TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Scroll the mouse over a word and the original text will appear. A [list of corrections] is at the end of the text.

Illogical Geology

The Weakest Point in

The Evolution Theory

BY

GEORGE McCREADY PRICE

Editor of "The Modern Heretic," and Author of "Outlines of Modern Science" and "Modern Christianity."

The Modern Heretic Company

257 S. HILL ST. LOS ANGELES, CAL.

[Illogical Geology]
The Weakest Point in
The Evolution Theory

BY
GEORGE McCREADY PRICE

Editor of "The Modern Heretic," and Author of "Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity."

The Modern Heretic Company
257 S. HILL STREET, LOS ANGELES, CAL.

SINGLE COPIES 25^c
3 COPIES 60c: 10 COPIES $1.75

ILLOGICAL GEOLOGY

THE WEAKEST POINT IN THE EVOLUTION THEORY

To the Reader.

This Advance Edition has been issued by the Publishers in this cheap form to enable them to get out several thousand copies for critical review at comparatively small expense. Succeeding editions will be in regular book form, and will be sold at the usual rates for bound volumes.

"It is a singular and a notable fact, that while most other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology still remains imprisoned in 'a priori' theories."—Sir Henry Howorth: "The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood." Preface. VII.

THE MODERN HERETIC COMPANY

257 S. Hill St., Los Angeles, California
1906

COPYRIGHT 1906
BY
GEORGE McCREADY PRICE
LOS ANGELES, CAL.

[PART I]

[PREFACE]

This book is not written especially for geologists or other scientists as such, though it deals with the question which it discusses from a purely scientific standpoint, and presupposes a good general knowledge of the rocks and of current theories. It is addressed rather to that large class of readers to whom geology is only an incident in larger problems, and who are not quite wholly satisfied with those explanations of the universe which are now commonly accepted on the testimony of biological science. I am free to say that my own conviction of the higher value and surer truth of other data outside of the biological sciences have always been given formative power in my own private opinions, and that in this way I have long held that there must be something wrong with the Evolution Theory, and also that there must be a surer way of gauging the value of that Theory, even from the scientific standpoint, than the long devious processes connected with Darwinism and biology. Some years ago, when compelled to investigate the subject more fully than I had hitherto done, I discovered, somewhat to my own surprise, the phenomenal weakness of the geological argument. The results of that investigation have grown into the present work.

Though mostly critical and analytic, it is not wholly so. But so far as it is constructive there is one virtue which can rightly be claimed for it. It is at least an honest effort to study the foundation facts of geology from the inductive may be standpoint, and whether or not I have succeeded in this, it is, so far as I know, the only work published in the English or any other language which does not treat the science of geology more or less as a cosmogony.

That such a statement is possible is, I think, my chief justification in giving it to the public. It would seem as if the twentieth century could afford at least one book built up from the present, instead of being postulated from the past.

GEORGE McCREADY PRICE.

257 South Hill Street,
Los Angeles, California,
June, 1906.

[CONTENTS]

[INTRODUCTION]

A brief outline of the argument which I have used in the following pages will be in order here.

Darwinism, as a part, the chief part, of the general Evolution Theory, rests logically and historically on the succession of life idea as taught by geology. If there has actually been this succession of life on the globe, then some form of genetic connection between these successive types is the intuitive conclusion of every thinking mind. But if there is no positive evidence that certain types are essentially older than others, if this succession of life is not an actual scientific fact, then Darwinism or any other form of evolution has no more scientific value than the vagaries of the old Greeks—in short, from the standpoint of true inductive science it is a most gigantic hoax, historically scarce second to the Ptolemaic astronomy.

In Part One I have examined critically this succession of life theory. It is improper to speak of my argument as destructive, for there never was any real constructive argument to be thus destroyed. It is essentially an exposure, and I am willing to give a thousand dollars to any one who will, in the face of the facts here presented, show me how to prove that one kind of fossil is older than another.

In Part Two I have attempted to build up a true, safe induction in the candid, unprejudiced spirit of a coroner called upon to hold a post mortem. The abnormal character of most of the fossiliferous deposits, the sudden world-wide change of climate they record, the marked degeneration in all organic forms in passing from the older to the modern world, together with the great outstanding fact that human beings, with thousands of other living species of animals and plants have at this great world-crisis left their fossils in the rocks all over the world, prove beyond a possible doubt that our once magnificently stocked world met with a tremendous catastrophe some thousands of years ago, before the dawn of history. As for the origin of the living beings that existed before that event, we can only suppose a direct creation, since modern science knows nothing of the spontaneous generation of life, or of certain types of life having originated before other types, and thus being able to serve as the source of origin of other alleged succeeding types.

With the myth of a life succession dissipated once and for ever, the world stands face to face with creation as the direct act of the Infinite God.

[CHAPTER I]
THE ABSTRACT IDEA

How many of us have ever tried to think out a statement of just how we would prove that there has been a succession of life on the globe in a particular order?

Herbert Spencer did[1] and he did not seem to think the way in which it is usually attempted a very praiseworthy example of the methods to be pursued in natural science.

He starts out with Werner, of Neptunian fame, and shows that the latter's main idea of the rocks always succeeding one another over the whole globe like the coats of an onion was "untenable if analyzed," and "physically absurd," for among other things it is incomprehensible that these very different kinds of rocks could have been precipitated one after another by the same "chaotic menstrum."

But he then proceeds to show that the science is "still swayed by the crude hypotheses it set out with; so that even now, old doctrines that are abandoned as untenable in theory, continue in practice to mould the ideas of geologists, and to foster sundry beliefs that are logically indefensible."

Werner had taken for his data the way in which the rocks happened to occur in "a narrow district of Germany," and had at once jumped to the conclusion that they must always occur in this relative order over the entire globe. "Thus on a very incomplete acquaintance with a thousandth part of the earth's crust, he based a sweeping generalization applying to the whole of it."

Werner classified the rocks according to their mineral characters, but when the fossils were taken as the prime test of age, the "original nomenclature of periods and formations" kept alive the original idea of complete envelopes encircling the whole globe one outside each other like the coats of an onion. So that now, instead of Werner's successive ages of sandstone making or limestone making, and successive suites of these rocks, we have successive ages of various types of life, with successive systems or "groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other in a given order; and are severally everywhere of the same age. Though it may not be asserted that these successive systems are universal, yet it seems to be tacitly assumed that they are so.... Though, probably, no competent geologist would contend that the European classification of strata is applicable to the globe as a whole; yet most, if not all geologists, write as though it were so."

Spencer then goes on to show how dogmatic and unscientific it is to say that when the Carboniferous flora, for example, existed in some localities, this type of life and this only must have enveloped the world.

"Now this belief," he says, "that geologic 'systems' are universal, is quite as untenable as the other. It is just as absurd when considered a priori: and it is equally inconsistent with the facts," for all such systems of similar life-forms must in olden time have been of merely "local origin," just as they are now. In other words, we have no scientific knowledge of a time in the past when there were not zoological provinces and zones as there are to-day, one type of life existing in one locality, while another and totally different type existed somewhere else.

Then, after quoting from Lyell a strong protest against the old fancy that only certain types of sandstone and marls were made at certain epochs, he proceeds:

"Nevertheless, while in this and numerous passages of like implication, Sir C. Lyell protests against the bias here illustrated, he seems himself not completely free from it. Though he utterly rejects the old hypothesis that all over the earth the same continuous strata lie upon each other in regular order, like the coats of an onion, he still writes as though geologic 'systems' do thus succeed each other. A reader of his 'Manual' would certainly suppose him to believe, that the Primary epoch ended, and the Secondary epoch commenced, all over the world at the same time.... Must we not say that though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is tractable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its antagonists."

Spencer then examines at considerable length the kindred idea that the same or similar species "lived in all parts of the earth at the same time." "This theory," he says, "is scarcely more tenable than the other."

He then shows how in some localities there are now forming coral deposits, in some places chalk, and in others beds of Molluscs; while in still other places entirely different forms of life are existing. In fact, each zone or depth of the ocean has its particular type of life, just as successive altitudes do on the sides of a mountain; and it is a dogmatic and arbitrary assumption to say that such conditions have not existed in the past.

"On our own coasts, the marine remains found a few miles from shore, in banks where fish congregate, are different from those found close to the shore, where only littoral species flourish. A large proportion of aquatic creatures have structures that do not admit of fossilization; while of the rest, the great majority are destroyed, when dead, by the various kinds of scavengers that creep among the rocks and weeds. So that no one deposit near our shores can contain anything like a true representation of the fauna of the surrounding sea; much less of the co-existing faunas of other seas in the same latitude; and still less of the faunas of seas in distant latitudes. Were it not that the assertion seems needful, it would be almost absurd to say that the organic remains now being buried in the Dogger Bank can tell us next to nothing about the fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and corals that are now being buried in the Bay of Bengal."

This author evidently found it difficult to keep within the bounds of parliamentary language when speaking of the absurd and vicious reasoning at the very basis of the whole current geological theory; for, unlike the other physical sciences, the great leading ideas of geology are not generalisations framed from the whole series or group of observed facts, but are really abstract statements supposed to be reasonable in themselves, or at the most very hasty conclusions based on wholly insufficient data, like that of Werner in his "narrow district of Germany." Sir Henry Howorth[2] has well expressed the urgent need that there is of a complete reconstruction of geological theory:

"It is a singular and a notable fact, that while most other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology still remains imprisoned in a priori theories."

But Huxley[3] also has left us some remarks along the same line which are almost equally helpful in showing the essential absurdity of the assumption that when one type of life was living and being buried in one locality another and very diverse type could not have been doing the same things in other distant localities.

This is how he expresses it:

"All competent authorities will probably assent to the proposition that physical geology does not enable us in any way to reply to this question—Were the British Cretaceous rocks deposited at the same time as those of India, or were they a million of years younger, or a million of years older?"

This phase of the idea, however, is not so bad, for the human mind refuses to believe that distant and disconnected groups of similar forms were not connected in time and genetic relationship. It is really the reverse of this proposition that contains the most essential absurdity, and this is the very phase that is most essential to the whole succession of life idea. Huxley, indeed, seems to have caught a glimpse of this truth, for he says:

"A Devonian fauna and flora in the British Islands may have been contemporaneous with Silurian life in North America, and with a Carboniferous fauna and flora in Africa. Geographical provinces and zones may have been as distinctly marked in the Palaeozoic epoch as at present."

Certainly; but if this be true, it is equally certain that the Carboniferous flora of Pennsylvania may have been contemporaneous alike with the Cretaceous flora of British Columbia and the Tertiary flora of Germany and Australia. But in that case what becomes of this succession of life which for nearly a century has been the pole star of all the other biological sciences—I might almost say of the historical and theological as well?

Must it not be admitted that in any system of clear thinking this whole idea of there having really been a succession of life on the globe is not only not proved by scientific methods, but that it is essentially unprovable and absurd?

Huxley, in point of fact, admits this, though he goes right on with his scheme of evolution, just as if he never thought of the logical consequences involved. His words are:

"In the present condition of our knowledge and of our methods (sic) one verdict—'not proven and not provable'—must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of the palaeontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe."

In view of these startling facts, is it not amazing to see the supernatural knowledge of the past continually and quietly assumed in every geological vision of the earth's history?

[CHAPTER II]
HISTORY OF THE IDEA

Among the few stray principles that the future will probably be able to save from the wreck of Spencer's philosophy, is the advisability of looking into the genealogy of an idea. What has been its surroundings? What is its family history? Does it come of good stock, or is its family low and not very respectable?

This is especially true in the case of a scientific idea, which above all others needs to have a clean bill of health and a good family record. But, unfortunately, the idea we are here considering has a bad record, very bad in fact; for the whole family of Cosmogonies, of which this notion is the only surviving representative, were supposed to have been banished from the land of science long ago, and were all reported dead. Some of them had to be executed by popular ridicule, but most of them died natural deaths, the result of inherited taint, in the latter part of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is perfectly astonishing how any of the family could have survived over into the twentieth century, in the face of such an antecedent record.

