The Foot-prints of the Creator

by Hugh Miller

Fig. 46.

HYOID PLATE OF RUSSIAN ASTEROLEPIS.

(One twelfth the natural size, linear.)

But what of their organization? Were they fishes low or high in the scale? On this head we can, of course, determine merely by the analogies which their structure exhibits to that of fishes of the existing period; and these point in three several directions;—in two of the number, directly on genera of the high Ganoid order; and in the third, on the still higher Placoids and Enaliosaurs. No trace of vertebræ has yet been found; and so we infer—lodging, however, a precautionary protest, as the evidence is purely negative, and therefore it some degree inconclusive—that the vertebral column of the Asterolepis was, like that of the sturgeon, cartilaginous. Respecting its external covering, we positively know, as has been already shown, that, like the Lepidosteus of America and the Polypterus of the Nile, it was composed of strong plates and scales of solid bone; and, regarding its dentition, that, as in these last genera, and even more decidedly than in these, it was of the mixed ichthyic-reptilian character,—an outer row of thickly-set fish-teeth being backed by an inner row of thinly-set reptile-teeth. And its form of coprolite indicates the spiral disposition of intestine common to the Rays and Sharks of the existing period, and of the Ichthyosauri of the Secondary ages. Instead of being, as the development hypothesis would require, a fish low in its organization, it seems to have ranged on the level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian families ever called into existence. Had an intelligent being, ignorant of what was going on upon earth during the week of creation, visited Eden on the morning of the sixth day, he would have found in it many of the inferior animals, but no trace of man. Had he returned again in the evening, he would have seen, installed in the office of keepers of the garden, and ruling with no tyrant sway as the humble monarchs of its brute inhabitants, two mature human creatures, perfect in their organization, and arrived at the full stature of their race. The entire evidence regarding them, in the absence of all such information as that imparted to Adam by Milton’s angel, would amount simply to this, that in the morning man was not, and that in the evening he was. There, of course, could not exist, in the circumstances, a single appearance to sanction the belief that the two human creatures whom he saw walking together among the trees at sunset had been “developed from infusorial points,” not created mature. The evidence would, on the contrary, lie all the other way. And in no degree does the geologic testimony respecting the earliest Ganoids differ from what, in the supposed case, would be the testimony of Eden regarding the earliest men. Up to a certain point in the geologic scale we find that the Ganoids are not; and when they at length make their appearance upon the stage, they enter large in their stature and high in their organization.

FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS—UPPER AND LOWER.
THEIR RECENT HISTORY, ORDER, AND SIZE.

But the system of the Old Red Sandstone represents the second, not the first, great period of the world’s history. There was a preceding period at least equally extended, perhaps greatly more so, represented by the Upper and Lower Silurian formations. And what is the testimony of this morning period of organic existence, in which, so far as can yet be shown, vitality, in the planet which man inhabits, and of whose history or productions he knows anything, was first associated with matter? May not the development hypothesis find a standing in the system representative of this earliest age of creation, which it fails to find in the system of the Old Red Sandstone?

It has been confidently asserted, not merely that it may, but that it does. Ever since the publication, in 1839, of Sir Roderick Murchison’s great work on the Silurian System, it had been known that the remains of fishes occur in a bed of the “Ludlow Rock,”—one of the most modern deposits of the Upper Silurian division; and subsequent discoveries both in England and America, had shown that even the base of this division has its ichthyic organisms. But for year after year, the lower half of the system,—a division more than three thousand feet in thickness,—had failed, though there were hands and eyes busy among its deposits, to yield any vertebrate remains. During the earlier half of the first great period of organic existence, though the polyparia, radiata, articulata, and mollusca, existed, as their remains testified, by myriads, fish had, it was held, not yet entered upon the scene; and the assertors of the development theory founded largely on the presumed fact of their absence. “It is still customary,” says the author of the “Vestiges of Creation,” in his volume of “Explanations,” “to speak of the earliest fauna as one of an elevated kind. When rigidly examined, it is not found to be so. In the first place, it contains no fish. There were seas supporting crustacean and molluscan life, but utterly devoid of a class of tenants who seem able to live in every example of that element which supports meaner creatures. This single fact, that only invertebrated animals now lived, is surely in itself a strong proof that, in the course of nature, time was necessary for the creation of the superior creatures. And if so, it undoubtedly is a powerful evidence of such a theory of development as that which I have presented. If not, let me hear an equally plausible reason for the great and amazing fact, that seas were for numberless ages destitute of fish. I fix my opponents down to the consideration of this fact, so that no diversion respecting high molluscs shall avail them.” And how is this bold challenge to be met?

Most directly, and after a fashion that at once discomfits the challenger.

It might be rationally enough argued in the case, that the author of the “Vestiges” was building greatly more on a piece of purely negative evidence,—the presumed absence of fish from the Lower Silurian formations,—than purely negative evidence is, from its nature as such, suited to bear; that only a very few years had passed since it was known that vertebrate remains occurred in the Upper Silurian, and only a few more since they had been detected in the Old Red Sandstone; nay, that within the present century their frequent occurrence in even the Coal Measures was scarce suspected; and that, as his argument, had it been founded twelve years ago on the supposed absence of fishes from the Upper Silurian, or twenty years ago on the supposed absence of fishes from the Old Red Sandstone, would have been quite as plausible in reference to its negative data then as in reference to its negative data now, so it might now be quite as erroneous as it assuredly would have been then. Or it might be urged, that the fact of the absence of fish from the Lower Silurians, even were it really a fact, would be in no degree less reconcilable with the theory of creation by direct act, than with the hypothesis of gradual development. The fact that Adam did not exist during the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth days of the introductory week of Scripture narrative, furnishes no argument whatever against the fact of his creation on the sixth day. And the remark would of course equally apply to the non-existence of fishes during the Lower Silurian period, had they been really non-existent at the time, and to their sudden appearance in that of the Upper. But the objection admits of a greatly more conclusive answer. “I fix my opponents down,” says the author of the “Vestiges,” “to the consideration of this fact,” i. e. that of the absence of fishes from the earliest fossiliferous formations. And I, in turn, fix you down, I reply, to the consideration of the antagonist fact, not negative, but positive, and now, in the course of geological discovery, fully established, that fishes were not absent from the earliest fossiliferous formations. From none of the great geological formations were fishes absent,—not even from the formations of the Cambrian division. “The Lower Silurian,” says Sir Roderick Murchison, in a communication with which, in 1847, he honored the writer of these chapters, “is no longer to be viewed as an invertebrate period; for the Onchus (species not yet decided) has been found in the Llandeilo Flags and in the Lower Silurian rocks of Bala. In one respect I am gratified by the discovery; for the form is so very like that of the Onchus Murchisoni of the Upper Ludlow rock, that it is clear the Silurian system is one great natural-history series, as is proved, indeed, by all its other organic remains.” It may be mentioned further, in addition to this interesting statement, that the Bala spine was detected in its calcareous matrix by the geologists of the Government Survey, and described to Sir Roderick as that of an Onchus, by a very competent authority in such matters,—Professor Edward Forbes, and that the annunciation of the existence of spines of fishes in the Llandeilo Flags we owe to one of the most cautious and practised geologists of the present age,—Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge.