Principles of Geology Part 11

Our acquaintance with the newer Pleiocene mammalia in Europe, South America, and Australia, is derived chiefly from cavern deposits, a fact which we ought never to forget if we desire to appreciate the superior facilities we enjoy for studying the more modern as compared to the more ancient terrestrial faunas. We know nothing of the fossil bones which must have been inclosed in the stalagmite of caverns in the older Pleiocene, or in the Miocene or Eocene epochs, much less can we derive any information respecting the inhabitants of the land from a similar source, when we carry back our inquiries to the Wealden or carboniferous epochs. We are as well a.s.sured that land and rivers then existed, as that they exist now; but it is evident that even a slight geographical revolution, accompanied by the submergence and denudation of land, would reduce to an extreme improbability the chance of our hitting on those minute points of s.p.a.ce where caves may once have occurred in limestone rocks.

_Fossil quadrumana._--Until within a few years (1836, 1837), not a single bone of any quadrumanous animal, such as the orang, ape, baboon, and monkey, had been discovered in a fossil state, although so much progress had been made in bringing to light the extinct mammalia of successive tertiary eras, both carnivorous and herbivorous. The total absence of these anthropomorphous tribes among the records of a former world, had led some to believe that the type of organization most nearly resembling the human, came so late in the order of creation, as to be scarcely, if at all, anterior to that of man. That such generalizations were premature, I endeavored to point out in the first edition of this work,[224] in which I stated that the bones of quadrupeds. .h.i.therto met with in tertiary deposits were chiefly those which frequent marshes, rivers, or the borders of lakes, as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tapir, hog, deer, and ox, while species which live in trees are extremely rare in a fossil state. I also hinted, that we had as yet no data for determining how great a number of the one kind we ought to find, before we have a right to expect a single individual of the other. Lastly, I observed that the climate of the more modern (or Post-Eocene) tertiary periods in England was not tropical, and that in regard to the London clay, of which the crocodiles, turtles, and fossil fruits implied a climate hot enough for the quadrumana, we had as yet made too little progress in ascertaining what were the Eocene pachydermata of England, to ent.i.tle us to expect to have discovered any quadrumana of the same date.

Since those remarks were first written, in 1829, a great number of extinct species have been added to our collections of tertiary mammalia from Great Britain and other parts of the world. At length, between the years 1836 and 1839, a few remains of quadrumana were found in France and England, India and Brazil. Those of India, belonging to more than one extinct species of monkey, were first discovered near the Sutlej, in lat. 30 N., in tertiary strata, of which the age is not yet determined; the Brazilian fossil, brought from the basin of the Rio das Velhas, about lat. 18 S., is referable to a form now peculiar in America, allied to the genus Callithrix, the species being extinct. The skull and other bones met with in the South of France belong to a gibbon, or one of the tailless apes, which stand next in the scale of organization to the orang. It occurred at Sansan, about forty miles west of Toulouse, in lat. 43 40' N., in freshwater strata, probably of the Miocene or middle tertiary period. Lastly, the English quadrumane first met with, occurred in a more ancient stratum than the rest, and at a point more remote from the equator. It belongs to the genus Macacus, is an extinct species, and was found in Suffolk, in lat. 52,[225] in the London clay, the fossils of which, such as crocodiles, turtles, sh.e.l.ls of the genus Nautilus, and many curious fruits, had already led geologists to the conclusion that the climate of that era (the Eocene) was warm and nearly tropical.

Some years later (in 1846) the jaw of another British species of fossil monkey, Macacus pliocenus, was announced by Mr. Owen as having been met with in the newer Pleiocene strata, on the banks of the Thames, at Grays, in Ess.e.x, accompanying the remains of hippopotamus, elephant, and other quadrupeds, and a.s.sociated with freshwater and land sh.e.l.ls, most of which are now inhabitants of the British Isles.[226]

When we consider the small area of the earth's surface hitherto explored geologically, and the new discoveries brought to light daily, even in the environs of great European capitals, we must feel that it would be rash to a.s.sume that the Lower Eocene deposits mark the era of the first creation of quadrumana. It would, however, be still more unphilosophical to infer, as some writers have done, from a single extinct species of this family obtained in a lat.i.tude far from the tropics, that the Eocene quadrumana did not attain as high a grade of organization as they do in our own times. What would the naturalist know of the apes and orangs now contemporary with man, if our investigations were restricted to such northern lat.i.tudes as those where alone the geologist has. .h.i.therto found all the fossil quadrumana of Europe?

_Cetacea._--The absence of Cetacea from rocks older than the Eocene has been frequently adduced as lending countenance to the theory of the very late appearance of the highest cla.s.s of Vertebrata on the earth.

Professor Sedgwick possesses in the Cambridge Museum a ma.s.s of anchylosed cervical vertebrae of a whale, which he found in drift clay near Ely, and which he has no doubt was washed out of the Kimmeridge clay, an upper member of the Oolite. According to Professor Owen, it exhibits well-marked specific characters, distinguis.h.i.+ng it from all other known recent or fossil cetacea. Dr. Leidy, of Philadelphia, has lately described (1851) two species of cetacea of a new genus, which he has called Priscodelphinus from the green sand of New Jersey, which corresponds in age with the English Chalk or the cretaceous strata above the gault. The specimens consist of dorsal and cervical vertebrae.[227]

Even in the Eocene strata of Europe, the discovery of cetaceans has never kept pace with that of land quadrupeds. The only instance cited in Great Britain is a species of Monodon, from the London clay, of doubtful authenticity as to its geological position. On the other hand, the gigantic Zeuglodon of North America occurs abundantly in the Middle Eocene strata of Georgia and Alabama, from which as yet no bones of land quadrupeds have been obtained.

In the present imperfect state then of our information, we can scarcely say more than that the cetacea seem to have been scarce in the secondary and primary periods. It is quite conceivable that when aquatic saurians, some of them carnivorous, like the Ichthyosaurus, were swarming in the sea, and when there were large herbivorous reptiles, like the Iguanodon, on the land, the cla.s.s of reptiles may, to a certain extent, have superseded the cetacea, and discharged their functions in the animal economy.

That mammalia had been created long before the epoch of the Kimmeridge clay, is shown by the Microlestes of the Trias before alluded to, and by the Stonesfield quadrupeds from the Inferior Oolite. And we are bound to remember, whenever we infer the poverty of the flora or fauna of any given period of the past, from the small number of fossils occurring in ancient rocks, that it has been evidently no part of the plan of Nature to hand down to us a complete or systematic record of the former history of the animate world. We may have failed to discover a single sh.e.l.l, marine or freshwater, or a single coral or bone in certain sandstones, such as that of the valley of the Connecticut, where the footprints of bipeds and quadrupeds abound; but such failure may have arisen, not because the population of the land or sea was scanty at that era, but because in general the preservation of any relics of the animals or plants of former times is the exception to a general rule. Time so enormous as that contemplated by the geologist may multiply exceptional cases till they seem to const.i.tute the rule, and so impose on the imagination as to lead us to infer the non-existence of creatures of which no monuments happen to remain. Professor Forbes has remarked, that few geologists are aware how large a proportion of all known species of fossils are founded on single specimens, while a still greater number are founded on a few individuals discovered in one spot. This holds true not only in regard to animals and plants inhabiting the land, the lake, and the river, but even to a surprising number of the marine mollusca, articulata, and radiata. Our knowledge, therefore, of the living creation of any given period of the past may be said to depend in a great degree on what we commonly call chance, and the casual discovery of some new localities rich in peculiar fossils may modify or entirely overthrow all our previous generalizations.

Upon the whole then we derive this result from a general review of the fossils of the successive tertiary strata, namely, that since the Eocene period, there have been several great changes in the land quadrupeds inhabiting Europe, probably not less than five complete revolutions, during which there has been no step whatever made in advance, no elevation in the scale of being; so that had man been created at the commencement of the Eocene era, he would not have const.i.tuted a greater innovation on the state of the animal creation previously established than now, when we believe him to have begun to exist at the close of the Pleiocene. The views, therefore, which I proposed in the first edition of this work, January, 1830, in opposition to the theory of progressive development, do not seem to me to require material modification, notwithstanding the large additions since made to our knowledge of fossil remains.

These views may be thus briefly stated. From the earliest period at which plants and animals can be proved to have existed, there has been a continual change going on in the position of land and sea, accompanied by great fluctuations of climate. To these ever-varying geographical and climatal conditions the state of the animate world has been unceasingly adapted. No satisfactory proof has yet been discovered of the gradual pa.s.sage of the earth from a chaotic to a more habitable state, nor of any law of progressive development governing the extinction and renovation of species, and causing the fauna and flora to pa.s.s from an embryonic to a more perfect condition, from a simple to a more complex organization.

