"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:
"These fishes seem to have thronged the waters of the period, and their remains are often found in masses, as if they had been suddenly entombed in living shoals by the sediment which now contains them."
I beg leave to quote somewhat at length the picturesque language of Hugh Miller[60] regarding these rocks as found in Scotland.
"The river bull-head, when attacked by an enemy, or immediately as it feels the hook in its jaws, erects its two spines at nearly right angles with the plates of the head, as if to render itself as difficult of being swallowed as possible. The attitude is one of danger and alarm; and it is a curious fact, to which I shall afterward have occasion to advert, that in this attitude nine-tenths of the Pterichthes of the Lower Old Red Sandstone are to be found.... It presents us, too, with a wonderful record of violent death falling at once, not on a few individuals, but on whole tribes."
"At this period of our history, some terrible catastrophe involved in sudden destruction the fish of an area at least a hundred miles from boundary to boundary, perhaps much more. The same platform in Orkney as at Cromarty is strewed thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted, curved, the tail in many instances is bent round to the head; the spines stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in fish that die in convulsions.... The record is one of destruction at once widely spread and total, so far as it extended.... By what quiet but potent agency of destruction were the innumerable existences of an area perhaps ten thousand square miles in extent annihilated at once, and yet the medium in which they had lived left undisturbed in its operations?
"Conjecture lacks footing in grappling with the enigma, and expatiates in uncertainty over all the known phenomena of death."
I shall not taunt the uniformitarians by asking them to direct us to some modern analogies. But I would have the reader remember that these Devonian and other rocks are absolutely world-wide in extent.
Surely Howorth is talking good science when he says that his masters Sedgwick and Murchison taught him "that no plainer witness is to be found of any physical fact than that Nature has at times worked with enormous energy and rapidity," and "that the rocky strata teem with evidence of violent and sudden dislocations on a great scale."
I have spoken only of the class Fishes. But what other class of the animal kingdom will not point us a similar lesson? The Reptiles and Amphibians, to say nothing of the larger Mammals, are also found in countless myriads, packed together as if in natural graveyards. Everybody knows of the enormous numbers and splendid preservation of the great reptiles of the Western and Southern States, untombed by Leidy, Cope and Marsh. One patch of Cretaceous strata in England, the Wealden, has afforded over thirty different species of dinosaurs, crocodiles, and pleisosaurs. Mr. Chas. H. Sternberg, one of Zittel's assistants, recently reported great quantities of Amphibians from the Permian of Texas. They are of all sizes, some frogs being six feet long, others ten. Besides these he found three "bone-beds" full of minute forms an inch or less in length. Of the small ones, which I judge must represent whole millions of young ones suddenly entombed, he says:
"I got over twenty perfect skulls, many with vertebrae attached, and thousands of small bones from all parts of the skeleton. In one case, a complete skull, one-fourth of an inch in length, had connected with it nearly the entire vertebral column, with ribs in position, coiled upon itself, bedded with many bones of other species in a red silicious matrix. So perfectly were they weathered out that they lay in bas-relief as white and perfect as if they had died a month ago; a single row of teeth, like the points of cambric needles, occupied both sets of jaws."[61]
How many more such cases there may have been in these "three bone-beds full" of similar remains, it would be interesting to know. But though somewhat aside from the present subject, I cannot refrain in passing from referring to the wonderful preservation of these remains. It is preposterous to say that these bones have lain thus exposed to the weather for the millions of years postulated by the popular theory. There is not a particle of scientific evidence to prove that they are not just as recent as any specimen from the Tertiaries or the Pleistocene. Buffon and Cuvier proved the mammals to be of "recent" age, because they occurred in the superficial deposits. They never heard of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous of Colorado and Wyoming, nor these Permian of Texas. Think of this frog's teeth "like the points of cambric needles," and he and his fellows "as perfect as if they had died a month ago." Of one of the big six-foot specimens this author says: "Its head was so beautifully preserved, and cleaned under long erosion, it was difficult to believe it was not a recent specimen." While of the little six-inch fellow referred to above he says: "The bones of the skull are perfectly preserved, quite smooth, and show the sutures distinctly; there is no distortion, some red matrix attached below seems absolutely necessary to convince the mind that it is not a thing of yesterday." James Geikie[62] mentions the case of the Elgin sandstones "formerly classed as 'Old Red,'" but which are now called Triassic, "from the fact that they have yielded reptilian remains of a higher grade than one would expect to meet with in old Red Sandstone." Since these strata slide up and down so easily, we have here far more urgent scientific reasons for calling these amphibian remains of Texas among the most "recent" geological deposits on the globe.
But I must return to my subject. The Invertebrates are also eloquent to the fact of abnormal conditions having prevailed when their remains were entombed. We could go through the whole list, but it is the same old story of abnormal deposits, essentially different from anything that is being made to-day.
Where, for instance, in the modern seas, will we find the remains of polyp-corals now being intercalated between beds of clays or sands over vast areas, as we find them in the Lias and Oolyte of England and elsewhere? Corals require a definite depth of water, neither too deep nor too shallow, but it must be clear and pure; and nothing but some awful catastrophe could place a bed of coral remains a few feet or a few inches in thickness over the vast areas that we find them. Crinoids require the same clear, pure water, but much deeper, some of the modern kinds living over a mile down, but every student of the science knows that the Subcarboniferous limestone of both Europe and America (called Mountain Limestone in England), so noted for its crinoids and its corals, is constantly found intercalated between shale or sandstone, or between the coal beds themselves as at Springfield, Ill., or in the Lower Coal Measures of Westmorland County, Pa. There are of course, here and there, great masses of these rocks which represent an original formation by growth in situ; but no sane man can say this for these great sheets perhaps only a few inches in thickness, for in many cases they show a stratified or bedded structure just as much as a sandstone or a shale. In some tables given by Dana on pp. 651-2 of his "Manual," compiled from four different localities, I count no less than 23 beds of limestone thus intercalated, though we are not told how many of them contain corals or crinoids. Such details are generally omitted as of little consequence.
