Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

The phenomenon of raised sea-beaches is one of great interest, and seems to be connected with the alternate elevations and depressions of the Tertiary epoch, perhaps marking the successive steps of the upheaval of the land. In several parts of England the coast-line exhibits one or more shelves parallel with the existing sea-beach, and covered with similar shingle, sand, and sea-shells. And the same phenomenon is exhibited on a still more gigantic scale in South America. Mr. Darwin³⁹ found that for a distance of at least 1,200 miles from the Rio de la Plata to the Straits of Magellan on the eastern side, and for a still longer distance on the west, the coast-line and the interior have been raised to a height of not less than 100 feet in the northern part, but as much as 400 feet in Patagonia. All this change has taken place within a comparatively short period; for in Valparaiso, where the effect is most considerable, modern marine deposits, with human remains, are seen at the height of 1,300 feet above the sea.

At what exact point, geologically, the period of human history begins, it is impossible to say. No evidence of Man's presence has occurred older than the latest Tertiary deposits, which insensibly merge into the Alluvial. It seems certain that human remains have been found in chronological association with those of animals long extinct, and there appears no reason to doubt that some species of animals, as the Irish Deer, the Moa of New Zealand, and the Dodo of the Mauritius, have disappeared from creation within a period of a few centuries.⁴⁰ It is not improbable that the last of the Moho race may have lived only long enough to grace the pages of the "Birds of Australia."

It is as important as it is interesting, to observe that the same kinds of physical operations have been, within the present epoch, and are still, going on, as those whose results are chronicled in the rocks. Strata of alluvium are constantly being formed on a scale which, though it does not suddenly affect the outline of coasts, and therefore appears small, yet is great in reality.

The Ganges is estimated to pour into the Indian Ocean nearly 6,400 millions of tons of mud every year; and its delta is a triangle whose sides are two hundred miles long. The delta of the Mississippi is of about the same size, and it advances steadily into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of a mile in a century.

The accumulation of river-mud is gradually filling up the Adriatic Sea. From the northernmost point of the Gulf of Trieste to the south of Ravenna, there is an uninterrupted series of recent accessions of land, more than a hundred miles in length, which, within the last twenty centuries, have increased from two to twenty miles in breadth.

The coral-polypes are working still with great energy. Mr. Darwin mentions two or three examples of the rate of increase, one of which only I shall cite. In the lagoon of Keeling Atoll, a channel was dug for the passage of a schooner built upon the island, through the reef into the sea; in ten years afterward, when it was examined, it was found almost choked up with living coral.

Volcanic action is busy in many parts of the earth, pouring forth clouds of ashes and torrents of molten rock; and instances are not wanting in which new islands have been raised from the bed of the ocean by this means, within the sphere of history.

Slow and permanent changes of level are still being produced on the earth's crust. The bottom of the Baltic has been, for several centuries at least, in process of continuous elevation, the effects of which are palpable. Many rocks formerly covered are now permanently exposed; channels between islets, formerly used, are now closed up, and beds of marine shells have become bare. On the other hand, the whole area of the Pacific Polynesia seems subsiding.

Deposits are being made by waters which hold earthy substances in solution. The principal of these is lime. Several remarkable examples of this kind are quoted by Sir Charles Lyell, in one of which there is a thickness of 200 or 300 feet of travertine of recent deposit, while in another a solid mass thirty feet thick was deposited in about twenty years. He also states that there are other countless places in Italy where the constant formation of limestone may be seen, while the same may be said of Auvergne and other volcanic districts. In the Azores, Iceland, and elsewhere, silica is deposited often to a considerable extent. Deposits of asphalt and other bituminous products occur in other places.⁴¹

The floors of limestone caverns are frequently strewn with fossil bones, which are imbedded in stalagmite, and this incrustation is still in progress of formation. It is remarkable that in this deposit alone we obtain the bones of Man in a fossil condition. The two creations, – the extinct and the extant, – or rather the prochronic and the diachronic – here unite. But there is no line of demarcation between them; they merge insensibly into each other. The bones of Man, and even his implements and fragments of pottery, are found mingled with the skeletons of extinct animals in the caves of Devonshire, in those of Brazil,⁴² and in those of Franconia. In Peru, some scores of human skeletons have been found in a bed of travertine, associated with marine shells; the stratum itself being covered by a deep layer of vegetable soil, forming the face of a hill crowned with large trees.

