Town Geology

by Charles Kingsley

And now, perhaps, the reader will ask—If I am to believe that all new land is made out of old land, and that all rocks and soils are derived from the wear and tear of still older rocks, off what land came this enormous heap of sands more than 5,000 feet thick in places, stretching across England and into Germany?

It is difficult to answer. The shape and distribution of land in those days were so different from what they are now, that the rocks which furnished a great deal of our sandstone may be now, for aught I know, a mile beneath the sea.

But over the land which still stands out of the sea near us there has been wear and tear enough to account for any quantity of sand deposit. As a single instance—It is a provable and proven fact—as you may see from Mr. Ramsay’s survey of North Wales—that over a large tract to the south of Snowdon, between Port Madoc and Barmouth, there has been ground off and carried away a mass of solid rock 20,000 feet thick; thick enough, in fact, if it were there still, to make a range of mountains as high as the Andes. It is a provable and proven fact that vast tracts of the centre of poor old Ireland were once covered with coal-measures, which have been scraped off in likewise, deprived of inestimable mineral wealth. The destruction of rocks—“denudation” as it is called—in the district round Malvern, is, I am told, provably enormous. Indeed, it is so over all Wales, North England, and West and North Scotland. So there is enough of rubbish to be accounted for to make our New Red sands. The round pebbles in it being, I believe, pieces of Old Red sandstone, may have come from the great Old Red sandstone region of South East Wales and Herefordshire. Some of the rubbish, too, may have come from what is now the Isle of Anglesey.

For you find in the beds, from the top to the bottom (at least in Cheshire), particles of mica. Now this mica could not have been formed in the sand. It is a definite crystalline mineral, whose composition is well known. It is only found in rocks which have been subjected to immense pressure, and probably to heat. The granites and mica-slates of Anglesey are full of it; and from Anglesey—as likely as from anywhere else—these thin scales of mica came. And that is about all that I can say on the matter. But it is certain that most of these sands were deposited in a very shallow water, and very near to land. Sand and pebbles, as I said in my first paper, could not be carried far out to sea; and some of the beds of the Bunter are full of rounded pebbles. Nay, it is certain that their surface was often out of water. Of that you may see very pretty proofs. You find these sands ripple-marked, as you do shore-sands now. You find cracks where the marl mud has dried in the sun: and, more, you find the little pits made by rain. Of that I have no doubt. I have seen specimens, in which you could not only see at a glance that the marks had been made by the large drops of a shower, but see also from what direction the shower had come. These delicate markings must have been covered up immediately with a fresh layer of mud or sand. How long since? How long since that flag had seen the light of the sun, when it saw it once again, restored to the upper air by the pick of the quarryman? Who can answer that? Not I.

Fossils are very rare in these sands; it is not easy to say why. It may be that the red oxide of iron in them has destroyed them. Few or none are ever found in beds in which it abounds. It is curious, too, that the Keuper, which is all but barren of fossils in England, is full of them in Würtemberg, reptiles, fish, and remains of plants being common. But what will interest the reader are the footprints of a strange beast, found alike in England and in Germany—the Cheirotherium, as it was first named, from its hand-like feet; the Labyrinthodon, as it is now named, from the extraordinary structure of its teeth. There is little doubt now, among anatomists, that the bones and teeth of the so-called Labyrinthodon belong to the animal which made the footprints. If so, the creature must have been a right loathly monster. Some think him to have been akin to lizards; but the usual opinion is that he was a cousin of frogs and toads. Looking at his hands and other remains, one pictures him to oneself as a short, squat brute, as big as a fat hog, with a head very much the shape of a baboon, very large hands behind and small ones in front, waddling about on the tide flats of a sandy sea, and dragging after him, seemingly, a short tail, which has left its mark on the sand. What his odour was, whether he was smooth or warty, what he ate, and in general how he got his living, we know not. But there must have been something there for him to eat; and I dare say that he was about as happy and about as intellectual as the toad is now. Remember always that there is nothing alive now exactly like him, or, indeed, like any animal found in these sandstones. The whole animal world of this planet has changed entirely more than once since the Labyrinthodon waddled over the Cheshire flats. A lizard, for instance, which has been found in the Keuper, had a skull like a bird’s, and no teeth—a type which is now quite extinct. But there is a more remarkable animal of which I must say a few words, and one which to scientific men is most interesting and significant.

Both near Warwick, and near Elgin in Scotland, in Central India, and in South Africa, fossil remains are found of a family of lizards utterly unlike anything now living save one, and that one is crawling about, plentifully I believe—of all places in the world—in New Zealand. How it got there; how so strange a type of creature should have died out over the rest of the world, and yet have lasted on in that remote island for long ages, ever since the days of the New Red sandstone, is one of those questions—quite awful questions I consider them—with which I will not puzzle my readers. I only mention it to show them what serious questions the scientific man has to face, and to answer, if he can. Only the next time they go to the Zoological Gardens in London, let them go to the reptile-house, and ask the very clever and courteous attendant to show them the Sphenodons, or Hatterias, as he will probably call them—and then look, I hope with kindly interest, at the oldest Conservatives they ever saw, or are like to see; gentlemen of most ancient pedigree, who have remained all but unchanged, while the whole surface of the globe has changed around them more than once or twice.

And now, of course, my readers will expect to hear something of the deposits of rock-salt, for which Cheshire and its red rocks are famous. I have never seen them, and can only say that the salt does not, it is said by geologists, lie in the sandstone, but at the bottom of the red marl which caps the sandstone. It was formed most probably by the gradual drying up of lagoons, such as are depositing salt, it is said now, both in the Gulf of Tadjara, on the Abyssinian frontier opposite Aden, and in the Runn of Cutch, near the Delta of the Indus. If this be so, then these New Red sandstones may be the remains of a whole Sahara—a sheet of sandy and all but lifeless deserts, reaching from the west of England into Germany, and rising slowly out of the sea; to sink, as we shall find, beneath the sea again.

And now, as to the vast period of time—the four or five worlds, as I called it—which elapsed between the laying down of the New Red sandstones and the laying down of the boulder-clays.

I think this fact—for fact it is—may be better proved by taking readers an imaginary railway journey to London from any spot in the manufacturing districts of central England—begging them, meanwhile, to keep their eyes open on the way.

And here I must say that I wish folks in general would keep their eyes a little more open when they travel by rail. When I see young people rolling along in a luxurious carriage, their eyes and their brains absorbed probably in a trashy shilling novel, and never lifted up to look out of the window, unconscious of all that they are passing—of the reverend antiquities, the admirable agriculture, the rich and peaceful scenery, the like of which no country upon earth can show; unconscious, too, of how much they might learn of botany and zoology, by simply watching the flowers along the railway banks and the sections in the cuttings: then it grieves me to see what little use people make of the eyes and of the understanding which God has given them. They complain of a dull journey: but it is not the journey which is dull; it is they who are dull. Eyes have they, and see not; ears have they, and hear not; mere dolls in smart clothes, too many of them, like the idols of the heathen.