Next, let us try the Lamellibranchs, such as the clam, oyster, and other true bivalves. These creatures have an arrangement in the hinge region by which the valves of the shell tend to open, but during life are held together by the adductor muscles. When dead, however, these muscles relax and decay, and then the valves spread wide open. Of course there are some, such as certain kinds of clams, which burrow in the mud or sand, and the shells of these, if they happened to die a natural death in their holes, could not spread very far apart. However some mud must even then wash into their burrows and into their empty shells. But many kinds of bivalves do not thus burrow in the ground; and when the fossils of such kinds are found in quantity with the valves applied and often hollow, as is so frequently the case in many of the "older" rocks, I cannot see how we are to understand any ordinary conditions of deposit. And yet we are gravely assured by a high authority, that "A sudden burial is not necessary to entombment in this condition."
Or, let us take the Brachiopods. These have a bivalve shell, the parts of which, however, are not pulled apart after death, and only need to open a little way even in life to admit the sea water which brings them their food. Yet, though the valves do not gape after death, there is when dead and empty a hole at the hinge or beak, which would readily admit mud if such were present in the water, or if the shells after death were subject to the ordinary movements of tide, wave and current. Yet Dawson[63] says of the Brachiopods, Spirifer and Athyris:
"I may mention here that in all the Carboniferous limestones of Nova Scotia the shells of this family are usually found with the valves closed and the interior often hollow."
Of course he tries to explain how this state of things might occur "in deep and clear water"—for some of the modern species are found in the clear depths 18,000 feet down—and he thinks that their entombment in this condition "does not prove that the death of the animals was sudden." But we now know that there is no means of producing a stratified formation in this "deep and clear water," and hence that some revolution of nature is implied by the conditions in which we find them.
Some people seem to have converted David Hume's famous sentence into a scientific formula, thus: "Anything contrary to Uniformity is impossible: hence no amount of evidence can prove anything contrary to Uniformity."
For the trouble in this case is that, not only do such conditions prevail "in all the Carboniferous limestones of Nova Scotia," which must be several thousands of square miles in extent, but in the Devonian shales and Silurian limestones of Ontario and the Middle States at least—perhaps over the rest of the world—the Brachiopods are found in this same tell-tale condition, and it would establish a very dangerous precedent to admit abnormal conditions in even a single case.
I have only touched upon the voluminous evidence that might be adduced in the case of the lower forms of life. Had I the space, I might show how the marvelously preserved plants of the coal beds tell the same story. But we must pass on to consider the remains of the larger land animals. I have already given a quotation from Dana about the mammoth and rhinoceros in Northern Siberia, where he says that their encasing in ice and the perfect preservation of their flesh "shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's night, and knew no relenting afterward." Not very many serious attempts have been made to account for this remarkable state of things, which is a protest against uniformity that can be appreciated by a child, and I never heard of any theory which attempted to account for the facts without some kind of awful catastrophe.
Many, however, seem to have little idea of the extent of these remains in the Arctic regions. They are not all thus perfectly preserved, for thousands of skeletons are found in localities where the ground thaws out somewhat in the short summer, and here of course, the skin and tissues could not remain intact. Remains of these beasts occur in only a little less abundance over all Western Europe, and the mammoth also in North America, well preserved specimens having been obtained from the Klondike region of Alaska; and there is nothing to forbid the idea that many, if not most of these latter specimens were also at one time enshrined as "mummies" in the ice, which has since melted over the more temperate regions. But we must confine ourselves to the remains in Siberia. Flower and Lydekker tell us that since the tenth century at least, these remains have been quarried for the sake of the ivory tusks, and a regular trade in this fossil ivory, in a state fit for commercial purposes, has been carried on "both eastward to China, and westward to Europe," and that "fossil ivory has its price current as well as wheat."
"They are found at all suitable places along the whole line of the shore between the mouth of the Obi and Behring Straits, and the further north the more numerous do they become, the islands of New Siberia being now one of the favorite collecting localities. The soil of Bear Island and of Liachoff Islands is said to consist only of sand and ice with such quantities of mammoth bones as almost to compose its chief substance. The remains are not only found around the mouths of the great rivers, as would be the case if the carcasses had been washed down from more southern localities in the interior of the continent, but are imbedded in the frozen soil in such circumstances as to indicate that the animals had lived not far from the localities in which they are now found, and they are exposed either by the melting of the ice in unusually warm summers, or by the washing away of the sea cliffs or river banks by storms or floods. In this way the bodies of more or less nearly perfect animals, even standing in the erect position, with the soft parts and hairy covering entire, have been brought to light."[64]
But these remains of the mammoth, though the best known, are not the only ones attesting extraordinary conditions: though of course in warmer latitudes we do not find perfect "mummies" with the hide and flesh preserved untainted. Let us go to a warmer climate, to Sicily, and read a description of the remains of the hippopotamus found there. I quote from Sir Joseph Prestwich:
"The chief localities, which centre on the hills around Palermo, arrest attention from the extraordinary quantity of bones of Hippopotami (in complete hecatombs) which have there been found. Twenty tons of these bones were shipped from around the one cave of San Ciro, near Palermo, within the first six months of exploiting them, and they were so fresh that they were sent to Marseilles to furnish animal charcoal for use in the sugar factories. How could this bone breccia have been accumulated?... The only suggestion that has been made is that the bones are those of successive generations of Hippopotami which went there to die. But this is not the habit of the animal, and besides, the bones are those of animals of all ages down to the foetus, nor do they show traces of weathering or exposure....
"My supposition is, therefore, that when the island was submerged, the animate in the plain of Palermo naturally retreated, as the waters advanced, deeper into the amphitheatre of hills until they found themselves embayed, as in a seine, with promontories running out to sea on either side and a mural precipice in front. As the area became more and more circumscribed the animals must have thronged together in vast multitudes, crushing into the more accessible caves, and swarming over the ground at their entrance, until overtaken by the waters and destroyed."[65]
Our author then adds this summary of his argument:
"The extremely fresh condition of the bones, proved by the retention of so large a proportion of animal matter, and the fact that animals of all ages were involved in the catastrophe, shows that the event was geologically, comparatively recent, as other facts show it to have been sudden."
That it must have been a good deal more "sudden" than even this author will admit, is evident from the nature of the hippopotamus. I never thought that it was particularly afraid of the water, or likely to be drowned by any such moderate catastrophe as Prestwich invokes in this singular volume. The reader must, however, note that this affair, like the entombment of the mammoth, certainly took place since man was upon the globe, even according to the uniformitarians. Would it not be economy of energy to correlate the two together? But if man dates from "Miocene times," as some contend, he must have witnessed half a dozen awful affairs like these, for there is scarcely a country on the globe that has not been under the ocean since then.
Let us proceed.
But whither shall we turn to avoid finding similar phenomena? The vast deposits of mammals in the Rocky Mountains may occur to the reader. As Dana says, they "have been found to be literally Tertiary burial grounds." I need not go into the details of these deposits, nor of those in other places containing the great mammals which must have been contemporary with "Tertiary man," for I would only weary the reader with a monotony of abnormal conditions of deposit—unlike anything now being produced this wide world over. We shall be stating the case very mildly indeed, if we conclude that the vast majority of the fossils, by their profuse abundance and their astonishing preservation, tell a very plain story of "speedy burial after death," and are of an essentially different character from modern deposits.
Prof. Nicholson, in speaking of the remains of the Zeuglodon, says:
"Remains of these gigantic whales are very common in the 'Jackson beds' of the Southern United States. So common are they that, according to Dana, 'the large vertebrae, some of them a foot and a half long and a foot in diameter, were formerly so abundant over the country in Alabama that they were used for making walls, or were burned to rid the fields of them.'"[66]
Shortly before his death in 1895, Dana prepared a revised edition of his "Manual," and in it he gives us quite a rational explanation of this case, as follows:
"Vertebrae were so abundant, on the first discovery, in some places that many of these Eocene whales must have been stranded together in a common catastrophe, on the northern borders of the Mexican Gulf—possibly by a series of earthquake waves of great violence; or by an elevation along the sea limit that made a confined basin of the border region, which the hot sun rendered destructive alike to Zeuglodons and their game; or by an unusual retreat of the tide, which left them dry and floundering under a tropical sun." (p. 908.)
That is, this veteran geologist in his old age would not attempt to account for such abnormal conditions without a catastrophe of some kind. But if we use similar explanations for similar conditions, where shall we stop through the whole range of the rocks from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene?
Dana became very fond of this idea of earthquake waves, and invoked them to account for "the universality and abruptness" with which the species disappear at the close of "Palaeozoic time," using as the generating cause the uplifting of the Appalachian Mountains, with "flexures miles in height and space, and slips along newly opened fractures that kept up their interrupted progress through thousands of feet of displacement," from which he says "incalculable violence and great surgings of the ocean should have occurred and been often repeated.... Under such circumstances the devastation of the sea border and the low-lying lands of the period, the destruction of their animals and plants, would have been a sure result. The survivors within a long distance of the coast line would have been few."[67]
But as this sudden break in the life-chain "was so general and extensive that no Carboniferous species is known to occur among the fossils of succeeding beds, not only in America and Europe, but also over the rest of the world" (p. 735), he is obliged to make his catastrophe by earthquake waves positively world wide. Hence he adds: "The same waves would have swept over European land and seas, and there found coadjutors for new strife in earthquake waves of European origin."
At the close of the Mesozoic he uses similar language, though in this case he has the whole range of the mountains on the west of both North and South America, the Rockies and the Andes, in length a "third of the circumference of the globe," "undergoing simultaneous orogenic movements, with like grand results." (p. 875.) "The deluging waves sent careering over the land" would, he thinks, "have been destructive over all the coasts of a hemisphere," and "may have made their marches inland for hundreds of miles" (p. 878), sweeping all before them.
I should think so; but then what becomes of this doctrine of uniformity? Personally, I have not the slightest objection to these "deluging waves sent careering over the land," for I feel sure that just such things have occurred, and on just such a scale as our author pictures, for, as he says, the destruction of species "was great, world-wide, and one of the most marvelous events in geological history." (p. 877.)
But it seems to me that here we have an enormous amount of energy going to waste. Others have demanded a continent to explain the appearance of a beetle in a certain locality; but here we have a great world-wide catastrophe to explain the sudden disappearance of merely a few species. Why not utilize this surplus energy in doing other necessary work, that has certainly been accomplished somehow, but has hitherto gone a-begging for a competent cause? The only thing I object to in Dana's view of the case is his way of having these "exterminations" take place on the installment plan. For in that way we have to work up a great world catastrophe to do only a very limited amount of work, and then have to repeat the thing another time for a similarly limited work, when one such cosmic convulsion is competent to do the whole thing. I plead for the "law of parsimony," and the economizing of energy.
The vast shoals of carcasses which seem to be piled up in almost every corner of the world are prima facie evidence that our old globe has witnessed some sort of cosmic convulsion. The exact cause, nature, and extent of this event we may never have sufficient facts to determine, though two or three additional facts having a bearing on the subject will be considered in the following chapters.
Another great general fact about the fossil world may be stated about as follows:
All of the fossils (save a very few of the so-called "Glacial Age," and they admit of other easy explanation) give us proofs of an almost eternal spring having prevailed in the Arctic regions, and semi-tropical conditions in north temperate latitudes; in short give us proofs of a singular uniformity of climate over the globe which we can hardly conceive possible, let alone account for.
The proofs of this are almost unnecessary, as this subject of climate has been pretty well discussed of late years. And it was the overwhelming evidence on this point which forced Lyell and so many others to decide against the theory of Croll, which called for a regular rotation of climates, for they said that the fossil evidence was wholly against such a view. Howorth has given an admirable argument on this point in Chapter XI of his second work on the Glacial Theory[68] and to it I would refer the reader for details which I have not the space to reproduce here.
This author first remarks:
"The best thermometer we can use to test the character of a climate is the flora and fauna which lived while it prevailed. This is not only the best, but is virtually the only thermometer available when we inquire into the climate of past geological ages. Other evidence is always sophisticated by the fact that we may be attributing to climate what is due to other causes; boulders can be rolled by the sea as well as by sub-glacial streams, and conglomerates can be formed by other agencies than ice. But the biological evidence is unmistakable; cold-blooded reptiles cannot live in icy water; semi-tropical plants, or plants whose habitat is in the temperate zone, cannot ripen their seeds and sow themselves under arctic conditions.... We may examine the whole series of geological horizons, from the earliest Palaeozoic beds down to the so-called Glacial beds, and find, so far as I know, no adequate evidence of discontinuous and alternating climates, no evidence whatever of the existence of periods of intense cold intervening between warm periods, but just the contrary. Not only so, but we shall find that the differentiation of the earth's climate into tropical and arctic zones is comparatively modern, and that in past ages not only were the climates more uniform, but more evenly distributed over the whole world."
Without attempting to follow through the whole series of formations we may note a few characteristic statements of the text-books. Thus Dana says of the Cambrian:
"There was no frigid zone, and there may have been no excessively torrid zone."
While of the Silurian coral limestones of the Arctic regions he says:
"The formation of thick strata of limestone shows that life like that of the lower latitudes not only existed there, but flourished in profusion."[69]
Howorth thus quotes Colonel Fielden, the Arctic explorer, regarding the fossil Sclerodermic corals of the Silurian, widely distributed in the Arctic regions:
"These undoubted reef-forming corals of the Silurian epoch were just as much inhabitants of warm water in northern latitudes at that period as are the Sclerodermata of to-day in the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic oceans.... These corals were forms of life which must have been tropical in habits and requirement."
In fact coral limestones of the Carboniferous system are the nearest known fossiliferous rocks to the North Pole, and from the strike of the beds must underlie the Polar Sea. In the words of Howorth, "Coal strata with similar fossils have occurred all round the Polar basin ... and may be said, therefore, to have occupied a continuous cap around the North Pole."[70]
Again I quote from Howorth regarding the Mesozoic rocks:
"This very widespread fauna and flora proves that the high temperature of the Secondary era prevailed in all latitudes, and not only so, it pervaded them apparently continuously without a break. There is no evidence whatever, known to me, that can be derived from the fauna and flora of Secondary times, which points to any period of cold as even possible. There are no shrunken and stunted forms, and no types such as we associate with cold conditions, and no changes evidenced by intercalated beds showing vicissitudes of life."