From a very interesting paper by M. Marcel de Serres, it appears indubitable that the existing shells of the Mediterranean are even now passing in numbers into the fossil state, and that not in quiet spots only, but where the sea is subject to violent agitations. Specimens of common species, "completely petrified, have been converted into carbonate of lime at the same time that they have lost the animal matter which they originally contained. Their hardness and solidity are greater than those of some petrified species from tertiary formations."

"In the collection of M. Doumet, Mayor of Cette, there exists an anchor which exhibits the same circumstances, and which is also covered with a layer of solid calcareous matter. This contains specimens of Pecten, Cardium, and Ostrea, completely petrified, and the hardness of which is equal to that of fossil species from secondary formations. On the surface of the deposit in which the anchor is imbedded, there are Anomiæ and Serpulæ, which were living when the anchor was got out of the sea; these present no trace of alteration."⁴³

Thus we have brought down the record to an era embraced by human history, and even to individual experience; and we confidently ask, Is it possible, is it imaginable, that the whole of the phenomena which occur below the diluvial deposits can have been produced within six days, or seventeen centuries? Let us recapitulate the principal facts.

1. The crust of the earth is composed of many layers, placed one on another in regular order. All of these are solid, and most are of great density and hardness. Most of them are of vast thickness, the aggregate not being less than from seven to ten miles.

2. The earlier of these were made and consolidated before the newer were formed; for in several cases, it is demonstrable that the latter were made out of the débris of the former. Thus the compact and hard granite was disintegrated grain by grain; the component granules were rolled awhile in the sea till their angles were rubbed down; they were slowly deposited, and then consolidated in layers.

3. A similar process goes on again and again to form other strata, all occupying long time, and all presupposing the earlier ones.⁴⁴

4. After some strata have been formed and solidified, convulsions force them upward, contort them, break them, split them asunder. Melted matter is driven through the outlets, fills the veins, spreads over the surface, settles into the hollows, cools and solidifies.

5. After the outflowing and consolidation of these volcanic streams, the action of running water cuts them down, cleaving beds of immense depth through their substance. Mr. Poulett Scrope, speaking of the solidified streams of basalt, in the volcanic district of Southern France, observes: —

"These ancient currents have since been corroded by rivers, which have worn through a mass of 150 feet in height, and formed a channel even in the granite rocks beneath, since the lava first flowed into the valley. In another spot, a bed of basalt, 160 feet high, has been cut through by a mountain stream. The vast excavations effected by the erosive power of currents along the valleys which feed the Ardèche, since their invasion by lava-currents, prove that even the most recent of these volcanic eruptions belong to an era incalculably remote."⁴⁵

6. A series of organic beings appears, lives, generates, dies; lives, generates, dies; for thousands and thousands of successive generations. Tiny polypes gradually build up gigantic masses of coral, – mountains and reefs – microscopic foraminifera accumulate strata of calcareous sand; still more minute infusoria – forty millions to the inch – make slates, many yards thick, of their shells alone.

7. The species at length die out – a process which we have no data to measure,⁴⁶ though we may reasonably conclude it very long. Sometimes the whole existing fauna seems to have come to a sudden violent end; at others, the species die out one by one. In the former case suddenly, in the latter progressively, new creatures supply the place of the old. Not only do species change; the very genera change, and change again. Forms of beings, strange beings, beings of uncouth shape, of mighty ferocity and power, of gigantic dimensions, come in, run their specific race, propagate their kinds generation after generation, – and at length die out and disappear; to be replaced by other species, each approaching nearer and nearer to familiar forms.

