It presents to us a coarse and filthy savage, repulsive
in feature, gross in habits, warring with his fellow-
savages, and warring yet more remorselessly with
every living thing he could destroy, tearing half-
cooked flesh, and cracking marrow-bones v/ith stone
hammers, sheltering himself in damp and smoky
caves, with no eye heavenward, and with only the
first rude beginnings of the most important arts of
life.

Both pictures may contain elements of truth, for
man is a many-sided monster, made up of things
apparently incongruous, and presenting here and
there features out of which either picture may be
composed. Evolutionists, and especially those who
believe in the struggle for existence and natural
selection, ignore altogether the evidence of the golden
age of humanity, and refer us to the rudest of modern
savages as the types of primitive man. Those who
believe in a Divine origin for our race, perhaps dwell
too much on the higher spiritual features of the
Edenic state, to the exclusion of its more practical
aspects, and its relations to the condition of the more
barbarous races. Let us examine more closely both
representations ; and first, that of creation.

The Glacial period, with its snows and ice, had
passed away, and the world rejoiced in a sjiring-time
of renewed verdure and beauty. Many great and
formidable beasts of the Tertiary time had disap-
peared in the revolutions which had occurred, and

378

THE STORY OF THE EAETH AND MAN.

the existing fauna of the northern hemisphere had
been established on the land. Then it was that man
was introduced by an act of creative power. In the
preceding changes a region of Western Asia had
been prepared for his residence. It was a table-land
at the head watersj of -he rivers that flow into the
Euxine, the Caspian, and the Persian Gulf. Its
climate was healthy and bracing, v/ith enough of
variety to secure vigour, and not so inclement as to
exact any artificial provision for clothing or shelter.
Its flora afforded abundance of edible fruits, and was
rich in all the more beautiful forms of plant life ;
while its clear streamc, alluvial soil, and undulating
surface, aff*orded every variety of station and all that
is beautiful in scenery. It was not infested with the
more powerful and predacious quadrupeds, and its
geographical relations were such as to render this
exemption permanent. In this paradise man found
ample supplies of wholesome and nutritious food.
His requirements as to shelter were met by the
leafy bowers he could weave. The streams of Eden
aff'orded gold which he could fashion for use and
ornament, pearly shells for vessels, and agate for his
few and simple cutting instruments. He required
no clothing, and knew of no use for it. His body
was the perfection and archetype of the vertebrate
form, full of grace, vigour, and agility. His hands
enabled him to avail himself of all the products of
nature for use and pleasure, and to modify and adapt
them according to his inclination. His intelligence,

JJ.

PKIMITIVE MAN.

379

jpliere had
s that man
T. In the
Asia had
table-land
w into the
jrulf. Its
enough of
nent as to
or shelter.
s, and was
plant life ;
undulating
id all that
d with the
s, and its
snder this
Qan found
ious food.
it by the
of Eden
use and
te for his
required
His body
vertebrate
lis hands
oducts of
md adapt
elligence.

along with his manual powers, allowed him to ascer-
tain the properties of things, to plan, invent, and
apply in a manner impossible to any other creature.
His gift of speech enabled him to imitate and reduce
to systematic language the sounds of nature, and to
connect them with the thoughts arising in his own
mind, and thus to express their relations and signifi-
cance. Above all, his Maker had breathed into him
a spiritual nature akin to His own, whereby he
became different from all other animals, and the
very shadow and likeness of God; capable of rising
to abstractions and general conceptions of truth and
goodness, and of holding communion with his Creator.
This was man Edenic, the man of the golden age, as
sketched in the two short narratives of the earlier
part of Genesis, which not only conform to the general
traditions of our race on the subject, but bear to any
naturalist who will read them in their original dress,
internal evidence of being contemporary, or very
nearly so, with the state of things to which they
relate.

" And God said, ' Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness ; and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over
the birds of the air, and over the herbivora, and over all the
land.' And God blessed them, and said unto them, ' Be fruit-
ful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'

"And the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and
man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a
garden, eastward in Eden, and there He placed the man whom
He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God
to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for

380

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

food. And a river went out of Eden to water tlio garden, and
parted from thence, becoming four heads (of great rivers).
The name of the first is Pison, compassing the whole land of
Chavila, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is
good ; there is (also) pearl and agate. . . . And the Lord
God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden, ^o
cultivate it and to take care of it."

Before leaving this most ancient and most beautiful
history, we may say that it implies several things of
much importance to our conceptions of primeval man.
It implies a centre of creation for man, and a group of
companion animals and plants, and an intention to
dispense in his case with any struggle for existence.
It implies, also, that man was not to be a lazy savage,
but a care-taker and utiliser, by his mind and his
bodily labour, of the things given to him ; and it also
implies an intelligent submission on his part to his
Mpker, and spiritual appreciation of His plans and in-
tentions. It further implies that man was, in process
of time, from Eden, to colonise the earth, a> d subdue
its wildr^-css, so as to extend the conditions of Eden
widely over its surface. Lastly, a part of the record
not quoted above, but necessary to the consistency of
the story, implies that, in virtue of his spiritual nature,
and en certain conditions, man, though in bodily frame
of the earth earthy, like the other animals, was to be
exempted from the common law of mortality which
had all along prevailed, and which continued to prevail,
even among the animals of Eden. Further, if man fell
from this condition into that of the savage of the age
of stone, it must have been by the obscuration of his

JJ.

rRnilTIVE MAN.

381

! garden, and
Tcat rivers),
rholo land of
that land is
.nd the Lord
1 of Eden, to

st beautiful

1 things of

meval man.

a group of

atention to

' existence.

azy savage,

id and his

and it also

part to his

ms and in-

in process

d subdue

ns of Eden

he record

sistency of

ual nature,

)dily frame

was to be

lity which

to prevail,

if man fell

af the age

tion of his

spiritual nature under that which is merely nnimal ; in
other words, by his ceasing to be spiritual and in com-
r.i union with God, and becoming practically a sensual
materialist. That this actually happened is asserted by
the Scriptural story, but its details would take us too
far from our present subject. Let us now turn to the
other picture — that presented by the theory of strug-
gle for existence and derivation from lower animals.