The following is from Nordenskiold, as quoted by Howorth, and refers to the whole geological series:
"From what has been already stated it appears that the animal and vegetable relics found in the Polar regions, imbedded in strata deposited in widely separated geological eras, uniformly testify that a warm climate has in former times prevailed over the whole globe. From palaeontological science no support can be obtained for the assumption of a periodical alternation of warm and cold climates on the surface of the earth."[71]
And now we have the equally positive language of A. R. Wallace:
"It is quite impossible to ignore or evade the force of the testimony as to the continuous warm climate of the North Temperate and Polar Zones throughout Tertiary times. The evidence extends over a vast area both in space and time, it is derived from the work of the most competent living geologists, and it is absolutely consistent in its general tendency ... Whether in Miocene, Upper or Lower Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Carboniferous or Silurian times, and in all the numerous localities extending over more than half the Polar regions, we find one uniform climatic aspect of the fossils."[72]
Of course in all this I am taking the various kinds of fossils in the traditional chronological order. But I shall presently show on the best of authority that Man existed in "Pliocene" or perhaps "Miocene times," and in view of such an admission we have, even from the standpoint of current theory, a vital, personal interest in this question of climate. Let us take, then, the following from James Geikie, the great champion of the Glacial theory, on the climate of the Arctic regions at this part of the human epoch:
"Miocene deposits occur in Greenland, Iceland, Spitzbergen, and at other places within the Arctic Circle. The beds contain a similar (similar to the "most luxuriant vegetation" of Switzerland) assemblage of plant-remains; the palm-trees, however, being wanting. It is certainly wonderful that within so recent a period as the Miocene, a climate existed within the Arctic regions so mild and genial as to nourish there beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, walnuts, limes, magnolias, hazel, holly, blackthorn, logwood, hawthorn, ivy, vines, and many evergreens, besides numerous conifers, among which was the sequoia, allied to the gigantic Wellingtonia of California. This ancient vegetation has been traced up to within eleven degrees of the Pole."[73]
According to Dana and other American geologists the "Glacial Period" is only a variation intervening between the warm Tertiary and the equally warm "Champlain Period," and it was during the latter that the mammoth, mastodon, etc., roamed over Europe, Asia, and America. Of the climate then indicated, when all acknowledge that Man was in existence, this author says:
"The genial climate that followed the Glacial appears to have been marvelously genial to the species, and alike for all the continents, Australia included. The kinds that continued into modern time became dwindled in the change wherever found over the globe, notwithstanding the fact that genial climates are still to be found over large regions."[74]
In his "Geological Story Briefly Told," he uses even stronger language:
"The brute mammals reached their maximum in numbers and size during the warm Champlain Period, and many species lived then which have since become extinct. Those of Europe and Britain were largely warm-climate species, such as are now confined to warm temperate and tropical regions; and only in a warm period like the Champlain could they have thrived and attained their gigantic size. The great abundance of their remains and their condition show that the climate and food were all the animals could have desired. They were masters of their wanderings, and had their choice of the best."[75]
"The genial climate of the Champlain period was abruptly (italics Dana's) terminated. For carcasses of the Siberian elephants were frozen so suddenly and so completely at the change, that the flesh has remained untainted." (Id. p. 230.)
I quite agree with this author that the evidence is conclusive as to the climate and food being "all the animals could have desired," and that they must have "had their choice of the best." But it seems to me that in following out their theory these authors have not left the poor creatures very much to choose from. For as the inevitable result of their theory in arranging the plants as well as the animals in chronological order according to the percentages of living and extinct forms, they have already disposed of, and consigned to the "early" Tertiaries, etc., all the probable vegetation on which these animals lived, and thus have nothing left on which to feed the horse and bison, rhinoceros and elephant, etc., away within the Arctic Circle, except the few miserable shrubs and lichens which now survive there.
But this strange, inconsistent notion of Dana's that the so-called Glacial phenomena lie in between the warm Tertiary and the equally warm "Champlain period," is easily understood as the survival of the notion, so tenaciously held even later than the middle decades of the nineteenth century, that Man was not a witness of any of the great geological changes. When the evidence became overwhelming that Man lived while the semi-tropical animals roamed over England, the "Glacial period" still remained as a sort of buffer against the dangerous possibility of extending the human period back any further. I am not aware that this venerable scientist ever became quite reconciled to the idea of "Tertiary Man," though in his "Manual" he mentions a few evidences in favor of this now almost universally accepted opinion.
As for the real teachings of the Drift phenomena there is no need of explanation here. At the very most they are confined to a quite limited part of the northern hemisphere, there being no trace of them in Alaska, nor on the plains of Siberia, where now almost eternal frosts prevail.[76] In fact they are practically confined between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River on the west, and the Ural Mountains on the east; and with a little common sense infused into the foundation principles of the science we will cease to be tormented with a "Glacial Nightmare." Much of the Drift phenomena with the raised beaches are certainly later events than most of the other geological work, but are inseparably connected with the general problem in their explanation. Even from the ordinary standpoint, I am not aware that the elaborate argument of Howorth has even been satisfactorily answered. Indeed, I feel almost like saying that this writer's various contributions to the cause of inductive geology mark the beginning of the dawn.
Hence it may suffice here to merely call attention to the great simplicity introduced into this vast complexity of the glacialists, by the positive assurance of this author that the "Drift period" and the Pleistocene end together, and join onto the modern; or perhaps I ought rather to say that the so-called Glacial phenomena lie in between the true fossil world and our modern one.
"Thus, in regard to the Pleistocene mammals, the view is now generally accepted that, in every place where they have been found in a contemporary bed, that bed underlies the till, and is therefore pre-glacial. As in other places, so here (Scotland), teeth and bones of mammals have occurred in the clay itself; but in all such cases they occur sporadically and as boulders. As Mr. James Geikie says, 'They almost invariably afford marks of having been subjected to the same action as the stones and boulders by which they are surrounded; that is to say, they are rubbed, ground, striated, and smoothed.'"[77]
And again:
"The Pleistocene fauna, so far as I know, came to an end with the so-called Glacial age." (Id. p. 463.)
From a recent notice in Nature[78] it would seem that even Dr. H. Woodward, of the British Museum, supports this general view in his "Table of British Strata," by the statement that the glacial deposits contain only derived fossils.
But this is such a decided simplification of the problem of climate that I am utterly at a loss to understand how any one can still cling to the complex and highly artificial arrangement of numerous "interglacial" periods, to account for a few bones of mammals or a few pockets of lignite; and how they can even place between the "Glacial period" and our times the "genial Champlain period," with it, as Dana says, "abruptly terminated," and becoming "suddenly extreme as of a single winter's night." Howorth, in the latter part of the chapter already quoted from (pp. 460-478), gives a good review of this subject of intermittent climates, and strongly supports his contention that the stratigraphical evidence all points to the fact that the Pleistocene forms are always older than the Drift-beds, and where the flora and fauna of the Pleistocene occur in the Drift, they do so only as boulders; that, in fact, as he says in his Preface, "The Pleistocene Flood ... forms a great dividing line in the superficial deposits," separating the true fossil world from the modern.
I have hardly the space to repeat here my argument about the extremely fanciful way in which geologists classify the various members of the Tertiary group and the Pleistocene. And yet I must say a few words. I have tried to show the utter nonsense of the common custom of classifying these beds according to the percentage of living and extinct forms which they contain, when the real fact is that the number and kinds of the ancient life-forms which have survived into the modern era is a purely fortuitous circumstance, being limited solely to those lucky ones which could stand the radical change from a tepid water or a genial air to the ice and frosts which they now experience, to mention only one circumstance of that cosmic convulsion which we now know to have really intervened between that ancient world and our own. YET IT IS ON SUCH EVIDENCE ONLY that these Pleistocene forms are separated from the Tertiaries, or that the Tertiaries themselves are classified off—at least as far as the invertebrates and the plants are concerned. No one claims that the so-called Glacial beds can be sharply distinguished from other deposits on purely mechanical make-up. Indeed, I am strongly of the opinion that very many Archaean soils, totally unfossiliferous themselves, and resting on unfossiliferous rocks, have been assigned to the "Glacial age," merely because their discoverers did not know what else to do with them. When beds contain fossils, the latter are the one and only guide in determining age; but in view of the purely arbitrary character of this method of classifying off the Tertiary and post-Tertiary rocks, I do not see where we are going to draw the line when we once admit that the post-Tertiary beds contain only "derived fossils." It seems to me truly astonishing that shrewd reasoners, like Howorth and Dr. Woodward, have not seen the dangerous character of this precedent which they have admitted. For with that marvelous climate of all geological time continuing right up to that fatal day when it was "abruptly terminated," and the mammoth and his fellows were caught in the merciless frosts which now hold them, the percentage of all the lucky forms of life, plants, invertebrates, or mammals, which could stand such a change and "persist" into our modern world, must be utterly nonsensical as a test of age even from their standpoint.
In resuming the main argument of this chapter, I need only summarize by saying that the evidence is conclusive that all geological time down to this sharp "dividing line" was characterized by a surprisingly mild and uniform climate over all the earth. The modern period is characterized by terrific extremes of heat and cold; and now little or nothing can exist where previously plant and animal life flourished in profusion.
This radical and world-wide change in climate, therefore, demands ample consideration when seeking a true induction as to the past of our globe. That it was no gradual or secular affair, but that the climate "became suddenly extreme as of a single winter's night," the Siberian "mummies" are unanswerable arguments. That it occurred within the human epoch all are now agreed.
There is another great general fact about the fossil world which seems to be a natural corollary from the one already given about climate.
It is this:
The fossils, regarded as a whole, invariably supply us with types larger of their kind and better developed in every way than their nearest modern representatives, whether of plants or animals.
This fact also is so well known that it needs no proof. Through the whole range of geological literature I do not know of a word of dissent from this general fact by any writer whatever. Proof therefore is not necessary, though a brief review of a little of the evidence may refresh our memories.
To begin with the Cambrian, Dana says:
"The Pteropods, among Mollusks, were much larger than the modern species of the tribe. The Trilobites even of the Lower Cambrian comprise species as large as living Crustaceans. The Ostrapods are generally larger than those of recent times."[79]
Again, in speaking of the general character of the Cambrian fossils, he says:
"The types of the early Cambrian are mostly identical with those now represented in existing seas, and although inferior in general as to grade [in the "Phylogenic series"], they bear no marks of imperfect or stunted growth from unfit or foul surroundings." (p. 485.)
The well known Mollusk, Maclurea magna, which is so enormously abundant in the Silurian, is often eight inches in diameter, and the astounding Cephalopod genus, Endoceras, consisting of twenty species, found only in two divisions of the Lower Silurian, has left shells over a foot in diameter, and ten or twelve feet long!
Of the fishes of the Devonian we have, among other remarks of a similar character, the following:
"The Dipnoans, or 'Lung-fishes,' were represented by gigantic species called by Newberry Dinichthys and Titanichthys, from their size and formidable dental armature.... A still larger species is the Titanichthys clarki of Newberry, in which the head was four feet or more broad, the lower jaw a yard long. This jaw was shaped posteriorly like an oar blade, and anteriorly was turned upward like a sled runner."[80]
One of the ancient Eurypterids from the Old Red Sandstone of Europe has a length of six feet, which is more than three times that of any Crustacean now living. While a gigantic Isopod Crustacean from the same strata had a leg the basal joint of which was three inches long, and three-quarters of an inch through, which is larger than the whole body of any modern species.
The ancient "Horse-tails," "Ground-pines," Ferns and Cycads were trees from 30 to 90 feet high, and their carbonized stems and leaves make up many of our largest and best beds of coal. Compared with them the modern representatives are mere herbs or shrubbery.
Of the gigantic insects of the Devonian and Carboniferous beds we might make similar remarks. Some of the ancient locusts had an expanse of wing of over seven inches; while many of the ancient Dragon-flies had bodies from a foot to sixteen inches long, with wings a foot long and over two feet in spread from tip to tip.