8. Though these early creatures were unparalleled by anything existing now, yet they were animals of like structure and economy essentially. We can determine their analogies and affinities; appoint them their proper places in the orderly plan of nature, and show how beautifully they fill hiatuses therein. They had shells, crusts, plates, bones, horns, teeth, exactly corresponding in structure and function to those of recent animals. In some cases we find the young with its milk-teeth by the side of its dam with well-worn grinders. The fossil excrement is seen not only dropped, but even in the alimentary canal. Bones bear the marks of gnawing teeth that dragged them and cracked them, and fed upon them. The foot-prints of birds and frogs, of crabs and worms, are imprinted in the soil, like the faithful impression of a seal.⁴⁷

9. Millions of forest-trees sprang up, towered to heaven, and fell, to be crushed into the coal strata which make our winter fires. Hundreds of feet measure the thickness of what were once succulent plants, but pressed together like paper-pulp, and consolidated under a weight absolutely immensurable. Yet there remain the scales of their stems, the elegant reticulated patterns of their bark, the delicate tracery of their leaf-nerves, indelibly depicted by an unpatented process of "nature-printing." And when we examine the record, – the forms of the leaves, the structure of the tissues, we get the same result as before, that the plants belonged to a flora which had no species in common with that which adorns the modern earth. Very gradually, and only after many successions, not of individual generations, but of the cycles of species, genera, and even families, did the vegetable creation conform itself to ours.⁴⁸

10. At length the species both of plants and animals grew, – not by alteration of their specific characters, but by replacement of species by species – more and more like what we have now on the earth, and finally merged into our present flora and fauna, about the time when we find the first geological traces of man.

11. During the course of these successive cycles of organic life, the map of the world has changed many times. Up to a late period the ocean washed over Mont Blanc and Mount Ararat; the continent of Europe was a wide sea; then it was a Polynesia, then an Archipelago of great islands, then a Continent much larger than it is now, with England united to it, and the solid land stretching far away into the Atlantic; – then it sank again, and was again raised, not all at once, but by several stages, each of which has left its coast line, and its shingle beach. All these changes must have been the work of vast periods of time.

"Excepting possibly, but not certainly, the higher parts of some mountains, which at widely different epochs have been upheaved, and made to elevate and pierce the stratified masses which once lay over them, there is scarcely a spot on the earth's surface which has not been many times in succession the bottom of the sea, and a portion of dry land. In the majority of cases, it is shown, by physical evidences of the most decisive kind, that each of those successive conditions was of extremely long duration; a duration which it would be presumptuous to put into any estimate of years or centuries; for any alteration, of which vestiges occur in the zoological state and the mineral constitution of the earth's present surface, furnishes no analogy (with regard to the nature and continuance of causes), that approaches in greatness of character to those changes whose evidences are discernible in almost any two continuous strata. It is an inevitable inference, unless we are disposed to abandon the principles of fair reasoning, that each one of such changes in organic life did not take place till after the next preceding condition of the earth had continued through a duration, compared with which six thousand years appear an inconsiderable fraction of time."⁴⁹

12. The climate of our atmosphere has undergone corresponding mutations. At one time the Palms, the Treeferns, the Cycads of the tropical jungles found their congenial home here: the Elephant, the Rhinoceros, and the Tiger roamed over England; nay, dwelt in countless hosts on the northern shores of Siberia: then the climate gradually cooled to a temperate condition: then it became cold, and glaciers and icebergs were its characteristic features: finally it became temperate again.

13. The icebergs and the glaciers were the ships and railways of past epochs; they were freighted with their heavy but worthless cargoes of rock-boulders and gravel, and set out on their long voyages and travels, over sea and land, sometimes writing their log-books in ineffaceable scratches on the rocky tables over which they passed, and at length discharging their freights in harbours and bays, on inland plains, on mountain sides and summits, where they remain unclaimed, free for any trader in such commodities, without the ceremony of producing the original bill of lading.

Let the remainder be told in the words of one of our most eloquent and able geologists, Professor Sedgwick.

"The fossils demonstrate the time to have been long, though we cannot say how long. Thus we have generation after generation of shell-fish, that have lived and died on the spots where we find them; very often demonstrating the lapse of many years for a few perpendicular inches of deposit. In some beds we have large, cold-blooded reptiles, creatures of long life. In others, we have traces of ancient forests, and enormous fossil trees, with concentric rings of structure, marking the years of growth. Phenomena of this kind are repeated again and again; so that we have three or four distinct systems of deposit, each formed at a distinct period of time, and each, characterised by its peculiar fossils. Coeval with the Tertiary masses, we have enormous lacustrine deposits; sometimes made up of very fine thin laminæ, marking slow tranquil deposits. Among these laminæ, we can find sometimes the leaf-sheddings and the insects of successive seasons. Among them also we find almost mountain-masses of the Indusiœ tubulatœ [the cases of Phryganeœ], and other sheddings of insects, year after year. Again, streams of ancient lava alternate with some of these lacustrine tertiary deposits.

