“RUDIMENTARY SPECIES OF CRYPTOGAMS ONLY SURVIVED.”
As the quantity of water and rainfall diminished, and, as the springs failed and the aqueous vapor of the atmosphere grew less, vegetation had entirely changed its aspect, increasing the volume of its leaves and the length of its roots, seeking in every way to absorb the humidity necessary for life. Species which had not been able to adjust themselves to the new conditions had vanished; the rest were transformed. Not a tree or a plant with which we are familiar was to be seen. There were no oaks, nor ashes, nor elms, nor willows, and the landscape bore no resemblance to that of today. Rudimentary species of cryptogams only survived.
Like changes had taken place in the animal kingdom. Animal forms had been greatly modified. The wild species had either disappeared or been domesticated. The scarcity of water had modified the food of herbivora as well as carnivora. The most recent species, evolved from those which preceded them, were smaller, with less fat and a larger skeleton. The number of plants had sensibly decreased. Less of the carbonic acid of the air was absorbed, and a proportionally greater quantity existed in the atmosphere. As for the human race, its metamorphosis was so absolute that it was with an astonishment bordering on incredulity that one saw in geological museums fossil specimens of men of the twentieth or one hundredth century, with great brutal teeth and coarse intestines; it was difficult to admit that organisms so gross could really be the ancestors of intellectual man.
Though millions of years had passed, the sun still poured upon the earth almost the same quantity of heat and light. At most, the loss had not exceeded one-tenth. The only difference was that the sun appeared a little yellower and a little smaller.
The moon still revolved about the earth, but more slowly. Its distance from the earth had increased and its apparent diameter had diminished. At the same time the period of the earth’s rotation had lengthened. This slower rotatory motion of the earth, increase in the distance of the moon, and lengthening of the lunar month, were the results of the friction of the tides, whose action resembled that of a brake. If the earth and the moon last long enough, and there are still oceans and tides, calculation would enable us to predict that the time would come when the periodic time of the earth’s rotation would finally equal the lunar month, so that there would be but five and one-quarter days in the year: the earth would then always present the same side to the moon. But this would require more than 150 million years. The period of which we are speaking, ten million years, is but a fifteenth of the above; and the time of the earth’s rotation, instead of being seventy times, was only four and one-half times greater than it now is, or about 110 hours.
These long days exposed the earth to the prolonged action of the sun, but except in those regions where its rays were normal to the surface, that is to say in the equatorial zone between the two tropical circles, this exposure availed nothing; the obliquity of the ecliptic had not changed; the inclination of the axis of the earth being the same, about two degrees, and the changes in the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit had produced no sensible effect upon the seasons or the climate.
The human form, food, respiration, organic functions, physical and intellectual life, ideas, opinions, religion, science, language—all had changed. Of present man almost nothing survived.
