Part 3

The earliest stratified rocks contain no matters which are not to be found in the primitive granite. They are the same in material, but only changed into new forms and combinations; hence they have been called by Mr. Lyell, metamorphic rocks. But how comes it that some of them are composed almost exclusively of one of the materials of granite; the mica schists, for example, of mica—the quartz rocks, of quartz, &c.? For this there are both chemical and mechanical causes. Suppose that a river has a certain quantity of material to carry down, it is evident that it will soonest drop the larger particles, and carry the lightest farthest on. To such a cause is it owing that some of the materials of the worn-down granite have settled in one place and some in another. {52} Again, some of these materials must be presumed to have been in a state of chemical solution in the primeval seas. It would be, of course, in conformity with chemical laws, that certain of these materials would be precipitated singly, or in modified combinations, to the bottom, so as to form rocks by themselves.

The rocks hitherto spoken of contain none of those petrified remains of vegetables and animals which abound so much in subsequently formed rocks, and tell so wondrous a tale of the past history of our globe. They simply contain, as has been said, mineral materials derived from the primitive mass, and which appear to have been formed into strata in seas of vast depth. The absence from these rocks of all traces of vegetable and animal life, joined to a consideration of the excessive temperature which seems to have prevailed in their epoch, has led to the inference that no plants or animals of any kind then existed. A few geologists have indeed endeavoured to shew that the absence of organic remains is no proof of the globe having been then unfruitful or uninhabited, as the heat to which these rocks have been subjected at the time of their solidification, might have obliterated any remains of either plants or animals which were included in them. But this is only an hypothesis of negation; and it certainly seems very unlikely that a degree of heat sufficient to obliterate the remains of plants or animals when dead, would ever allow of their coming into or continuing in existence.

COMMENCEMENT OF ORGANIC LIFE— SEA PLANTS, CORALS, ETC.

WE can scarcely be said to have passed out of these rocks, when we begin to find new conditions in the earth. It is here to be observed that the subsequent rocks are formed, in a great measure, of matters derived from the substance of those which went before, but contain also beds of limestone, which is to no small extent composed of an ingredient which has not hitherto appeared. Limestone is a carbonate of lime, a secondary compound, of which one of the ingredients, carbonic acid gas, presents the element carbon, a perfect novelty in our progress. Whence this substance? The question is the more interesting, from our knowing that carbon is the main ingredient in organic things. There is reason to believe that its primeval condition was that of a gas, confined in the interior of the earth, and diffused in the atmosphere. The atmosphere still contains about a two-thousandth part of carbonic acid gas, forming the grand store from which the substance of each year’s crop of herbage and grain is derived, passing from herbage and grain into animal substance, and from animals again rendered back to the atmosphere in their expired breath, so that its amount is never impaired. Knowing this, when we hear of carbon beginning to appear in the ascending series of rocks, we are unavoidably led to consider it as marking a time of some importance in the earth’s history, a new era of natural conditions, one in which organic life has probably played a part.

It is not easy to suppose that, at this period, carbon was adopted directly in its gaseous form into rocks; for, if so, why should it not have been taken into earlier ones also? But we know that plants take it in, and transform it into substance; and we also know that there are classes of animals (marine polypes) which are capable of appropriating it, in connexion with lime, (carbonate of lime,) from the waters of the ocean, provided it be there in solution; and this substance do these animals deposit in masses (coral reefs) equal in extent to many strata. It has even been suggested, on strong grounds of probability, that a class of limestone beds are simply these reefs subjected to subsequent heat and pressure.

The appearance, then, of limestone beds in the early part of the stratified series, may be presumed to be connected with the fact of the commencement of organic life upon our planet, and, indeed, a consequent and a symptom of it.

