The World Before the Deluge

Part 1

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THE WORLD BEFORE THE DELUGE.

BY LOUIS FIGUIER.

NEWLY EDITED AND REVISED BY H. W. BRISTOW, F.R.S., F.G.S.,

Of the Geological Survey of Great Britain; Hon. Fellow of King’s College, London.

With 235 Illustrations.

CASSELL, PETTER, & GALPIN, LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1 CONSIDERATION OF FOSSILS 4 CHEMICAL AND NEBULAR HYPOTHESES OF THE GLOBE 15 MODIFICATIONS OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE 26 ERUPTIVE ROCKS 30 PLUTONIC ERUPTIONS 31 Granite 31 Syenite 34 Protogine 35 Porphyry 37 Serpentine 38 VOLCANIC ROCKS 39 Trachytic Formations 39 Basaltic Formations 44 Volcanic or Lava Formations 51 METAMORPHIC ROCKS 71 General Metamorphism 74 THE BEGINNING 80 PRIMARY EPOCH 99 CAMBRIAN PERIOD 101 SILURIAN PERIOD 102 Lower Silurian Period 104 Upper Silurian Period 110 OLD RED SANDSTONE AND DEVONIAN PERIOD 119 CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD 130 Carboniferous Limestone 140 Coal Measures 150 Formation of Coal 159 PERMIAN PERIOD 170 Permian Rocks 177 SECONDARY EPOCH 185 TRIASSIC, OR NEW RED PERIOD 185 New Red Sandstone 187 Muschelkalk 188 Keuper Period 199 RHÆTIC (PENARTH) PERIOD 207 JURASSIC PERIOD 211 Liassic Period 211 Oolitic Sub-Period 243 Lower Oolite Fauna 244 ---- ---- Rocks 249 Middle Oolite 255 Upper Oolite 265 CRETACEOUS PERIOD 275 Lower Cretaceous Period 286 Upper Cretaceous Period 300 TERTIARY EPOCH 312 Eocene Period 315 Miocene Period 336 Pliocene Period 357 QUATERNARY EPOCH 378 POST-PLIOCENE 378 EUROPEAN DELUGES 422 GLACIAL PERIOD 435 CREATION OF MAN 464 ASIATIC DELUGE 480 EPILOGUE 489 TABLE AND DIAGRAM OF BRITISH SEDIMENTARY AND FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA 493

FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.

FRONTISPIECE--THE FIRST MAN. PAGE I. De Sancy Peak, Mont Dore 42 II. Basaltic Mountain of La Coupe d’Ayzac 46 III. Extinct Volcanoes of Le Puy 52 IV. Mud Volcano of Turbaco 62 V. Great Geyser of Iceland 66 VI. The Earth in a gaseous state circulating in space 82 VII. Condensation and rainfall 94 VIII. Ideal Landscape of the Silurian Period 104 IX. Ideal Landscape of the Devonian Period 121 X. Ideal view of marine life in the Carboniferous Period 147 XI. Ideal view of a marshy forest in the Coal Period 156 XII. Ideal Landscape of the Permian Period 172 XIII. Ideal Landscape of the Muschelkalk Period 191 XIV. Ideal Landscape of the Saliferous or Keuper Period 198 XV. Ideal Scene of the Lias Period with Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus 231 XVI. Ideal Landscape of the Liassic Period 241 XVII. Ideal Landscape of the Lower Oolite Period 254 XVIII. Ideal Landscape of the Middle Oolite Period 258 XIX. Apiocrinites rotundus and Encrinus liliiformis 261 XX. Ideal Landscape of the Upper Oolite Period 267 XXI. Ideal Scene of the Lower Cretaceous Period 296 XXII. Ideal Landscape of the Cretaceous Period 307 XXIII. Ideal Landscape of the Eocene Period 328 XXIV. Ideal Landscape of the Miocene Period 352 XXV. Ideal Landscape of the Pliocene Period 375 XXVI. Skeleton of the Mammoth in the St. Petersburg Museum 394 XXVII. Skeleton of Megatherium 403 XXVIII. Ideal View of the Quaternary Epoch--Europe 416 XXIX. Ideal Landscape of the Quaternary Epoch--America 419 XXX. Deluge of the North of Europe 425 XXXI. Glaciers of Switzerland 445 XXXII. Appearance of Man 468 XXXIII. Asiatic Deluge 483 DIAGRAM AT END--Ideal Section of the Earth’s Crust, showing the order of superposition or chronological succession of the principal groups of strata.

PREFACE.

The object of “The World before the Deluge” is to trace the progressive steps by which the earth has reached its present state, from that condition of chaos when it “was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” and to describe the various convulsions and transformations through which it has successively passed. In the words of the poet--

“Where rolls the deep, there grew the tree; O Earth, what changes hast thou seen! There, where the long street roars, hath been The silence of the central sea.”

It has been thought desirable that the present edition of the work should undergo a thorough revision by a practical geologist, a task which Mr. H. W. Bristow has performed. Mr. Bristow has however confined himself to such alterations as were necessary to secure accuracy in the statement of facts, and such additions as were necessary to represent more precisely the existing state of scientific opinion. Many points which are more or less inferential and therefore matters of individual opinion, and especially those on which M. Figuier bases his speculations, have been left in their original form, in preference to making modifications which would wholly change the character of the book. In a work whose purpose is to give the general reader a summarised account of the results at which science has arrived, and of the method of reasoning regarding the facts on which these generalisations rest, it would be out of place, as well as ineffective, to obscure general statements with those limitations which caution imposes on the scientific investigator.

In the original work the Author had naturally enough drawn most of his facts from French localities; in the translation these are mostly preserved, but others drawn from British Geology have been added, either from the translator’s own knowledge, or from the works of well-known British writers. It was considered desirable, for similar reasons, to enlarge upon the opinions of British geologists, to whom the French work scarcely does justice, considering the extent to which the science is indebted to them for its elucidation.

In the original work the chapter on Eruptive Rocks comes at the end of the work, but, as the work proceeded, so many unexplained allusions to that chapter were found that it seemed more logical, and more in accordance with chronological order, if the expression may be used, to place that chapter at the beginning.

A new edition of the French work having appeared in the early part of 1866, to which the Author contributed a chapter on Metamorphic Rocks, a translation of it is appended to the chapter on Eruptive Rocks.

A chapter on the Rhætic (or Penarth) beds has been inserted (amongst much other original matter), the stratigraphical importance of that series having been recognised since the publication of the First Edition.

In the present Edition the text has been again thoroughly revised by Mr. Bristow, and many important additions made, the result of the recent investigations of himself and his colleagues of the Geological Survey.

THE WORLD BEFORE THE DELUGE.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.

The observer who glances over a rich and fertile plain, watered by rivers and streams which have, during a long series of ages, pursued the same uniform and tranquil course; the traveller who contemplates the walls and monuments of a great city, the first founding of which is lost in the night of ages, testifying, apparently, to the unchangeableness of things and places; the naturalist who examines a mountain or other locality, and finds the hills and valleys and other accidents of the soil in the very spot and condition in which they are described by history and tradition--none of these observers would at first suspect that any serious change had ever occurred to disturb the surface of the globe. Nevertheless, the earth has not always presented the calm aspect of stability which it now exhibits; it has had its convulsions, and its physical revolutions, whose story we are about to trace. The earth, like the body of an animal, is wasted, as the philosophical Hutton tells us, at the same time that it is repaired. It has a state of growth and augmentation; it has another state, which is that of diminution and decay: it is destroyed in one part to be renewed in another; and the operations by which the renewal is accomplished are as evident to the scientific eye as those by which it is destroyed. A thousand causes, aqueous, igneous, and atmospheric, are continually at work modifying the external form of the earth, wearing down the older portions of its surface, and reconstructing newer out of the older; so that in many parts of the world denudation has taken place to the extent of many thousand feet. Buried in the depths of the soil, for example, in one of those vast excavations which the intrepidity of the miner has dug in search of coal or other minerals, there are numerous phenomena which strike the mind of the inquirer, and carry their own conclusions with them. A striking increase of temperature in these subterranean places is one of the most remarkable of these. It is found that the temperature of the earth rises one degree for every sixty or seventy feet of descent from its surface. Again: if the mine be examined vertically, it is found to consist of a series of layers or beds, sometimes horizontal, but more frequently inclined, upright, or contorted and undulating--even folded back upon themselves. Then, instances are numerous where horizontal and parallel beds have been penetrated, and traversed vertically or obliquely by veins of ores or minerals totally different in their appearance and nature from the surrounding rocks. All these undulations and varying inclinations of strata are indications that some powerful cause, some violent mechanical action, has intervened to produce them. Finally, if the interior of the beds be examined more minutely--if, armed with the miner’s pick and hammer, the rock is carefully broken up--it is not impossible that the very first efforts at mining may be rewarded by the discovery of some fossilised organic form no longer found in the living state. The remains of plants and animals belonging to the earlier ages of the world, are, in fact, very common; entire strata are sometimes formed of them; and in some localities the rocks can scarcely be disturbed without yielding fragments of bones and shells, or the impressions of fossilised animals and vegetables--the buried remains of extinct creations.

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