THE CHAIN OF LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

preliminary considerations as to the extent and sources of our knowledge.

t is of the nature of true science to take nothing on trust or on authority. Every fact must be established by accurate observation, experiment, or calculation. Every law and principle must rest on inductive argument. The apostolic motto, “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,” is thoroughly scientific. It is true that the mere reader of popular science must often be content to take that on testimony which he cannot personally verify; but it is desirable that even the most cursory reader should fully comprehend the modes in which facts are ascertained and the reasons on which conclusions are based. Failing this, he loses all the benefit of his reading in so far as training is concerned, and cannot have full assurance of that which he believes. When, therefore, we speak of life-epochs, or of links in a chain of living beings, the question is at once raised—What evidence have we of the succession of such epochs? This question, with some accessory points, must engage our attention in the present chapter.

Geology as a practical science consists of three leading parts. The first and most elementary of these is the study of the different kinds of rocks which enter into the composition of those parts of the earth which are accessible to us, and which we are in the habit of calling the crust of the earth. This is the subject of Lithology, which is based on the knowledge of minerals, and has recently become a much more precise department of science than heretofore, owing to the successful employment of the microscope in the investigation of the minute structure and composition of rocks. The second is the study of the arrangement of the materials of the earth on the large scale, as beds, veins, and irregular masses; and inasmuch as the greater part of the rocks known to us in the earth’s crust are arranged in beds or strata, this department may be named Stratigraphy. A more general name sometimes employed is that of Petrography. The third division of geology relates to the remains of animals and plants buried in the rocks of the earth, and which have lived at the time when those rocks were in process of formation. These fossil remains introduce us to the history of life on the earth, and constitute the subject of Palæontology.

It is plain that in considering what may be learned as to epochs in the history of life we are chiefly concerned with the last of these divisions. The second may also be important as a means of determining the relative ages of the fossils. With the first we have comparatively little to do.

Previous to observation and inquiry, we might suppose that the kinds of animals and plants which now inhabit the earth are those which have always peopled it; but a very little study of fossils suffices to convince us that vast numbers of creatures once inhabitants of this world have become extinct, and can be known to us only by their remains buried in the earth. When we place this in connection with stratigraphical facts, we further find that these extinct species have succeeded each other at different times, so as to constitute successive dynasties of life. On the one hand, when we know the successive ages of fossil forms, these become to us, like medals or coins to the historian, evidences of periods in the earth’s history. On the other hand, we are obliged in the first instance to ascertain the ages of the medals themselves by their position in the successive strata which have been accumulated on the surface. The series of layers which explorers like Schliemann find on the site of an ancient city, and which hold the works of successive peoples who have inhabited the place, thus present on a small scale a faithful picture of the succession of beds and of forms of life on the great earth itself.

Our leading criterion for estimating the relative ages of rocks is the superposition of their beds on each other. The beds of sandstone, shale, limestone, and other rocks which constitute the earth’s crust have nearly all been deposited thereon by water, and originally in attitudes approaching to horizontality. Hence the bed that is the lower is the older of any two beds. Hence also, when any cutting or section reveals to us the succession of several beds, we know that fossil remains contained in the lower beds must be of older date.

We can scarcely walk by the side of a stream which has been cutting into its banks, or at the foot of a sea-cliff, or through a road-cutting, without observing illustrations of this. For instance, in the section represented in Fig. 1, we see at the surface the vegetable soil, below this layers of gravel and sand, below this a bed of clay, and below this hard limestone. Of these beds a is the newest, d the oldest; and if, for example, we should find some marine shells in d, some freshwater shells in c, bones of land animals and flint arrowheads in b, and fragments of modern pottery in a, we should be able at once to assign their relative ages to these fossils, and to form some idea of the succession of conditions and of life which had occurred in the locality.

On a somewhat larger scale, we have in Fig. 2 a section of the beds cut through by the great Fall of Niagara. All of these except that marked a are very ancient marine rocks, holding fossil shells and corals, but now forming part of the interior of a continent, and cut through by a fresh-water river.