For one of the chief traits of the family as a whole is that of mental disorder of various stages and degrees. Some of them were raving crazy; others were mild and comparatively harmless, except that their drivel had such a disturbing effect on scientific investigations that they had to be put out of the way. It seems such a pity that when this last fellow, early in life, was up before Doctors Huxley and Spencer for examination, he was not locked up or put in limbo forthwith. This is especially unfortunate, because this survivor of an otherwise extinct race has since then produced a large family, some of which it is true have already expired, while the eldest son, Darwinism, was reported in 1901 to be "at its last gasp,"[4] and was even said last year to have had its "tombstone inscription" written by von Hartmann of Germany. But the succession of life idea itself, the father of all this brood, is still certified by those in authority to be healthy and compos mentis.

The Cosmogony Family is a very ancient one, running back to the time of Plato and Thales of Miletus. Indeed the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia seem to indicate that a tribe with very similar characteristics existed several millenniums before the Christian era. But discarding all these, the first men that we need to mention are perhaps Burnet and Whiston, who knew no other way of arriving at geological truth than to spin a yarn about how the world was made. Woodward seems to have had a little better sense, and is named along with Hooke and John Ray as one of the real founders of the science.

Unfortunately the brood of Cosmogonists was not dead, for Moro and De Maillet were at this same period spinning their fantastic theories about the origin of things; or as Zittel puts it, "accepted the risks of error, and set about explaining the past and present from the subjective standpoint."[5] This tendency we will find to be a birthmark in the family, and will serve to invariably identify any of them wherever found. We must remember this, and apply the test to the modern survivors.

Buffon seems to have been really the founder of the family in the modern form. He is credited with the sarcastic remark that "geologists must feel like the ancient Roman augurs who could not meet each other without laughing;" though in view of his fantastic scheme of seven "epochs," in which he endeavors to portray "the beginning, the past, and the future (sic) of our planet,"[6] one is reminded of the common symptom which manifests itself in thinking all the rest of the world crazy.

The "Heroic Age of Geology" succeeded this period, and was characterized largely by a determination to discard speculation, and to seek to build up a true science of actual fact and truth.

We have already seen from Spencer's remarks that A. G. Werner, who was, however, one of the leaders in Germany at this time, was very far from following true inductive methods. And the following language of Sir Arch. Geikie shows that in him the family characteristics were decidedly prominent:

"But never in the history of science did a stranger hallucination arise than that of Werner and his school, when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foundation of accurately-ascertained fact. Never was a system devised in which theory was more rampant; theory, too, unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly erroneous. From beginning to end of Werner's method and its applications, assumptions were made for which there was no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demonstrable facts. The very point to be proved was taken for granted, and the geognosts, who boasted of their avoidance of speculation, were in reality among the most hopelessly speculative of all the generations that had tried to solve the problem of the theory of the earth."[7]

In fact this author says that:

"The Wernerians were as certain of the origin and sequence of the rocks as if they had been present at the formation of the earth's crust." (pp. 288-9.)

Here we see the family characteristics very strongly developed.

In speaking of Werner's five successive "suites" or onion-coats in which he wrapped his embryo world, Zittel complains:

"Unfortunately, Werner's field observations were limited to a small district, the Erz mountains and the neighboring parts of Saxony and Bohemia. And his chronological scheme of formations was founded upon the mode of occurrence of the rocks within these narrow confines." (p. 59.)

And yet, as we have seen, it is precisely such a charge as this that Spencer and Huxley bring against the modern phase of the doctrine of successive ages based on the succession of life idea. Werner, from observations "limited to a small district," constructed his scheme of exact chronological sequence, basing it entirely upon the mineral or mechanical character of his "suites." And hundreds of enthusiastic followers long declared that the rocks everywhere conformed to this classification, even so great an observer as von Humboldt thinking that the rocks which he examined in Central and South America fully confirmed Werner's chronological arrangement.

But such notions to-day only cause a smile of pity, for it is now well known that, take the world over, the rocks do not occur as Werner imagined, though, as Geikie says, he and his disciples were as certain of the matter "as if they had been present at the formation of the earth's crust." Besides, as already pointed out, we moderns ought now to have pretty well assimilated the idea that while one kind of mineral or rock was forming in one locality, a totally different kind of deposit may have been in process of formation in another spot some distance off at the very same time, and we cannot imagine a time in the past when this principle would not hold good. But in a precisely similar way the idea of a time value was, as we shall see, transferred from the mechanical and mineral character of the rocks to their fossil contents; and from observations again "limited to a small district," William Smith and Cuvier conceived the idea that the fossils occurred only in a certain order; that only certain fossils lived at a certain time; that, for example, while Trilobites were living and dying in one locality, Nummulites or Mammals positively were not living and dying in another locality, though in any system of clear thinking this latter notion is just as irrational as that of Werner. Hence Spencer is compelled to say, "though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is still traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclusions of its antagonists."

The two cases are exactly parallel; only it has taken us nearly a hundred years, it seems, to find out that the fossils do not follow the prearranged order of Smith and Cuvier any better than the rocks and minerals do the scheme of Werner. If hundreds of geologists still seem to think that the fossils in general agree with the standard order, we must remember how many sharp observers said the same thing for decades about Werner's scheme. The taint of heredity will always come out sooner or later; and both of these schemes exhibit very strongly the family history of the whole tribe of Cosmogonies, viz., the facts refuse to certify that they are of sound mind.

It was William Smith, an English land surveyor, who first conceived the idea of fixing the relative ages of strata by their fossils. Just how far he carried this idea it seems difficult to determine exactly. Lyell[8] says nothing along this line about him, save that he followed the leading divisions of the Secondary strata as outlined by Werner, though he claims "independently" of the latter. Whewell[9] remarks rather pityingly on his having had "no literary cultivation" in his youth, but has nothing about the degree in which he is responsible for the modern scheme of life succession of which many modern geologists have made him the "father". Geikie and Zittel are much more explicit. The former[10] says that "he had reached early in life the conclusions on which his fame rests, and he never advanced beyond them." "His plain, solid, matter-of-fact intellect never branched into theory or speculation, but occupied itself wholly in the observation of facts." Zittel[11] says pretty much the same thing, remarking that "Smith confined himself to the empirical investigation of his country, and was never tempted into general speculations about the history of the formation of the earth"—words which to my mind are the very highest praise, for they seem to indicate that he was only in a very limited way responsible for the unscientific and illogical scheme of a "phylogenic series" or complete "life-history of the earth," which now passes as the science of geology. Doubtless like his little bright-eyed German contemporary, A. G. Werner, he had not had his imagination sufficiently cultivated in his youth to be able to appreciate the beauty of first assuming your premises and then proving them by means of your conclusion, i.e., first assuming that there has been a gradual development on the earth from the lowest to the highest, and then arranging the fossils from scattered localities over the earth in such a way that they cannot fail to testify to the fact.

The following may be taken as a fair statement of what he actually accomplished and taught:

"After his long period of field observations, William Smith came to the conclusion that one and the same succession of strata stretched through England from the south coast to the east, and that each individual horizon could be recognized by its particular fossils, that certain forms reappear in the same beds in the different localities, and that each fossil species belongs to a definite horizon of rock."[12]

But even granting the perfect accuracy of this generalization of Smith's for the rocks which he examined, I fail to see how it is any better than Werner's scheme, which Zittel characterizes as "weak" and premature, and of which Whewell (p. 521) says that "he promulgated, as respecting the world, a scheme collected from a province, and even too hastily gathered from that narrow field."

Quoting again from Zittel's criticism of Werner's work ("Hist. of Geology," p. 59), we must admit that Smith's observations also were "limited to a small district," and "his chronological scheme of formations was founded upon the mode of occurrence of the rocks (fossils) within these narrow confines." There is, as we have shown, a monstrous jump from this to the conclusion that even these particular fossils must always occur in this particular relative order over the whole earth. How can any one deny that if we had a complete collection of all the fossils laid down during the last thousand years—when all admit that the so-called "phylogenic series" is complete—particular fossils would in many cases be found to occur only in particular rocks, and we could still arrange them in this same order from the lowest to the highest forms of life, while we might even happen to find "small districts" where the "mode of occurrence of the rocks within these narrow confines" would have all the appearance of showing a true "phylogenic" order. This of itself ought to be sufficient to show us the weakness of this subjective method of study, and the purely hypothetical and imaginary value of the fossils in determining the real age of a rock deposit.

The name of Baron Cuvier is the next that we have to consider. An examination of part of his teaching will come naturally a little later when considering "extinct species." That part of his work which related to the doctrine of Catastrophism is somewhat aside from the subject of our study; while with regard to his influence on the succession of life idea per se there is not very much that need be said. And yet Cuvier is the real founder of modern cosmological geology, and thus in a certain sense the father of biological evolution.

But if the absence of the architectonic mania for building a cosmogony will serve to remove in a great measure any suspicions with regard to William Smith's results, we cannot say the same for those of Cuvier. In his scheme the hereditary Cosmological taint, which is such an invariable characteristic of the family, is very strong, though disguised and almost transfigured by learning and genius. It is doubtless these latter qualities which have secured for the theory such a phenomenal length of life, though of course we know that nothing born of this whole brood can ever secure a permanent home in the kingdom of science.

"How glorious," wrote this otherwise truly great man in his famous "Preliminary Discourse," "it would be if we could arrange the organized products of the universe in their chronological order, as we can already (Werner's onion-coats) do with the more important mineral substances!"

His work (with that of his co-laborer Brongniart) on the fossils of the Paris basin was probably accurate and logical enough for that limited locality. It was only when he quietly assumed as Werner had done, that the rocks must always occur in this particular order all over the world, or as Whewell expresses it, "promulgated as respecting the world, a scheme collected from a province, and (perhaps) even too hastily gathered from that narrow field"—it was only, I say, when this monstrous assumption was incorporated into his scheme, and he began to call into being his vision of organic creation on the instalment plan, as Werner had done with the minerals, that his great and valuable work for science became tainted with the deadly Cosmological virus, dooming it to death sooner or later. Sherlock Holmes might attempt to diagnose a disease by a mere glance at his patient's boots, but even this gave him more data and was a more logical proceeding than the facts and methods of Cuvier supplied for constructing a scheme of organic creation.

It will not be necessary to detail the manner in which the modern "phylogenic series" was gradually pieced together from the scattered fragments here and there all over the globe; but it should be noted here that the whole chain of life was practically complete before any serious attempt was made to study the rocks on the top of the ground, and to find out how this marvellous record of the past joined on to the modern period, thus reversing completely the true inductive method, and leaving the most important of all, viz., the rocks containing human remains and other living species, over till the last, with the result that we have for over half a century been laboring under a "Glacial Nightmare," and these deposits on the top of the ground "still remain in many respects the despair of geology."

Then came Lyell, Agassiz, and Darwin; and now in the light of the keen discussions instituted by Weismann in the later eighties of the last century, the modern world is pretty well agreed on two results, viz., that so far from natural selection being able to originate a species, it can't possibly originate anything at all, and also that no individual can transmit to his descendants what he has himself acquired in his lifetime, and hence it is hard to see how he can transmit what he has not got himself and what none of his ancestors ever had.

I have not the space to show how Agassiz further complicated the problem immensely by his absurdly illogical use of his three "laws" of comparison, when the prime fact of there ever having been a succession of life on the globe in any order whatever had never been proved; but I am free to say that if Cuvier's system of creation on the instalment plan had been fact instead of fancy, some scheme of evolution would undoubtedly be implied in this general fact. It is this instinctive feeling on the part of modern scientists which makes them to-day, while confessing the failure of Darwinism, still cling to the general idea of evolution somehow. Hence it seems quite evident that, having deviated from strict inductive methods by pursuing this ignis fatuus of a cosmological history of creation, it was essential in the interests of true science to go the whole journey and make a complete investigation of the biological side of the question, in order to complete the demonstration that science was on a wrong tack entirely. Darwin and Weismann were inevitable in view of the wholly unscientific course on which biology entered under the guidance of Buffon and Cuvier.