Here is James Geikie's summary of the leading types of the Palaeozoic:
"Many Palaeozoic species were characterized by their large size as compared with species of the same groups that belong to later times. Thus, some Trilobites and other Crustaceans were larger than any modern species of Crustaceans. The Palaeozoic Amphibians also much exceeded in size any living members of their class. Again, the modern club-mosses, which are insignificant plants, either trailing on the ground or never reaching more than two feet in height, were represented by great lepidodendroid trees."
Sternberg, in speaking of some of the frogs which he found in the Permian of Texas, says:
"I found several skulls that measured over a foot from the end of the chin to the distal point of the horns.... I think when alive the frog must have been six feet long."[81]
He mentions another specimen which was "about 10 feet long," the head of which was "about 20 inches in length," with jaws "more powerful than those of an ox."
Of the monstrous Dinosaurs of the Mesozoic rocks one hardly needs to speak.
"They were the most gigantic of terrestrial animals, in some cases reaching a length of 70 or 80 feet, while at the same time they had a height of body and massiveness of limb that, without evidence from the bones, would have been thought too great for muscle to move."[82]
They abound in both the Old and the New World.
Of the gigantic Mammals of the Tertiary beds of the Western States, it would also be superfluous to speak; their gigantic size is known by every high school pupil, or every one who has visited any important museum in Europe or America.
We may perhaps be reminded again that all the species of these "older" rocks are extinct species. I have already suggested the grave doubts on this point, regarding the great mass of the lower forms of life, plant and animal; but we will let that pass. But let us take some of the "late" Tertiary and Pleistocene mammals, which cannot be distinguished from living species, and how do we fare? It is the same old story; the moderns are degenerate dwarfs.
The hippopotamus (H. major) is a good one to start with, for Flower and Lydekker[83] say that it "cannot be specifically distinguished from H. amphibius" of Africa. This gigantic brute used to live in the rivers of England and Western Europe. The text-books generally say in "Pliocene times," because, I suppose, no one has the courage to suggest that it lived under the ice of the "Glacial period." We are always pointed to the wool on the rhinoceros and the mammoth as indicating a somewhat cool climate, but the well known amphibious habits of the hippopotamus cannot be so easily disposed of. But if, as I believe, this world never saw a foot of ice at the sea level till the end of the "Pleistocene period," to speak after the current manner, the problem becomes very simple. In that case the time of the Hippopotamus in England was neither earlier nor later than that of the palms and acacias of the "early" Tertiary or Mesozoic rocks, or than that of the mammoth, lion, and hyena of the Pleistocene. There is as we now know absolutely nothing but an out-of-date hypothesis to indicate that they did not all live there together. We may, if we choose, try to dovetail those conditions into the present on the basis of uniformity and slow secular change, by assuming a few million years for the process, but there is neither a particle of evidence nor of probability that the hippopotamus was not contemporary alike with the palms of the Eocene and the elephants and lions of the post-Tertiary.
As for the mammoth itself, which Flower and Lydekker have intimated may turn out identical with E. Columbi and E. armeniacus, and thus the direct ancestor of the modern Asiatic elephant (E. indicus), some have argued that its average size was not greater than that of the existing species of India and Africa. But Nicholson says that it was:
"... considerably larger than the largest of living elephants, the skeleton being over sixteen feet in length, exclusive of the tusks, and over nine feet in height."[84]
Dana is equally positive:
"The species was over twice the weight of the largest modern elephant, and nearly a third taller."[85]
The upper incisors or tusks were very much longer than in the modern species, being from ten to twelve feet long, and sometimes curved up and back so as to form an almost complete circle. As these tusks continue to grow throughout life, their enormous length is, I take it, a proof of much greater longevity and thus of greater vitality than in the cases of the modern species. The latter is simply a degenerate.
And so I might go on with the Edentates, the Ungulates, the Rodents, the Carnivores, etc., for the same thing must be said of all.
As Sir William Dawson[86] remarks:
"Nothing is more evident in the history of fossil animals and plants of past geological ages than that persistence or degeneracy are the rule rather than the exception.... We may almost say that all things left to themselves tend to degenerate, and only a new breathing of the Almighty Spirit can start them again on the path of advancement."
In spite of the long popular views of Cuvier, every modern scientist admits that the great lion and hyena of the Pleistocene are identical with the living species of Africa. Many say the same thing of the fossil bear as compared with the modern brown bear and the grizzly, though, as Dana remarks of all three, lion, hyena, and bear, "these modern kinds are dwarfs in comparison."
I quote again from Dana:
"Thus the brute races of the Middle Quaternary on all the continents exceeded the moderns greatly in magnitude. Why, no one has explained."[87]
This was in 1875. In the last edition of his "Manual," published shortly after his death, he has this to say in addition:
"A species thrives best in the region of fittest climate. In the Pleistocene, the fittest climate was universal. Geologists have attributed the extinction of most of the species and the dwindling of others to the cold of the Reindeer epoch. It is the only explanation yet found, though seemingly insufficient for the Americas." (p. 1016.)