In deep mines and borings still more profound sections may be laid open, as in Fig. 3, which represents the sequence of beds ascertained by boring with the diamond drill in search of rock salt near Goderich in Canada. Here we have a succession of 1,500 feet of beds, some of which must have been formed under very peculiar and exceptional conditions. The beds of rock salt and gypsum must have been formed by the drying up of sea-water in limited basins. Those of Dolomite imply precipitation of carbonate of lime and magnesia in the sea-bottom. The marls must have been formed largely by the driftage of sand and clay, while some of the limestone was produced by accumulation of corals and shells. Such deposits must not only have been successive, but must have required a long time for their formation.

In Fig. 4 we have a bed of coal and its accompaniments. The coal itself was produced by the slow accumulation of vegetable matter on a water-soaked soil, and this was buried under successive beds of sand and clay, now hardened into sandstone and shale, some of the beds holding trees and reed-like plants, which still stand on the soils on which they grew, and which must have been buried in sediment deposited in inundations or after subsidence of the land. In this section we may also observe that the beds are somewhat inclined; and that this is not their original position is shown by the posture of the stems of trees, once erect, but now inclined with the beds. This leads to a consideration very important with reference to our present subject; namely, that as our continents are mostly made up of beds deposited under water and afterwards elevated, these beds have in this process experienced such disturbances that they rarely retain their horizontal position, but are tilted at various angles. When we follow such inclined strata over large areas, we find that they undulate in great waves or folds, forming what are called anticlinal and synclinal lines, and that the irregularities of the surface of the land depend to a great extent on these undulations, along with the projection of hard beds whose edges protrude at the surface. In point of fact, as shown in Fig. 5, mountain ranges depend on these crumplings of the earth’s crust; and the primary cause of these is probably the shrinkage of the mass of the earth owing to contraction in cooling. When the disturbances of beds are extreme, they often cause intricacies of structure difficult to unravel; but when of moderate extent they very much aid us in penetrating below the surface, for we can often see a great thickness of beds rising one from beneath another, and can thus know by mere superficial examination the structure of the earth to a great depth. It thus happens that geologists reckon the thickness of the stratified deposits of the crust of the earth at more than 70,000 feet, though they cannot penetrate it perpendicularly to more than a fraction of that depth. The two sections, Figs. 6 and 7, showing the sequence of beds in England and in the northern part of North America, will serve, if studied by the reader, to show how, by merely travelling over the surface and measuring the upturned edges of beds, many thousands of feet of deposits may be observed, and their relative ages distinctly ascertained.

In studying any extensive section of rock we find that its members may more or less readily be separated into distinct groups. Sometimes these are distinguished by what is termed unconformability, that is, the lower series has been disturbed or inclined before the upper has been deposited upon it. This is seen on a grand scale in the section Fig. 7, in the case of the Laurentian and Cambrian formations, and on a smaller scale in Fig. 8 in the unconformable superposition of Devonian conglomerate on Silurian slates at St. Abb’s Head. In the last section it is quite evident that the beds of the lower series have been bent into abrupt folds and worn away to a considerable extent before the deposition of the overlying series. In such a case we know not merely that the upper series is newer than the lower, but that some considerable time must have elapsed after the deposition of the one before the other was laid down; and we are not surprised to find that the fossils in the groups thus unconformable to each other are very different.

But even when the beds are conformable, they can usually be separated into groups, depending upon differences of mineral character, or changes which have occurred in the mode of deposition. One group of beds, for example, may be largely composed of limestone, another of sandstone or shale. One group may be distinguished by containing some special mineral, as, for example, rock salt or coal, while others may be destitute of such special minerals. One group may show by its fossils that it was deposited in the sea, others may be estuarine or lacustrine. Thus we obtain the means of dividing the rocks of the earth into groups of different ages, known as “Formations,” and marking particular periods of geological time. By tracing these formations from one district or region to another, we learn the further truth that the succession is not merely local, but that, though liable to variation in detail, its larger subdivisions hold so extensively that they may be regarded as world-wide in their distribution.

