And through eternal change obeys
Up from the deepest region creeps
The trace of life of former days.”
Faust.
CHAPTER VII.
SECONDARY FORMATIONS.
No. 1. The New Red Sandstone.
“There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture’s eye hath not seen; the lions’ whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it.”—Job.
We now take our leave of the Palæozoic period, and enter upon the investigation of other and more recent geological epochs in the history of the crust of our planet. This division is known by the names Secondary or Mesozoic,[[64]] and is inclusive of the New Red Sandstone, Oolitic, Wealden, and Cretaceous groups. If, in our previous survey, we have had our minds filled with wonder as we looked at the disinterred relics of past creations, and have gazed at these fossil forms of ancient life with almost a loving interest in their still remaining beauty; so, as we now study higher types of life, and behold how “other wonders rise, and seize the soul the prisoner of amaze,” we shall find reason upon reason for the penetration of our minds with the profoundest adoration of Deity. No man turning up a tumulus, and there finding coins, weapons, beads, vases, or other such historical relics, would venture to say such things were created there; on the contrary, he would acknowledge that they were Roman, and that he had come to that conclusion by perceiving their resemblance to other and similar ancient Roman relics, discovered where there could be no doubt of their origin and history. Or if a traveller were to visit the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and there find buried beneath the overwhelming torrent of once burning lava, all possible kinds of human memorials, not only in human works, but also in the skeleton remains of human beings, would he not come to the conclusion that these were indubitable evidences of those cities having once been inhabited by man, and that these skeletons were once covered with warm flesh, and that they had lived, and moved, and had their being, even as we do now, amidst the activities and enjoyments of actual life? We apply this to geology. There are persons who never judge by evidence, (though what else have we to judge by?) but rashly jump to conclusions about geological facts, that have not a particle of common sense to sustain them. They never think that every rounded pebble they meet with has been so rounded by the action of water; they imagine sand to have been created as sand, instead of taking the geologist’s proof, that all sand has been produced by the action of moving water on solid rock. They believe that fossils were created, and that God put encrinital remains, and dead ammonites, and bones of saurians, and teeth and bones of great mammals, in the earth, just as we find them in the cliffs and caves of this and every country; and they imagine that thus to account for the wonders of creation redounds to the glory of that God whom thus they ignorantly worship. Even our great publishing society in Paternoster Row,[[65]] that has published about everything in natural history but geology, has acknowledged to me that it declines to undertake a work on this science, because of the theological difficulties connected with the subject. Why, what is this but the very way to breed infidelity? The man who studies nature and who studies his Bible, is not ashamed to say he believes them both; though two books, they are both given by inspiration of God. Man may be a liar, but neither nature nor the Bible can lie; and while one tells us the history of man, the other reveals to us the history of the creation, and succession of those beings which preceded the advent of man.
We now come to the New Red Sandstone, which must occupy our attention both on account of the unique fossil remains found in it, and also on account of its economic use and value in commerce. Few formations, small as it is, possess so many points of interest to the beginner as the new red sandstone; for, lying just above the carboniferous, and between it and the oolitic group, we find in it certain curiosities of very olden time, that are full of marvellous power to fill us with amaze. Every one remembers Robinson Crusoe’s surprise at finding “the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand,” and how he “stood like one thunder-struck, or as if he had seen an apparition;” and then how he “went again to see if it might not be his fancy, but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot;” and then how, after “innumerable fluttering thoughts, and out of himself,” he went home terrified to his fortification.
Equally surprising are the discoveries made in the old red sandstone. Large slabs of this rock have been discovered in England, in Scotland, and in the United States, on which are left, as Robinson left the impression of his foot, the undisturbed footmarks of pre-Adamite animals; the ebb and flow of the tide of those distant ages; the ripple-mark showing the direction of the wind; and casts of the rainprints made by showers, long long ages ere man had taken possession of the “deep places of the earth.” “Romantic nonsense!” says a grave friend; “let us go to something practical, instead of losing ourselves in such idle speculations.” Now, you are just the person whose ear we want to catch; and to you we say, just listen to the evidence of these assertions. “The casts of rainprints below project from the under side of two layers; the one a sandy shale, and the other a sandstone presenting a warty or a blistered surface, and affording evidence of cracks formed by the shrinkage of subjacent clay on which rain had fallen. The great humidity of the climate of the coal period had been previously inferred from the nature of its vegetation, and the continuity of its forests for hundreds of miles; but it is satisfactory to have at length obtained such positive proofs of showers of rain, the drops of which resembled in their average size those which now fall from the clouds. From such data we may presume that the atmosphere of the carboniferous period corresponded in density with that now investing the globe and that different currents of air varied then as now in temperature, so as to give rise, by their mixture, to the condensation of aqueous vapour.”[[66]]
