Outlines of the Earth's History: A Popular Study in Physiography

by Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

As the geologist follows down through the sections of the stratified rocks, and from the remains of strata determines the erosion which has borne away the greater part of the thick deposits which have been exposed to erosion, he comes upon one of those breaks in the succession, or encounters what is called an unconformity, as when horizontal strata lie against those which are tilted. In many cases he may observe that at this time there was a great interval unrepresented by deposits at the place where his observations are made, yet a great lapse of time is indicated by the fact that a large amount of erosion took place in the interval between the two sets of beds.

Putting together the bits of record, and assuming that the rate of erosion accomplished by the agents which operate on the land has always been about the same, the geologist comes to the conclusion that the section of the rocks from the present day to the lowest strata of the Laurentian represents in the time required for their formation not less than a hundred million years; more likely twice that duration. To this argument objection is made by some naturalists that the agents of erosion may have been more active in the past than they are at present. They suggest that the rainfall may have been much greater or the tides higher than they now are. Granting all that can be claimed on this score, we note the fact that the rate of erosion evidently does not increase in anything like a proportionate way with the amount of rainfall. Where a country is protected by its natural coating of vegetation, the rain is delivered to the streams without making any considerable assault upon the surface of the earth, however large the fall may be. Moreover, the tides have little direct cutting power; they can only remove detritus which other agents have brought into a condition to be borne away. The direct cutting power of the tidal movement does not seem to be much greater in the Bay of Fundy, where the maximum height of the waves amounts to fifty feet, than on the southern coast of Massachusetts, where the range is not more than five. So far as the observer can judge, the climatal conditions and the other influences which affect the wear of rocks have not greatly varied in the past from what they are at the present day. Now and then there have been periods of excessive erosion; again, ages in which large fields were in the conditions of exceeding drought. It is, however, a fair presumption that these periods in a way balance each other, and that the average state was much like that which we find at present.

If after studying the erosive phenomena exhibited in the structure of the earth the student takes up the study of the accumulations of strata, and endeavours to determine the time required for the laying down of the sediments, he finds similar evidence of the earth's great antiquity. Although the process of deposition, which has given us the rocks visible in the land masses, has been very much interrupted, the section which is made by grouping the observations made in various fields shows that something like a maximum thickness of a hundred and fifty thousand feet of beds has been accumulated in that part of geologic time during which strata were being laid down in the fields that are subjected to our study. Although in these rocks there are many sets of beds which were rapidly formed, the greater part of them have been accumulated with exceeding slowness. Many fine shales, such as those which plentifully occur in the Devonian beds of this country, must have required a thousand years or more for the deposition of the materials that now occupy an inch in depth. In those sections a single foot of the rock may well represent a period of ten thousand years. In many of the limestones the rate of accumulation could hardly have been more speedy. The reckoning has to be rough, but the impression which such studies make upon the mind of the unprejudiced observer is to the effect that the thirty miles or so of sedimentary deposits could not have been formed in less than a hundred million years. In this reckoning it should be noted that no account is taken of those great intervals of unrecorded time, such as elapsed between the close of the Laurentian and the beginning of the Cambrian periods.

There is a third way in which we may seek an interpretation of duration from the rocks. In each successive stage of the earth's history, in different measure in the various ages, mountains were formed which in time, during their exposure to the conditions of the land, were worn down to their roots and covered by deposits accumulated during the succeeding ages. A score or more of these successively constructed series of elevations may readily be observed. Of old, it was believed that mountain ranges were suddenly formed, but there is, however, ample evidence to prove that these disturbed portions of the strata were very gradually dislocated, the rate of the mountainous growth having been, in general, no greater in the past than it is at the present day, when, as we know full well, the movements are going on so slowly that they escape observation. Only here and there, as an attendant on earthquake shocks or other related movements of the crust, do we find any trace of the upward march which produces these elevations. Although not a subject for exact measurements, these features of mountain growth indicate a vast lapse of time, during which the elevations were formed and worn away.

Yet another and very different method by which we may obtain some gauge of the depths of the past is to be found in the steps which have led organic life from its lowest and earliest known forms to the present state of advancement. Taking the changes of species which have occurred since the beginning of the last ice epoch, we find that the changes which have been made in the organic life have been very small; no naturalist who has obtained a clear idea of the facts will question the statement that they are not a thousandth part of the alterations which have occurred since the Laurentian time. The writer is of the opinion that they do not represent the ten thousandth part of those vast changes. These changes are limited in the main to the disappearance of a few forms, and to slight modifications in those previously in existence which have survived to the present day. So far as we can judge, no considerable step in the organic series has taken place in this last great period of the earth's history, although it has been a period when, as before noted, all the conditions have combined to induce rapid modifications in both animals and plants. If, then, we can determine the duration of this period, we may obtain a gauge of some general value.

Although we can not measure in any accurate way the duration of the events which have taken place since the last Glacial period began to wane, a study of the facts seems to show that less than a hundred thousand years can not well be assumed for this interval. Some of the students who have approached the subject are disposed to allow a period of at least twice this length as necessary for the perspective which the train of events exhibits. Reckoning on the lowest estimate, and counting the organic changes which take place during the age as amounting to the thousandth part of the organic changes since the Laurentian age, we find ourselves in face once again of that inconceivable sum which was indicated by the physical record.

Here, again, the critics assert that there may have been periods in the history of the earth when the changes of organic life occurred in a far swifter manner than in this last section of the earth's history. This supposition is inadmissible, for it rests on no kind of proof; it is, moreover, contraindicated by the evident fact that the advance in the organic series has been more rapid in recent time than at any stage of the past. In a word, all the facts with which the geologist deals are decidedly against the assumption that terrestrial changes in the organic or the inorganic world ever proceed in a spasmodic manner. Here and there, and from time to time, local revolutions of a violent nature undoubtedly occur, but, so far as we may judge from the aspect of the present or the records of the past, these accidents are strictly local; the earth has gone forward in its changes much as it is now advancing. Its revolutions have been those of order rather than those of accident.

The first duty of the naturalist is to take Nature as he finds it. He must avoid supposing any methods of action which are not clearly indicated in the facts that he observes. The history of his own and of all other sciences clearly shows that danger is always incurred where suppositions as to peculiar methods of action are introduced into the interpretation. It required many centuries of labour before the students of the earth came to adopt the principle of explaining the problems with which they had to deal by the evidence that the earth submitted to them. Wherever they trusted to their imaginations for guidance, they fell into error. Those who endeavour to abbreviate our conception of geologic time by supposing that in the olden days the order of events was other than that we now behold are going counter to the best traditions of the science.