It may not be out of place here to remark, that carbon is presumed to exist largely in the interior of the earth, from the fact of such considerable quantities of it issuing at this day, in the form of carbonic acid gas, from fissures and springs. The primeval and subsequent history of this element is worthy of much attention, and we shall have to revert to it as a matter greatly concerning our subject. Delabeche estimates the quantity of carbonic acid gas locked up in every cubic yard of limestone, at 16,000 cubic feet. The quantity locked up in coal, in which it forms from 64 to 75 per cent., must also be enormous. If all this were disengaged in a gaseous form, the constitution of the atmosphere would undergo a change, of which the first effect would be the extinction of life in all land animals. But a large proportion of it must have at one time been in the atmosphere. The atmosphere would then, of course, be incapable of supporting life in land animals. It is important, however, to observe that such an atmosphere would not be inconsistent with a luxuriant land vegetation; for experiment has proved that plants will flourish in air containing one-twelfth of this gas, or 166 times more than the present charge of our atmosphere. The results which we observe are perfectly consistent with, and may be said to presuppose an atmosphere highly charged with this gas, from about the close of the primary non-fossiliferous rocks to the termination of the carboniferous series, for there we see vast deposits (coal) containing carbon as a large ingredient, while at the same time the leaves of the Stone Book present no record of the contemporaneous existence of land animals.

The hypothesis of the connexion of the first limestone beds with the commencement of organic life upon our planet is supported by the fact, that in these beds we find the first remains of the bodies of animated creatures. My hypothesis may indeed be unsound; but, whether or not, it is clear, taking organic remains as upon the whole a faithful chronicle, that the deposition of these limestone beds was coeval with the existence of the earliest, or all but the earliest, living creatures upon earth.

And what were those creatures? It might well be with a kind of awe that the uninstructed inquirer would wait for an answer to this question. But nature is simpler than man’s wit would make her, and behold, the interrogation only brings before us the unpretending forms of various zoophytes and polypes, together with a few single and double-valved shell-fish (mollusks), all of them creatures of the sea. It is rather surprising to find these before any vegetable forms, considering that vegetables appear to us as forming the necessary first link in the chain of nutrition; but it is probable that there were sea plants, and also some simpler forms of animal life, before this period, although of too slight a substance to leave any fossil trace of their existence.

The exact point in the ascending stratified series at which the first traces of organic life are to be found is not clearly determined. Dr. M’Culloch states that he found fossil orthocerata (a kind of shell-fish) so early as the gneiss tract of Loch Eribol, in Sutherland; but Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchison, on a subsequent search, could not verify the discovery. It has also been stated, that the gneiss and mica tract of Bohemia contains some seams of grawacke, in which are organic remains; but British geologists have not as yet attached much importance to this statement. We have to look a little higher in the series for indubitable traces of organic life.

Above the gneiss and mica slate system, or group of strata, is the Clay Slate and Grawacke Slate System; that is to say, it is higher in the order of supraposition, though very often it rests immediately on the primitive granite. The sub-groups of this system are in the following succession upwards:—1, hornblende slate; 2, chiastolite slate; 3, clay slate; 4, Snowdon rocks, (grawacke and conglomerates;) 5, Bala limestone; 6, Plynlymmon rocks, (grawacke and grawacke slates, with beds of conglomerates.) This system is largely developed in the west and north of England, and it has been well examined, partly because some of the slate beds are extensively quarried for domestic purposes. If we overlook the dubious statements respecting Sutherland and Bohemia, we have in this “system” the first appearances of life upon our planet. The animal remains are chiefly confined to the slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific. Zoophyta, polyparia, crinoidea, conchifera, and crustacea, {60} are the orders of the animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth’s sepulchres. The orders are distinguished without difficulty, from the general characters of the creatures whose remains are found; but it is only in this general character that they bear a general resemblance to any creatures now existing. When we come to consider specific characters, we see that a difference exists—that, in short, the species and even genera are no longer represented upon earth. More than this, it will be found that the earliest species comparatively soon gave place to others, and that they are not represented even in the next higher group of rocks. One important remark has been made, that a comparatively small variety of species is found in the older rocks, although of some particular ones the remains are very abundant; as, for instance, of a species of asaphus, which is found between the laminæ of some of the slate rocks of Wales, and the corresponding rocks of Normandy and Germany in enormous quantities.

Ascending to the next group of rocks, we find the traces of life become more abundant, the number of species extended, and important additions made in certain vestiges of fuci, or sea-plants, and of fishes. This group of rocks has been called by English geologists, the Silurian System, because largely developed at the surface of a district of western England, formerly occupied by a people whom the Roman historians call Silures. It is a series of sandstones, limestones, and beds of shale (hardened mud), which are classed in the following sub-groups, beginning with the undermost:—1, Llandillo rocks, (darkish calcareous flagstones;) 2 and 3, two groups called Caradoc rocks; 4, Wenlock shale; 5, Wenlock limestone; 6, Lower Ludlow rocks, (shales and limestones;) 7, Aymestry limestone; 8, Upper Ludlow rocks, (shales and limestone, chiefly micaceous.) From the lowest beds upwards, there are polypiaria, though most prevalent in the Wenlock limestone; conchifera, a vast number of genera, but all of the order brachiopoda, (including terebratula, pentamerus, spirifer, orthis, leptæna;) mollusca, of several orders and many genera, (including turritella, orthoceras, nautilus, bellerophon;) crustacea, all of them trilobites, (including trinucleus, asaphus, calamene.) A little above the Llandillo rocks, there have been discovered certain convoluted forms, which are now established as annelids, or sea-worms, a tribe of creatures still existing, (nereidina and serpulina,) and which may often be found beneath stones on a sea-beach. One of these, figured by Mr. Murchison, is furnished with feet in vast numbers all along its body, like a centipede. The occurrence of annelids is important, on account of their character and status in the animal kingdom. They are red-blooded and hermaphrodite, and form a link of connexion between the annulosa (white-blooded worms) and a humble class of the vertebrata. {62} The Wenlock limestone is most remarkable amongst all the rocks of the Silurian system, for organic remains. Many slabs of it are wholly composed of corals, shells, and trilobites, held together by shale. It contains many genera of crinoidea and polypiaria, and it is thought that some beds of it are wholly the production of the latter creatures, or are, in other words, coral reefs transformed by heat and pressure into rocks. Remains of fishes, of a very minute size, have been detected by Mr. Philips in the Aymestry limestone, being apparently the first examples of vertebrated animals which breathed upon our planet. In the upper Ludlow rocks, remains of six genera of fish have been for a longer period known; they belong to the order of cartilaginous fishes, an order of mean organization and ferocious habits, of which the shark and sturgeon are living specimens. “Some were furnished with long palates, and squat, firmly-based teeth, well adapted for crushing the strong-cased zoophytes and shells of the period, fragments of which occur in the fœcal remains; some with teeth that, like the fossil sharks of the later formations, resemble lines of miniature pyramids, larger and smaller alternating; some with teeth sharp, thin, and so deeply serrated, that every individual tooth resembles a row of poniards set up against the walls of an armory; and these last, says Agassiz, furnished with weapons so murderous, must have been the pirates of the period. Some had their fins guarded with long spines, hooked like the beak of an eagle; some with spines of straighter and more slender form, and ribbed and furrowed longitudinally like columns; some were shielded by an armour of bony points, and some thickly covered with glistening scales.” {64}

The traces of fuci in this system are all but sufficient to allow of a distinction of genera. In some parts of North America, extensive though thin beds of them have been found. A distinguished French geologist, M. Brogniart, has shewn that all existing marine plants are classifiable with regard to the zones of climate; some being fitted for the torrid zone, some for the temperate, some for the frigid. And he establishes that the fuci of these early rocks speak of a torrid climate, although they may be found in what are now temperate regions; he also states that those of the higher rocks betoken, as we ascend, a gradually diminishing temperature.

We thus early begin to find proofs of the general uniformity of organic life over the surface of the earth, at the time when each particular system of rocks was formed. Species identical with the remains in the Wenlock limestone occur in the corresponding class of rocks in the Eifel, and partially in the Harz, Norway, Russia, and Brittany. The situations of the remains in Russia are fifteen hundred miles from the Wenlock beds; but at the distance of between six and seven thousand from those,—namely, in the vale of Mississippi, the same species are discovered. Uniformity in animal life over large geographical areas argues uniformity in the conditions of animal life; and hence arise some curious inferences. Species, in the same low class of animals, are now much more limited; for instance, the Red Sea gives different polypiaria, zoophytes, and shell-fish, from the Mediterranean. It is the opinion of M. Brogniart, that the uniformity which existed in the primeval times can only be attributed to the temperature arising from the internal heat, which had yet, as he supposes, been sufficiently great to overpower the ordinary meteorological influences, and spread a tropical clime all over the globe.

ERA OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE— FISHES ABUNDANT.