What then can we take as the general lesson to be learned from the stubborn way in which, for over a hundred years, the world has followed this hypnotic suggestion of folly, that we might explain our genesis and being from the scientific standpoint? One of the lessons—there may be others—is that science knows nothing about origins, and that, in speculating along these lines, the cosmological taint will always vitiate the accuracy of our conclusions and debauch the true spirit of induction. A hundred years ago, they thought they knew all about how the world was made. The keen investigations inspired by Darwinism were necessary to convince us that we know nothing at all about it. Modern biology has simply developed a gigantic reductio ad absurdum argument against the easy assumptions of the earlier geologists that it occurred by a progression from the low to the high. A hundred years—nay fifty years ago—this assumption did not appear so unscientific, for we did not then have the biological evidence to refute such an idea. Now, however, in the light of the modern progress of science, this awful mystery of our existence, of our creation and destiny, is borne in upon us from every dividing cell, from every sprouting seed, from countless millions of the eloquent voices of nature, which our forefathers were too blind to see, too deaf to understand; and with weary, reluctant sadness does science confess that about it all she knows absolutely nothing.

[CHAPTER III]
FACT NUMBER ONE

Hitherto we have been dealing only with the a priori aspects of the succession of life idea. We have seen that it is really based on two primary assumptions, viz.:

(1) That over all the earth the fossils must always occur in the particular order in which they were found to occur in a few corners of Western Europe; and also—

(2) That in the long ago there were no such things as zoological provinces and zones, and totally different types of fossils from separated localities could not possibly have been contemporaneous with one another as we know they are to-day in "recent" deposits.[13]

On the blending of these two assumptions, the latter essentially absurd, and the former long ago disproved by the facts of the rocks, has been built up the towering structure of a complete "phylogenic series" from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene. The way in which, as we have been, Spencer and Huxley treated this subject, reminds us very much of the old advice, "When you meet with an insuperable difficulty, look it steadfastly in the face—and pass on." For neither they nor any of their thousands of followers have ever, so far as I know, pointed out the horrible logic in taking this immense complex of guesses and assumptions as the starting-point for new departures, the solid foundation for detailed "investigations" as to just how this wonderful phenomenon of development has occurred. For after Agassiz and his contemporaries had built on these large assumptions of Cuvier, and had arranged the details and the exact order of these successive forms by comparison with the embryonic life of the modern individual, the evolutionists of our time, led by such men as Spencer and Haeckel, with their "philogenetic principle," prove their theory of evolution by showing that the embryonic life of the individual is only "a brief recapitulation, as it were from memory," of the geological succession in time. There would really seem to be little hope of reaching with any arguments a generation of scientists who can elaborate genealogical trees of descent for the different families and genera of the animal kingdom, based wholly on such a series of assumptions and blind guesses, and then palm off their work on a credulous world as the proved results of inductive science.

And yet I am tempted to make some effort in this direction. And since we have now examined the a priori aspects of the question, it remains to test the two above mentioned assumptions by the facts of the rocks. The second, indeed, involving as it does a profound supernatural knowledge of the past, and being so positively contrary to all that we know of the modern world as to seem essentially absurd, is yet by its very nature beyond the reach of any tests that we can bring to bear upon it. Hence it remains to test by the facts of the rocks the assumption that all over the earth the fossils invariably occur in the particular order in which they were first found in a few corners of Western Europe by the founders of the science. Have we already a sufficiently broad knowledge of the rocks of the world to decide such a question? I think we have.

To begin then at the beginning, let us try to find out how we can fix on the rocks which are absolutely the oldest on the globe. We would expect to find a good many patches of them here and there, but there must be some common characteristic by which they may be distinguished wherever found. Of course, when I say "rocks" here I mean fossils, for as has long been agreed upon by geologists, mineral and mechanical characters are of practically no use in determining the age of deposits, and we are here dealing only with life and the order in which it has occurred on the globe. Accordingly our problem is really to find that typical group of fossils which is essentially older than all dissimilar groups of fossils.

In most localities we do not have to go very far down[14] into the earth to find granite or other so-called igneous rocks, which not only do not contain any traces of fossils, but which we have no proper reason for supposing ever contained any. These Azoic or Archaean rocks constitute practically all the earth's crust, there being only a thin skim of fossiliferous strata on the outside somewhat like the skin on an apple. Now it would be natural enough to suppose that those fossils which occur at the bottom, or next to the Archaean, are the oldest. This is doubtless what the earlier geologists had in mind, or at least ought to have had, for it is not quite certain that they had any clear thoughts on the matter whatever. They did not really begin at the bottom, but half way up, so to speak, at the Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks, and Sedgwick and Murchison, who undertook to find bottom, got too excited over their Cambro-Silurian controversy to attend to such an insignificant detail as the logical proof that any type of fossils was really older than all others. If they had really stopped to consider that some type of fossil might occur next to the Archaean in Wales, and another type occur thus in Scotland, while still another type altogether might be found in this position in some other locality, and so on over the world, leading us to the very natural conclusion that in the olden times as now there were zoological provinces and districts, the history of science during the nineteenth century might have been very different, and this chapter might never have been written. But this commonplace of modern geology, that any type of fossil whatever, even the very "youngest," may occur next to the Archaean, was not then considered or understood; and when about 1830 it came to be recognized, other things were allowed to obscure its significance, and the habit of arranging the rocks in chronological order according to their fossils was too firmly established to be disturbed by such an idea.

But the Fact Number One, which I have chosen as the subject of this chapter, is the now well established principle that any kind of fossil whatever, even "young" Tertiary rocks, may rest upon the Archaean or Azoic series, or may themselves be almost wholly metamorphosed or crystalline, thus resembling in position and outward appearance the so-called "oldest" rocks.

The first part of this proposition, about any rocks occurring next to the Archaean, is covered by the following quotation from Dana:[15]

"A stratum of one era may rest upon any stratum in the whole of the series below it,—the Coal-measures on either the Archaean, Silurian, or Devonian strata; and the Jurassic, Cretaceous, or Tertiary on any one of the earlier rocks, the intermediate being wanting. The Quaternary in America in some cases rests on Archaean rocks, in others on Silurian or Devonian, in others on Cretaceous or Tertiary."

It would be tedious to multiply testimony on a point so universally understood.

As for the other half of this fact, that even the so-called "youngest" rocks may be metamorphic and crystalline just as well as the "oldest," it also is now a recognized commonplace of science. Dana[16] says that as early as 1833 Lyell taught this as a general truth applicable to "all the formations from the earliest to the latest."

The first reference I can find to any disproof of this old fable of Werner's, that only certain kinds of rock are to be found next to the "Primitive" or Archaean, is in the observations of Studer and Beaumont in the Alps, (1826-28), who found "relatively young" fossils in crystalline schists, which, as Zittel says, "was a very great blow to the geologists who upheld the hypothesis of the Archaean or pre-Cambrian age of all gneisses and schists."

James Geikie, doubtless referring to the same series of rocks, tells us that:—

"In the central Alps of Switzerland, some of the Eocene strata are so highly metamorphosed that they closely resemble some of the most ancient deposits of the globe, consisting, as they do, of crystalline rocks, marble, quartz-rock, mica schist, and gneiss."[17]

Hence we need not be surprised at the following statement of the situation by Zittel.[18]

"The last fifteen years of the nineteenth century witnessed very great advances in our knowledge of rock-deformation and metamorphism. It has been found that there is no geological epoch whose sedimentary deposits have been wholly safeguarded from metamorphic changes, and, as this broad fact has come to be realized, it has proved most unsettling, and has necessitated a revision of the stratigraphy of many districts in the light of new possibilities. The newer researches scarcely recognize any theory; they are directed rather to the empirical method of obtaining all possible information regarding microscopic and field evidences of the passage from metamorphic to igneous rocks, and from metamorphic to sedimentary rocks."

But in addition to what Zittel means by recognizing "no theory" as to the origin of the various sorts of "igneous" rocks, it seems to me that this "broad fact" ought surely to prove "most unsettling," to the traditional theories about certain fossils being intrinsically older than others. With our minds divested of all prejudice, and this "broad" Fact Number One well comprehended, that any kind of fossil whatever may occur next to the Archaean, and the rocky strata containing it may in texture and appearance "closely resemble some of the most ancient deposits on the globe," where on this broad earth shall we look for the place to start our life-succession That is, where can we now go to find those kinds of fossils which we can prove, by independent arguments, to be absolutely older than all others? It may seem very difficult for some of us to discard a theory so long an integral part of all geology; but until it can be proved that this "broad fact" as stated by Zittel and Dana is no fact at all, I see no escape from the acknowledgment that the doctrine of any particular fossils being essentially older than others is a pure invention, with absolutely nothing in nature to support it.

Or, to state the matter in another way, since the life succession theory rests logically and historically on Werner's notion that only certain kinds of rocks (fossils) are to be found at the "bottom" or next to the Archaean, and it is now acknowledged everywhere that any kind of rocks whatever may be thus situated, it is as clear as sunlight that the life succession theory rests logically and historically on a myth, and that there is no way of proving what kind of fossil was buried first.

Of course, the reason the followers of Cuvier and his life succession now find themselves in such a fix as this is because they have not been following true inductive methods. Theirs has been a geology by hypothesis instead of by observed fact. They started out with a pretty scheme ready-made about the origin and formation of the world, perfectly innocent of any evil intent in such a method of procedure, and unconscious of its speculative character; and for nearly a hundred years they have supposed that they were following inductive methods in Geology. But in view of what we have now learned I think we are perfectly justified in adapting and applying to Cuvier and the modern school of geologists what Geikie[19] says about Werner and his school:

"But never in the history of science did a stranger hallucination arise than that of Cuvier and the modern school, when they supposed themselves to discard theory and build on a foundation of accurately ascertained fact. Never was a system devised in which theory was more rampant; theory, too, unsupported by observation, and, as we now know, utterly erroneous. From beginning to end of Cuvier's method and its applications, assumptions were made for which there was no ground, and these assumptions were treated as demonstrable facts. The very point to be proved was taken for granted, and the evolutionary geologists who boasted of their avoidance of speculation, were in reality among the most hopelessly speculative of all the generations that had tried to solve the problem of the theory of the earth."

[CHAPTER IV]
FACT NUMBER TWO

If we had ample evidence that a certain man was personally acquainted with Julius Caesar, that they were born in the same town, went to school together, served in the same wars, and later carried on an extensive mutual correspondence, would we not conclude that they must have lived in the same age of the world's history? I confess that the conclusion seems quite unavoidable. Who would dream that eighteen centuries or more had separated the two lives, and that while one was an old Roman the other was an American of the latter nineteenth century?

Some such a puzzle as this is presented in geology under the general subject of conformability. Let me define this term.

Strata laid down by water are in the first place in a horizontal position. Some subsequent force may have disturbed them, so that we may now find them standing up on edge like books in a library. But all human experience goes to show that they were not deposited in this position. Some disturbing cause must have taken hold of them since they were laid down, for the water in which they were made must have spread them out smooth and horizontal, each subsequent layer or stratum fitting "like a glove" on the preceding. Thus when we find two successive layers agreeing with one another in their planes of bedding, with every indication that the lower one was not disturbed in any way before the upper one was spread out upon it, the two are said to be conformable. But if the lower bed has evidently been upturned or disturbed before the other was laid down, or if its surface has even been partly eroded or washed away by the water, the strata are said to be unconformable, or they show unconformability in bedding.