It introduces us first to an ape, akin perhaps to the
modern orang or gorilla, but unknown to us as yet by
any actual remains. This creature, after living for an
indefinite time in the rich forests of the Miocene and
earlier Pliocene periods, was at length subjected to the
gradually increasii>g rigours of the Glacial age. Its
vegetable food and its leafy shelter failed it, and it
learned to nestle among such litter as it could collect
in dens and caves, and to seize and devour such weaker
animals as it could o /ertake and master. At the same
time, its lower extremities, no longer used for climbing
trees, but for walking on the ground, gained in
strength and size ; its arms diminished ; and its
development to maturity being delayed by the in-
tensity of the struggle for existence, its brain en-
larged, it became more cunning and sagacious, and
even learned to use weapons of wood or stone to
destroy its victims. So it gradually grew into a fierce
and terrible creature, "neither beast nor human,"
combining the habits of a bear and the agility of a
monkey with some glimmerings of the cunning and
resources of a savage.

382

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

When tlio Glacial period passed away, our nameless
simian man, or manlike ape, m'glit naturally bo sup-
posed to revert to its original condition, and to estab-
lish itself as of old in the new forests of the Modern
period. For some unknown reason, however, perhaps
because it had gone too far in the path of improve-
ment to bo able to turn back, this reversion did not
take place. On the contrary, the ameliorated circum-
stances and wider range cf thu new continents enabled
it still further to improve. Ease and abundance per-
fected what struggle and privation had begun ; it
added to the rude arts of the Glacial time ; it parted
with the shaggy hair now unnecessary; its features
became softer; and it returned in part to vegetable
food. Language sprang up from the attempt to arti-
culate natural sounds. Fire-making was invented and
new arts arose. At length the spiritual nature, poten-
tially present in the creature, was awakened by some
access of fear, or some grand and terrible physical
phenomenon ; the idea of a higner intelligence was
struck out, and the descendant of apes became a
superstitious and idolatrous savage. How much
trouble and discussion would have been saved, had
he been aware of his hun.bie origin, and never enter-
tained the vain imagination that he was a child of
God, rather than a mere product of physical evolution !
It ir, indeed, curious, that at this point evolutionism,
like theism, has its "fall of man;'' for surely the
awakening of the religious sense, and of the know-
ledge of good and evil, must on tuat theory be so

PRnriTlVE MAN.

383

designated, since it subverted in the case of man the
previous regidar operation of natural selection, and
introduced all that debasing superstition, priestly
domination, and religious controversy which have
been among the chief curses of our race, and which
are doubly accursed if, as the evolutionist believes,
they are not the ruins of something nobler and holier,
but the more gratuitous, vain, and useless imaginings
of a creature who should have been content to cat and
drink and die, without hope or fear^ like the brutes
from which he sprang.

These are at present our alternative sketches : the
genesis of theism, and the genesis of evolution. After
the argument in previous pages, it is unnecessary
here to discuss their relative degrees of probability.
If we believe in a personal spiritual Creator, the first
becomes easy and natural, as it is also that which best
accords with history and tradition. If, on the con-
trary, we reject all these, and accept as natural laws
the postulates of the evolutionists which we have
already discussed, we may become believers in the
latter. Tlie only remaining point is to inquire as to
which explains best the actual facts of humanity as we
find them. This is a view of which much has been
made by evolutionists, and it therefore merits consider-
ation. But it is too extensive to be fully treated of
here, and I must content myself with a few illustra-
tions of the failure of the theory of derivation to
explain some of the most important features presented
by even the ruder races of men.

384

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

One of these is the belief in a future state of exist-
ence beyond this life. This belongs purely to the
spiritual nature of man. It is not taught by physical
nature, yet its existence is probably universal, and it
lies near the foundation of all religious beliefs. Lartet
has described to us the sepulchral cave of Aurignac,
in which human skeletons, believed to be of Post-
glacial date, were associated with remains of funeral
feasts, and with indications of careful burial, and with
provisions laid up for the use of the dead. Lyell well
remarks on this, " If we have here before us, at the
northern base of the Pyrenees, a sepulchral vault with
skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and
relatives to their last resting-place — if we have also at
the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and
within it indications of viands destined for the use of
the departed on their way to a land of spirits ; while
among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in
other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion,
the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros — we have at last
succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial,
and more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to
times long anterior to those of history and tradition.
Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of
that remote era, he still deserved,. by cherishing hopes
of a hereafter, the epithet of ' noble,' which Dryden
gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as
the primitive condition of our race.'' *

In like manner, in the vast American continent^ all

* " Antiquity of Man," p. 192.

ite of exist-
rely to tlie
by physical
;rsal, and it
3fs. Lartet
f Aurignac,
)e of Post-
3 of funeral
il, and with

Lyell well
3 us^ at the
vault with
'riends and
lavo also at
feasts, and
' the use of
irits; while
lerewith in

cave-lion,
ave at last
3 of burial,
re state, to
. tradition.
B savage of
ling hopes
ch Dryden
himself as

itinent, all

PRIMITIVE MAN.

385

its long isolated and widely separated tribes, many of
them in a state of lowest barbarism, and without any
external ritual of religious worship, believed in happy
hunting-grounds in the spirit-land beyond the grave,
and the dead warrior was buried with his most useful
weapons and precious ornaments.