The principle of adaptation to which I have alluded, appears to have been a.n.a.logous to that which now peoples the arctic, temperate, and tropical regions contemporaneously with distinct a.s.semblages of species and genera, or which, independently of mere temperature, gives rise to a predominance of the marsupial or didelphous tribe of quadrupeds in Australia, of the placental or monodelphous tribe in Asia and Europe, or which causes a profusion of reptiles without mammalia in the Galapagos Archipelago, and of mammalia without reptiles in Greenland.

_Recent origin of man._--If, then, the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms, rests on a very insecure foundation; it may be asked, whether the recent origin of man lends any support to the same doctrine, or how far the influence of man may be considered as such a deviation from the a.n.a.logy of the order of things previously established, as to weaken our confidence in the uniformity of the course of nature.

Antecedently to investigation, we might reasonably have antic.i.p.ated that the vestiges of man would have been traced back at least as far as those modern strata in which all the testacea and a certain number of the mammalia are of existing species, for of all the mammalia the human species is the most cosmopolite, and perhaps more capable than any other of surviving considerable vicissitudes in climate, and in the physical geography of the globe.

No inhabitant of the land exposes himself to so many dangers on the waters as man, whether in a savage or a civilized state;[228] and there is no animal, therefore, whose skeleton is so liable to become imbedded in lacustrine or submarine deposits; nor can it be said that his remains are more perishable than those of other animals; for in ancient fields of battle, as Cuvier has observed, the bones of men have suffered as little decomposition as those of horses which were buried in the same grave.[229] But even if the more solid parts of our species had disappeared, the impression of their form would have remained engraven on the rocks, as have the traces of the tenderest leaves of plants, and the soft integuments of many animals. Works of art, moreover, composed of the most indestructible materials, would have outlasted almost all the organic contents of sedimentary rocks. Edifices, and even entire cities, have, within the times of history, been buried under volcanic ejections, submerged beneath the sea, or engulfed by earthquakes; and had these catastrophes been repeated throughout an indefinite lapse of ages, the high antiquity of man would have been inscribed in far more legible characters on the framework of the globe than are the forms of the ancient vegetation which once covered the islands of the northern ocean, or of those gigantic reptiles which at still later periods peopled the seas and rivers of the northern hemisphere.[230]

Dr. Prichard has argued that the human race have not always existed on the surface of the earth, because "the strata of which our continents are composed were once a part of the ocean's bed"--"mankind had a beginning, since we can look back to the period when the surface on which they lived began to exist."[231] This proof, however, is insufficient, for many thousands of human beings now dwell in various quarters of the globe where marine species lived within the times of history, and, on the other hand, the sea now prevails permanently over large districts once inhabited by thousands of human beings. Nor can this interchange of sea and land ever cease while the present causes are in existence. Terrestrial species, therefore, might be older than the continents which they inhabit, and aquatic species of higher antiquity than the lakes and seas which they now people.

But so far as our interpretation of physical movements has yet gone, we have every reason to infer that the human race is extremely modern, even when compared to the larger number of species now our contemporaries on the earth, and we may, therefore, ask whether his creation can be considered as one step in a supposed progressive system, by which the organic world has advanced slowly from a more simple to a more complex and perfect state? If we concede, for a moment, the truth of the proposition, that the sponge, the cephalopod, the fish, the reptile, the bird, and the mammifer, have followed each other in regular chronological order, the creation of each cla.s.s being separated from the other by vast intervals of time, should we be able to recognize, in man's entrance upon the earth, the last term of one and the same series of progressive developments?

In reply to this question it should first be observed, that the superiority of man depends not on those faculties and attributes which he shares in common with the inferior animals, but on his reason, by which he is distinguished from them. When it is said that the human race is of far higher dignity than were any pre-existing beings on the earth, it is the intellectual and moral attributes of our race, rather than the physical, which are considered; and it is by no means clear that the organization of man is such as would confer a decided pre-eminence upon him, if, in place of his reasoning powers, he was merely provided with such instincts as are possessed by the lower animals.