One of these relates to the absolute duration of the time represented by the geological history of the earth. Such estimates as our present knowledge enables us to form are very indefinite. Whether we seek for astronomical or geological data, we find great uncertainty. To such an extent is this the case, that current estimates of the time necessary to bring the earth from a state of primitive incandescence to its present condition have varied from fifteen millions of years to five hundred millions. Of the various modes proposed, perhaps the most satisfactory as well as instructive is that based on the rate of denudation of our present continents, as indicated by the amount of sediment carried down by great rivers. The Mississippi, draining a vast and varied area in temperate latitudes, is washing away the American land at the rate of one foot in 6,000 years. The Ganges, in a tropical climate and draining many mountain valleys, works at the rate of one foot in 2,358 years. The mean of these two great rivers would give one foot in 4,179 years, at which rate our continents would be levelled with the waters in about six millions of years. But the land has been in process of renewal as well as of waste in geological time; and a better measure will be afforded by the amount of beds actually deposited. The entire thickness of all the stratified rocks of Great Britain has been calculated by Ramsay at 72,000 feet. Now, if we suppose the waste in all geological time to have been on the average the same as at present, and that this material has been deposited to the thickness of 72,000 feet on a belt of sea margin 100 miles in width, we shall have about 86 millions of years as the time required.1 This has the merit of approximating to Sir William Thomson’s calculation, based on the rate of cooling of the earth, that a minimum of 100 millions of years may represent the time since a solid crust first began to form. As it is more likely that the rate of denudation has on the average been greater in former geological periods than at present, we may perhaps estimate fifty or sixty millions of years as the time required for the accumulation of all our formations. Some geologists object to this as too little, but in this some of them are influenced by the exigencies of theories of evolution, and others appear to have no adequate conception of the vast lapse of time represented by such numbers, in its relation to the actual rates of denudation and deposition.

It should be mentioned here, however, that, on certain theories now somewhat generally accepted, respecting the nature and source of solar heat, the absolute duration of geological time would be much reduced below the estimate of Sir Wm. Thomson. Prof. Tait has based on such data an estimate of fifteen millions of years. Prof. Simon Newcomb says that “on the only hypothesis science will now allow us to make respecting the source of the solar heat” (the gravitation hypothesis of Helmholtz) “the earth was, twenty millions of years ago, enveloped in the fiery atmosphere of the sun.” Dr. Kirkwood has called attention to these results in connection with the planetary hypothesis of La Place, in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.2 Should such views prove to be well-founded, geological calculations as to the time required for the successive formations may have to be revised.

If now we attempt to divide this time among the formations known to us, according to their relative thicknesses, we have, according to an elaborate estimate of Professor Dana, the time ratios of 12, 3, and 1 for the Palæozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic periods respectively. Taking the whole time since the beginning of the Cambrian as forty-eight millions of years, we should thus have for the Palæozoic thirty-six millions, for the Mesozoic nine, and for the Tertiary three. Another calculation, recently made by Professors Hull and Haughton, gives the following ratios:—

This calculation is, however, based on the absolute thickness of the several series as ascertained in Great Britain, without reference to the nature of the beds, as indicating different rates of accumulation. Under either estimate it will be seen that the Palæozoic time greatly exceeds the Mesozoic and Cainozoic together, and consequently that changes of life seem to have proceeded at an accelerated rate as time wore on.

Another inquiry of some importance relates to the manner of preservation of fossils, and the extent to which they constitute the material of rocks. This inquiry is doubly important, as it bears on the genuineness of fossil remains, and on the means we have of understanding their nature.

Some rocks are entirely made up of matter that once was alive, or formed part of living organisms. This is the case with some limestones, which consist of microscopic shells, or of larger shells, corals, and similar calcareous organisms, either entire or broken into fragments and cemented together with pasty or crystalline limestone filling their interstices. This may be seen in Fig. 9, which represents a magnified slice of a Silurian limestone. Coal in like manner consists of carbonised vegetable matter, retaining more or less perfectly its organic structure, and sometimes even the external forms of its constituent parts. More frequently, fossils are dispersed more or less sparsely through the substance of beds composed of earthy matter; and they have usually been more or less affected by chemical changes, or by mechanical pressure, or are mineralised by different substances which have either filled their pores by infiltration or have more or less completely replaced their substance. Of course, as a rule, the softer and more putrescible organic matters have perished by decay, and it is only the harder and more resisting parts that remain. Even these have often yielded to the enormous pressure to which they have been subjected, and if at all porous, have been changed by the slow action of percolating water charged with various kinds of mineral matter in solution.

In some cases not only are the pores filled with mineral matter, but the solid parts themselves have been replaced, and the whole mass has actually become stone, while still retaining its original structure. Thus silicified wood is often as hard and solid as agate, and under the microscope we see that the wood has entirely perished, and is represented by silica or flint, differing merely in colour from that which fills the cavities. In this case we may imagine the wood to have been acted on by water holding in solution silica, combined with soda or potash, in the manner of what is termed soluble glass. The wood, in decay, would be converted into carbon dioxide, and this as formed would seize on the potash or soda, leaving the silica in an insoluble state, to be deposited instead of the carbon. Thus each particle of the carbon of the wood, as removed by decay, would be replaced by a particle of silica, till the whole became stone. By similar chemical changes corals and shells are often represented by silica, or by pyrite, which has taken the place of the original calcareous matter; and still more remarkable changes sometimes occur, as when the siliceous spicules of sponges have been replaced by carbonate of lime. The organic matter present in the fossils greatly promotes these changes, by the substances produced in its decay, and thus it often happens that the shells, corals, etc., contained in limestone have been replaced by flint, while the inclosing limestone is unchanged. Fig. 10 shows the various conditions which a coral may assume under these different modes of treatment.

The substance of a fossil may be entirely removed by decay Fig. 11.—Cast of erect tree (Sigillaria) in sandstone, standing on a small bed of coal, South Joggins, Nova Scotia (Dawson’s Acadian Geology). or solution, leaving a mere mould representing its external form, and this may subsequently be filled with mineral matter, so as to produce a natural cast of the object. This is very common in the case of fossil plants; and large trunks of trees may sometimes be found represented, as seen in Fig. 11, by stony pillars retaining nothing of the original wood except perhaps a portion of the bark in the state of coal. It sometimes happens that the substance of fossils has been removed, leaving mere empty cavities, sometimes containing stony cores representing the internal chambers of the fossils. Again, calcareous fossils imbedded in hard rocks are often removed by weathering, leaving very perfect impressions of their forms. For this reason the fossil remains contained in some hard resisting rocks can be best seen as impressed moulds on the weathered surfaces.

Lastly, we sometimes have impressions or footprints representing the locomotion of fossil animals, rather than the fossils themselves. In this way some extinct creatures are known to us only by their footsteps on sand or clay, once soft, but now hardened into stone; and in the case of some of the lower animals the trails thus made are often not easily interpreted (Figs. 12, 12a). It has been found that even sea-weeds drifted by the tide make impressions of this kind, which, when they occur in old rocks, are very mysterious. Even rain-drops are capable of being permanently impressed on rocks, and constitute a kind of fossils. Besides these we have many kinds of imitative markings which simulate fossils, as those of concretions or nodules, which are often very fantastic in shape, those of dendritic crystallisation giving moss-like forms, and the complicated tracery produced on muddy shores by the little rills of water which follow the receding tide (Fig. 13). Such things are often mistaken by the ignorant for fossil remains, but are easily distinguished by a practised eye.

Fig. 12a.—Footprints of modern Limulus, or king-crab, in the sand, which enable us to interpret those in Fig. 12.

The reader who has followed these, perhaps somewhat dry, details, will be rewarded for his patience by having some conception of the conditions in which we find fossil remains, and of the evidence by which we can refer these to different periods in the history of the earth.

CHAPTER II.

the beginning of life on the earth.

he day must have been when the first living being appeared for the first time on our planet. Was it plant or animal? or a generalised organism uniting in some mysterious way the properties and powers of two kingdoms of nature, now so distinct, and even contrary to each other in their manifestations? Did it appear suddenly, or was it slowly evolved from dead matter by some process in which the albuminous or protoplasmic matter, which we know forms the basal substance of living beings, was first produced and then endowed with life? Did the first living being appear in a mature state, or was it merely a germ from which the mature individual could be produced? These are questions which science in its present state has no means of answering. We do not know any process by which the ingredients of protoplasm can be combined so as to produce that substance without a previous living being. We do not know what molecular differences may exist between dead albumen and that which we see growing and moving and instinct with life; still less do we know how to set up or establish these differences. We do not know the precise nature or relation to other forces of the energy which actuates living organisms. In our experience the simplest creatures that have life spring from previous germs, themselves the products of previous generations of living beings. Thus we are in the presence of great mysteries which it might be impossible for us to solve, even if we were permitted to visit some new planet on which the dawn of life was breaking.

