Illogical Geology, the Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory

by George McCready Price

[PART II.]

[CHAPTER IX]
GRAVEYARDS

"The crust of our globe," writes a distinguished scientist, "is a great cemetery, where the rocks are tombstones on which the buried dead have written their own epitaphs." The reading of these epitaphs is the business of geology; and too often, as we shall see, the record is that of a violent and sudden death.

With the doctrine of Uniformity as a theoretical proposition, I shall have little to say. At best it is a pure assumption that the present quiet and regular action of the elements has always prevailed in the past, or that this supposition is sufficient to explain the facts of the rocks. In its more extreme form it becomes an iron dogma, which shuts out all evidence not agreeable to its teachings. But in its essential nature, whether in its least or its most extreme form, it is not approaching the subject from the right standpoint. It seeks to show how the past geological changes may have occurred; it never attempts to prove how they must have occurred. And I may say in passing, that it is largely for the purpose of avoiding the cumulative character of the evidence gathered from every stone quarry and from every section of strata in every corner of the globe, that the uniformitarians have wished to have these burials take place on the installment plan; for otherwise the violent and catastrophic character of the events recorded in the rocks would become too plainly manifest. But if a coroner, called upon to hold an inquest, were to content himself, after the manner of Lyell and Hutton, with glittering generalities about how people are all the time dying of old age, fever, or other causes, coupled with assurances of the quiet, regular habits and good reputation of all his fellow citizens, I do not think that he would be praised for his adherence to inductive methods if we could get at clear and decisive evidence that the poor fellow under examination had been shot. Just so with common-sense methods in geology. A true induction is capable of finding out for certain whether or not the present quiet regular action of the elements has always prevailed in the past; and it is most unscientific to assume, as the followers of Hutton and Lyell have done, that the comparatively insignificant changes within historic time have always prevailed in the past, when there is plenty of clear and decisive evidence to the contrary.

The general fact which I wish to develop in this chapter may be stated somewhat as follows:

Rocks belonging to all the various systems or formations give us fossils in such a state of preservation, and heaped together in such astonishing numbers, that we cannot resist the conviction that the majority of these deposits were formed in some sudden and not modern manner, catastrophic in nature.

But before giving any examples of these abnormal deposits we must first study the modern normal deposits; before we can rightly understand the sharp contrast between the ancient and the modern action of the elements, we must become familiar with the way in which fossils are now being buried by our rivers and oceans.

One of the many geological myths dissipated by the work of the "Challenger" Expedition, which, as Zittel says, "marks the grandest scientific event of the nineteenth century," is that about the ocean bottom and the work now being carried on there. The older text-books taught that, not only was the bottom of the ocean thickly strewn with the remains of the animals which died there and in the waters above, but also that the oceanic currents were constantly wearing away in some places and building up in others over all the ocean floor, and hence producing true stratified deposits. Accordingly it was said that it was only necessary for these beds to be lifted above the surface to produce the ordinary rocks that we find everywhere about us. But we now know that the ocean currents have, as Dana says, "no sensible, mechanical effects, either in the way of transportation or abrasion."[55] We know also that all kinds of sediment drop so much quicker in salt water than in fresh, that none of it gets beyond the narrow "continental shelf" and the classic 100 fathom line, which in most cases is not very far from shore. In the north Atlantic there are sediments found in deeper water produced by ice-floes or icebergs dropping their loads there; but we cannot suppose such work to have gone on when the Arctic regions were clothed with a temperate-climate vegetation, much less that such things occurred over all the earth. On the floor of the open ocean, and away from the tracks of our modern icebergs, we have two or three kinds of mud or ooze formed from minute particles of organic matter; but besides these absolutely nothing save a possible sprinkling of volcanic products, which of course are limited in their distribution. Where then can we find a stratified or bedded structure now being formed over the ocean bottom? Dana says there is nothing of the kind now being produced there, save as the result of possible variations during the passing ages in the organic deposits thrown down, where a bed of ooze may be supposed to be thrown down directly upon another kind of ooze. There is no gravel, no sand, no clay, but whatever variation there might be in the organic deposits, the new kind would be laid down immediately upon the preceding similar deposits, unless a thin sprinkling of volcanic dust happened to intervene.

Thus to explain practically all the deposits found in the rocks, we are absolutely limited to the shore deposits and the mouths of large rivers. Here we certainly have alternations of sand, clay and gravel, producing a true bedded structure. But I ask: What kind of organic remains will we get from these modern deposits? Certainly nothing like the crowded graveyards which we find everywhere in the ancient ones.