If this be admitted, it would not follow, even if there were sufficient geological evidence in favor of the theory of progressive development, that the creation of man was the last link in the same chain. For the sudden pa.s.sage from an irrational to a rational animal, is a phenomenon of a distinct kind from the pa.s.sage from the more simple to the more perfect forms of animal organization and instinct. To pretend that such a step, or rather leap, can be part of a regular series of changes in the animal world, is to strain a.n.a.logy beyond all reasonable bounds.

_Introduction of man, to what extent a change in the system._--But setting aside the question of progressive development, another and a far more difficult one may arise out of the admission that man is comparatively of modern origin. Is not the interference of the human species, it may be asked, such a deviation from the antecedent course of physical events, that the knowledge of such a fact tends to destroy all our confidence in the uniformity of the order of nature, both in regard to time past and future? If such an innovation could take place after the earth had been exclusively inhabited for thousands of ages by inferior animals, why should not other changes as extraordinary and unprecedented happen from time to time? If one new cause was permitted to supervene, differing in kind and energy from any before in operation, why may not others have come into action at different epochs? Or what security have we that they may not arise hereafter? And if such be the case, how can the experience of one period, even though we are acquainted with all the possible effects of the then existing causes, be a standard to which we can refer all natural phenomena of other periods?

Now these objections would be unanswerable, if adduced against one who was contending for the absolute uniformity throughout all time of the succession of sublunary events--if, for example, he was disposed to indulge in the philosophical reveries of some Egyptian and Greek sects, who represented all the changes both of the moral and material world as repeated at distant intervals, so as to follow each other in their former connection of place and time. For they compared the course of events on our globe to astronomical cycles; and not only did they consider all sublunary affairs to be under the influence of the celestial bodies, but they taught that on the earth, as well as in the heavens, the same identical phenomena recurred again and again in a perpetual vicissitude. The same individual men were doomed to be re-born, and to perform the same actions as before; the same arts were to be invented, and the same cities built and destroyed. The Argonautic expedition was destined to sail again with the same heroes, and Achilles with his Myrmidons to renew, the combat before the walls of Troy.

Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae vehat Argo Dilectos heroas; erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles.[232]

The geologist, however, may condemn these tenets as absurd, without running into the opposite extreme, and denying that the order of nature has, from the earliest periods, been uniform in the same sense in which we believe it to be uniform at present, and expect it to remain so in future. We have no reason to suppose, that when man first became master of a small part of the globe, a greater change took place in its physical condition than is now experienced when districts, never before inhabited, become successively occupied by new settlers. When a powerful European colony lands on the sh.o.r.es of Australia, and introduces at once those arts which it has required many centuries to mature; when it imports a mult.i.tude of plants and large animals from the opposite extremity of the earth, and begins rapidly to extirpate many of the indigenous species, a mightier revolution is effected in a brief period than the first entrance of a savage horde, or their continued occupation of the country for many centuries, can possibly be imagined to have produced. If there be no impropriety in a.s.suming that the system is uniform when disturbances so unprecedented occur in certain localities, we can with much greater confidence apply the same language to those primeval ages when the aggregate number and power of the human race, or the rate of their advancement in civilization, must be supposed to have been far inferior. In reasoning on the state of the globe immediately before our species was called into existence, we must be guided by the same rules of induction as when we speculate on the state of America in the interval that elapsed between the introduction of man into Asia, the supposed cradle of our race, and the arrival of the first adventurers on the sh.o.r.es of the New World. In that interval, we imagine the state of things to have gone on according to the order now observed in regions unoccupied by man. Even now, the waters of lakes, seas, and the great ocean, which teem with life, may be said to have no immediate relation to the human race--to be portions of the terrestrial system of which man has never taken, nor ever can take possession; so that the greater part of the inhabited surface of the planet may still remain as insensible to our presence as before any isle or continent was appointed to be our residence.

If the barren soil around Sydney had at once become fertile upon the landing of our first settlers; if, like the happy isles whereof the poets have given such glowing descriptions, those sandy tracts had begun to yield spontaneously an annual supply of grain, we might then, indeed, have fancied alterations still more remarkable in the economy of nature to have attended the first coming of our species into the planet. Or if, when a volcanic island like Ischia was, for the first time, brought under cultivation by the enterprise and industry of a Greek colony, the internal fire had become dormant, and the earthquake had remitted its destructive violence, there would then have been some ground for speculating on the debilitation of the subterranean forces, when the earth was first placed under the dominion of man. But after a long interval of rest, the volcano bursts forth again with renewed energy, annihilates one half of the inhabitants, and compels the remainder to emigrate. The course of nature remains evidently unchanged; and, in like manner, we may suppose the general condition of the globe, immediately before and after the period when our species first began to exist, to have been the same, with the exception only of man's presence.

The modifications in the system of which man is the instrument do not, perhaps, const.i.tute so great a deviation from previous a.n.a.logy as we usually imagine; we often, for example, form an exaggerated estimate of the extent of our power in extirpating some of the inferior animals, and causing others to multiply; a power which is circ.u.mscribed within certain limits, and which, in all likelihood, is by no means exclusively exerted by our species.[233] The growth of human population cannot take place without diminis.h.i.+ng the numbers, or causing the entire destruction, of many animals. The larger beasts of prey, in particular, give way before us; but other quadrupeds of smaller size, and innumerable birds, insects, and plants, which are inimical to our interests, increase in spite of us, some attacking our food, others our raiment and persons, and others interfering with our agricultural and horticultural labors. We behold the rich harvest which we have raised by the sweat of our brow, devoured by myriads of insects, and are often as incapable of arresting their depredations, as of staying the shock of an earthquake, or the course of a stream of lava.

A great philosopher has observed, that we can command nature only by obeying her laws; and this principle is true even in regard to the astonis.h.i.+ng changes which are superinduced in the qualities of certain animals and plants by domestication and garden culture. I shall point out in the third book that we can only effect such surprising alterations by a.s.sisting the development of certain instincts, or by availing ourselves of that mysterious law of their organization, by which individual peculiarities are transmissible from one generation to another.[234]

It is probable from these and many other considerations, that as we enlarge our knowledge of the system, we shall become more and more convinced, that the alterations caused by the interference of man deviate far less from the a.n.a.logy of those effected by other animals than is usually supposed.[235] We are often misled, when we inst.i.tute such comparisons, by our knowledge of the wide distinction between the instincts of animals and the reasoning power of man; and we are apt hastily to infer, that the effects of a rational and irrational species, considered merely as _physical agents_, will differ almost as much as the faculties by which their actions are directed.

It is not, however, intended that a real departure from the antecedent course of physical events cannot be traced in the introduction of man.

If that lat.i.tude of action which enables the brutes to accommodate themselves in some measure to accidental circ.u.mstances could be imagined to have been at any former period so great, that the operations of instinct were as much diversified as are those of human reason, it might, perhaps, be contended, that the agency of man did not const.i.tute an anomalous deviation from the previously established order of things.

It might then have been said, that the earth's becoming at a particular period the residence of human beings, was an era in the moral, not in the physical world--that our study and contemplation of the earth, and the laws which govern its animate productions, ought no more to be considered in the light of a disturbance or deviation from the system, than the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter should be regarded as a physical event affecting those heavenly bodies. Their influence in advancing the progress of science among men, and in aiding navigation and commerce, was accompanied by no reciprocal action of the human mind upon the economy of nature in those distant planets; and so the earth might be conceived to have become, at a certain period, a place of moral discipline and intellectual improvement to man, without the slightest derangement of a previously existing order of change in its animate and inanimate productions.

The distinctness, however, of the human from all other species, considered merely as an efficient cause in the physical world, is real; for we stand in a relation to contemporary species of animals and plants widely different from that which other irrational animals can ever be supposed to have held to each other. We modify their instincts, relative numbers, and geographical distribution, in a manner superior in degree, and in some respects very different in kind from that in which any other species can affect the rest. Besides, the progressive movement of each successive generation of men causes the human species to differ more from itself in power at two distant periods, than any one species of the higher order of animals differs from another. The establishment, therefore, by geological evidence, of the first intervention of such a peculiar and unprecedented agency, long after other parts of the animate and inanimate world existed, affords ground for concluding that the experience during thousands of ages of all the events which may happen on this globe, would not enable a philosopher to speculate with confidence concerning future contingencies.