Of course, in all this we are dealing only with relative time. When we find one bed or stratum lying above another in their natural position, the lower one is of course the older of the two; but whether laid down ten minutes earlier, or ten million years earlier, how are we to determine? Ignoring the matter of the fossils they contain, must we not own that, though there is no way of telling just how much longer the lower one was deposited before the next succeeding, yet if the two are conformable to one another, and the bottom one shows no evidence of disturbance or erosion before the other was fitted upon it, the strong presumption would seem to be that no great length of time could have elapsed between the laying down of the two layers. To say that we have here a geological example similar to that of a modern American having been personally acquainted with Julius Caesar, would seem to be quite "inexplicable," as Herbert Spencer used to say.

But if the life succession theory be true, we have just such a conundrum in our Fact Number Two, which is that any formation whatever may rest conformably upon any other "older" formation.

The lower may be Devonian, Silurian, or Cambrian, and the upper one Cretaceous or Tertiary, and thus according to the theory millions on millions of years must have elapsed after the first, and before the following bed was laid down, but the conformability is perfect, and the beds have all the appearance of having followed in quick succession. Sometimes, too, though less frequently, these age-separated formations are lithologically the same, and can only be separated by their fossils!

But before going into the minute description of any of these cases, we must notice some general statements. Thus as long ago as the date of the publication of "The Origin of Species," Darwin, in speaking of the "Imperfection of the Geological Record," could speak of "The many cases on record of a formation conformably covered, after an immense interval of time, by another and later formation, without the underlying bed having suffered in the interval by any wear and tear."[20]

Also Geikie,[21] in speaking of how "fossil evidence may be made to prove the existence of gaps which are not otherwise apparent," says that "It is not so easy to give a satisfactory account of those which occur where the strata are strictly conformable, and where no evidence can be observed of any considerable change of physical conditions at the time of deposit. A group of quite conformable strata having the same general lithological characters throughout, may be marked by a great discrepance between the fossils of the upper and the lower part." In many cases he says these conditions are "not merely local, but persistent over wide areas.... They occur abundantly among the European Palaeozoic and Secondary rocks," and are "traceable over wide regions."

We have seen how Dana admits that "A stratum of one era may rest upon any stratum in the whole series below it, ... the intermediate being wanting." He classes this under the head of the "Difficulties" of the science, quite naturally as it would seem, though he does not expressly assert that these age-separated formations are often conformable to one another, as Geikie and Darwin have said in the above given quotations.

The literature really teems with illustrations of these facts, and the more detailed accounts contained in the various Geological Reports are often quite charmingly naive in their description of the conditions. Two examples, however, must suffice, both from the Canadian North West.

The first is from the Report on the region about Banff, in Alberta, near the line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and just east of the Rockies.

"East of the main divide the Lower Carboniferous is overlaid in places by beds of Lower Cretaceous age, and here again, although the two formations differ so widely in respect to age, one overlies the other without any perceptible break, and the separation of one from the other is rendered more difficult by the fact that the upper beds of the Carboniferous are lithologically almost precisely like those of the Cretaceous (above them.) Were it not for fossil evidence, one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with."[22]

The other example is from the District of Athabasca.

"The Devonian limestone is apparently succeeded conformably by the Cretaceous, and with the possible exception of a thin bed of conglomerate of limited extent, which occurs below Crooked Rapid on the Athabasca, the age of which is doubtful, the vast interval of time which separated the two formations, is, so far as observed, unrepresented either by deposition or erosion."[23]

Of course, some geological writers labor to explain this thundering rebuke of their theory, just as the Ptolemaic astronomers had their "deterrents" and "epicycles" for every new difficulty. But surely the detailed records of such observations as these are fearful examples of the power of tradition to blind the minds of investigators to the meaning of the very plainest facts.

On a previous page (Id. p. 51,) the author last quoted gives us some idea of the "remarkable persistence" of this instructive case of conformability, which extends from the Athabasca "in a broad band around the southern end of Birch Mountains, and across Lake Claire to Peace River, and up the latter stream to a point two miles above Vermillion Falls."

The distance, as I judge from the map, can not be less than 150 miles in a straight direction, thus making a district of probably several thousand square miles in extent where, according to the theory of a life succession, nature must have put an injunction on the action of the elements, and they had to continue in the status quo for millions of ages, or from the Devonian to the Cretaceous "age," the water neither wearing away nor building up over any part of this consecrated ground during all this time.

Nor is this all, for from Part E, Report (p. 209) of this same volume, we are told of strata near Lake Manitoba, over 500 miles away, in almost the same wonderful relationship,—"Devonian rocks very similar in character" to those in Athabasca still overlaid directly by the Cretaceous, though in this case as it happens "unconformably." It would almost seem to be a bona fide case of Werner's onion coats cropping out.

And all this incredible picture of nature's inconsistent behaviour in past ages is necessitated solely by the loving allegiance with which the infallibility of the life succession theory is regarded by modern geologists.

[CHAPTER V]
TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

How many of us have ever seen a mountain fall? Not very many. And yet events even more wonderful than this have frequently occurred in the past, as we are confidently assured by the leaders in geological science. Thus, in speaking of a certain region in the Alps, Dana[24] says that "one of the overthrust folds has put the beds upside down over an area of 450 square miles."

It is well worth our while to try to understand this statement. Our first and most natural inquiry is, What is it that leads scientists to think so? The details of this particular case are not very accessible, and so we are driven to reasoning from analogy from the known methods and constructions employed in this science. We must agree that none of the authorities who report this circumstance can testify as eye-witnesses of this marvellous event: they were not there on the spot when old Mother Earth turned this huge calcareous and silicious pancake. And yet there must be some kind of evidence by which these eminent men have arrived at this conclusion. What kind of evidence can it be?

We cannot imagine any physical evidence which could even remotely suggest such an idea. In fact from the universal custom of making the contained fossils the supreme test of the age of a rock deposit, we are perfectly safe in concluding that it is solely because the fossils occur here in the reverse of the accepted order, that we have this astounding picture of an immense mountain mass having been put "upside down over an area of 450 square miles." The "older" fossils are evidently here on top, while the "younger" ones are underneath, and of course some explanation must be given of this flat contradiction of the life succession theory.

But let us retrace our steps somewhat, and pick up the thread of our argument. We have already found quite serious reason to question the accuracy of this life succession theory: but there is still another way of testing its rationality. If certain fossils are not necessarily older than certain others, it might reasonably be expected that we would now and then find them reversed as to position, i.e., with the "younger" below and the "older" above. Accordingly we have the following very necessary caution from Prof. Nicholson:[25]

"It may even be said that in any case where there should appear to be a clear and decisive discordance between the physical and the palaeontological (fossil) evidence as to the age of a given series of beds, it is the former that is to be distrusted rather than the latter."

To meet all ordinary cases of this character, where the differences involve only a few formations representing a few "ages" or a few million years, the theory of pioneer "colonies" was invented by Barrande in 1852.

But for extreme cases, say where Silurian or Cambrian fossils occur above Jurassic, Cretaceous or Tertiary, there is in such a predicament always an anxious search made for faults and displacements; or gigantic "thrust-faults" or "overthrust folds," like the example already quoted from Dana, are described in picturesque language, many miles in extent—inventions which, as I have already suggested of a similar expedient to explain away evidence, deserve to rank with the famous "epicycles" of Ptolemy, and will do so some day.

Here is Geikie's highly instructive statement regarding the same conditions:—

"We may even demonstrate that in some mountainous ground, the strata have been turned completely upside down, if we can show that the fossils in what are now the uppermost layers ought properly to lie underneath those in the beds below them."[26]

Some day, I fancy, a statement like this will be regarded as a literary curiosity.

There are plenty of examples under this head, though two or three ought to be as good as a dozen. In the part of Alberta east of the Rockies already referred to, is a section of country of about fourteen square miles at least—and we know not how much more—where Cambrian fossils are found above Cretaceous, and the inevitable "thrust fault" is thus described by one of the officers of the Canadian Geological Survey. He has just been speaking of "a series" of these "gigantic thrust faults":—

"One of the largest and most important of these occurs along the eastern base of the chain, and brings the Cambrian limestones of the Castle Mountain group over the Cretaceous of the foot hills. This fault has a vertical displacement of more than 15,000 feet (? three miles), and an estimated horizontal displacement of the Cambrian beds of about seven miles in an easterly section. The actually observed overlap amounts to nearly two miles. The angle of inclination of its plane to the horizon is very low, and in consequence of this its outcrop follows a very sinuous line along the base of the mountains, and acts exactly like the line of contact of two nearly horizontal formations.

"The best places for examining this fault are at the gaps of the Bow and of the south fork of the Ghost River. At the former place the Cretaceous shales form the floor of the bay which the Bow has cut in the eastern wall of the range, and rise to a considerable height in the surrounding slopes. Their line of contact with the massive gray limestones of the overlying Castle Mountain group is well seen near the entrance of the gap in the hills to the north. The fault plane here is nearly horizontal, and the two formations, viewed from the valley, appear to succeed one another conformably."[27]

But what an amazing condition of affairs is this. Here are great mountainous masses of rock, very similar in mechanical and mineral make-up to thousands of examples elsewhere. The line of bedding between them "acts exactly like the line of contact of two nearly horizontal formations," and in a natural section cut out by a river the two "appear to succeed one another conformably." And yet we are asked to believe that all this is merely an optical illusion. The rocks could not possibly have been deposited in this way, for the lower ones contain "Benton fossils" (Cretaceous), and the upper ones are Cambrian, and almost the whole geological series and untold millions of years occurred after the upper one, and before the lower one was formed. Solely on the strength of the infallibility of a theory invented a hundred years ago in a little corner of Western Europe, which "promulgated, as respecting the world, a scheme collected from that province," and assumed that over all the world the rocks must always follow the order there observed, we are here asked to deny the positive evidence of our senses because these rocks do not follow this accepted order. I must confess that I cannot see the force of such a method of reasoning. It is carrying the argument several degrees beyond the reasoning of the three little green peas in the little green pod, as narrated in the exquisite fable of Eugene Field. These wise little fellows noticed that their little world was all green, and they themselves green likewise, and they shrewdly concluded from this that the whole universe must also be green. But we are not told of their travelling abroad and persisting in a systematic attempt to explain all subsequently observed facts in terms of their theory.

This government Report last quoted from says that in the eastern part of Tennessee the Appalachian Chain "presents an almost identical structure," and refers to a similar state of things in the Highlands of Scotland. Dana, in the last edition of his "Manual" (p. 369), refers to this report, and reproduces some of its plates showing some of the structures referred to; and on another page, in speaking of this similar example in Scotland, says that "a mass of the oldest crystalline rocks, many miles in length from north to south, was thrust at least ten miles westward over younger rocks, part of the latter fossiliferous"; and further declares that "the thrust planes look like planes of bedding, and were long so considered."[28]

Geikie quite naturally devotes several pages in his "Text-Book" to a description of these conditions in the Highlands; but from one of his first reports on these observations, published in Nature[29] we get some much more suggestive details. The thrust-planes, he says, are difficult to be "distinguished from ordinary stratification planes, like which they have been plicated, faulted, and denuded. Here and there, as a result of denudation, a portion of one of them appears capping a hill-top. One almost refuses to believe that the little outlier on the summit does not lie normally on the rocks below it, but on a nearly horizontal fault by which it has been moved into its place."

Speaking of some similar conditions in Ross Shire, which he himself had previously described as naturally conformable, he declares:—

"Had these sections been planned for the purpose of deception they could not have been more skillfully devised ... and no one coming first to this ground would suspect that what appears to be a normal stratigraphical sequence is not really so."

"When a geologist finds" things in this condition, he says, "he may be excused if he begins to wonder whether he himself is not really standing on his head."

But I would only weary the reader by attempting to pursue this subject further. Those who wish to do so will find many additional examples in the larger works of Dana, LeConte, Prestwich, and Geikie, to say nothing of the more detailed statements buried in numerous Government Reports and special monographs in German and French.