"In central France, a great stream of lava caps the lacustrine limestone. At a subsequent period the waters have excavated deep valleys, cutting down into the lacustrine rock-marble many hundred feet; and, at a newer epoch, anterior to the authentic history of Europe, new craters have opened, and fresh streams of lava have run down the existing valleys. Even in the Tertiary period we have thus a series of demonstrative proofs of a long succession of physical events, each of which required a long lapse of ages for its elaboration.

"Again, as we pass downwards from the bottom Tertiary beds to the Chalk, we instantly find new types of organic life. The old species, which exist in millions of individuals in the upper beds, disappear, and new species are found in the chalk immediately below. This fact indicates a long lapse of time. Had the chalk and upper beds been formed simultaneously at the same period [as the supporters of the diluvial theory represent], their organic remains must have been more or less mixed; but they are not. Again, at the base of the Tertiary deposits resting on the Chalk, we often find great masses of conglomerate or shingle, made up of chalk-flints rolled by water. These separate the Chalk from the overlying beds, and many of the rolled flints contain certain petrified chalk-fossils. Now, every such fossil proves the following points: —

"1. There was a time when the organic body was alive at the bottom of the sea.

"2. It was afterwards imbedded in the cretaceous deposit.

"3. It became petrified; a very slow process.

"4. The Chalk was, by some change of marine currents, washed away, or degraded, [i. e. worn away under the atmosphere by the weather and casualties, a process slow almost beyond description,] and the solid flints and fossils [thus detached from their imbeddings], were rolled into shingles.

"5. Afterwards, these shingles were covered up, and buried under Tertiary deposits.

"In this way of interpretation, a section of a few perpendicular feet indicates a long lapse of time, and the co-ordinate fact of the entire change of organic types, between the beds above and those below, falls in with the preceding inference, and shows the lapse of time to have been very long."⁵⁰

IV
THE CROSS-EXAMINATION

"When the fact itself cannot be proved, that which comes nearest to the proof of the fact is the proof of the circumstances that necessarily and usually attend such facts; and these are called presumptions, and not proofs, for they stand instead of the proofs of the fact, till the contrary be proved." —

Gilbert; Law of Evidence.

Such, then, is the evidence for the macro-chronology. I hope I have summed it up fairly; of course, many details I have been forbidden to adduce by want of space, but they would have been of the same kind as those brought forward. I am not conscious of having in any degree cushioned, or concealed, or understated a single proof which would have helped the conclusion.

A mighty array of evidence it certainly is, and such as appears at first sight to compel our assent to the sequent claimed for it. I must confess that I have no sympathy with the reasonings of those, however I honour their design, who can find a sufficient cause for these phenomena in the natural operations of the Antediluvian centuries, or in the convulsion that closed them.

But is there no other alternative? Am I compelled to accept the conclusions drawn from the phenomena thus witnessed unto, as undeniable facts, since they refuse to be normally circumscribed within the limits of the historic period? I verily believe there is another, and a perfectly legitimate solution.

My first business is to examine, and, if I can, to disprove this testimony. If I can show the witness to be liable to error; if I can adduce a principle which invalidates all his proofs; if I can make it undeniably manifest that, in a case precisely parallel, similar conclusions, deduced from exactly analogous phenomena, would be notoriously false; if I can do this, I think I have a right to demand that the witness be bowed out of court, as perfectly nugatory and worthless in this cause.