Some things, however, we can infer as to the conditions of the introduction of life.

First, there is every reason to believe that the earth we inhabit was once a glowing, incandescent mass, condensing from a vaporous condition, and quite unfit for the abode of living beings, and which, even if in some previous state its materials had constituted the mass of an inhabited world, must have lost every trace of any living germ in the fervent heat to which it had been subjected. There must, therefore, have been in some way an absolute creation or origination of life and organisation.

Secondly, we may infer that in the earlier stages of the earth, when it was perhaps wholly or almost entirely covered with the waters, when it was still uniformly warmed with its own internal heat, when it was surrounded with a pall of dense vapours preventing radiation, and nursing its heat within itself, though in a condition entirely unsuited to the higher forms of life, it may have presented circumstances more favourable to the origination and multiplication of living beings of low organisation than at any subsequent time. This incubation of creative power in the vaporous mantle over the primæval ocean was a favourite imagination of old thinkers, and is not obscurely hinted at in the Book of Genesis. It has been revived and much insisted on by evolutionists in our own time, though it has no certain foundation in scientific observation or experiment.

Thirdly, from the fact that plant-life alone has the power of subsisting on inorganic matter, and that plants furnish all the nourishment of animals, we may fairly infer that the life of the plant preceded that of the animal. It has, indeed, been suggested that some of the humbler forms of life may combine in a rude and simple way enough of the powers of the plant and the animal to enable them to bridge over the double gap between the animal and the plant, and the animal and the mineral, or that such creatures may in their early stages carry on vegetable functions, and in their later those of the animal. It is theoretically possible that life may have begun with such creatures, which some of the results of microscopical research would lead us to believe still exist. It is, however, on the whole more probable that simple plants first existed, and furnished pabulum to animals of low grade introduced almost contemporaneously.

Fourthly, all our knowledge of the succession of life leads us to believe that it was not the higher plants and animals that first sprang into existence from the teeming earth, but creatures of low and humble organisation, suited to the then immature and unfinished condition of the planet. It is also in accordance with the amazing fecundity of the seas in all geological periods in these lower forms of life, to suppose that the earliest living things originated in the waters, and that the plants and animals of the land are of later date.

Do we know anything from actual observation of this earliest population of the world? Such knowledge we can hope to acquire only by studying the oldest formations known to us; and these, it must be confessed, exist in a state so highly crystalline, and so much affected by internal heat, by mechanical pressure, and by movement, as to render it little likely that organic remains should be preserved in them in a state fit for recognition.

In many parts of the world, and notably in Canada and Scandinavia, as well as in Wales, Scotland, and Bavaria, the older Palæozoic rocks, the lowest containing plants in great abundance, rest on still older crystalline beds, which have become hard and crystalline in pre-Palæozoic times, and have contributed sand and pebbles to the succeeding very ancient deposits. These old rocks—the Eozoic series of our table—may be grouped in two great systems, the Laurentian and Huronian (Fig. 14). The former may be conveniently divided into three members: First, the Bojian, or Ottawa gneiss, consisting of stratified granite rocks, usually of a red colour, and of very great thickness. This contains, so far as known, no limestone, and has afforded as yet no trace of fossils. Secondly, the Middle Laurentian, the greater part of which consists of gneiss, but containing important beds of other rocks, as quartzite, iron ore, and limestone. It is in this series that we have the first evidence of life, and it is here also that we find the greatest abundance of carbon, in the form of graphite or plumbago, and also large quantities of calcium phosphate, or bone earth. Thirdly, the Upper Laurentian or Norian series. This consists in great part of Labadorite, or lime feldspar, but has also beds of ordinary gneiss, limestone, and iron ore.

It is likely that much of the present appearance and condition of the most ancient rocks may be attributed to metamorphism, that is, to the slow baking under the influence of heat, heated water, and pressure, to which they have been subjected in the lower parts of the earth’s crust, when buried deeply under newer deposits. It is also true, however, as Dr. Sterry Hunt has pointed out in detail, that they present mineral characters which show a mode of deposition different from that which has prevailed subsequently, and probably indicating great ejections of heated mineral matter into the primitive ocean, and comparatively little of that deposit therein of mere sand and clay which has prevailed in subsequent geological periods. In short, these rocks have an unmistakably primitive aspect, distinguishing them from those of later times, and conveying the impression that they approach at least to the records of that time when a heated ocean first rested on the thin and recently solidified crust of our planet. If this is really the case, then our Lower Laurentian—hard, compact, destitute of limestone, and composed of material which may be little else than the débris of products of internal heat merely spread out into bedded forms by water—may represent a time when no living thing as yet tenanted the waters; and the dawn of life may have appeared in that period when the Middle Laurentian beds were laid down. Here at least we find two kinds of evidence pointing to the existence of certain forms of life in the waters.

The first depends on the mineral character of the beds themselves. This formation holds several very thick beds of limestone. Now although this kind of rock may, under certain circumstances, be deposited directly from solution in water, it is not ordinarily so deposited, but more usually through the agency of living beings inhabiting the waters, and forming their skeletons or hard parts of limestone derived from the water, usually through the medium of humble forms of plant life. In this way are formed reefs of coral and beds of shells and of chalky ooze, all composed of material once constituting the skeletons of animals. The study of limestones of all geological ages shows that this has been the usual mode of their formation. If the Laurentian limestones had a similar origin, the seas of that period must have swarmed with animals having calcareous coverings; and the study of more modern limestones which have become highly crystalline shows that it is quite possible that the forms and structures of these organisms may have been obliterated.

Again, the Middle Laurentian abounds in carbon or coaly matter. True, this is in the form of graphite or plumbago, but this condition may be a result of metamorphism; and we know that the carbon of coal-beds and bituminous shales of much more modern times has been altered into graphite. Further, the graphite occurs in the way in which we should expect it to occur if of organic origin. It is found disseminated in the limestone, just as bituminous matter is found in unaltered rocks of this kind. It is found interlaminated with gneiss, as carbonaceous and bituminous matters are found in the shales of the ordinary fossiliferous rocks, where these substances are known to be of organic origin. The graphite also occurs in a very pure form in irregular veins, just as in some bituminous formations the rock oil, oozing into fissures, has been hardened into asphalt or coaly matter.3

To these facts may be added the presence of thick beds and veins of iron ore and of apatite or calcium phosphate (bone earth). Both of these substances occur in a disseminated state in nearly all rocks, but they are concentrated into definite deposits by the action of life. Iron is usually dissolved out and redeposited by acids produced in the decay of vegetable matter, as we see in the clay ironstones of the coal formation and in bog-iron ores. Calcic phosphate is taken up by many animals, and forms their shells or skeletons, and on their death is deposited in beds on the sea-bottom, sometimes to a very considerable extent.

The concurrence of all these phenomena in the Middle Laurentian may be held to afford a strong presumption that, could we discover these rocks in an unaltered state, we should find the limestones filled with marine fossils and the graphite showing the forms or structure of plants. The only startling feature in this conclusion is, that if we admit it, we must also admit that life was developed in the Laurentian time in an exuberance not surpassed, if equalled, in any subsequent period. Still, there is nothing incredible in this, for if the forms of life were few and low, their increase may have been rapid, because unchecked; and they no doubt found in the ancient seas a surplusage of material on which to feed and with which to construct their skeletons. Dr. Hunt has estimated that the amount of carbon now sealed up as coaly matter would, if diffused in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, afford 600 times the quantity of that gas at present floating in the air. A still more vast amount is sealed up in the limestone of the several geological formations. The same chemist has shown that the quantity of lime held in solution in the ocean must have been much greater in Laurentian times than at present. These facts at least allow us to suppose that in the Eozoic times there were great supplies of carbon and of lime available to such creatures of low organisation as were capable of profiting by them; and we have no reason to doubt that there may have been plants and animals so constituted as to flourish in conditions of this kind, in which perhaps scarcely any modern species could exist.

These probabilities have caused geologists anxiously to search for any traces of fossil organic remains in the old Laurentian rocks; and they have been rewarded by the discovery of one species, Eozoon Canadense, still often referred to as only a problematical fossil; but this arises to a large extent from the prevalent want of knowledge sufficient to appreciate the evidence for its organic character. This being once admitted, we have in the existence of Eozoon alone a sufficient cause for the accumulation of much of the Laurentian limestone, though there is reason to believe that it was not the only inhabitant of those ancient seas.