However, since the discovery of the pictures of the reindeer and the mammoth drawn and even painted side by side on the caverns of Southern France, undoubtedly from life and by the same artist, we do not hear so much about the "Reindeer epoch," and the "Mammoth epoch." A little thought should have suggested long ago that it was more reasonable to suppose the reindeer, glutton, musk-ox, etc., to have been originally adapted to the high mountains and table lands of that ancient world, than to imagine all the fauna careering up and down over continents and across seas like a lot of crazy Scandinavian lemmings, as the migration theory involved. But most geologists seem never to have had any use for mountains or plateaus, except to breed glaciers and continental ice-sheets. But the only point which I wish to insist upon here is that the cause, whatever it was, that made such a zoological break at the "close" of the Pleistocene, and which compelled the shivering, degenerate survivors, that could not stand the new extremes of frost and snow, to shift to the Tropics—this cause was certainly competent to do a good deal more work in the way of "extinction" or "dwindling" of species than the uniformitarians have generally given it credit for.
And in summing up this matter regarding the size and physical development of species, we must confess that we find in geology no indication of inherent progress upward. Variation there is and variation there has been, even "mutations" and "saltations," but with one voice do the rocks testify that the general results of such variation have not been upward. Rather must we confess as a great biological law, that degeneration has marked the history of every living form.
There is still another fact which we must consider ere we can frame any wise or safe induction regarding the geological changes. It is this:
Man himself, to say nothing of numerous living animals and plants, must have witnessed something of the nature of a cosmic convulsion—how much it is the object of our search to find out. Even according to the ordinary text-books, he must have seen the uplifting of the greater part of the mountain chains of the world; while he certainly lived in conditions of climate, and of land and water distribution, together with plant and animal surroundings, which preclude the possibility of dovetailing those conditions into the present order of things on any basis of uniformity.
By this proposition I simply mean that Man must have witnessed a cosmic geological catastrophe of some character and of some dimensions—the true nature and probable limits of this catastrophe ought to be the chief point of all geological inquiry. But instead of this method, instead of finding out whether our present world was ever a witness of such an event, the founders of the science began at the little end of an assumed succession of life (involving a preposterous supernatural knowledge of the past), and gradually worked up a habit of explaining everything in terms of Uniformity long decades before they would acknowledge that Man or the present order of things had anything to do with this fossil world. The evidence on this latter point finally became overwhelming; but with their habit of Uniformity well mastered, and their long, single file of life succession all tabulated off and infallibly fixed, modern geologists have hitherto refused to look at the whole science from this new point of view, or to reconstruct geological theory if need be in accordance with a true modern induction.
And in this proposition the reader will understand that I believe in what is called "Tertiary man." I am aware that a few scientists still contest this view, but the evidence (from the standpoint of current theory) seems to me to be overwhelmingly against them. But in this fact, if it be a fact, that Man lived under the wholly strange and different conditions of "Pliocene" or perhaps "Miocene times," is THE VERY STRONGEST POSSIBLE ARGUMENT that I can conceive of for the necessity of a complete reconstruction of geological theory—I mean, of course, apart altogether from the preposterous way in which the life succession was assumed and built up and then treated as an actual fact. It was when this grim fact of Man's inseparable connection with the fossil world was borne in upon me, that I began to realize the possibility and imperative necessity of reconstructing the science on a truly inductive basis.
I shall not undertake to give a complete up-to-date argument for "Miocene" or even "Pliocene Man." The subject is still under discussion as to just how far back along this thin line of receding life forms Man actually did live, and from the peculiar methods now in vogue which are so wholly subjective in character, it would seem to be capable of settlement in almost any way one chooses. However, whole volumes are being written on the subject, and the end is not yet. But there is no denying that human remains have frequently been found in strata which, but for their presence, would have been assigned a place far back in "Tertiary time." The existence of strong evidence for "Tertiary Man" no one would think of denying.
In all this, of course, I am considering the question from the common uniformitarian standpoint. But why should it be necessary for us to positively settle the question as to just how far back in geological time Man actually did live? For those who have attentively read my statement of the unscientific methods of classifying these Tertiary and post-Tertiary beds—or all the others for that matter—I need not here add any further argument if the accepted succession of life is, to put it as mildly as possible, not quite a scientific certainty; if the time-honored custom of classifying these so-called "superficial" beds by their relative percentages of extinct and living forms rests under a shadow of suspicion as to its scientific accuracy; if, above all, we do not at the beginning prejudice the whole case by the assumption of uniformity, what need is there of determining whether "Pliocene" or "Miocene" shells are found with these fossil human remains?
That Man lived in Western Europe contemporary with those giants of the prime, the elephant and the musk-ox, the rhinoceros and the reindeer, the lion, the Cape hyena, and the hippopotamus, at which time a very different distribution of land and water prevailed over these parts, with a radically different mantle of climate spread over all, no one will deny for a moment. Such facts are now found in the primary text-books for our children in the public schools.
But since geologists still classify the rocks as they do, and give a time value to percentages of extinct and living species of marine shells, etc., we are in a measure compelled to take the matter where we find it, and enquire how far back in geological time, i.e., among what kinds of fossils, are human remains found?
One of the best popular works on the subject that I know of is "The Meeting-Place of Geology and History," (1894) by Sir J. W. Dawson; though, like all other works of its kind written from the religious standpoint, it endeavors as far as possible to minimize the evidence in support of Man's geological antiquity.
This author thinks that Dr. Mourlan, of Belgium, has "established the strongest case yet on record for the existence of Tertiary Man." (p. 30.) It is that of some worked flints and broken bones of animals "imbedded in sands derived from Eocene and Pliocene beds, and supposed to have been remanie by wind action." Prestwich[88] has brought forward similar facts; and though the evidence in favor of the genuine geological character of these remains seems to me little if any better than that from the auriferous gravels of California, I am willing to take them as reported.