In the first place, there is nothing here but circumstantial evidence; there is no direct testimony to the facts sought to be established. Let it not seem unfair to make this distinction; it is one of great importance. No witness has deposed to actual observation of the processes above enumerated; no one has appeared in court who declares he actually saw the living Pterodactyle flying about, or heard the winds sighing in the tops of the Lepidodendra. You will say, "It is the same thing; we have seen the skeleton of the one, and the crushed trunk of the other, and therefore we are as sure of their past existence as if we had been there at the time." No, it is not the same thing; it is not quite the same thing; not quite. Strong as is the evidence, it is not quite so strong as if you had actually seen the living things, and had been conscious of the passing of time while you saw them live. It is only by a process of reasoning that you infer they lived at all.⁵¹

The process is something like this. Here is an object in a mass of stone, which has a definite form, – the form of the bone of a beast. The more minutely you examine it, the more points of resemblance you find; you say, If this is a bone, it ought to have so and so – condyles, scars for the attachment of muscles in particular spots, a cavity for the reception of marrow, a mark for the insertion of the ligament; you look for each of these, and find all in the very conditions you have prescribed; it is not only a bone, but a particular bone, the thigh-bone, for instance. Here in the same block of stone is another object: you work it out; it is another bone; its joint accurately fits the preceding; it answers precisely to the tibia of a mammal. Other bones at length appear, and you have got a perfect skeleton, no part redundant, none wanting; the most minute, the most elaborate, the most delicate portions of the osseous frame of a mammal are present, and every one exactly correspondent to the rest in size, in maturity, in fit. Each bone, out of the scores, displays exactly those characters, and no other, which an anatomist would have said beforehand it ought to have. Allowing for the difference of species, the skeleton, when worked out of its matrix, and set up, is precisely like that of the little beast at whose death you were actually present, whose bones you cleaned with your own hands, and mounted for your own museum. It would be as reasonable to deny that the one is the skeleton of a real animal as the other.

Thus far there is matter of fact – observed, witnessed fact; you have found in a stone a real skeleton.

You immediately infer that this skeleton once belonged to a living animal, that breathed, and fed, and walked about, exactly as animals do now. This conclusion seems so obvious and unavoidable, that we naturally conclude it to rest on the same foundation as the fact that the object is a skeleton, or that it was in the stone. But really it rests on a totally different foundation; it is a conclusion deduced by a process of reasoning from certain assumed premises.

Myriads, perhaps millions of skeletons of animals like this one have come at different times under human observation, which have been obviously referrible to creatures that, within the same sphere of observation, had been alive. No similar skeleton has ever come within the range of recorded observation that could be referred to any other source than that of a quondam living animal. On these premises you build the conclusion that a skeleton must, at some time or other, have belonged to a living animal. And it may seem an impregnable position; but yet its validity altogether depends on the exhaustive power of human observation. If I could show, to your satisfaction, that a skeleton might have existed; still more, if I could show you that a skeleton must have existed; still more, if I could prove that myriads of skeletons, precisely like this, must have existed, without ever having formed parts of antecedent living bodies; you would yourself acknowledge that your conclusions were untenable. The utmost you could affirm, would be, that possibly, perhaps probably, the skeleton you had found in the stone had at some time belonged to a living animal, but that, so far as any recognised premises exist, there was no certainty about it.

But the premises have not been fairly stated. There is more than the relation of precedence and sequence in what we know of the connexion between skeletons and living animals; there is the relation of cause and effect. It is not only that universal experience has declared the fact that every skeleton was once part of a living body; it has shown that the very structure and nature of the skeleton implied living body. The skeleton, in every part, displays a regard for the advantages of the living animal; it is built expressly for it; by itself it is nothing – a machine without any object; its joints, its cavities, its apophyses, its processes, all have special reference to tissues and organs which are not here now, but which belong to the living body.

And then experience has shown that the skeleton is made in a particular manner. The bone is deposited, atom by atom, in living organic cells, which are formed by living blood, which implies a living animal. The microscopic texture of your stone-girt skeleton does not differ from that of the skeleton which you cleaned from the muscles with your own hands; and therefore you infer that it was constructed in the same way, namely, by the blood of a living body.

Well, I come back, notwithstanding, to my position, – that your right to affirm this must altogether depend on the exhaustive power of that experience on which you build. And it will be overthrown, if I can show that skeletons have been made in some other way than by the agency of living blood.

Can I do this? I think I can. At least I think I can show enough greatly to diminish, if not altogether to destroy, the confidence with which you inferred the existence of vast periods of past time from geological phenomena. I can adduce a principle, having the universality (within its proper sphere) of law, hitherto unrecognised, whose tendency is to invalidate the testimony of your witness.