" Bring here the last gifts ; and with them
The last lament be said.
Let all that pleased and yet may please,
Be buried with the dead "

was no unmeaning funeral song, but involved the
sacrifice of the most precious and prized objects, that
the loved one might enter the new and untried state
provided for its needs. Even the babe, whoso life is
usually accounted of so small value by savage tribes,
was buried by the careful mother with ° precious
strings of wampum, that had cost more months of
patient labour than the days of its short life, that it
might purchase the fostering care of the inhabitants
of that unknown yet surely bolieved-in region of
immortality. This

" —wish that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the sou

Is it likely to have germinated in the brain of an
ape ? and if so, of what possible use would it be in
the struggle of a merely physical existence? Is it
not rai,her the remnant of a better spiritual life— a
remembrance of the tree of life that grew in the

2 c

386

TrIE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

paradise of God, a link of connection of the spiritual
nature in man with a higher Divine Spirit above ?
Life and immortality, it is true, were brought to light
by Jesus Christ, but they existed as beliefs more or
less obscure from the first, and farmed the basis for
good and evil of the religions of the world. Around
this idea were gathered multitudes of collateral be-
liefs and religious obser\ ances ; feasts and festivals
for the dead ; worship of dead heroes and ances-
tors; priestly intercessions and sacrifices for the
dead; costly rites of sepulture. Vain and withorr
foundation many of these have no doubt been, but
they have formed a universal and costly testimony to
an instinct of immortality, dimly glimmering even in
the breast of the savage, and glowing with higher
brightness in the soul of the Christian, but separated
by an impassable gulf from anything derivable from
a brute ancestry.

The theistic picture of primeval man is in har-
mony with the fact that men, as a whole, are, and
always have been, believers in God. The evolu-
tionist picture is not. If man had from the first
not merely a physical and intellectual nature, but a
spiritual nature as well, we can understand how he
came into relation with God, and how through all
his vagaries and corruptions he clings to this relation
in one form or another ; but evolution afibrds no link
of connection of this kind. It holds God to be un-
knowable even to the cultivated intellect of philosophy,
and perceives no use in ideas with relation to Him,

?5'

PRIMITIVE MAN.

387

whicli according to it must necessarily be ffillacious.
It leaves the theistic notions of mankind without
explanation, and it will not serve its purpose to assert
that some few and exceptional families of men have
no notion of a God. Even admitting this, and it is at
best very doubtful, it can form but a trifling exception
to a general truth.

It appears to me that this view of the cp 3e is very
clearly put in the Bible, and it is curiously illustrate
by a recent critique of "Mr. Darwin's Critics,*
by Professor Huxley in the Contemjwrani Revieiv.
Mr. Mivart, himself a derivationist, but differing in
some points from Darwin, had aflSrmed, in the spirit
rather of a Romish theologian than of a Biblical
student or philosopher, that " acts unaccompanied by
mental acts of conscious will'* are '^absolutely des-
titute of the most incipient degree of goodness.''
Huxley well replies, " It is to my understanding
extremely hard to reconcile Mr. Mivart's dictum with
that noble summary of the whole duty of man, ' Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with i I thy soul, and with all thy strength ; and
thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' Accord-
ing to Mr. Mivart's definition, the man who loves
God and his neighbour, and, out of sheer love and
affection for both, does all he can to please them, is"
nevertheless destitute of a particle of real goodness."
Huxley's reply deserves to be pondered by certain
moralists and theologians whose doctrine savours of
the leaven of the Pharisees, but neither Huxley nor

388

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

his opponent see the higher truth that in the love of
God we have a principle far nobler and more God-
like and less animal than that of mere duty. Man
primeval, according to the doctrine of Genesis, was,
by simple love and communion with his God, placed
in the position of a spiritual being, a member of a
higher family than that of the animal. The " know-
ledge of good and evil '* which he acquired later, and
on which is based the law of conscious duty, was a less
happy attainment, which placed him on a lower level
than that of the unconscious love and goodness of
primal innocence. No doubt man's sense of right
and wrong is something above the attainment of
animals, and which could never have sprung from
them ; but still more is this the case with his direct
spiritual relation to God, which, whether it rises to
the inspiration of the prophet or the piety of the
Christian, or sinks to the rude superstition of the
savage, can be no part of the Adam of the dust
but only of the breath of life breathed into him from
above.

That man should love his fellow-man may not seem
strange. Certain social and gregarious and family
instincts exist among the lower animals, and Darwin
very ably adduces these as akin to the similar affections
of man ; yet even in the law of love of our neighbour,
as enforced by Christ's teaching, it is easy to see that
we have something beyond animal nature. But this
becomes still more distinct in the love of God. Man
was the '^ shadow and likeness of God/' says the old

PRIMITIVE MAN.

389

bhe love of
nore God-
uty. Man
aesis, was,
od, placed
ruber of a
e "know-
later, and
was a less
ower level
odness of
of right
nment of
mg from
his direct
t rises to
y of the
u of the
the dust
liim from

not seem
^d family
I Darwin
ifPections
)ighbour,
see that
But this
d. Man
the old

record in Genesis — the shadow that clings to the sub-
stance and is inseparable from it, the likeness that
represents it visibly to the eyes of men, and of the
animals that man rules over. Primeval man could
" hear in the evening breeze the voice of God, walking
to and fro in the garden." What mere animal ever
had or could attain to such an experience ?

But if we turn from the Edenic picture of man in
harmony with Heaven — "owning a father, when he
owned a God '^ — to man as the slave of superstition ;
even in this terrible darkness of mistaken faith, of
which it may be said,

" Fear makes her devils, and weak faith her gods,
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust.
Whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust,"

we see the ruins, at least, of that sublime love of-
God. The animal clings to its young with a natural
affection, as great as that of a human mother for her
child, but what animal ever thought of throwing its
progeny into the Ganges, or into the fires of Mo-
loch's altar, for the saving of its soul, or to obtain the
favour or avoid the wrath of God ? No less in the
vagaries of fetichism, ritualism, and idolatry, and in
the horrors of asceticism and human sacrifice, than in
the Edenic communion with and hearing of God, or
in the joy of Christian love, do we see, in however
ruined or degraded condition, the higher spiritual
nature of man.