WE advance to a new chapter in this marvellous history—the era of the Old Red Sandstone System. This term has been recently applied to a series of strata, of enormous thickness in the whole mass, largely developed in Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and South Wales; also in the counties of Fife, Forfar, Moray, Cromarty, and Caithness; and in Russia and North America, if not in many other parts of the world. The particular strata forming the system are somewhat different in different countries; but there is a general character to the extent of these being a mixture of flagstones, marly rocks, and sandstones, usually of a laminous structure, with conglomerates. There is also a schist shewing the presence of bitumen; a remarkable new ingredient, since it is a vegetable production. In the conglomerates, of great extent and thickness, which form, in at least one district, the basis or leading feature of the system, inclosing water-worn fragments of quartz and other rocks, we have evidence of the seas of that period having been subjected to a violent and long-continued agitation, probably from volcanic causes. The upper members of the series bear the appearance of having been deposited in comparatively tranquil seas. The English specimens of this system shew a remarkable freedom from those disturbances which result in the interjection of trap; and they are thus defective in mineral ores. In some parts of England the old red sandstone system has been stated as 10,000 feet in thickness.

In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian are continued: we have the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta, polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea; but to these are added numerous fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary and surprising forms. Several of the strata are crowded with remains of fish, shewing that the seas in which those beds were deposited had swarmed with that class of inhabitants. The investigation of this system is recent; but already {68} M. Agassiz has ascertained about twenty genera, and thrice the number of species. And it is remarkable that the Silurian fishes are here only represented in genera; the whole of the species of that era had already passed away. Even throughout the sub-groups of the system itself, the species are changed; and these are phenomena observed throughout all the subsequent systems or geological eras; apparently arguing that, during the deposition of all the rocks, a gradual change of physical conditions was constantly going on. A varying temperature, or even a varying depth of sea, would at present be attended with similar changes in marine life; and by analogy we are entitled to assume that such variations in the ancient seas might be amongst the causes of that constant change of genera and species in the inhabitants of those seas to which the organic contents of the rocks bear witness.

Some of the fossils of this system,—the cephalaspis, coccosteus, pterichthys, holoptychius—are, in form and structure, entirely different from any fishes now existing, only the sturgeon family having any trace of affinity to them in any respect. They seem to form a sort of connecting link between the crustacea and true fishes.

The cephalaspis may be considered as making the smallest advance from the crustacean character; it very much resembles in form the asaphus of lower formations, having a longish tail-like body inserted within the cusp of a large crescent-shaped head, somewhat like a saddler’s cutting-knife. The body is covered with strong plates of bone, enamelled, and the head was protected on the upper side with one large plate, as with a buckler—hence the name, implying buckler-head. A range of small fins conveys the idea of its having been as weak in motion as it is strong in structure. The coccosteus may be said to mark the next advance to fish creation. The outline of its body is of the form of a short thick coffin, rounded, covered with strong bony plates, and terminating in a long tail, which seems to have been the sole organ of motion. It is very remarkable, that, while the tail establishes this creature among the vertebrata and the fishes, its mouth has been opened vertically, like those of the crustaceans, but which is contrary to the mode of vertebrata generally. This seems a pretty strong mark of the link character of the coccosteus between these two great departments of the animal kingdom. The pterichthys has also strong bony plates over its body, arranged much like those of a tortoise, and has a long tail; but its most remarkable feature, and that which has suggested its name, is a pair of long and narrow wing-like appendages attached to the shoulders, which the creature is supposed to have erected for its defence when attacked by an enemy.

The holoptychius is of a flat oval form, furnished with fins, and ending in a long tail; the whole body covered with strong plates which overlap each other, and the head forming only a slight rounded projection from the general figure. The specimens in the lower beds are not above the size of a flounder; but in the higher strata, to judge by the size of the scales or plates which have been found, the creature attained a comparatively monstrous size.

The other fishes of the system,—the osteolepis, glyptolepis, dipterus, &c., are, in general outline, much like fishes still existing, but their organization has, nevertheless, some striking peculiarities. They have been entirely covered with bony scales or plates, enamelled externally; their spines are tipped with bone, and, as one striking and unvarying feature, the tail is only finned on the lower side. The internal skeleton, of which no traces have been preserved, is presumed to have been cartilaginous. They therefore unite the character of cartilaginous fishes with a character peculiar to themselves, and in which we see pretty clear vestiges of the pre-existent crustaceous form.