From the very same set of beds different observers try to explain these puzzles in very different ways. Some, like Helm, will describe gigantic overthrust folds, and will draw immense arcs of circles several miles high in the air, as the place where the rocks must once have been. Others, like Rothpletz, from an examination of the very same rocks, will cut the mountain up into sections with imaginary fault-planes, and will tell how, in the district about Glarus for example, an enormous mass of mountains "travelled from east to west a distance of about twenty-five miles from the Rhine valley to the Linth," or how the "Rhatikon Mountain mass travelled from Montafon valley to the Rhine valley, about nineteen miles from east to west."[30]

With regard to some at least of these conditions in the Alps, Geikie virtually admits that these incredible and self-contradictory earth-movements are necessitated by and described from fossil evidence only, for he says:—

"... the strata could scarcely be supposed to have been really inverted, save for the evidence (sic) as to their true order of succession supplied by their included fossils." "... portions of Carboniferous strata appear as if regularly interbedded among Jurassic rocks, and indeed could not be separated save after a study of their enclosed organic remains."[31]

In fact, we are perfectly safe in concluding in all similar cases that we may encounter in the literature of the science that it is the reversed order of the fossils which constitutes the whole evidence; for, as I have said, we can imagine no possible physical evidence competent to form a foundation for such ideas, nor do I know of anything save the exigencies of this venerable theory of life succession, for which otherwise competent observers will thus freely sacrifice their common sense. When the dividing line between two sets of strata "acts exactly like the line of contact between two nearly horizontal formations," so much so that in a natural section cut out by a river the two "appear to succeed one another conformably," a calm judicial mind, divested of all theoretical prejudice, instead of talking about these conditions having been planned by nature "for the purpose of deception," will find no difficulty at all in believing that these rocks were really laid down in the reverse order in which we now find them, with the "younger" below and the "older" above, and only one under the hypnotic spell of a preconceived theory would at the suggestion of such a fact begin "to wonder whether he himself is not really standing on his head."

[CHAPTER VI]
FACT NUMBER FOUR

There is only one class of agents now working upon the rocks of the globe which have been in business continuously ever since the dry land appeared, and which have left us a legible record of approximately the amount of business they have been doing all these centuries. And my Fact Number Four, which will complete this line of argument in illustrating the antagonism between the facts of the rocks and the theory of life succession, is that the rivers of the world, which of course are the agents to which I have referred, in traveling across the country, act precisely as if they knew nothing of the varying ages of the rocks, but on the contrary treat them all alike as if they were of the same age, and as if they began sawing at them all at the same time. Of course it is, evidently, in only a few cases where the records are so free from ambiguity as to be quite incapable of being misunderstood, that is, the cases of rivers with steep rocky gorges, or those that cut through mountain ranges; but there are several such rivers in the world, and they all seem to tell the same story.

The famous Colorado River is a good example. It flows from "younger" strata into "older" in its deep cutting across the Arizona plateau.[32] Stated in terms of the current theory, this means that when the region of country about the lower part of this river's course first became dry land, the upper part was still sea, and that thus there was no such river in existence here until the very "youngest" of these rocks was formed. For otherwise the river must have started running from the sea toward the dry land, i.e., running up hill. Stated in terms neutral as to theory, it means that the whole of this region of country, drained by this large river, with its rocks of many varying "ages," was all elevated practically as it is now before this river began its work of erosion. It treats all these rocks as if they were of the same age, and as if it began sawing at them all at the same time.

Also its companion, the Green River, cuts through the Uinta Range in the same manner. Similar conditions are said to occur on the Danube, and in the river-courses of the Himalayas, and elsewhere.

In the case of the Colorado, Zittel says that:

"Powell's explanation of the apparent enigma is that after the river had eroded its channel rocks were uplifted in one portion of its course, but so slow was the rate of uplift that the river was enabled to deepen its channel, either proportionately or more rapidly, so that it was never diverted from its former course."

It was by similarly cunning inventions that the early writers on astronomy, alchemy, and medicine evaded the force of accumulated facts which told against their absurd theories.

We have now completed our survey of the strictly stratigraphical phases of this question, and have found four very remarkable principles about the rocks, which I wish to summarize here before proceeding further.

(1) The "broad fact," as stated by Zittel and Dana, that any kind of rocks whatever, i.e. containing any kinds of fossils, even the "youngest," may rest on the Archaean, and may thus in position, as also in texture and appearance, resemble the very oldest deposits on the globe.

(2) That any kind of beds may rest in such perfect conformability on any other so-called "older" beds over vast stretches of country that, "were it not for fossil evidence, one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with," while "the vast interval of time intervening is unrepresented either by deposition or erosion." The youngest seem to have followed the oldest in quick succession.

(3) That in very many cases and over many square miles of country these conditions are exactly reversed, and such very "ancient" rocks as Cambrian limestones are on top of the comparatively "young" Cretaceous, while the lime between them "acts exactly like the line of contact of two nearly horizontal formations," and in a natural section made by a river the two "appear to succeed one another conformably." To any one ignorant of the theory of life succession they have every appearance of having been deposited as we find them.

(4) That the rivers of the world, in cutting across the country, completely ignore the varying ages of the rocks in the different parts of their courses, and act precisely as if they began sawing at them all at the same time.

Now I know not what additional fact can be demanded or imagined to complete the demonstration that there is no particular order in which the fossils can be said to occur as regards succession in time. It is true, some fossiliferous deposits, metamorphosed almost beyond recognition, and buried deep beneath thousands of feet of subsequent deposits, have enough appearance of remote antiquity about them in all conscience. But to increase this antiquity by saying that other equally prodigious masses of rocks elsewhere were deposited long after these, or by pointing to still other deposits in another region which are said to be older than any of the others, is an illogical and wholly unscientific procedure. I fear I could scarcely confine myself within the bounds of parliamentary language were I to attempt to express an opinion regarding any effort that may now be made to justify the life succession theory in view of the above acknowledged facts.

And surely it is scarcely necessary in this enlightened age to point out how completely this vitiates any biological argument (such as that of Darwinism) which has incorporated into its system the results of such illogical reasoning, or which in any way is dependent upon the conclusions of such a theory of geology. In view of the laws of evidence, which every intelligent person is supposed to understand now-a-days, surely some strange things passed for scientific proof during the nineteenth century. For, as we have seen, the earlier geologists did little better than assume the succession of life bodily; than Agassiz and his contemporaries arranged the details and the exact order of these successive life forms by comparison with the embryonic life of the modern individual; and now the evolutionists of our day, led by such men as Spencer and Haeckel with their "phylogenetic principle," prove their theory of evolution by showing that the embryonic life of the modern individual is only "a brief recapitulation, as it were, from memory," of the (assumed) geological succession in time. Surely this will some day make a more amazing record for posterity than those of phlogiston or the epicycles of Ptolemy.

If I am now asked: What do the rocks have to tell us, in view of the fact that they refuse to testify to a life succession? I can only say that we are not as yet in a position to decide this question. There are several other matters connected with the character and mode of occurrence of the fossils, which are almost equally important with anything already considered, in forming a true scientific induction regarding this matter. These facts must be considered in subsequent chapters. Already, however, we can say this much, that we have in the rocks almost as complete a world, in some respects vastly more complete, than the living world of to-day. With the life succession theory repudiated, we have still to deal with the fossils themselves which have been thus systematically classified; but this geological series becomes only the taxonomic or classification series of an older state of our present world, buried somehow and at some time or times in the remote past—the how and the when of which we have not as yet the means to determine.

But I think we are now prepared to enter the mazes of the biological argument, and to study the subject of extinct species, which by many is supposed to furnish a line of independent evidence in favor of the life succession theory.

[CHAPTER VII]
EXTINCT SPECIES

Let us now test the value of this assumed life succession by another very simple question. In "Eocene times," so we are told, England was a land of palms, with a semi-tropical flora and fauna. In fact at this time, cycads, gourds, proteads (like the Australian shrubs and trees), the fig, cinnamon, screw-pine, and various species of acacias and palms, abounded in England and Western Europe; while turtles, monkeys, crocodiles, and other sub-tropical and warm-temperate forms were equally abundant. Then again, in the Pleistocene deposits of the same countries, we find various species of elephant and rhinoceros, with a hippopotamus, lion, and hyena, identical with species now living in the tropics, "although," as Dana says, "these modern kinds are dwarfs in comparison."

Now, how are we to prove that these various forms of animal life did not exist together in these countries at the same time as the trees and plants before mentioned?

Lions and monkeys, hippopotami and crocodiles, with elephants, hyenas, and rhinoceroses, now live beneath the palms, mimosas, acacias, and other tropical plants represented in the Eocene and Miocene beds. What is there to hinder us from believing that they all lived there together in that olden time? Surely it would be the very irony of scientific fate if forms now so closely connected in life should in death be so divided. Or, to present it in another form, why should we be asked to believe that these acacias, cinnamons, palms, etc., lived and died ages or millions of years before the lions, elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotami, came into existence to enjoy their shade; and then, after these unnumbered ages had dragged their slow length along and vanished into the dim past, and all these semi-tropical plants had shifted to the tropics or been turned into lignite, these lions, elephants, and hippopotami came into existence in these same localities, when no such plants existed anywhere in Europe?

Surely we ought to expect some pretty substantial evidence for such a violation of "the observed uniformity of nature." We generally boast that we have outgrown the crude ideas of the earlier years of the science when they spoke of "ages" of limestone making or of sandstone making; but it seems that some of us have not yet attained to that broad view of the essential unity of nature in which the flora and fauna of our world are seen to be just as indissolubly connected with each other. But nature could as easily be persuaded to produce for a whole age nothing in the way of rock but limestone or conglomerate, as to adjust her powers to such an unbalanced state of affairs as is spoken of above, with the animals in one age and the complementary plants in another.

But in considering this question as to why the Eocene plants and the Pleistocene animals may not be supposed to have lived contemporaneously together, we are brought face to face with the second supposed argument in favor of there having been a succession of life on the globe. The answer given is that all the animals of these "early" Tertiary beds are extinct species, also very many of the plants; while the hyena, lion, hippopotamus, etc., of the Pleistocene are identical with the living species, and even the mammoth is so closely like its nearest surviving relative, the Asiatic elephant (E. indicus), that these also might be classed as identical.[33]

This point being considered by many as so important, and having such a vital connection with the whole life succession theory, we must go into the matter somewhat in detail, even at the risk of appearing rather technical to some.

If the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic strata are often of enormous extent, spreading in vast sheets over wide regions, so that their stratigraphical order in any particular district is quite readily made out, it is in most cases altogether different with the Tertiary and Pleistocene deposits. For these resemble one another so much in everything except their fossils, and occur so generally in detached and fragmentary beds, holding no stratigraphical relation to one another, that Lyell devised the plan of distinguishing them from one another and arranging them in the accustomed order of successive ages, by their relative percentages of living and extinct mollusca. With only unimportant changes, Lyell's divisions are still followed in classifying off the Tertiary and post-Tertiary beds. Those with all the species extinct, or less than 5 per cent. living, are classed as Eocene; those containing few extinct forms, or nearly all living species, are classed as Pleistocene or post-Tertiary. The Miocene and Pliocene represent the intermediate grades, and all are supposed to be a true chronological order. It goes without saying that in actual practice it is often so extremely difficult to adjust these differences that beds are assigned to an "early" or a "late" division on general principles by what the literary critics would call "tact" or "intuition," rather than by the strict percentage system, though for these large and important divisions of Tertiary and post-Tertiary rocks, these are absolutely the only professed grounds on which the subdivisions are distinguished and arranged in the customary order of time.