This point leads to another distinction which, when
properly viewed, widens the gap between man and

390

THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN.

the animals, or at least destroys one of the frail
bridges of the evolutionists. Lubbock and others
affect to believe that the lowest savages of the modern
world must be nearest to the type of primeval man.
I have already attempted to show the fallacy of this.
I may add here that in so holding they overlook a
fundamental distinction, well pointed out by the Duke
of Argyll, between the capacity of acquiring know-
ledge and knowledge actually acquired, and between
the possession of a higher rational nature and the
exercise of that nature in the pursuit of mechanical
arts. In other words, primeval man must not be held
to have been " utterly barbarous " because he was
ignorant of mining or navigation, or of sculpture and
painting. He had in him the power to attain to these
things, but so long as he was not under necessity to
exercise it, his mind may have expended its powers in
other and happier channels. As well might it be
alfirmed that a delicately nurtured lady is an " r fcter
barbarian " because she cannot build her own house,
or make her own shoes. No doubt in such work she
would be far more helpless than the wife of the rudest
savage, yet she is not on that account to be held as an
inferior being, or nearer to the animals. Our con-
ception of an angelic nature implies the absence of
all our social institutions and mechanical arts ; but
does this necessitate our regarding an angel as an
" utter barbarian '' ? In short, the whole notion of
civilisation held by Lubbock and those who think
with him, is not only low and degrading, but utterly

PRIMITIVE MAN.

391

the frail
.nd others
be modern
eval man.
3y of this,
'verlook a
the Duke
ig know-
between
and the
echanical
b be held
5 he was
ture and
to these
essity to
)wers in
it be
"rtter
I house,
ork she
rudest
i as an
ir con-
nce of
i; but
as an
ion of
think
itterly

and absurdly wrong ; and of course it vitiates all their
conceptions of primeval man as well as of man's
future destiny. Further, the theistic idea implies that
man was, without exhausting toil, to regulate and
control nature, to rule over the animals, to cultivate
the earth, to extend himself over it and subdue it ; and
all this as compatible with moral innocence, and at
the same time with high intellectual and spiritual
activity.

There is, however, a still nicer and more beautiful
distinction involved in this, and included in the won-
derful narrative in Genesis, so simple yet so much
more profound than our philosophies ; and which
crops out in the same discussion of the critics of
Darwin, to which I have already referred. A writer
in the Quarterly Review had attempted to dis-
tinguish human reason from the intelligence of
animals, as involving self-consciousness and reflec-
tion in our sensations and perceptions. Huxley
objects to this, instancing the mental action of a
greyhound when it sees and pursues a hare, as
similar to that of the gamekeeper when he lets slip
the hound.*

"As it is very necessary to keep up a clear dis-
tinction between these two processes, let the one be
called neurosis and the other psychosis. When the
gamekeeper was first trained to his work, every step
in the process of neurosis was accompanied by a cor-
responding step in that of psychosis, or nearly so.
* Contcniporary Review, November, 1871, p. 461.

392

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

He was conscious of seeing something, conscious of
making sure it was a hare, conscious of desiring to
catch it, and therefore to loose the greyhound at the
right time, conscious of the acts by whicl: he let the
dog out of the leash. But with practice, though the
various steps of the neurosis remain — for otherwise
the impression on the retina would not result in the
loosing of the dog — the great majority of the steps
of the psychosis vanish, and the loosing of the dog
follows unconsciously, or, as we say, without think-
ing about, upon the sight of the hare. No one will
deny that the series of acts which originally inter-
vened between the sensation and the letting go of
the dog were, in the strictest sense, intellectual and
rational operations. Do they cease to be so when
the man ceases to be conscious of them ? That
depends upon what is the essence and what the
accident of these operations, which taken together
constitute ratiocination. Now, ratiocination is re-
solvable into predication, and predication consists
in marking, in some way, the existence, the co-
existence, the succession, the likeness and unlike-
ness, of things or their ideas. Whatever does this,
reasons ; and if a machine produces the effects of
reason, I see no more ground for denying to it the
reasoning power because it is unconscious, than I see
for refusing to Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a
calculating machine on the same grounds.^' ~

Here we have in the first place, the fact that an
action, in the first instance rational and complex, be-

PRIMITIVE MAN.

393

cious of
iring to
1 at the

let the
agh the
herwise
i in the
le steps
3he dog
I think-
)ne will
J inter-
' go of
iial and
3 when
That
lat the
ogether

is re-
3onsists
:he co-
unlike-
3s this^
ects of

it the
a I see
le of a

hat an

ex, be-

comes by repetition simple and instinctive. Does
the man then sink to the level of the hound, or, what
is more to the purpose, does this in the least approach
to showing that the hound can rise to the level of the
man ? Certainly not ; for the man is the conscious
planner and originator of a course of action in which
the instincts of the brute are made to take part, and
in which the readiness that he attains by habit only ^
enables him to dispense with certain processes of
thought which were absolutely necessary at first.
The man and the beast co-operate, but they meet
each other from entirely different planes ; the former
from that of the rational consideration of nature, the
latter from that of the blind pursuit of a mere physical
instinct. The one, to use Mr. Huxley^s simile, is the
conscious inventor of the calculating machine, the
other is the machine itself, and, though the machine
can calculate, this fact is the farthest possible from
giving it the power of growing into or producing its
own inventor. But Moses, or the more ancient autho-
rity from whom he quotes in Genesis, knew this better
than either of these modern combatants. His special
distinctive mark of the superiority of man is that he
was t ) have dominion over the earth and its animal
inhabitants; and he represents this dominion as
inaugurated by man's examining and naming the
animals of Eden, and finding among them no "help
meet" for him.* Man was to find in them helps,
but helps under his control, and that not the control

* Literally, " Corresponding," or " Similar," to him.