If, then, an intelligent being, after observing the order of events for an indefinite series of ages, had witnessed at last so wonderful an innovation as this, to what extent would his belief in the regularity of the system be weakened?--would he cease to a.s.sume that there was permanency in the laws of nature?--would he no longer be guided in his speculations by the strictest rules of induction? To these questions it may be answered, that, had he previously presumed to dogmatize respecting the absolute uniformity of the order of nature, he would undoubtedly be checked by witnessing this new and unexpected event, and would form a more just estimate of the limited range of his own knowledge, and the unbounded extent of the scheme of the universe. But he would soon perceive that no one of the fixed and constant laws of the animate or inanimate world was subverted by human agency, and that the modifications now introduced for the first time were the accompaniments of new and extraordinary circ.u.mstances, and those not of a _physical_ but a _moral_ nature. The deviation permitted would also appear to be as slight as was consistent with the accomplishment of the new _moral_ ends proposed, and to be in a great degree temporary in its nature, so that, whenever the power of the new agent was withheld, even for a brief period, a relapse would take place to the ancient state of things; the domesticated animal, for example, recovering in a few generations its wild instinct, and the garden-flower and fruit-tree reverting to the likeness of the parent stock.

Now, if it would be reasonable to draw such inferences with respect to the future, we cannot but apply the same rules of induction to the past. We have no right to antic.i.p.ate any modifications in the results of existing causes in time to come, which are not conformable to a.n.a.logy, unless they be produced by the progressive development of human power, or perhaps by some other new relations which may hereafter spring up between the moral and material worlds. In the same manner, when we speculate on the vicissitudes of the animate and inanimate creation in former ages, we ought not to look for any anomalous results, unless where man has interfered, or unless clear indications appear of some other _moral_ source of temporary derangement.

CHAPTER X.

SUPPOSED INTENSITY OF AQUEOUS FORCES AT REMOTE PERIODS.

Intensity of aqueous causes--Slow acc.u.mulation of strata proved by fossils--Rate of denudation can only keep pace with deposition--Erratics, and effects of ice--Deluges, and the causes to which they are referred--Supposed universality of ancient deposits.

_Intensity of aqueous causes._--The great problem considered in the preceding chapters, namely, whether the former changes of the earth made known to us by geology, resemble in kind and degree those now in daily progress, may still be contemplated from several other points of view.

We may inquire, for example, whether there are any grounds for the belief entertained by many, that the intensity both of aqueous and of igneous forces, in remote ages, far exceeded that which we witness in our own times.

First, then, as to aqueous causes: it has been shown, in our history of the science, that Woodward did not hesitate, in 1695, to teach that the entire ma.s.s of fossiliferous strata contained in the earth's crust had been deposited in a few months; and, consequently, as their mechanical and derivative origin was already admitted, the reduction of rocky ma.s.ses into mud, sand, and pebbles, the transportation of the same to a distance, and their acc.u.mulation elsewhere in regular strata, were all a.s.sumed to have taken place with a rapidity unparalleled in modern times. This doctrine was modified by degrees, in proportion as different cla.s.ses of organic remains, such as sh.e.l.ls, corals, and fossil plants, had been studied with attention. a.n.a.logy led every naturalist to a.s.sume, that each full-grown individual of the animal or vegetable kingdom, had required a certain number of months or years for the attainment of maturity, and the perpetuation of its species by generation; and thus the first approach was made to the conception of a common standard of time, without which there are no means whatever of measuring the comparative rate at which any succession of events has taken place at two distinct periods. This standard consisted of the average duration of the lives of individuals of the same genera or families in the animal and vegetable kingdoms; and the mult.i.tude of fossils dispersed through successive strata implied the continuance of the same species for many generations. At length the idea that species themselves had had a limited duration, arose out of the observed fact that sets of strata of different ages contained fossils of distinct species. Finally, the opinion became general, that in the course of ages, one a.s.semblage of animals and plants had disappeared after another again and again, and new tribes had started into life to replace them.

_Denudation._--In addition to the proofs derived from organic remains, the forms of stratification led also, on a fuller investigation, to the belief that sedimentary rocks had been slowly deposited; but it was still supposed that _denudation_, or the power of running water, and the waves and currents of the ocean, to strip off superior strata, and lay bare the rocks below, had formerly operated with an energy wholly unequalled in our times. These opinions were both illogical and inconsistent, because deposition and denudation are parts of the same process, and what is true of the one must be true of the other. Their speed must be always limited by the same causes, and the conveyance of solid matter to a particular region can only keep pace with its removal from another, so that the aggregate of sedimentary strata in the earth's crust can never exceed in volume the amount of solid matter which has been ground down and washed away by running water. How vast, then, must be the s.p.a.ces which this abstraction of matter has left vacant! how far exceeding in dimensions all the valleys, however numerous, and the hollows, however vast, which we can prove to have been cleared out by aqueous erosion! The evidences of the work of denudation are defective, because it is the nature of every destroying cause to obliterate the signs of its own agency; but the amount of reproduction in the form of sedimentary strata must always afford a true measure of the minimum of denudation which the earth's surface has undergone.