With regard to the link character of these animals, some curious facts are mentioned. It appears that in the imperfect condition of the vertebral column, and the inferior situation of the mouth in the pterichthys, coccosteus, &c., there is an analogy to the form of the dorsal cord and position of the mouth in the embryo of perfect fishes. The one-sided form of the tail in the osteolepis &c. finds a similar analogy in the form of the tail in the embryo of the salmon. It is not premature to remark how broadly these facts seem to hint at a parity of law affecting the progress of general creation, and the progress of an individual fœtus of one of the more perfect animals.

It is equally ascertained of the types of being prevalent in the old red, as of those of the preceding system, that they are uniform in the corresponding strata of distant parts of the earth; for instance, Russia and North America.

In the old red sandstone, the marine plants, of which faint traces are observable in the Silurians, continue to appear. It would seem as if less change took place in the vegetation than in the animals of those early seas; and for this, as Mr. Miller has remarked, it is easy to imagine reasons. For example, an infusion of lime into the sea would destroy animal life, but be favourable to vegetation.

As yet there were no land animals or plants, and for this the presumable reason is, that no dry land as yet existed. We are not left to make this inference solely from the absence of land animals and plants; in the arrangement of the primary (stratified) rocks, we have further evidence of it. That these rocks were formed in a generally horizontal position, we are as well assured as that they were formed at the bottom of seas. But they are always found greatly inclined in position, tilted up against the slopes of the granitic masses which are beneath them in geological order, though often shooting up to a higher point in the atmosphere. No doubt can be entertained that these granitic masses, forming our principal mountain ranges, have been protruded from below, or, at least, thrust much further up, since the deposition of the primary rocks. The protrusion was what tilted up the primary rocks; and the inference is, of course, unavoidable, that these mountains have risen chiefly, at least, since the primary rocks were laid down. It is remarkable that, while the primary rocks thus incline towards granitic nuclei or axes, the strata higher in the series rest against these again, generally at a less inclination, or none at all, shewing that these strata were laid down after the swelling mountain eminences had, by their protrusion, tilted up the primary strata. And thus it may be said an era of local upthrowing of the primitive and (perhaps) central matter of our planet, is established as happening about the close of the primary strata, and beginning of the next ensuing system. It may be called the Era of the Oldest Mountains, or, more boldly, of the formation of the detached portions of dry land over the hitherto watery surface of the globe—an important part of the designs of Providence, for which the time was now apparently come. It may be remarked, that volcanic disturbances and protrusions of trap took place throughout the whole period of the deposition of the primary rocks; but they were upon a comparatively limited scale, and probably all took place under water. It was only now that the central granitic masses of the great mountain ranges were thrown up, carrying up with them broken edges of the primary strata; a process which seems to have had this difference from the other, that it was the effect of a more tremendous force exerted at a lower depth in the earth, and generally acting in lines pervading a considerable portion of the earth’s surface. We shall by-and-by see that the protrusion of some of the mountain ranges was not completed, or did not stop, at that period. There is no part of geological science more clear than that which refers to the ages of mountains. It is as certain that the Grampian mountains of Scotland are older than the Alps and Apennines, as it is that civilization had visited Italy, and had enabled her to subdue the world, while Scotland was the residence of “roving barbarians.” The Pyrenees, Carpathians, and other ranges of continental Europe, are all younger than the Grampians, or even the insignificant Mendip Hills of southern England. Stratification tells this tale as plainly as Livy tells the history of the Roman republic. It tells us—to use the words of Professor Philips—that at the time when the Grampians sent streams and detritus to straits where now the valleys of the Forth and Clyde meet, the greater part of Europe was a wide ocean.

The last three systems—called, in England, the Cumbrian, Silurian, and Devonian, and collectively the palæozoic rocks, from their containing the remains of the earliest inhabitants of the globe—are of vast thickness; in England, not much less than 30,000 feet, or nearly six miles. In other parts of the world, as we have seen, the earliest of these systems alone is of much greater depth—arguing an enormous profundity in the ocean in which they were formed.

SECONDARY ROCKS. ERA OF THE CARBONIFEROUS FORMATION. LAND FORMED. COMMENCEMENT OF LAND PLANTS.

WE now enter upon a new great epoch in the history of our globe. There was now dry land. As a consequence of this fact, there was fresh water, for rain, instead of immediately returning to the sea, as formerly, was now gathered in channels of the earth, and became springs, rivers, and lakes. There was now a theatre for the existence of land plants and animals, and it remains to be inquired if these accordingly were produced.