39J>

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

of brute force, but of higher skill and of thought,
and even of love — a control still seen in some degree
in the relation of man to his faithful companion, the
dog. These old words of Genesis, simple though
they are. place the rational superiority of man on a
stable basis, and imply a distinction between him and
the lower animals which cannot be shaken by the
sophistries of the evolutionists.

T}?o theistic picture further accords with the fact
that the geological time immediately preceding man's
appearance was a time of decadence of many of
the grander forms of animal life, especially in thai
area of the old continent where man was to appear.
Whatever may be said of the imperfection of the
geological record, there can be no question of the
fact that the Miocene and earlier Pliocene were dis-
tinguished by the prevalence of grand and gigantic
forms of mammalian life, some of which disappeared
in or before the Glacial period, while others failed
after that period in the subsidence of the Post-glacial,
or in connection with its amelioration of climate.
The Modern animals are also, as explained above, a
selection from the grander fauna of the Post-glacial
period. To speak for the moment in Darwinian
language, there was for the time an evident tendency
to promote the survival of the fittest, not in mere
physical development, but in intelligence and sagacity.
A similar tendency existed even in the vegetable
world, replacing the flora of American aspect which
had existed in the Pliocene, with the richer and more

PEIMITIVE MAN.

395

■ tllOUgllfc,

no degree
auion, the
e though
nan on a
him and
n by the

I the fact
iug man's

many of
Y in thaL
0 appear,
n of the
•n of the
were dis-

gigantic
(appeared
)rs failed
5t-glacial,

climate,
above, a
st-glacial
'arwinian
tendency
in mere
sagacity,
'egetable
3t which

•

nd more

useful flora of Europe and AVestem Asia. This not
obscurely indicates the preparing of a place for man,
and the removal out of his way of obstacles and
hindrances. That these changes had a relation to
the advent of man, neither theist nor evolutionist can
doubt, and it may be that we shall some day find
that this relation implies the existence of a creative
law intolligible by us; but while we fail to perceive
any link of direct causation between the changes in
the lower world, and the introduction of our race, we
cannot help seeing that correlation which implies a
far-reaching plan, and an intelligent design.

Finally, the evolutionist picture wants some of the
fairest lineaments of humanity, and cheats us with a
semblance of man without the reality. Shave and
paint your ape as you may, clothe him and set him
up upon his feet, still he fails greatly of the " human
form divine ;'' and so it is with him morally and
spiritually as well. We have seen that he wants the
instinct of immortality, the love of God, the mental
and spiritual power of exercising dominion over the
earth. The very agency by which he is evolved is of
itself subversive of all these higher properties. The
struggle for existence is essentially selfish, and there-
fore degrading. Even in the lower animals, it is a
false assumption that its tendency is to elevate; for
animals when driven to the utmost verge of struggle
for life, become depauperated and degraded. The
dog which spends its life in snarling contention with
its fellow- curs for insufficient food, will not be a noble

39G

THE STORY OP THE EARTH AND MAN.

specimen of its race. God does not so treat His
creatures. There is far more truth to nature in the
doctrine which represents hhn as listening to the
young ravens when they cry for food. But as applied
to man, the theory of the struggle for existence and
survival of the fittest, though the most popular phase
of evolutionism at present, is nothing less than the
basest and most horrible of superstitions. It makes
man not merely carnal, but devilish. It takes his
lowest appetites and propensities, and makes them
his God and creator. His higher sentiments and
aspirations, his self-denying philanthropy, his enthu-
siasm for the good and true, all the struggles and
sufferings of heroes and martyrs, not to speak of that
self-sacrifice which is the foundation of Christianity,
are in the view of the evolutionist mere loss and
waste, failure in the struggle of life. What does he
give us in exchange ? An endless pedigree of bestial
ancestors, without one gleam of high or holy tradition
to enliven the procession; and for the future, the
prospect that the poor mass of protoplasm which
constitutes the sum of our being, and which is the
sole gain of an indefinite struggle in the past, must
scon be resolved again into inferior animals or dead
matter. That men of thought and culture should
advocate such a philosophy, argues either a strange
mental hallucination, or that the higher spiritual
nature has been wholly quenched within them. It
is one of the saddest of many sad spectacles that our
age presents. Still these men deserve credit for their

.N.

PRIMITIVE MAN.

397

) treat His
Lture in the
ng to the
'' as applied
istence and
pular phase
is than the

It makes
; takes his
akes them
tnents and
his enthu-
iggles and
Jak of that
biristianity,
' loss and
it does he
i of bestial
Y tradition
Liture, the
sm which
ich is the
oast, must
s or dead
re should
a strange

spiritual

hem. It

that our

for their

bold pursuit of truth, or vvhat seems to them to be
truth; and they are, after all, nobler sinners than
those who would practically lower us to the level of
beasts by their negation even of intellectual life, or
who would reduce us to apes, by making us the mere
performers of rites and ceremonies, as a substitute
for religion, or who would advise us to hand over
reason and conscience to the despotic authoi-ity of
fallible men dressed in strange garbs, and called by
sacred names. The world needs a philosophy and a
Christianity of more robust mould, which shall re-
cognise, as the Bible does, at once body and soul and
spirit, at once the sovereignty of God and the liberty
of man; and which shall bring out into practical
operation the great truth that God is a Spirit, and
they tluit worship Him must worship Him in spirit
and in truth. Such a religion might walk in the
sunlight of truth and free discussion, hand in hand
with science, ec^ oation, liberty, and material civilisa-
tion, and would speedily consign evolution to the
tomb which has already received so many supersti-
tions and false philosophies.

II!

INDEX.

Abbeville, Peat of, 294.

Acadian Group, 38.

Advent of Man, 286.

Agassiz on Synthetic Types, 181.

Ammonitidce, 221.

Amphibians of the Coal Period,

144.
Andrews on the Post-pUocene, 293.
Anthracosaiirus, 145.
Anticosti Formation, 61.
Antiquity of Man, 292.
Archaocyathus, 47.
Archebiosis, 327.
Arenicolites, 46.
Asterolepis, 98.

Baculites, 222.

Bala Limestone, 59.

Baphetes, 145.

Barrande on Primordial, 49.

Bastian on Lower forms of Life, 327.

Beatricea, 65.

Belemnites, 223.

Bigsby on Silurian Fauna, 75 ; on

Primordial Life, 52.
Billings on Archajocyathus, 46 ; on

Feet of Trilobites, 44.
Binney on Stigmaria, 127.
Biology as a term, 327.
Boulder Clay, 268.
Brachiopods, or Lamp-shells, 39.
Breccia of Caverns, 304.
Brown, Mr. E., on Stigmaria, 127.

Catamites, 104, 129, 173.

Calcaire Grossicr, 247.

Cambrian Age, 36 ; name defined,

49.
Caradoc Rocks, 60.
Carbonic Acid in Atmosphere, 128.
Carboniferous Age, 109 ; Land

Quails of the, 138; Crus-
taceans of the, 154; Insects of
the, 135 ; Corals of the, 153 ;
Plants of the, 120 ; Fishes of the,
157; Footprints in the, 143;
Geography of the, 110 ; Reptiles
of the, 143.

Carpenter on Cretaceous Sea, 230.

Carruthers on Graptohtes, 72.

Cave Earth, 305.

Cavern Deposits, 304.

Cephalaspis, 97.

Cephalepods of Silurian, 69.

Ceteosaurus, 204 ; Foraminifera in
the, 227.

Chalk, Nature of, 227.

Chaos, 2.

Climactichnites, 45.

Coal, Origin of, 116 ; of the Meso-
zoic, 201.

Colours of Eocks, 110.

Continental Plateaus, 57.

Continents, their Origin, 13.

Conulm Prisms, 139.

Cope on Dinosaurs, 202 ; on Ptero-
dactyl, 206; on Mososaurus,
217 ; on Caverns, 303.

Corals of the Silurian, 63 ; agency
of, in forming Limestone, 63, 89 ;
of the Devonian, 89 ; of the Car-
boniferous, 153.

Comiferous Limestone, 96.

Coryphodov, 244.

Creation, Unity of, 33; not by
Evolution, 33 ; laws of, 78, 150;
statement of as a theory, 340; re-
quirements of, 343 ; how treated
by Evolutionists, 339 ; definition
and explanation of, 340 ; ita pro-
bable conditions, 352.

Creator, evidence of a personal, 344.

400

INDEX.

Cretaceous Period, 192, 231 ; Sea

of the, 230.
Crhioids of the Silurian, 68.
CroU on the Post-pliocene, 262.
Crusiana, 45.
Crustaceans of the Primordial, 42 ;

of the Silurian, 71 ; of the

Mesozoic, 225.
Crust of the Earth, 5 ; Folding of,

165.
Cuvier on Tertiary Mammals, 249.
Cystideans, 69.

Dana on Geological Periods, 175.

Darwin,. Nature of his Theory, 327 ;
Ids account of the Origin of Man,
337; his statement of Descent of
Man, 337.

Davidson on Brachiopods, 169.

Dawkiti:! on Post-glacial Mammals,
300.

Delaunay on Solidity of the|Earth,6.

Deluge, the, 290.

Devonian, or Erian Age, 81 ; Physi-
cal Condition of, 82 ; Tabular
View of, 85 ; Corals of the, 89 ;
Fishes of the, 96 ; Plants of the,
102 ; Geography of the, 82 ; In-
sects of the, 107.

Dinichthys, 99.

Dinosaurs, 202.

Dromathcrium, 208.

Dudley, Fossils of, 69.

Earth, its earliest state, 9 ; Crust

of iu^, 5; folding of, 165;

gaseous state of, 9.
Edenic state of Man, 310, 376.
Edwards, Milne, on Devonian

Corals, 89.
Elasmosaunis, 214.
Elephants, Fossil, 254, 300.
Elevation and Subsidence, 13, 29,

83, 165.
Enaliosaurs, 213.
" Engib" Skull, its characters, 357.
Eocene Seas, 241 ; Foraminifera of

the, 241 ; Mammals of the, 247 ;

Plants of the, 238; Footprints

in the, 299.
Eophyton, 42.
Eosaurus, 145.

Eozoic Period, 17.

Eozoon Bavaricum, 38.

Enzoon Canademe, 20, 24.

Erian, or Devonian, 81 ; Ile?.son of

the Name, 84; Table of Erian

Formations, 85 ; Corals of the,

89 ; Fishes of the, 96 ; Plants of

the, 102.
Eskers on Karnes, 286.
Etheridge on Devonian, 85.
Eurypterus, 71, 115. ,

Evolution as applied to Eozoon,

33 ; Primordial Animals, 55 ;

Silurian Animals, 77 ; Trilobites,

94, 155; Reptiles, 150; Man, 319;

Its Character as a Theory, 320 ;

Its Difficulties, 322 ; Its " FaU of

Man " 382.

Falconer on Indian Miocene, 252.

Eavosites, 91.

Ferns of the Devonian, 96 ; of the
Carboniferous, 120.

Fishes, Ganoid, 99 ; of the Silu-
rian, 74 ; of the Devonian, 96 ;
of the Carboniferous, 157.

Flora of the Silurian, 76 ; of the
Devonian, 102 ; of the Carboni-
ferous, 120 ; of the Permian,
172 ; of the Mesozoic, 199 ; of
the Eocene, 238 ; of the Mio-
cene, 259.