_Erratics._--The next phenomenon to which the advocates of the excessive power of running water in times past have appealed, is the enormous size of the blocks called _erratic_, which lie scattered over the northern parts of Europe and North America. Unquestionably a large proportion of these blocks have been transported far from their original position, for between them and the parent rocks we now find, not unfrequently, deep seas and valleys intervening, or hills more than a thousand feet high.

To explain the present situation of such travelled fragments, a deluge of mud has been imagined by some to have come from the north, bearing along with it sand, gravel, and stony fragments, some of them hundreds of tons in weight. This flood, in its transient pa.s.sage over the continents, dispersed the boulders irregularly over hill, valley, and plain; or forced them along over a surface of hard rock, so as to polish it and leave it indented with parallel scratches and grooves--such markings as are still visible in the rocks of Scandinavia, Scotland, Canada, and many other countries.

There can be no doubt that the myriads of angular and rounded blocks above alluded to, cannot have been borne along by ordinary rivers or marine currents, so great is their volume and weight, and so clear are the signs, in many places, of time having been occupied in their successive deposition; for they are often distributed at various depths through heaps of regularly stratified sand and gravel. No waves of the sea raised by earthquakes, nor the bursting of lakes dammed up for a time by landslips or by avalanches of snow, can account for the observed facts; but I shall endeavor to show, in the next book, chap. 15,[236]

that a combination of existing causes may have conveyed erratics into their present situations.

The causes which will be referred to are, first, the carrying power of ice, combined with that of running water; and second, the upward movement of the bed of the sea, converting it gradually into land.

Without entering at present into any details respecting these causes, I may mention that the transportation of blocks by ice is now simultaneously in progress in the cold and temperate lat.i.tudes, both of the northern and southern hemisphere, as, for example, on the coasts of Canada and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and also in Chili, Patagonia, and the island of South Georgia. In those regions the uneven bed of the ocean is becoming strewed over with ice-drifted fragments, which have either stranded on shoals, or been dropped in deep water by melting bergs. The entanglement of boulders in drift-ice will also be shown to occur annually in North America, and these stones, when firmly frozen into ice, wander year after year from Labrador to the St. Lawrence, and reach points of the western hemisphere farther south than any part of Great Britain.

The general absence of erratics in the warmer parts of the equatorial regions of Asia, Africa, and America, confirms the same views. As to the polis.h.i.+ng and grooving of hard rocks, it has lately been ascertained that glaciers give rise to these effects when pus.h.i.+ng forward sand, pebbles, and rocky fragments, and causing them to grate along the bottom. Nor can there be any reasonable doubt that icebergs, when they run aground on the floor of the ocean, must imprint similar marks upon it.

It is unnecessary, therefore, to refer to deluges, or even to speculate on the former existence of a climate more severe than that now prevailing in the western hemisphere, to explain the geographical distribution of most of the European erratics.

_Deluges._--As deluges have been often alluded to, I shall say something of the causes which may be supposed to give rise to these grand movements of water in addition to those already alluded to (p. 9).

Geologists who believe that mountain-chains have been thrown up suddenly at many successive epochs, imagine that the waters of the ocean may be raised by these convulsions, and then break in terrific waves upon the land, sweeping over whole continents, hollowing out valleys, and transporting sand, gravel, and erratics, to great distances. The sudden rise of the Alps or Andes, it is said, may have produced a flood even subsequently to the time when the earth became the residence of man. But it seems strange that none of the writers who have indulged their imaginations in conjectures of this kind, should have ascribed a deluge to the sudden conversion of part of the unfathomable ocean into a shoal rather than to the rise of mountain-chains. In the latter case, the mountains themselves could do no more than displace a certain quant.i.ty of atmospheric air, whereas, the instantaneous formation of the shoal would displace a vast body of water, which being heaved up to a great height might roll over and permanently submerge a large portion of a continent.