In the words of Dr. David Page:

"As there is often no perceptible mineral distinction between many clays, sands and gravels, it is only by their imbedded fossils that geologists can determine their Tertiary or post-Tertiary character."[34]

Now to say that a set of beds, ninety-five per cent. of whose fossils belong to extinct species, and only five per cent. are now living, must be vastly older than another set where these percentages are reversed, i.e. where the species are nearly all living, seems at first thought an eminently reasonable idea, and we immediately begin to imagine the long ages it must have taken for these exceedingly numerous and apparently vigorous species to wear out and become extinct in the alleged ordinary way by the merciless struggle for existence with forms more fitted to survive.

But it is hardly necessary to point out that all this is based on the assumption of Uniformity in its most extreme type, a doctrine which not only denies that these living forms are merely the lucky survivors of tremendous changes in which their contemporaries perished, but which in essence is taking for granted beforehand the very point which ought to be the chief aim of all geological inquiry, viz., How did the geological changes take place? It would not be considered a very scientific procedure for a coroner, called upon to hold a post mortem, to content himself with interesting statistics about the percentage of people who die of old age, fever, and other causes, while there was clear and decisive evidence that the poor fellow had been shot. In this case, as in geology, it is not merely the result that is wrong, but the whole method of investigation. For, as in the latter case we don't want to know how people generally die, but how this particular person actually did die, so, in our study of geology, we do not wish to know merely the rate at which changes of surface and extinctions of species are now going on, and then project this measure backward into the past as an infallible guide, but we wish to know for sure just what changes of this nature have taken place. A true induction is, I think, capable of deciding very positively whether or not the tools of nature have always worked at the same rate and with the same force as at present; and this method of arranging the fossils in supposed chronological order on the percentage basis mentioned above, is only an extreme form of methods claiming to be inductive which in this age of the world ought to be considered a shame and a disgrace, because, as Howorth says, they are based, "not upon induction, but upon hypotheses," and have "all the infirmity of the science of the Middle Ages."

Then again, it occurs to us, that this method, of attaching a time-value to percentages of extinct or living species, would make the sub-fossil remains of the bison on the Western prairies almost infinitely older than those of the lion, hippopotamus, etc., in the Pleistocene beds of Europe; for (except for some few specimens artificially preserved, and which may be ignored in this connection) the bison is to-day absolutely extinct, while the Pleistocene mammals are found by the thousand in the proper localities and show no signs of surrender in the struggle for existence. Similar comparisons might be made between the great wingless birds of Madagascar, Mauritius and New Zealand, and the many cases of "persistent" forms which have survived unchanged from Carboniferous, Silurian, or Cambrian times, a period of time which, in the language of the current geology, means quite a large fraction of eternity. But all of these considerations show that the mere fact of certain species being extinct and others being now alive, is no trustworthy guide in determining the relative age of their remains, until we first find out how they happened to become extinct.

The inquiry as to the how and the when (relatively) is an absolutely essential preliminary in any such investigation; and is inseparably united in nature with the general question of how the great geological changes have taken place in the past. Of course, if everything like a world-catastrophe is a priori denied; if, in other words, it is settled from the first that all these fossils living and extinct did not live contemporaneously with each other, the living ones being simply the lucky survivors of stupendous changes in which the others perished, then all pretense of a scientific investigation of the subject is at an end. If a coroner has it settled beforehand that an accident or a murder could not possibly have occurred, then his profession of a candid post mortem examination is only a farce; for he does not hold it to find out anything, since he knows everything essential about it beforehand. Uniformitarians would certainly make poor coroners, or for that matter poor investigators of law or history, or anything else.

Will some one please give us a reasonable explanation of why the lion, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and elephant shifted from England to the tropics? Or will they explain how, at this same general time, some elephants and rhinoceroses got caught in the merciless frosts of Northern Siberia so suddenly that their flesh has remained untainted all these centuries, and is now, wherever exposed, greedily devoured by the dogs and wolves?

An abundant warm-climate vegetation once mantled all the polar regions, and its fossils have been found just about as far north as explorers have ever gone; while Dana says that, "The encasing in ice of huge elephants, and the perfect preservation of the flesh, shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's night, and knew no relenting afterwards."[35]

Now, if no one can deny this sudden change of climate over half the world or so at least, is it not extremely unscientific to deny that this same cause, whatever it may have been, was quite competent to bring about a good many other changes, and the extinction of numerous other species which we are so often reminded must imply the lapse of untold ages of time? The economizing of energy, or the famous law of parsimony as stated by Leibnitz, is quite appropriate in this case, and may be referred to again in the sequel. The principle upon which I must here insist is that the mere fact of certain species being extinct, and others being now alive, gives no clue whatever to the relative age of these remains, until we first ascertain why, how and when this extinction was brought about. And yet, though every one admits the fact of tremendous changes of climate, etc., having intervened between that ancient world and our own (the true extent and character of which, as I have said, ought to be the chief point of all geological investigation), no allowance seems ever to be made for this as a powerful cause of extermination of all forms of life. But in the utter absence of any such explanation as to how and when, and in the very teeth of these facts assuming a dead-level uniformitarianism, the presence of ten, fifty or a hundred per cent. of extinct forms in a set of beds is manifestly of no scientific value in determining age. It would be many degrees more reasonable and accurate to arrange all the Greek and Latin books of the world in chronological order according to the percentage of their words which have survived into the English language. Indeed, it would be much like a coroner, at the inquest following a railway disaster, attempting to arrange the exact order in which the various victims had perished by the proportionate number of surviving relatives which each had left behind him.

And the completely worthless character of such "evidence" of age becomes, if possible, more apparent when we consider that very many of these so-called "extinct" forms are not really distinct species from their living representatives of to-day. "It is notorious," says Darwin, "on what excessively slight differences many palaeontologists have founded their species." And even to-day, in spite of all that we have learned about variation, little or no allowance seems ever to be made for the effects of a certainly greatly changed environment. If the fossil forms among the mollusks and other shell fish for instance, are not precisely like the modern ones in every respect, they are always classed as separate species, the older forms thus being "extinct," in utter disregard of the striking anatomical differences between the huge Pleistocene mammals and their dwarfish descendants of to-day, which for a hundred years or so were declared positively to be distinct from one another, but are now acknowledged to be identical.

Of course no one denies that there are numerous extinct forms among the invertebrates, just as we know there are among the huge vertebrates of the Mesozoic and Tertiaries, none of which we moderns have ever seen alive. Other forms do not appear familiar to our modern eyes, because larger or of somewhat different form; but to say that they are really distinct species from their modern representatives, or to say that no human being ever saw them alive, are statements utterly incapable of proof. Up to about the year 1869 it was stoutly maintained that man had never seen any of these fossil forms in life. But no one now maintains this view, for human remains have now been found along with undisturbed fossils of the Pleistocene, or even middle Tertiaries, while the paintings on the cave walls of Southern France seem conclusive that they were copied from life when the mammoth and reindeer lived side by side with man in that latitude. Hence the only question now is, and it is the supreme question of all modern geology, WITH HOW MUCH OF THAT ANCIENT FOSSIL WORLD WERE THESE EQUALLY FOSSIL MEN ACQUAINTED? If Man lived in "Pliocene" or perhaps "Miocene times," when a luxuriant vegetation was spread out over all the Arctic regions, what possible evidence is there to show that his companions, the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, mammoth, etc., were not also living then and browsing off just such plants, when the Arctic frosts caught them in the grip of death and put their "mummies" in cold storage for our astonishment and scientific information? Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other; why should not the plants and animals, contemporary with the same creature (man), be just as truly contemporary with one another? If man was contemporary with the Miocene plants, and the Pleistocene mammals were contemporary with man, what is there to forbid the idea that the Pleistocene mammals and the middle Tertiary flora were contemporary with each other?

For nearly half a century geologists have never had the courage to face this problem fairly and squarely, with all preconceived prejudices about uniformity cast aside. Is it possible that all the plants and animals of the Tertiaries and the Pleistocene may have really lived together in the same world after all? But the trouble would then be that, with this much conceded, the whole "phylogenic series" would tumble with it, and become only the taxonomic or classification series of that ancient world with which these fossil men were acquainted. To appropriate the words of one who has done much to clear the ground for a common-sense study of geology, I know of nothing against such an idea save "the almost pathetic devotion of a large school of thinkers to the religion founded by Hutton, whose high priest was Lyell, and which in essence is based on a priori arguments like those which dominated Mediaeval scholasticism and made it so barren."[36]

Baron Cuvier's work in the line of comparative osteology has never been surpassed, perhaps never equalled since, and he is said to have been "the greatest naturalist and comparative anatomist of that, or perhaps of any time." (LeConte, "Evol. and Rel. Thought," pp. 33, 34); and yet he maintained till the last that all those which we now call the Pleistocene mammals were distinct species from the modern ones; and it is only of recent years and with extreme reluctance that many of them have been admitted to be identical with the ones now living. All of which tends to show how unreliable are those assertions commonly found in the text-books about all the species of the so-called "older" rocks being extinct. It is only with hesitation that such specific distinctions are surrendered even to-day, though during the last few decades a steady progress has been made in bringing the palaeontology of the higher vertebrates into line with our increased knowledge of zoology, thus breaking down many of the specific distinctions which have long been maintained between the fossil and the living forms. Even the mammoth has been found to have so many characters identical with the modern elephant of India, and such a complete gradation exists between the two types, that Flower and Lydekker acknowledge the transition from one to the other is "almost imperceptible," and express a doubt whether they "can be specifically distinguished" from one another.[37]

But the extreme reluctance with which anything like a confession of this fact leaks out in our modern literature can be readily understood when we try the hopeless task of splicing the environment of the modern form with that of the ancient on any basis of uniformity.

Zittel gives us a peep behind the scenes which helps us to appreciate the value of a percentage of extinct species as a test of the age of a rock deposit.

He pictures the uncritical work of the earlier writers on fossil botany, until August Schink (1868-91) made a great reform in this science; and Zittel declares that "now the author of a paper on any department" of fossil botany "is expected to have a sound knowledge" of the systematic botany of recent forms. But he adds: "It cannot be said that palaeozoology (the science of fossil animals) has yet arrived at this desirable standpoint."

But he justifies this charge of want of confidence by saying:

"Comparatively few individuals have such a thorough grasp of zoological and geological knowledge as to enable them to treat palaeontological researches worthily, and there has accumulated a dead weight of stratigraphical-palaeontological literature wherein the fossil remains of animals are named and pigeon-holed solely as an additional ticket of the age of a rock-deposit, with a willful disregard of the much more difficult problem of their relationships in the long chain of existence.

"The terminology which has been introduced in the innumerable monographs of special fossil faunas in the majority of cases makes only the slenderest pretext of any connection with recent systematic zoology; if there is a difficulty, then stratigraphical arguments are made the basis of a solution. Zoological students are, as a rule, too actively engaged and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt to spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions arrived at by many stratigraphers, or to revise their labors from a zoological point of view."[38]

Doubtless this scathing impeachment of the common mania for creating new names for the fossils has especial reference to the case of the lower forms of life. For if, in spite of the brilliant and withal careful work of Cuvier, Owen, Wallace, Huxley, Ray Lankester, and Leith Adams, with numerous others that might be mentioned, there are still grounds for such grave doubts of the values of specific distinctions in the case of the mammals, whose general anatomy and life-history are so well known and their almost countless variations so well studied out, what must be the confusion and inaccuracy in the case of the lower vertebrates, and especially of the invertebrates, whose general life-history in so many instances is so dimly understood, and the limits of their variations absolutely unknown? Remembering all this, what is our amazement when we read in this same volume by Professor Zittel[39] that the tendency among many modern writers in dealing with these lower forms of life, is toward the erection of the closest possible distinctions between genera and species, until recent palaeontological literature is fairly inundated with new names; and all this with the purpose, unblushingly avowed, of "enhancing the value" of such distinctions as a means of determining the relative ages of strata, and to "bring the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development" of the various forms "into more apparent correspondence." I do not exaggerate in the least, as the reader may see by referring to Zittel's book; though not wishing to make my readers "spell through" another quite technical paragraph I have refrained from direct quotation.