Footprints in the Carboniferous,
143 ; in the Trias, 203 ; in the
Eocene, 297.

Foraminifera, Nature of, 24 ; Lau-
rentian, 25 ; of the Chalk, 227 ;
of the Tertiary, 241.

Forbes on Post-glacial Land, 288.

Forests of the Devonian, 102 ; of
the Carboniferous, 120.

Ganoid Fishes, 96, 99.

Gaseous state of the Earth, 9.

Genesis, Book of, its account of
Chaos, 2; of Creation of Laud,
13 ; of Palicozoic Animals, 187 ;
of Creation of Reptiles, 150; of
Creation of Mammals, 234, 298 ;
of the Deluge, 290 ; of Cren fcion
of Man, 379 ; of Eden, 379.

Genesis of the Earth, 1.

i, 38.
, 20, 24.

1, 81 ; Eefson of

Table of Brian

; Corals of the,

le, 96 ; Plants of

286.

mian, 85.
5.

lied to Eozoon,
[ Animals, 55 ;
s, 77 ; Trilobites,
;, 150; Man, 319;
a Theory, 320 ;
122; Its "Fall of

a. Miocene, 252.

lian, 96 ; of the

20.

9; of the Silu-

Devonian, 96 ;
3rous, 157.
'ian, 76 ; of the

of the Carboni-
[ the Permian,
esozoic, 199 ; of
i ; of the Mio-

) Carboniferous,
las, 203 ; in the

ire of, 24 ; Lau-

the Chalk, 227 ;

241.

,cial Land, 288.

(vonian, 102 ; of

IS, 120.

99.
le Earth, 9.

its account of
eation of Land,
c Animals, 187 ;
icptiles, 150; of
imals, 234, 298 ;
90; of Crefition
Eden, 379.
th, 1.

INDEX.

401

Geography of the Silurian, 67 ; of
the Devonian, 82 ; of the Car-
boniferous, 110 ; of the Permian.
163.

Geological Periods, 175, 195.

Glacial Period, 267, 278.

Glauconite, 229.

Olyptocrusus, 88.

Graptolites, 72.

Greenland, Miocene Flora of, 260.

Greensand, 229.

Giimbel on Bavarian Eozoon, 37.

Hndrosaunis, 202.

Hall on Geological Periods, 186.

Hall on GraptoHtes, 72 ; on Geo-
logical Periods, 186.

Harlech Beds, 38.

Heer on Tertiary Plants, 261.

Helderberg Eocks, 62.

Hercynian Schists, 37.

Heteroge.iesis, 327.

Hicks on Primordial Fossils, 38.

Hilgard on Mississippi Delta, 296.

Hippopotamus, Fossil. 300.

Histlodenna, 46.

Hopkins on SoHdity of the Earth, 6.

Hudson River Group, 60.

Hunt, Dr. T. S., on Volcanic
Action, 7; on Chemistry of
Primeval Earth, 11 ; on Lingular,
41.

Huronian Formation, 36.

Huxley on Coal, 132; on Carbo-
niferous Reptiles, 145 ; on Dino-
saurs, 202; on Paley's Argu-
ment from Design, 348 ; on Gcod
and Evil, 349 ; on Intuitive and
Rational Actions, 391 ; on ten-
dency of Evolutionist views, 348.

Ilylonomus, 148.

Ice-action in Permian, 168 ; in

Post-pliocene, 270.
Ichthyosaurus, 213.
lyuanodon, £02.
Insects, Devonian, 107; Carbo-

niferouB, 135.
Intelligence of Animals, Nature

of, 328.

Jurassic, subdivieious of, 190.

Karnes, 286.

Kaup on Dinotherium, 251.
Kent's Cavern, 304.
King-crabs of Carboniferous, 154.
King on Carboniferous Eeptilee,
143.

Lahyrinthodon, 201.

Lalaps, 203.

Lamb-shells, 40.

Land-snails of Carboniferous, 138.

La Place's Nebular Theory, 7.

Laurentian Rocks, 18 ; Life in the,
23 ; Plants of the, 32.

Lepidodendron, 103, 106, 127.

Leptophleum, 104.

Limestone Corniferous, 96 ; Num-
mulitic, 241 ; Milioline, 243 ;
Silurian, 64 ; Origin of, 27, 63, 89.

Limulus, 154.

Lingula:, 39.

Lingula Flags, 88.

Logan, Sir W., on Laurentian
Rocks, 18; on Reptilian Foot-
prints, 143.

London Clay, 247.

Longmynd Rocks, 38, 47.

Lower Helderberg Group, 62.

Ludlow Group, 62.

Lycll, Sir C, on Devonian Lime-
stone, 89 ; on Wealden, 191 ; on
Classification of tho Tertiary,
238.

Machairodus, 250.

Magnesian Limestunes, 166.

Mammals of the Mesozoic, 208 ; of
the Eocene, 247 ; of tho Miocene,
250 ; of the Pliocene, 256 ; of the
Post-glacial, 300.

Man, Advent of, 286.

Man, Antiquity of, 292 ; History
of, according to Theory of
Creation, 377 ; according to Evo-
lution, 381 ; widely different
from Apes, 360 ; a new type, 365 ;
Primitive, not a Savage, 367;
his Spiritual Nature, 384, 370,
387 ; LocaUty of his Origin, 373 ;
Primeval, according to Creation,
377; according to Evolution,
381.

2 I)

4.02

INDEX.

Mayhill Sandstone, 00.
Medina Sandstone, GO.
Mcgalosaunis, 203.
Menevian Formation, 38.
Mesozoic Ages, 188 ; subdivisions of,

189 ; Flora of, 199 ; Coal of, 201 ;

Crustaceans of the, 225 ; Eeptiles

of the, 201, 212.
Metalliferous Eockt:, 1G7.
Metamorphism, 21,
Microlestes, 208.
Miliolino Limestones, 243,
Miller on Old lied Sandstone, 8G.
Millipedes, Fossil, 136.
Miocene Plants, 2C0 ; Climate,

264 ; Mammals of, 250,
Mississippi, Delta of the, 296.
Modern Period, 283.
Mosasatirus, 206.
Mosse on Lingula, 39.

Nebular Theory, 7.
Neolithic Age, 284.
Neozoic Ages, 236; divisions of,

239.
Newberry on Dinichthys, 99,
Nicholson on Graptolites, 72.
Nummulitic Limestones, 241.

Ohihmnia, 45,
Old lied Sandstone, 86.
Oneida Cinglunerall, 69.
Orthoceratites, 69, 154.
Oscillations of Continents, 179.
Owen on Dinosaurs, 202 ; on Mar-
supials, 209.

Palffiolithic Age, 284, 289.

Pn^frnphii^, 245.

Palajozoij Life, 181 ; diugram of,

186.
Paley on Design in Nature ; his

illustration of the watch, 349.
Peat of Abbeville, 294.
Pengelly on Kent's Hole, 304.
J'cntremites, 153.
Periods, Geological, 195, 175.
Permian Age, 160; Geography of
I the, 163 ; Ice-action in the, 168 ;

Plants of the, 172; lleptiles of

the, 172.
Phillips on Dawn of Life, 30 ; on

Ceteosaurus, 204.

Pictet on Post-pliocene Mammals,
256 ; on Post-glacial Animals,
357.

Pictures of Primeval Man, 376.

Pierce on Diminution of Earth's
notation, 165.

Pines of the Devonian, 105 ; of the
Carboniferous, 131 ; of the Per-
mian, 173.

Plaeoid Fishes, 96.

Plants of the Laurentia, 32 ; of the
Silurian, 76 ; of the Devonia,
102 ; of the Carboniferous, 124 ;
of the Permian, 172; of the
Mesozoic, 199 ; of the Tertiary
258 ; classification of, 122.

Plateaus, Continental, 57.

Plesiosaurus, 213.

Pliocene, Climate of, 266 ; Mam-
mals of, 25').

Pliosaurus, 215.

I'luvial Period, 287.

Post-glacial Age, 283, 292.

Post-pliocene Period, 274; cold,
278 ; Ice-acti(m hi the, 270 ;
Subsidence, 279 ; Elevation, 284;
Shells, evidence of, against Deri-
vation, 358 ; Manmials, evidence
of, against Derivation, 357.

Potsdam Sandstone, 38.

PiTstwich on St. Acheul, 294.

Primordial Age, 36 ; Crustaccan.s
of the, 42.

ProticJniites, 45.

I'rotorosaurus, 172.

P rata to. rites, 76.

Psilophyton, 76, 103.

Pteraapia, 76.

Ptcrichthysi, 98,

Pterodactyls, 206,

Ptcrijjintu^, 93.

Pupa Vctnsta, 139.

Quebec Group, 60,

Eain-marks, 47.

Ilamsay on Permian, 168,

lied Sandstones, their Origin, 110,

166.
lleptiles of the Carboniferous, 143 ;

of the Permian, 172; of the Me-

eozoic, 201, 212.

INDEX.

4015

of, 2CG; Main-

Rliinocpvos, Fossil, 300.
Kocks, Culours of, 110.
Botation of the Earth, its Gradual
Dimiinition, 105.

Patter on Fossil Crustacea, 155.
hodgwick on Cambrian, 56, 75
Seeley on Pterodactyls, 20G.
Shrinkage-cracks, 47.
SUjillaria, 104, 124.
Silurian Ages, 50; Cephalopods

^ ^ the, 09 ; Corals of the, 08 ;

Crinoids of the 08 ; Crustaceans

of the, 71 ; Fishes of the, 74 ;

Plants of the, 70.

Siluro-Cambriau, use of the fprm
50. '

Slaty Structure, 48.
Solidity of the Earth, 0.
Sonune, R., Gravels of, 202.
Species, Nature of the, 327 : how

Created, 352,
Spencer, his Exposition of Evo-

mtion, 321, 331.
Spiritual Nature of Man, 384, 370

387. '

Spore-cases in Coals and Shales,

Stalagmite of Caves, 305.
Striated Eock-surfaces, 209 ^
Stumps, Fossil of, Carboniferous,
140.

Synthetic Types, 181.

Table of Devonian Eock, 85 ; of
Pala)ozoic Ages, 187 ; of Mesozoic
Ages, 234; of Neozoic Ages,
298 ; of Post-pliocene, 276.

Temperature of Interior of the

Earth, 4.
Tertiary Period, 236; Mammals

of, 247, 250, 256; classification

of its Bocks, 238.
Thomson, Sir W., on Solidity of

the Earth, 6. ^

Time, Geological Divisions of, 175.
Tnnere, Cave of, 293.
Trenton Limestone, 59, 03.
Trias.Divisions of, 189 ; Footprints

m the, 203.
Trilobites,43, 94, 154; Feet of, 43
Turtles of Mesozoic, 218.
Tylor on Pluvial Period, 287
Tyndall on Carbonic Acid in

Atmosphere, 123.

Uniformitarianism in Geoloev 3
Utica Shale, GO. ^' '

Volcanic Action, 7; of Cambrian
Age, 30 ; of Sihn-ian Age, 02 • of
Devonian Age, 81, 83.

Von Dechen on Beptiles of Car-
boniferous, 143. 145.

Von Meger on Dinosaurs, 202.

Walchla, 173.

Wallace, his views on Inapplicability
of Natural Selection to Man 308
Wealden, 191.
Wenlock Group, 02.
WilUamsonia (jigas, 200.
Williamson on Calamites, 131.
Woodward on I'terygotus, 93. *

Zaphreutis, 92.

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