But surely we have here a most amazing style of reasoning. It is another clear case of first assuming one's premises, and then proving them by means of one's conclusion. The method here employed seems about like this: First assume the succession of life from the low to the high as a whole; then in any particular group, as of Brachiopods or Mollusks, decide the momentous question as to which came first and which later in "geological time" by comparing them as to size, shape, etc., with the live modern individual in its development from the egg to maturity; and lastly, take the results of this alleged chronological arrangement to prove just how the modern forms have evolved. Surely it is a most fearful example of otherwise intelligent men being hypnotized by their theory into blind obedience to its suggestions and necessities.

Not long ago I had occasion to write to a well-known geologist about a Lower Cambrian mollusk which appears strikingly like a modern species. I give below an extract from his reply which bears directly upon this point. I withhold the name, for the information was given in a half-confidential manner, but I may say that the author's work on the Palaeozoic fossils is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic.

"Some geologists make it a point to give a new name to all forms found in the Palaeozoic rocks, i.e. a name different from those of modern species. I was taken to task by a noted palaeontologist for finding a pupa (a kind of land snail) in Devonian beds; but I could not find any point in which it differed from the modern genus [? species]. Yet if I could have had more perfect specimens I might have found differences."

Such disclosures speak volumes for those able to understand; and lead one to receive with a smile the familiar assertion that all the species of the Palaeozoic and other "older" rocks are extinct. And we can now form a truer estimate of the high scientific accuracy of Lyell's ingenious division of the Tertiary beds, according to the percentage of living or extinct Mollusks which they contain.

But from the inherent weakness of the argument about extinct species as thus revealed, it follows that chronological distinctions based on any proportionate number of extinct species have absolutely no scientific value; and hence that the life succession theory finds no support from these chronological distinctions, just as we have already seen that it is without a vestige of support from the stratigraphical argument.

The life succession theory has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination.

[CHAPTER VIII]
SKIPPING

We have now to deal with another absurdity involved in the life succession theory, the discussion of which grows naturally out of the subject of extinct species.

As preliminary to the subject here to be presented, we must bear in mind that the present arrangement of the fossils in alleged chronological order, as well as the naming of thousands of typical specimens, was all well advanced while as yet little or nothing was known of the contents of the depths of the ocean, or even of the land forms of Africa, Australia, and other foreign countries. In most of the important groups of both plants and animals, the detailed knowledge of the fossil forms preceded the knowledge of the corresponding living forms, just as Zittel says that the theories of the igneous origin of the crystalline rocks "had been laid without the assistance of chemistry" and the knowledge of the microscopic structure of these rocks.[40] On pp. 128-137 of his "History," this author shows how, up to 1820, little or nothing of a scientific character was known of any of the classes of living animals save mammals. During the last half century, however, the progress of science has been steadily showing case after case where families and genera, long boldly said to have been "extinct" since "Palaeozoic time," are found in thriving abundance and in little altered condition in unsuspected places all over the world. And the point for consideration here is the manifest absurdity of these inhabitants of the modern seas and the modern land skipping all the uncounted millions of years from "Palaeozoic times" down to the "recent," for, though found in profuse abundance in these "Older" rocks, not a trace of many of them is to be found in all the "subsequent" deposits.

The proposition here to be considered and proved I shall venture to formulate as follows:

There is a fossil world, and there is a modern living world; the two resembling one another in various details as well as in a general way; but to get the ancestral representatives of many modern types, e.g., countless invertebrates, with other lower forms of animals and plants, we must go clear back to the Mesozoic or the Palaeozoic rocks, for they are not found in any of the "more recent" deposits.

I have already remarked that the blending of the doctrine of life succession with that of uniformity, must inevitably have given birth to the evolution theory, for it is evident that the succession from the low to the high could only have taken place by each type blending with those before and those after it in the alleged order of time. That such is not the testimony of the rocks, even when arranged with this idea in view, is too notorious to need any words of mine, for it has been considered by many[41] the "greatest of all objections" to the theory of evolution.

This abruptness in the disappearance of "old" and the first appearance of "new" forms, has brought into being that "geological scape-goat," as James Geikie has called the doctrine of the imperfection of the record. But Dawson has well disposed of this argument in the following words:

"When we find abundance of examples of the young and old of many fossil species, and can trace them through their ordinary embryonic development, why should we not find examples of the links which bound the species together?"[42]

But it is equally evident that each successive series ought to contain, in addition to its own characteristic or "new" species, all the older forms which survived into any later deposits, or are now to be found living in our modern world. Such no doubt was the idea of those of the early geological explorers who discarded Werner's onion-coat theory, and they tried to arrange their series accordingly. This reasonable demand is still recognized as good; and the principle is alluded to by Dana when he attempts to show how strata might be discovered and "proved" to be older than the present Lower Cambrian rocks.[43]

It is, I say, still recognized in theory that the "younger" deposits ought to contain samples of the "older" types which were still surviving, in addition to their own characteristic species; but with the progress of geological discovery it has long since been found that such an arrangement was utterly impossible. Indeed, it would almost seem as if modern writers had forgotten the principle altogether.

For, as already said, according to the present chronological arrangement, many kinds of invertebrates, both terrestrial and marine, occurring in comparative abundance in our modern world, are found as fossils only in the very "oldest" rocks and are wholly absent from all the rest!!! Others which date from "Mesozoic times" are wholly absent from the Tertiaries, though abundant in our modern world. This I regard as another crucial test of the rationality of this idea of a life succession.

Of course there are certain limitations which must be borne in mind. If we find a series of beds made up largely of deep sea deposits, we cannot reasonably expect to find in them examples of all the land forms of the preceding "ages" which then survived, nor even of the shallow water types. Nor, conversely, can we demand that, in beds crowded with the remains of the great mammals and plants, and thus probably of fresh or shallow water formation, we ought to find examples of all the marine types still surviving. We now know that each level of ocean depth has its characteristic types of life, just as do the different heights on a mountain side. This doctrine of "rock facies" was, I believe, enunciated first in 1838. Edward Forbes also did much for this same idea, showing how at the present time certain faunas are confined to definite geographical limits, and particular ocean depths. Jules Marcou about 1848 applied this principle to the fossils and showed how such distinctions must have prevailed during geological time.

Here it seems that we are at last getting a refreshing breath of true science; but if carried out in its entirety how shall we assure ourselves that in the long ago very diverse types of fossils, e.g., gratolites and nummulites, or even trilobites and mammals, could not have been contemporary with each other? This principle of "rock facies," if incorporated into the science in its early days, would have saved the world from a large share of the nonsense in our modern geological and zoological text-books.

But in answer to any pleadings about the imperfection of the record, or any protests about the injustice of judging all the life-forms of an "age" by a few examples of local character, i.e., of fresh, shallow, or deep water as the case may be, the very obvious retort is, Why then are such local and fragmentary records given a time value? Why, for example, should the Carboniferous and associated formations be counted as representing all the deposits made in a certain age of the world, when we know from the Cambrian and Silurian and also from the alleged "subsequent" Jurassic that there must have been vast open sea deposits formed contemporaneously?

As Dana expresses it:

"The Lias and Oolyte of Britain and Europe afforded the first full display of the marine fauna of the world since the era of the Subcarboniferous. Very partial exhibits were made by the few marine beds of the Coal measures: still less by the beds of the Permian, and far less by the Triassic. The seas had not been depopulated. The occurrence of over 4,000 invertebrate species in Britain in the single Jurassic period is evidence, not of deficient life for the eras preceding, but of extremely deficient records."[44]

Surely these words exhibit the "phylogenic series" in all its native, unscientific deformity. It is because the Coal-measures, the Permian, and the Triassic, are necessarily "extremely deficient records" of the total life-forms then in the world, that I am writing this chapter, and this book. But it seems like perverseness to plead about the imperfection of the record, and yet refuse the evidently complementary deposits when they are presented. If, as this illustrious author says, "The seas had not been depopulated," what would he have us think they were doing? Were they forming no deposits all these intervening ages that the Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic were being piled up? Were the fishes and invertebrates all immortalized for these ages, or were they, when old and full of days translated to some supermundane sphere, thus escaping deposit in the rocks? Did the elements continue in the status quo all these uncounted millions of years? and if so, how did they receive notice that the Triassic period was at last ended, and that it was time for them to begin work again? I do not like to appear trivial; but these questions serve to expose the folly of taking diverse, local, and partial deposits, and attaching a chronological value to each of them separately, and then pleading in a piteous, helpless way about the imperfection of the record.

And yet I cannot promise to present a tithe of the possible evidence, because of two serious handicaps. First, the ordinary literature of the science is silent and meagre enough in all conscience, even though the bare fact may be recorded that a "genus" of the Cambrian or Silurian is "closely allied" to some genus now living. It may be even admitted that "according to some it is not genetically distinct from the modern genus" so-and-so; but the authors never descend below the "genus," and in most cases forget to tell us whether or not it occurs in other "later" formations, though of course the presumption is that it does not, but has skipped all the intervening ages, or it would hardly be named as a characteristic type of the formation in which it occurs.

But this disadvantage, serious though it be, is scarcely worth speaking of when we remember the significant words of a well-known authority already quoted:

"Some geologists make it a point to give a new name to all forms found in the Palaeozoic rocks, i.e. a name different from those of modern species."

Or Zittel's confession that:

"The terminology which has been introduced in the innumerable monographs of special fossil faunas in the majority of cases makes only the slenderest pretext of any connection with recent systematic zoology; if there is a difficulty, then stratigraphical arguments are made the basis of a solution. Zoological students are as a rule too actively engaged and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt to spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions arrived at by many stratigraphers, or to revise their labors from a zoological point of view."

Hence I have no reluctance in saying that, in the present confused state of the science, it is utterly impossible to find out the truth as to how many hundreds of these "genera" of the Paleozoic rocks may have survived to the present, though having skipped perhaps all the formations of the intervening millions of years. I doubt not that the number is enormously large, though as I have not attempted "to spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions" scattered through the literature, I can only depend on a few though striking examples that lie on the open pages of the ordinary text-books.

The larger mammals can of course furnish us no examples, for the "age" in which they abounded is quite conveniently modern, and is separated from the present by no great lapse of time. Of the smaller marsupials, quite a number of jaw-bones have been found in the Jurassic and Triassic, one from the latter being strikingly like the living Myrmecobius of Australia. They are scarcely more numerous in the Cretaceous of America, while in the foreign rocks of this system Dana says that "Only one species had been reported up to 1894." Those strange, sad-eyed creatures called Lemurs deserve a passing notice, for though now confined as to their typical forms to the island of Madagascar, their fossils seem as exclusively confined to the temperate regions of the New and the Old World. Flower and Lydekker enumerate about fifteen fossil species, and add that:

"... it is very noteworthy that all these types seem to have disappeared from both regions with the close of the upper portion of the Eocene period."[45]

But this jump from the "Eocene period" to the present is as nothing compared with the secular acrobatics of some of the fishes and especially of the invertebrates. The living Cestraciont sharks, of which there are four species found in the seas between Japan and Australia, seem to disappear with the Cretaceous, skipping the whole Tertiary Epoch, as do also a tribe of modern barnacles which, as Darwin says, "coat the rocks all over the world in infinite numbers." The Dipnoans or Lung-fishes (having lungs as well as gills, such as the Ceratodus and Lepidosiren), which are represented by several living species in Australia and South Africa, are the remains of a tribe found in whole shoals in the Carboniferous, Triassic and Jurassic rocks, but not, so far as I know, in any of the intervening rocks. The living Ceratodus was only discovered in 1870, and was regarded as a marvel of "persistence." On a pinch, as when his native streams dry up, this curious fellow can get along all right without water, breathing air by his lungs like a land animal. If in the meantime he was off on a trip to the moon, he must have "persisted" a few million years without either.

But his cousin, the Polypterus of the Upper Nile, has a still more amazing record, for he has actually skipped all the formations from the Devonian down to the modern; while the Limuloids or sea scorpions have jumped from the Carboniferous down.

The Mollusks and Brachiopods would afford us examples too numerous to mention. How is it possible that these numerous families disappear suddenly and completely with the Mesozoic or even the "early" Palaeozoic, and are not found in any "later" deposits, though alive now in our modern world? Parts of Europe and America have, we are told, been down under the sea and up again a dozen times since then; why then should we not expect to find abundant remains of these "persistent" types in the Mesozoic and Tertiaries? Surely these feats of time-acrobatics show the folly of arranging contemporaneous, taxonomic groups in single file and giving to each a time value.

The Chalk points a similar lesson. It was not till the time of the "Challenger" Expedition that the modern deposits of Globigerina ooze, made up of species identical with those of the Chalk, were known to be now forming over vast areas of the ocean floor. In the words of Huxley, these modern species "bridge over the interval between the present and the Mesozoic periods."[46]

As for the silicious sponges found in the Chalk, which were such puzzles for the scientists during the first half of the nineteenth century, because their living forms were unknown, the deep-sea investigations have solved the problem, for in 1877 Sollas demonstrated "the identity of their structure with that of living Hexactinellids, Lithistids, and Monactinellids."[47]

And yet with all the alleged vicissitudes of the continents during the millions of years since the Cretaceous age, there is so far as I am aware not a trace of either the chalk or the sponges in any of the "subsequent" rocks. Pieces of Cretaceous rock are of course found thus sporadically as boulders, but there is no natural deposit of this kind. But in the light of these modern discoveries why is not the Chalk of "the white dear cliffs of Dover," full of modern living species as we now know it to be, just as "recent" a deposit as the "late" Tertiaries or the Pleistocene?

Another good illustration of the absurdity of the present arrangement of the rocks is found in the Echinoderms—crinoids, star-fishes, sea-urchins, etc. Of the latter Prof. A. Agassiz found in the deep waters of the West Indies, four genera of Echinids or sea-urchins of the "later Tertiary," but 24 genera of the "early" Tertiary, 10 of the Cretaceous, and 5 of the Jurassic.[48]

But far from being uncommon we know that similar discoveries have been in almost constant progress during the last half century. And were it not that "zoological students are," as Zittel says, "too actively engaged and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt to spell through the arbitrary palaeontological conclusions" found in the "dead weight of stratigraphical-palaeontological literature," there is no telling what hosts of similar facts might not be pointed to regarding the forms found in all the "older" rocks.

Of the star-fishes and serpent-stars (Asteridea and Ophiuridea), Zittel says: "It would seem that the Palaeozoic 'sea-stars' differed very little from those in the seas of the present age." (p. 395.) The crinoids, we are told, "are among the earliest in geological history," making up vast limestones of the Palaeozoic rocks; and forms scarcely separable from the modern are found in the Jurassic, but so far as the text-books tell us are absolutely unknown in any later deposits. But there are several modern genera, such as Pentacrinus, Rhizocrinus, Bathycrinus, etc., found in the deep waters of nearly all the oceans. The genus Rhizocrinus was discovered off the coast of Norway about the sixties of the last century. But what were these creatures doing since "Jurassic times," while the "pulsating crust" was putting parts of the continents under the sea for ages at a stretch? Why did they form no deposits during the Cretaceous, Eocene, Miocene or Pliocene ages? Surely the absurdity of the present arrangement is evident to a child. During all these intervening ages the climate of the globe continued of the same remarkable mildness, fossils of all these formations being found about as far north as explorers have ever gone. Why did the crinoids and polyp-corals suspend business from "Jurassic times" to the "recent," merely to accommodate a modern theory? Dana says that "The coral reefs of the Oolyte in England consist of corals of the same group with the reef-making species of the existing tropics,"[49] and he argues from this fact that the mean temperature of the waters must have been about 69 deg. F. But a luxuriant vegetation still continued in the Arctic regions during the Cretaceous and the Tertiaries. How absurd to say that these corals built no reefs about the European coasts during all these ages. Or, to put the matter in another way, considering how many of their characteristic types are alive in our modern seas, why should we say that the crinoidal or coral limestones of the Mesozoic or Palaeozoic rocks are not as recent as the nummulitic limestones of the Eocene or any late Tertiary deposits?

It is no answer at all to tell us that, though the general types are the same, the species of the Palaeozoic and the Mesozoic are entirely extinct. I have not had the courage "to attempt to spell through" all the "dead weight" of the modern literature, but I think that the world would like more satisfactory proof of this oft-repeated assertion than the customs and traditions of a hundred years, and the exigencies of a fanciful theory. This worn-out argument of Cuvier's about extinct species has kept up a running fight with common sense for many decades, and though driven backward from one point to another over the long thin line of this taxonomic series of the fossil world, it still contests every inch of ground.

But let us try the tree-ferns and cycads of the coal beds of the "older" rocks. In northern regions they are not found "later" than the Triassic and Jurassic, and doubtless the same holds good of the rocks in the Tropics, where the modern species now live in fair abundance. But how did they come to shift to the Tropics so many millions of years before the palms, etc., of the Tertiaries thought it time to do the same? The climate had not changed a bit: how did they come to scent the coming "Glacial Age" so much earlier than their more highly organized fellows?

The "Challenger" expedition found some Cyathophylloid corals now building reefs at the bottom of our modern ocean. The geologists had already assigned the last of them to the Carboniferous and Permian rocks with the idea that they were extinct. But where have these fellows kept themselves during all the intervening ages while the continents were deep under the ocean time and time again? or why are not the rocks containing their fossils as "recent" as any deposits on the globe?

And so I might go on. There is hardly a tribe found in the "older" rocks which does not have its living representatives of to-day, and with, I believe, a fair proportion of the species identical; though in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cases these species, genera, or even whole tribes, have somehow skipped all the intervening formations.

But let us drop this method of studying our subject, and look at it from a slightly different standpoint.

Thus Dana[50] says that:

"The absence of Lamellibranchs in the Middle Cambrian, although present in both Lower and Upper, means the absence of fossils from the rocks, not of species from the faunas."

He puts this in italics by way of emphasis, for it is certainly a reasonable idea, and as A. R. Wallace says, "no one now doubts that where any type appears in two remote periods it must have been in existence during the whole intervening period, although we may have no record of it."[51] But what would be the result if we only extend this idea to its logical conclusion? It seems to be an effort to avoid one of the absurdities of the onion-coat theory, without, however, discarding that theory altogether.

In speaking of some corals and crinoids of the Devonian which "were absent" from some of the divisions of this formation because the conditions of the seas about New York "were unfavorable," Dana says that "they were back when the seas were again of sufficient purity."[52]

In his review of these formations he enlarges on this subject:

"At the close of the early Devonian the evidences of clear seas—the corals and crinoids, with most of the attendant life—disappear, migrating no one knows whither.... With the variations in the fineness, or other characteristics of the beds as H. S. Williams has illustrated, the species vary.... The faunas of each stratum are not strictly faunas of epochs or periods of time, but local topographical faunas. After the Corniferous period, corals, crinoids, and trilobites still flourished somewhere, as before, but they are absent from the Central Interior until the Carboniferous age[53] opens."

Here we are certainly getting a refreshing breath of common-sense geology; but what would become of current theories if we enlarge a little on this idea?

What if the gigantic dinosaurs of the Cretaceous or the equally marvellous mammals of the "early" Tertiaries of the Western States, described by Marsh and Cope, and the Pleistocene mammals of other parts of America and of Europe and Northern Siberia, "are not strictly faunas of epochs or periods of time, but local topographical faunas?" What if the world-wide limestones of the Cambrian and Silurian, and the no less enormous or widespread nummulitic limestones of the Eocene, extending from the Alps to Eastern Asia, and constituting mountains ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand feet high—what if these are possibly contemporaneous with one another? Supposing the coal-measures of Nova Scotia and Pennsylvania, and the Cretaceous and Tertiary lignites of Vancouver Island, Alberta, and the Western States are not strictly floras of epochs or periods of time, but local topographical floras?[54]

But it must be confessed that the logical extension of this broad view of the fossils, and the projection of our modern zoological provinces and zones back into the fossil world would mean the death-blow to the life succession theory, and might have a very disturbing effect upon certain theories about human origins and other genetic relationships which have grown quite popular since the middle of the last century.

[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.

Darwin, in his famous chapter on "The Imperfection of the Geological Record," has well shown how scanty and imperfect are the modern fossiliferous deposits. The progress of research has only confirmed and accentuated the argument there presented on this point. Thus Nordenskiold, the veteran Arctic explorer, remarks with amazement on the scarcity of recent organic remains in the Arctic regions, where such a profusion of animal life exists; while in spite of the great numbers of cats, dogs and other domestic animals which are constantly being thrown into rivers like the Hudson or the Thames, dredgings about their mouths have revealed the surprising fact that scarcely a trace of any of them is there to be found.[56]

Even the fishes themselves stand a very poor chance of being buried intact. As Dana[57] puts it:

"Vertebrate animals, as fishes, reptiles, etc., which fall to pieces when the animal portion is removed, require speedy burial after death, to escape destruction from this source (decomposition and chemical solution from air, rain-water, etc.), as well as from animals that would prey upon them."

If a vertebrate fish should die a natural death, which of itself must be a rare occurrence, the carcass would soon be devoured whole or bit by bit by other creatures near by. Possibly the lower jaw, or the teeth, spines, etc., in the case of sharks, or a bone or two of the skeleton, might be buried unbroken, but a whole vertebrate fish entombed in a modern deposit is surely a unique occurrence.

But every geologist knows that the remains of fishes are, in countless millions of cases, found in a marvelous state of preservation. They have been entombed in whole shoals, with the beds containing them miles in extent, and scattered over all the globe. Indeed, so accustomed have we grown to this state of affairs in the rocks we hammer up, that if we fail to find such well-preserved remains of vertebrate fishes, land animals, or plants, we feel disappointed, almost hurt; we think that nature has somehow slighted this particular set of beds. But where in our modern quiet earth will we go to find deposits now forming like the copper slate of the Mansfield district, the Jurassic shales of Solenhofen, the calcareous marls of Oeningen on Lake Constance, the black slates of Glarus, or the shales of Monte Bolca?—to mention some cases from the Continent of Europe more than usually famous in the literature for exquisitely preserved vertebrate fishes, to say nothing of other fossils. According to Dana, all these must have met with a "speedy burial after death"—perhaps before, who knows?

Buckland[58] in speaking of the fossil fish of Monte Bolca, which may be taken as typical of all the others, is quite positive that these fish must have "perished suddenly," by some tremendous catastrophe.

"The skeletons of these fish," he says, "lie parallel to the laminae of the strata of the calcareous slate; they are always entire, and so closely packed on one another that many individuals are often contained in a single block.... All these fish must have died suddenly on this fatal spot, and have been speedily buried in the calcareous sediment then in course of deposition. From the fact that certain individuals have even preserved traces of color upon their skin, we are certain that they were entombed before decomposition of their soft parts had taken place."

In many places in America as well as Europe, where these remains of fish are found, the shaley rock is so full of fish oil that it will burn almost like coal, while some have even thought that the peculiar deposits like Albertite "coal" and some cannel coals were formed from the distillation of the fish oil from the supersaturated rocks.

De La Beche[59] was also of the opinion that most of the fossils were buried suddenly and in an abnormal manner. "A very large proportion of them," he says, "must have been entombed uninjured, and many alive, or, if not alive, at least before decomposition ensued." In this he is speaking not of the fishes alone but of the fossiliferous deposits in general.

There is a series of strata found in all parts of the world which used to be called the "Old Red Sandstone," now known as the Devonian. In this, almost wherever we find it, the remains of whole shoals of fishes occur in such profusion and preservation that the "period" is often known as the "Age of Fishes." Dr. David Page, after enumerating nearly a dozen genera, says: