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Title: The Foot-prints of the Creator
        or, The Asterolepis of Stromness

Author: Hugh Miller

Contributor: Louis Agassiz

Release date: February 28, 2022 [eBook #67527]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Gould and Lincoln

Credits: Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOT-PRINTS OF THE CREATOR ***






[Illustration: Engraved by J. Sartain.—From a original Talbotype.

Gould & Lincoln, Boston]




                                   THE
                       FOOT-PRINTS OF THE CREATOR:
                                   OR,
                      THE ASTEROLEPIS OF STROMNESS.

                                   BY
                              HUGH MILLER,
                 AUTHOR OF “THE OLD RED SANDSTONE,” ETC.

        “When I asked him how this earth could have been repeopled if
        ever it had undergone the same fate it was threatened with by
        the comet of 1680, he answered,—‘that required the power of a
        Creator.’”—_Conduit’s “Conversation with Sir Isaac Newton”._

                     FROM THE THIRD LONDON EDITION.

                       WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR
                            BY LOUIS AGASSIZ.

                                 BOSTON:
                           GOULD AND LINCOLN.
                          69 WASHINGTON STREET.
                     NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY.
                     CINCINNATI: GEO. S. BLANCHARD.
                                  1868.

       Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by
                       GOULD, KENDALL AND LINCOLN,
     In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of
                             Massachusetts.




TO SIR PHILIP DE MALPAS GREY EGERTON, BART. M.P., F.R.S. & G.S.


To you, Sir, as our highest British authority on fossil fishes, I take
the liberty of dedicating this little volume. In tracing the history of
Creation, as illustrated in that ichthyic division of the vertebrata
which is at once the most ancient and the most extensively preserved, I
have introduced a considerable amount of fact and observation, for the
general integrity of which my appeal must lie, not to the writings of my
friends the geologists, but to the strangely significant record inscribed
in the rocks, which it is their highest merit justly to interpret and
faithfully to transcribe. The ingenious and popular author whose views
on Creation I attempt controverting, virtually carries his appeal from
science to the want of it. I would fain adopt an opposite course: And
my use, on this occasion, of your name, may serve to evince the desire
which I entertain that the collation of my transcripts of hitherto
uncopied portions of the geologic history with the history itself,
should be in the hands of men qualified, by original vigor of faculty
and the patient research of years, either to detect the erroneous or to
certify the true. Further, I feel peculiar pleasure in availing myself
of the opportunity furnished me, by the publication of this little work,
of giving expression to my sincere respect for one who, occupying a
high place in society, and deriving his descent from names illustrious
in history, has wisely taken up the true position of birth and rank in
an enlightened country and age; and who, in asserting, by his modest,
persevering labors, his proper standing in the scientific world, has
rendered himself first among his countrymen in an interesting department
of Natural Science, to which there is no aristocratic or “royal road.”

    I have the honor to be, Sir,

                      With admiration and respect,

                                  Your obedient humble servant,

                                                             HUGH MILLER.




TO THE READER.


There are chapters in this little volume which will, I am afraid, be
deemed too prolix by the general reader, and which yet the geologist
would like less were there any portion of them away. They refer chiefly
to organisms not hitherto figured nor described, and must owe their
modicum of value to that very minuteness of detail which, by critics of
the merely literary type, unacquainted with fossils, and not greatly
interested in them, may be regarded as a formidable defect, suited
to overlay the general subject of the work. Perhaps the best mode of
compromising the matter may be to intimate, as if by beacon, at the
outset, the more repulsive chapters; somewhat in the way that the
servants of the Humane Society indicate to the skater who frequents in
winter the lakes in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, those parts of the
ice on which he might be in danger of losing himself. I would recommend,
then, readers not particularly palæontological, to pass but lightly over
the whole of my fourth and fifth chapters, with the latter half of the
third, marking, however, as they skim the pages, the conclusions at which
I arrive regarding the bulk and organization of the extraordinary animal
described, and the data on which these are founded. My book, like an
Irish landscape dotted with green bogs, has its portions on which it may
be perilous for the unpractised surveyor to make any considerable stand,
but across which he may safely take his sights and lay down his angles.

It will, I trust, be found, that in dealing with errors which, in at
least their primary bearing, affect questions of science, I have not
offended against the courtesies of scientific controversy. True, they
are errors which also involve moral consequences. There is a species
of superstition which inclines men to take on trust whatever assumes
the name of science; and which seems to be a reaction on the old
superstition, that had faith in witches, but none in Sir Isaac Newton,
and believed in ghosts, but failed to credit the Gregorian calendar. And,
owing mainly to the wide diffusion of this credulous spirit of the modern
type, as little disposed to examine what it receives as its ancient
unreasoning predecessor, the development doctrines are doing much harm on
both sides of the Atlantic, especially among intelligent mechanics, and
a class of young men engaged in the subordinate departments of trade and
the law. And the harm, thus considerable in amount, must be necessarily
more than merely considerable in degree. For it invariably happens,
that when persons in these walks become materialists, they become also
turbulent subjects and bad men. That belief in the existence after death,
which forms the distinguishing _instinct_ of humanity, is too essential
a part of man’s moral constitution not to be missed when away; and so,
when once fairly eradicated, the life and conduct rarely fail to betray
its absence. But I have not, from any consideration of the mischief thus
effected, written as if arguments, like cannon-balls, could be rendered
more formidable than in the cool state by being made red-hot. I have
not even felt, in discussing the question, as if I had a man before me
as an opponent; for though my work contains numerous references to the
author of the “Vestiges,” I have invariably thought on these occasions,
not of the anonymous writer of the volume, of whom I know nothing, but
simply of an ingenious, well-written book, unfortunate in its facts and
not always very happy in its reasonings. Further, I do not think that
palæontological fact, in its bearing on the points at issue, is of such
a doubtful complexion as to leave the geologist, however much from moral
considerations in earnest in the matter, any very serious excuse for
losing his temper.

In my reference to the three great divisions of the geologic scale, I
designate as _Palæozoic_ all the fossiliferous rocks, from the first
appearance of organic existence down to the close of the Permian system;
all as _Secondary_, from the close of the Permian system down to the
close of the Cretaceous deposits; and all as _Tertiary_, from the close
of the Cretaceous deposits down to the introduction of man. The wood-cuts
of the volume, of which at least nine tenths of the whole represent
objects never figured before, were drawn and cut by Mr. John Adams of
Edinburgh, (8, Heriot Place,) with a degree of care and skill which has
left me no reason to regret my distance from the London artists and
engravers. So far at least as the objects could be adequately represented
on wood, and in the limited space at Mr. Adams’ command, their truth
is such that I can safely recommend them to the palæontologist. In
the accompanying descriptions, and in my statements of geologic fact
in general, it will, I hope, be seen that I have not exaggerated the
peculiar features on which I have founded, nor rendered truth partial in
order to make it serve a purpose. Where I have reasoned and inferred,
the reader will of course be able to judge for himself whether the
argument be sound or the deduction just; and to weigh, where I have
merely speculated, the probability of the speculation; but as, in at
least _some_ of my statements of fact, he might lie more at my mercy, I
have striven in every instance to make these adequately representative of
the actualities to which they refer. And so, if it be ultimately found
that on some occasions I have misled others, it will, I hope, be also
seen to be only in cases in which I have been mistaken myself. The first
or popular title of my work, “Foot-prints of the Creator,” I owe to Dr.
Hetherington, the well-known historian of the Church of Scotland. My
other various obligations to my friends, literary and scientific, the
reader will find acknowledged in the body of the volume, as the occasion
occurs of availing myself of either the information communicated, or the
organism, recent or extinct, lent me or given.




HUGH MILLER, AUTHOR OF “OLD RED SANDSTONE” AND “FOOTPRINTS OF THE
CREATOR.”


The geological works of Hugh Miller have excited the greatest interest,
not only among scientific men, but also among general readers. There is
in them a freshness of conception, a power of argumentation, a depth
of thought, a purity of feelings, rarely met with in works of that
character, which are well calculated to call forth sympathy, and to
increase the popularity of a science which has already done so much to
expand our views of the Plan of Creation. The scientific illustrations
published by Mr. Miller are most happily combined with considerations of
a higher order, rendering both equally acceptable to the thinking reader.
But what is in a great degree peculiar to our author, is the successful
combination of Christian doctrines with pure scientific truths. On that
account, his works deserve peculiar attention. His generalizations have
nothing of the vagueness which too often characterize the writings
of those authors who have attempted to make the results of science
subservient to the cause of religion. Struck with the beauty of Mr.
Miller’s works, it has for some time past been my wish to see them more
extensively circulated in this country; and I have obtained leave from
the author to publish an American edition of his “Footprints of the
Creator,” for which he has most liberally furnished the publishers with
the admirable wood-cuts of the original.

While preparing some additional chapters, and various notes illustrative
of certain points alluded to incidentally in this work, it was deemed
advisable to preface it with a short biographical notice of the author.
I had already sketched such a paper, when I became acquainted with a full
memoir of this remarkable man, containing most interesting details of
his earlier life, written by that eminent historian of the “Martyrs of
Science,” the great natural philosopher of Scotland. It has occurred to
me that, owing to the frequent references which I could not avoid to my
own researches, I had better substitute this ample Biography for my short
sketch, with such alterations and additions as the connection in which
it is brought here would require. I therefore proceed to introduce our
author with Sir David Brewster’s own words:—

Of all the studies which relate to the material universe, there is none,
perhaps, which appeals so powerfully to our senses, or which comes
into such close and immediate contact with our wants and enjoyments,
as that of Geology. In our hourly walks, whether on business or for
pleasure, we tread with heedless step upon the apparently uninteresting
objects which it embraces: but could we rightly interrogate the rounded
pebble at our feet, it would read us an exciting chapter on the history
of primeval times, and would tell us of the convulsions by which it
was wrenched from its parent rock, and of the floods by which it was
abraded and transported to its present humble locality. In our visit to
the picturesque and the sublime in nature, we are brought into closer
proximity to the more interesting phenomena of geology. In the precipices
which protect our rock-girt shores, which flank our mountain glens, or
which variegate our lowland valleys, and in the shapeless fragments at
their base, which the lichen colors, and round which the ivy twines, we
see the remnants of uplifted and shattered beds, which once reposed in
peace at the bottom of the ocean. Nor does the rounded boulder, which
would have defied the lapidary’s wheel of the Giant Age, give forth a
less oracular response from its grave of clay, or from its lair of sand.
Floated by ice from some Alpine summit, or hurried along in torrents of
mud, and floods of water, it may have traversed a quarter of the globe,
amid the crash of falling forests, and the death shrieks of the noble
animals which they sheltered. The mountain range, too, with its catacombs
below, along which the earthquake transmits its terrific sounds, reminds
us of the mighty power by which it was upheaved;—while the lofty peak,
with its cap of ice, or its nostrils of fire, places in our view the
tremendous agencies which have been at work beneath us.

But it is not merely amid the powers of external nature that the once
hidden things of the Earth are presented to our view. Our temples and
our palaces are formed from the rocks of a primeval age; bearing the
very ripple-marks of a Pre-Adamite ocean,—grooved by the passage of the
once moving boulder, and embosoming the relics of ancient life, and the
plants by which it was sustained. Our dwellings, too, are ornamented with
the variegated limestones,—the indurated tombs of molluscous life,—and
our apartments heated with the carbon of primeval forests, and lighted
with the gaseous element which it confines. The obelisk of granite,
and the colossal bronze which transmit to future ages the deeds of the
hero and the sage, are equally the production of the Earth’s prolific
womb; and from the green bed of the ocean has been raised the pure and
spotless marble, to mould the divine lineaments of beauty, and perpetuate
the expressions of intellectual power. From a remoter age, and a still
greater depth, the primary and secondary rocks have yielded a rich
tribute to the chaplet of rank, and to the processes of art.

Exhibiting, as it peculiarly does, almost all those objects of interest
and research, Scotland has been diligently studied both by native
and foreign observers; and she has sent into the geological field a
distinguished group of inquirers, who have performed a noble feat in
exploring the general structure of the Earth, in decyphering its ancient
monuments, and in unlocking those storehouses of mineral wealth, from
which civilized man derives the elements of that gigantic power which his
otherwise feeble arm wields over nature.

The occurrence of shells on the highest mountains, and the remains of
plants and animals, which the most superficial observer could not fail
to notice, in the rocks around him, have for centuries commanded the
attention and exercised the ingenuity of every student of nature. But
though sparks of geological truth were from time to time elicited by
speculative minds, it was not till the end of the last century that
its great lights broke forth, and that it took the form and character
of one of the noblest of the sciences. Without undervaluing the labors
of Werner, and other illustrious foreigners, or those of our southern
countrymen, Mitchell and Smith, at the close of the last century, we
may characterize the commencement of the present as the brightest
period of geological discovery, and place its most active locality in
the northern metropolis of our island. It was doubtless from the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, as a centre, that a great geological impulse was
propagated southward, and it was by the collision of the Wernerian and
Huttonian views, the antagonist theories of water and of fire, that men
of intellectual power were summoned from other studies; and that grand
truths, which fanaticism and intolerance had hitherto abjured, rose
triumphant over the ignorance and bigotry of the age. The Geological
Society of London, which doubtless sprung from the excitement in the
Scottish metropolis, entered on the new field of research with a
faltering step. The prejudices of the English mind had been marshalled
with illiberal violence against the Huttonian doctrines. Infidelity and
Atheism were charged against their supporters; and had there been a
Protestant Inquisition in England at that period of general political
excitement, the geologists of the north would have been immured in its
deepest dungeons.

Truth, however, marched apace; and though her simple but majestic
procession be often solemn and slow, and her votaries few and dejected,
yet on this, as on every occasion, she triumphed over the most inveterate
prepossessions, and finally took up her abode in those very halls and
institutions where she had been persecuted and reviled. When their
science had been thus acquitted of the charge of impiety and irreligion,
the members of the Geological Society left their humble and timid
position of being the collectors only of _the materials of future
generalizations_, and became at once the most successful observers of
geological phenomena, and the boldest asserters of geological truth.

In this field of research, in which the physical, as well as the
intellectual, frame of the philosopher is made tributary to science, two
of our countrymen—Sir Roderick Murchison and Sir Charles Lyell—have been
among our most active laborers. From the study of their native glens,
these distinguished travellers, like the Humboldts and the Von Buchs of
the continent, have passed into foreign lands, exploring the north and
the south of Europe, and extending their labors to the eastern ranges of
the Ural and the Timan, and to the Apallachians and the Alleghanies in
the far west. But while our two countrymen were interrogating the strata
of other lands, many able and active laborers had been at work in their
own.

Among the eminent students of the structure of the earth, Mr. Hugh
Miller holds a lofty place, not merely from the discovery of new and
undescribed organisms in the Old Red Sandstone, but from the accuracy and
beauty of his descriptions, the purity and elegance of his composition,
and the high tone of philosophy and religion which distinguishes all
his writings. Mr. Miller is one of the few individuals in the history
of Scottish science who have raised themselves above the labors of an
humble profession, by the force of their genius and the excellence of
their character, to a comparatively high place in the social scale.
Mr. Telford, like Mr. Miller, followed the profession of a stone-mason,
before his industry and self-tuition qualified him for the higher
functions of an architect and an engineer. And Mr. Watt and Mr. Rennie
rose to wealth and fame without the aid of a university education. But,
distinguished as these individuals were, none of them possessed those
qualities of mind which Mr. Miller has exhibited in his writings; and,
with the exception of Burns, the uneducated genius which has done honor
to Scotland during the last century, has never displayed that mental
refinement, and classical taste, and intellectual energy, which mark all
the writings of our author. We wish that we could have gratified our
readers with an authentic and even detailed narrative of the previous
history of so remarkable a writer, and of the steps by which his
knowledge was acquired, and the difficulties which he encountered in its
pursuit; but though this is not, to any great extent, in our power, we
shall at least be able, chiefly from Mr. Miller’s own writings, to follow
him throughout his geological career.

Mr. Miller was born at Cromarty, of humble but respectable parents, whose
history would have possessed no inconsiderable interest, even if it had
not derived one of a higher kind from the genius and fortunes of their
child. By the paternal side he was descended from a race of sea-faring
people, whose family burying-ground, if we judge from the past, seems to
be the sea. Under its green waves his father sleeps: his grandfather, his
two granduncles, one of whom sailed round the world with Anson, lie also
there; and the same extensive cemetery contains the relics of several of
his more distant relatives. His father was but an infant of scarcely a
year old, at the death of our author’s grandfather, and had to commence
life as a poor ship-boy; but such was the energy of his mind, that, when
little turned of thirty, he had become the master and owner of a fine
large sloop, and had built himself a good house, which entitled his son
to the franchise on the passing of the Reform Bill. Having unfortunately
lost his sloop in a storm, he had to begin the world anew, and he soon
became master and owner of another, and would have thriven, had he lived;
but the hereditary fate was too strong for him, and when our author was a
little boy of five summers, his father’s fine new sloop foundered at sea
in a terrible tempest, and he and his crew were never more heard of. Mr.
Miller had two sisters younger than himself, both of whom died ere they
attained to womanhood. His mother experienced the usual difficulties
which a widow has to encounter in the decent education of her family; but
she struggled honestly and successfully, and ultimately found her reward
in the character and fame of her son. It is from this excellent woman
that Mr. Miller has inherited those sentiments and feelings which have
given energy to his talents as the defender of revealed truth, and the
champion of the Church of his fathers. She was the great granddaughter of
a venerable man, still well known to tradition in the north of Scotland
as Donald Roy of Nigg,—a sort of northern Peden, who is described in
the history of our Church as the single individual who, at the age of
eighty, when the presbytery of the district had assembled in the empty
church for the purpose of inducting an obnoxious presentee, had the
courage to protest against the intrusion, and to declare “that the blood
of the people of Nigg would be required at their hands, if they settled
a man _to the walls_ of that church.” Tradition has represented him as
a seer of visions, and a prophesier of prophecies; but whatever credit
may be given to stories of this kind, which have been told also of Knox,
Welsh, and Rutherford, this ancient champion of Non-Intrusion was a man
of genuine piety, and the savor of his ennobling beliefs and his strict
morals has survived in his family for generations. If the child of such
parents did not receive the best education which his native town could
afford, it was not their fault, nor that of his teacher. The fetters
of a gymnasium are not easily worn by the adventurous youth who has
sought and found his pleasures among the hills and on the waters. They
chafe the young and active limb that has grown vigorous under the blue
sky, and never known repose but at midnight. The young philosopher of
Cromarty was a member of this restless community; and he had been the
hero of adventures and accidents among rocks and woods, which are still
remembered in his native town. The parish school was therefore not the
scene of his enjoyments; and while he was a truant, and, with reverence
be it spoken, a dunce, while under its jurisdiction, he was busy in the
fields and on the sea-shore in collecting those stores of knowledge
which he was born to dispense among his fellow-men. He escaped, however,
from school, with the knowledge of reading, writing, and a little
arithmetic, and with the credit of uniting a great memory with a little
scholarship. Unlike his illustrious predecessor, Cuvier, he had studied
Natural History in the fields and among the mountains ere he had sought
for it in books; while the French philosopher had become a learned
naturalist before he had even looked upon the world of Nature. This
singular contrast is not difficult to explain. With a sickly constitution
and a delicate frame, the youthful Cuvier wanted that physical activity
which the observation of Nature demands. Our Scottish geologist, on the
contrary, in vigorous health, and with an iron frame, rushed to the rocks
and the sea-shore in search of the instruction which was not provided for
him at school, and which he could find no books to supply.

After receiving this measure of education, Mr. Miller set out in
February, 1821, with a heavy heart, as he himself confesses, “to make his
first acquaintance with a life of labor and restraint:”—

    “I was but a slim, loose-jointed boy at the time, fond of the
    pretty intangibilities of romance, and of dreaming when broad
    awake; and woful change! I was now going to work at what Burns
    has instanced in his ‘Twa Dogs’ as one of the most disagreeable
    of all employments—to work in a quarry. Bating the passing
    uneasiness occasioned by a few gloomy anticipations, the
    portion of my life which had already gone by had been happy
    beyond the common lot. I had been a wanderer among rocks and
    woods,—a reader of curious books, when I could get them,—a
    gleaner of old traditionary stories,—and now I was going to
    exchange all my day-dreams and all my amusements for the kind
    of life in which men toil every day that they may be enabled to
    eat, and eat every day that they may be enabled to toil. The
    quarry in which I wrought lay on the southern shore of a noble
    inland bay, or frith, rather, (the Bay of Cromarty,) with a
    little, clear stream on the one side, and a thick fir wood on
    the other. It had been opened in the Old Red Sandstone of the
    district, and was overtopped by a huge bank of diluvial clay,
    and which rose over it in some places to the height of nearly
    thirty feet.”—_Old Red Sandstone_, p. 4.

After removing the loose fragments below, picks and wedges and levers
were applied in vain by our author and his brother workmen to tear up and
remove the huge strata beneath. Blasting by gunpowder became necessary. A
mass of the diluvial clay came tumbling down, “bearing with it two dead
birds, that in a recent storm had crept into one of the deeper fissures,
to die in the shelter.” While admiring the pretty cock goldfinch, and the
light-blue and grayish-yellow woodpecker, and moralizing on their fate,
the workmen were ordered to lay aside their tools, and thus ended the
first day’s labor of our young geologist. The sun was then sinking behind
the thick fir wood behind him, and the long dark shadows of the trees
stretching to the shore. Notwithstanding his blistered hands, and the
fatigue which blistered them, he found himself next morning as light of
heart as his fellow-laborers, and able to enjoy the magnificent scenery
around him, which he thus so beautifully describes:—

    “There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime
    lay white on the grass as we passed onwards through the fields;
    but the sun rose in a clear atmosphere, and the day mellowed
    as it advanced into one of those delightful days of early
    spring which give so pleasing an earnest of whatever is mild
    and genial in the better half of the year. All the workmen
    rested at midday, and I went to enjoy my half hour alone on a
    mossy knoll in the neighboring wood, which commands through the
    trees a wide prospect of the bay and the opposite shore. There
    was not a wrinkle on the water, nor a cloud in the sky; and
    the branches were as moveless in the calm as if they had been
    traced on canvas. From a wooded promontory that stretched half
    way across the frith, there ascended a thin column of smoke. It
    rose straight on the line of a plummet for more than a thousand
    yards; and then, as reaching a thinner stratum of air, spread
    out equally on every side, like the foliage of a stately tree.
    Ben Wevis rose to the west, white with the yet unwasted snows
    of winter, and as sharply defined in the clear atmosphere as
    if all its sunny slopes and blue retiring hollows had been
    chiselled in marble. A line of snow ran along the opposite
    hills; all above was white, and all below was purple.”—_Old Red
    Sandstone_, pp. 6, 7.

In raising from its bed the large mass of strata which the gunpowder had
loosened, on the surface of the solid stone, our young quarrier descried
the ridged and furrowed ripple marks which the tide leaves upon every
sandy shore, and he wondered what had become of the waves that had thus
fretted the solid rock, and of what element they had been composed. His
admiration was equally excited by a circular depression in the sandstone,
“broken and flawed in every direction, as if it had been the bottom of a
pool recently dried up, which had shrunk and split in the hardening.” And
before the day closed, a series of large stones had rolled down from the
clay, “all rounded and water-worn, as if they had been tossed in the sea
or the bed of a river for hundreds of years.” Was the clay which enclosed
them created on the rock upon which it lay? No workman ever manufactures
a half-worn article!—were the ejaculations of the geologist at his
alphabet.

Our author and his companions were soon removed to an easier wrought
quarry, and one more pregnant with interest, which had been opened “in
a lofty wall of cliffs that overhangs the northern shore of the Moray
Frith.” Here the geology of the district exhibited itself in section.

    “We see in one place the primary rock, with its veins of
    granite and quartz,—its dizzy precipices of gneiss, and its
    huge masses of hornblende; we find the secondary rock in
    another, with its bed of sandstone and shale,—its spars, its
    clays, and its nodular limestones. We discover the still little
    known but highly interesting fossils of the Old Red Sandstone
    in one deposition; we find the beautifully preserved shells and
    lignites of the lias in another. There are the remains of two
    several creations at once before us. The shore, too, is heaped
    with rolled fragments of almost every variety of rock,—basalts,
    ironstones, hypersthenes, porphyries, bituminous shales, and
    micaceous schists. In short, the young geologist, had he all
    Europe before him, could hardly choose for himself a better
    field. I had, however, no one to tell me so at the time, for
    geology had not yet travelled so far north; and so, without
    guide or vocabulary, I had to grope my way as I best might,
    and find out all its wonders for myself. But so slow was the
    process, and so much was I a seeker in the dark, that the facts
    contained in these few sentences were the patient gatherings of
    years.”—_Old Red Sandstone_, pp. 9, 10.

In this rich field of inquiry, our author encountered, almost daily, new
objects of wonder and instruction. In one nodular mass of limestone he
found the beautiful ammonite, like one of the finely sculptured volutes
of an Ionic capital. Within others, fish-scales and bivalve shells;
and in the centre of another he detected a piece of decayed wood. Upon
quitting the quarry for the building upon which the workmen were to be
employed, the workmen received half a holiday, and our young philosopher
devoted this valuable interval to search for certain curiously shaped
stones, which one of the quarriers told him resembled the heads of
boarding-pikes, and which, under the name of _thunder-bolts_, were held
to be a sovereign remedy for cattle that had been bewitched. On the
shore two miles off, where he expected these remarkable bodies, he found
deposits quite different either from the sandstone cliffs or the primary
rocks further to the west. They consisted of “thin strata of limestone,
alternating with thicker beds of a black slaty substance,” which burned
with a bright flame and a bituminous odor. Though only the eighth part
of an inch thick, each layer contained thousands of fossils peculiar to
the lias,—scallops and gryphites, ammonites, twigs and leaves of plants,
cones of pine, pieces of charcoal, and scales of fishes,—the impressions
being of a chalky whiteness, contrasting strikingly with their black
bituminous lair. Among these fragments of animal and vegetable life, he
at last detected his _thunder-bolt_ in the form of a Belemnite, the
remains of a kind of cuttle-fish long since extinct.

In the exercise of his profession, which “was a wandering one,” our
author advanced steadily, though slowly and surely, in his geological
acquirements.

    “I remember,” says he, “passing direct on one occasion from the
    wild western coast of Ross-shire, where the Old Red Sandstone
    leans at a high angle against the prevailing quartz rock of
    the district, to where, on the southern skirts of Mid-Lothian,
    the mountain limestone rises amid the coal. I have resided
    one season on a raised beach on the Moray Frith. I have spent
    the season immediately following amid the ancient granites
    and contorted schists of the central Highlands. In the north,
    I have laid open by thousands the shells and lignites of the
    Oolite; in the south, I have disinterred from their matrices
    of stone or of shale the huge reeds and tree ferns of the
    carboniferous period.... In the north, there occurs a vast gap
    in the scale. The Lias leans unconformably against the Old Red
    Sandstone; there is no mountain limestone, no coal measures,
    none of the New Red Marls or Sandstones. There are at least
    three entire systems omitted. But the upper portion of the
    scale is well-nigh complete. In one locality we may pass from
    the Lower to the Upper Lias, in another from the Inferior to
    the Great Oolite, and onward to the Oxford Clay and the Coral
    Rag. We may explore in a third locality beds identical in their
    organisms with the Wealden of Sussex. In a fourth, we find the
    flints and fossils of the chalk. The lower part of the scale
    is also well-nigh complete. The Old Red Sandstone is amply
    developed in Moray, Caithness, and Ross, and the Grauwacke very
    extensively in Banffshire. But to acquaint one’s self with
    the three missing formations,—to complete one’s knowledge of
    the entire scale, by filling up the hiatus,—it is necessary
    to remove to the south. The geology of the Lothians is the
    geology of at least two thirds of the gap, and perhaps a little
    more;—the geology of Arran wants only a few of the upper
    beds of the New Red Sandstone to fill it entirely.”—_Old Red
    Sandstone_, pp. 13-17.

After having spent nearly fifteen years in the profession of a
stone-mason, Mr. Miller was promoted to a position more suited to his
genius. When a bank was established in his native town of Cromarty, he
received the appointment of accountant, and he was thus employed, for
five years, in keeping ledgers and discounting bills. When the contest in
the Church of Scotland had come to a close, by the decision of the House
of Lords in the Auchterurder Case, Mr. Miller’s celebrated letter to Lord
Brougham attracted the particular attention of the party which was about
to leave the Establishment, and he was selected as the most competent
person to conduct the _Witness_ newspaper, the principal metropolitan
organ of the Free Church. The great success which this journal has
met with is owing, doubtless, to the fine articles, political,
ecclesiastical, and geological, which Mr. Miller has written for it. In
the few leisure hours which so engrossing an occupation has allowed him
to enjoy, he has devoted himself to the ardent prosecution of scientific
inquiries; and we trust the time is not far distant when the liberality
of his country, to which he has done so much honor, will allow him to
give his whole time to the prosecution of science.

Geologists of high character had believed that the Old Red Sandstone
was defective in organic remains; and it was not till after ten years’
acquaintance with it that Mr. Miller discovered it to be _richly
fossiliferous_. The labors of other ten years were required to assign to
its fossils their exact place in the scale.

Among the fossils discovered by our author, the _Pterichthys_ or winged
fish is doubtless the most remarkable. He had disinterred it so early as
1831, but it was only in 1838 that he “introduced it to the acquaintance
of geologists.” It was not till 1831 that Mr. Miller began to receive
assistance in his studies from without. In the appendix to Messrs.
Anderson of Inverness’s admirable _Guide to the Highlands and Islands of
Scotland_, which “he perused with intense interest,” he found the most
important information respecting the geology of the North of Scotland;
and during a correspondence with the accomplished authors of that work,
many of his views were developed, and his difficulties removed. In
1838, he communicated to Dr. Malcolmson of Madras, then in Paris, a
drawing and description of the _Pterichthys_. His letter was submitted
to Agassiz, and subsequently a restored drawing was communicated to the
Elgin Scientific Society. The great naturalist, as well as the members
of the provincial society, were surprised at the new form of life
which Mr. Miller had disclosed, and some of them, no doubt, regarded
it with a sceptical eye. “Not many months after, however, a true _bona
fide Pterichthys_ was turned up in one of the newly-discovered beds of
Nairnshire.” In his last visit to Scotland, Agassiz found six species of
the _Pterichthys_, three of which, and the wings of a fourth, were in Mr.
Miller’s collection.

This remarkable animal has less resemblance than any other fossil of
the Old Red Sandstone to anything that now exists. When first brought
to view by the single blow of a hammer, there appeared on a ground of
light-colored limestone the effigy of a creature, fashioned apparently
out of jet, with a body covered with plates, two powerful looking arms
articulated at the shoulders, a head as entirely lost in the trunk as
that of the ray, (or skate,) and a long angular tail, equal in length to
a third of the entire figure. Its general resemblance is to the letter
T,—the upper part of the vertical line being swelled out, and the lower
part ending in an angular point, the two horizontal portions being, in
the opinion of Agassiz, organs of locomotion. To this remarkable fossil
M. Agassiz has given the appropriate name of _Pterichthys Milleri_. An
account of it, accompanied with two fine specimens, was communicated
to the Geological Section of the British Association at Glasgow, in
September, 1840; and the most ample details, with accurate drawings,
were afterwards published, in 1841, in Mr. Miller’s first work, _The Old
Red Sandstone_, which was dedicated to Sir Roderick Murchison, who was
born on the Old Red Sandstone of the North, in the same district as Mr.
Miller, and whose great acquirements and distinguished labors are known
all over the world among scientific men. This admirable work has already
passed through three editions. From the originality and accuracy of its
descriptions, and the importance of the researches which it contains, it
has obtained for its author a high reputation among geologists; while
from the elegance and purity of its style, and the force and liveliness
of its illustrations, it has received the highest praise from its more
general readers.[1]

Although we have been obliged, from the information which it contains
of our author’s early studies, to mention the “Old Red Sandstone” as if
it had been his first work; yet so early as 1830, after he had made his
first fossil discoveries at Cromarty, he composed a paper on the subject,
(his first published production,) which appeared as one of the chapters
of a small legendary and descriptive work, entitled _The Traditional
History of Cromarty_, which did not appear till 1835. This chapter,
entitled “The Antiquary of the World,” possesses a high degree of
interest. After describing the scene around him in its pictorial aspect,
and under the warm associations, which link it with existing life, he
surveys it with the cool eye of an “antiquary of the world,” studying
its once buried monuments, and decyphering the alphabet of plants and
animals, the hieroglyphics which embosom the history of past times and
of successive creations. The gigantic Ben Wevis, with its attendant
hills, rose abruptly to the west. The distant peaks of Ben Vaichard
appeared in the south, and far to the north were descried the lofty
hills of Sutherland, and even the Ord-hill of Caithness. Descending from
the towers of nature’s lofty edifice he surveys its ruins, its broken
sculptures, and its half-defaced inscriptions, as exhibited in certain
Ichthyic remains of the Lower Old Red Sandstone which had then no name,
and which were unknown to the most accomplished geologists. Among these
he specially notices “a confused bituminous-looking mass that had much
the appearance of a toad or frog,” thus shadowing forth in the morning
twilight the curious _Pterichthys_, which he was able afterwards, in
better specimens, to exhibit in open day. As we have already referred,
with some minuteness, to the fossils which our author had at this time
discovered in the great charnel-house of the old world, we shall indulge
our readers with a specimen of the noble sentiments which they inspired,
and of the beautiful language in which these sentiments are clothed.

    “But let us quit this wonderful city of the dead, with all
    its reclining obelisks, and all its sculptured tumuli, the
    memorials of a race that exist only in their tombs. And yet,
    ere we go, it were well, perhaps, to indulge in some of those
    serious thoughts which we so naturally associate with the
    solitary burying-ground and the mutilated remains of the
    departed. Let us once more look around us, and say, whether,
    of all men, the Geologist does not stand most in need of
    the Bible, however much he may contemn it in the pride of
    speculation. We tread on the remains of organized and sentient
    creatures, which, though more numerous at one period than the
    whole family of man, have long since ceased to exist; the
    individuals perished one after one—their remains served only
    to elevate the floor on which their descendants pursued the
    various instincts of their nature, and then sunk, like the
    others, to form a still higher layer of soil; and now that the
    whole race has passed from the earth, and we see the animals
    of a different tribe occupying their places, what survives of
    them but a mass of inert and senseless matter, never again
    to be animated by the mysterious spirit of vitality—that
    spirit which, dissipated in the air, or diffused in the ocean,
    can, like the sweet sounds and pleasant odors of the past,
    be neither gathered up nor recalled! And O, how dark the
    analogy which would lead us to anticipate a similar fate for
    ourselves! As individuals, we are but as yesterday; to-morrow
    we shall be laid in our graves, and the tread of the coming
    generation shall be over our heads. Nay, have we not seen a
    terrible disease sweep away, in a few years, more than eighty
    millions of the race to which we belong; and can we think of
    this and say that a time may not come when, like the fossils
    of these beds our whole species shall be mingled with the
    soil, and when, though the sun may look down in his strength
    on our pleasant dwellings and our green fields, there shall be
    silence in all our borders, and desolation in all our gates,
    and we shall have no thought of that past which it is now our
    delight to recall, and no portion in that future which it is
    now our very nature to anticipate. Surely it is well to believe
    that a widely different destiny awaits us—that the _God_ who
    endowed us with those wonderful powers, which enable us to
    live in every departed era, every coming period, has given us
    to possess these powers forever; that not only does he number
    the hairs of our heads, but that his cares are extended to
    even our very remains; that our very bones, instead of being
    left, like the exuviæ around us, to form the rocks and clays
    of a future world, shall, like those in the valley of vision,
    be again clothed with muscle and sinew, and that our bodies,
    animated by the warmth and vigor of life, shall again connect
    our souls to the matter existing around us, and be obedient to
    every impulse of the will. It is surely no time, when we walk
    amid the dark cemeteries of a departed world, and see the cold
    blank shadows of the tombs falling drearily athwart the way—it
    is surely no time to extinguish the light given us to shine so
    fully and so cheerfully on our own proper path, merely because
    its beams do not enlighten the recesses that yawn around us.
    And O, what more unworthy of reasonable men than to reject
    so consoling a revelation on no juster quarrel, than when it
    unveils to us much of what could not otherwise be known, and
    without the knowledge of which we could not be other than
    unhappy, it leaves to the invigorating exercises of our own
    powers whatever, in the wide circle of creation, lies fully
    within their grasp!”—_The Antiquary of the World_, pp. 56-58.

The next work published by Mr. Miller was entitled “_First Impressions
of England and its People_,”[2] a popular and interesting volume, which
has already gone through two editions, and which may be read with equal
interest by the geologist, the philanthropist, and the general reader. It
is full of knowledge and of anecdote, and is written in that attractive
style which commands the attention even of the most incurious readers.

This delightful work, though only in _one_ volume, is equal to _three_ of
the ordinary type, and cannot fail to be perused with high gratification
by all classes of readers. It treats of every subject which is presented
to the notice of an accomplished traveller while he visits the great
cities and romantic localities of merry England. We know of no tour
in England written by a native in which so much pleasant reading and
substantial instruction are combined; and though we are occasionally
stopped in a very delightful locality by a precipice of the Old Red
Sandstone, or frightened by a disinterred skeleton, or sobered by the
burial-service over Palæozoic graves, we soon recover our equanimity,
and again enter upon the sunny path to which our author never fails to
restore us.

Mr. Miller’s new work, the “_Footprints of the Creator_,” of which
we publish now another edition, authorized by the writer, is very
appropriately dedicated to Sir Philip Grey Egerton, Bart., M. P. for
Cheshire—a gentleman who possesses a magnificent collection of fossils,
and whose skill and acquirements in this department of geology is
known and appreciated both in Europe and America. The work itself is
divided into fifteen chapters, in which the author treats of the fossil
geology of the Orkneys, as exhibited in the vicinity of Stromness; of
the development hypothesis, and its consequences; of the history and
structure of that remarkable fish, the Asterolepis; of the fishes of the
Upper and Lower Silurian rocks; of the progress of degradation, and its
history; of the Lamarckian hypothesis of the origin of plants, and its
consequences; of the Marine and Terrestrial floras; and of final causes,
and their bearing on geological history. In the course of these chapters
Mr. Miller discusses the development hypothesis, or the hypothesis of
natural law, as maintained by Lamarck and by the author of the Vestiges
of Creation, and has subjected it, in its geological aspect, to the most
rigorous examination. Driven by the discoveries of Lord Rosse from the
domains of astronomy, where it once seemed to hold a plausible position,
it might have lingered with the appearance of life among the ambiguities
of the Palæozoic formations; but Mr. Miller has, with an ingenuity and
patience worthy of a better subject, stripped it even of its semblance
of truth, and restored to the Creator, as Governor of the universe, that
power and those functions which he was supposed to have resigned at its
birth.

Having imposed upon himself the task of examining in detail the various
fossiliferous formations of Scotland, our author extended his inquiries
into the mainland of Orkney, and resided for some time in the vicinity
of the busy seaport town of Stromness, as a central point from which the
structure of the Orkney group of islands could be most advantageously
studied. Like that of Caithness, the geology of these islands owes its
principal interest to the immense development of the Lower Old Red
Sandstone formation, and to the singular abundance of its vertebrate
fossils. Though the Orkneys contain only the _third_ part of the Old
Red Sandstone, which, but a few years ago, was supposed to be the least
productive in fossils of any of the geological formations, yet it
furnishes, according to Mr. Miller, more fossil fish than _every_ other
geological system in England, Scotland, and Wales, from the Coal Measures
to the Chalk, inclusive. It is, in short, “_the land of fish_,” and
“could supply with ichthyolites, by the ton and by the ship-load, the
museums of the world.” Its various deposits, with the curious organisms
which they inclose, have been upheaved from their original position
against a granitic axis, about six miles long and one broad, “forming the
great back-bone of the western district of the Island Pomona; and on this
granitic axis, fast jambed in between a steep hill and the sea, stands
the town of Stromness.”

The mass or pile of strata thus uplifted is described by Mr. Miller as a
three-barred pyramid resting on its granite base, exhibiting three broad
tiers—red, black, and gray—sculptured with the hieroglyphics in which
its history is recorded. The great conglomerate base on which it rests,
covering from 10,000 to 15,000 square miles, from the depth of from 100
to 400 feet, consists of rough sand and water-worn pebbles; and above
this have been deposited successive strata of mud, equal in height to
the highest of our mountains, now containing the remains of millions and
tens of millions of fish which had perished in some sudden and mysterious
catastrophe.

In the examination of the different beds of the three-barred formation,
our author discovered a well-marked bone, like a petrified large roofing
nail, in a grayish-colored layer of hard flag, about 100 yards over the
granite, and about 160 feet over the upper stratum of the conglomerate.
This singular bone, which Mr. Miller has represented in a figure, was
probably the oldest vertebrate organism yet discovered in Orkney. It was
5⅞ inches long, 2¼ inches across the head, and ³⁄₁₀ths of an inch thick
in the stem, and formed a characteristic feature of the Asterolepis, as
yet the most gigantic of the ganoid fishes, and probably one of the first
of the Old Red Sandstone. In his former researches, our author had found
that all of the many hundred ichthyolites which he had disinterred from
the Lower Old Red Sandstone were comparatively of a small size, while
those in the Upper Old Red were of great bulk; and hence he had naturally
inferred, that vertebrate life had increased towards the close of the
system—that, in short, it began with an age of dwarfs, and ended with an
age of giants; but he had thus greatly erred, like the supporters of the
development system, in founding positive conclusions on merely negative
evidence; for here, at the very base of the system, where no dwarfs were
to be found, he had discovered one of the most colossal of its giants.

After this most important discovery, Mr. Miller extended his inquiries
easterly for several miles along the bare and unwooded Lake of Stennis,
about fourteen miles in circumference, and divided into an upper arm
lower sheet of water by two long promontories jutting out from each side
and nearly meeting in the middle. The sea enters this lake through the
openings of a long rustic bridge, and hence the lower division of the
lake “is salt in its nether reaches, and brackish in its upper ones;
while the higher division is merely brackish in its nether reaches, and
fresh enough in its upper ones to be potable.” The fauna and flora of
the lake are therefore of a mixed character, the marine and fresh water
animals having each their own reaches, though each kind makes certain
encroachments on the province of the other.

In the marine and lacustrine floras of the lake, Mr. Miller observed
changes still more palpable. At the entrance of the sea, the _Fucus
nodosus_ and _Fucus vesiculosus_ flourish in their proper form and
magnitude. A little farther on in the lake, the F. nodosus disappears,
and the F. vesiculosus, though continuing to exist for mile after mile,
grows dwarfish and stunted, and finally disappears, giving place to
rushes and other aquatic grasses, till the lacustrine has entirely
displaced the marine flora. From these two important facts, the existence
of the fragment of _Asterolepis_ in the lower flagstones of the Orkneys,
and of the “curiously mixed semi-marine semi-lacustrine vegetation in the
Loch of Stennis,” which our author regards as bearing directly on the
development hypothesis, he takes occasion to submit that hypothesis to a
severe examination, and to point out its consequences—its incompatibility
with the great truths of morality and revealed religion. According
to Professor Oken, one of the ablest supporters of the development
theory, “There are two kinds of generation in the world, the creation
proper, and the propagation that is sequent thereon, or the _original
and secondary generation_. Consequently, no organism has been created
of larger size than an infusorial point. No organism is, or ever has
been created, which is not microscopic. Whatever is large has not been
created, but developed. Man has not been created, but developed.” Hence
it follows that during the great geological period, when race after race
was destroyed, and new forms of life called into being, “nature had been
pregnant with the human race,” and that immortal and intellectual Man is
but the development of the Brute—itself the development of some monad or
mollusc, which has been smitten into life by the action of electricity
upon a portion of gelatinous matter.

If the development theory be true, “the early fossils ought to be very
small in size,” and “very low in organization.” In the earliest strata we
ought to find only “mere _embryos_ and _fœtuses_; and if we find instead
the _full-grown_ and _mature_, then must we hold that the testimony of
geology is not only _not in accordance_ with the theory, but in positive
opposition to it.” Having laid this down as the _principle_ by which
the question is to be decided, our author proceeds to consider “what
are the _facts_.” The _Asterolepis_ of Stromness _seems_ to be the
oldest organism yet discovered in the most ancient geological system of
Scotland, in which vertebrate remains occur. It is probably the oldest
Cœlacanth that the world has yet produced, for there is no certain trace
of this family in the great Silurian system, which lies underneath, and
on which, according to our existing knowledge, organic existence first
began. “How, then,” asks Mr. Miller, “on the two relevant points—bulk and
organization—does it answer to the demands of the development hypothesis?
Was it a mere fœtus of the finny tribe, of minute size and imperfect
embryonic faculty? Or was it of, at least, the ordinary bulk, and, for
its class, of the average organization?”

In order to answer these questions, Mr. Miller proceeds in his _third_
chapter to give the recent history of the Asterolepis; in his _fourth_,
to ascertain the cerebral development of the earlier vertebrata; and in
his _fifth_ chapter to describe the structure, bulk, and aspect of the
Asterolepis. In the rocks of Russia certain fossil remains had been long
ago discovered, of such a singular nature as to have perplexed Lamarck
and other naturalists. Their true place among fishes was subsequently
ascertained by M. Eichwald, a living naturalist; and Sir Roderick
Murchison found that they were Ichthyolites of the Old Red Sandstone.
Agassiz gave them the name of _Chelonichthys_; but in consequence of very
fine specimens having been found in the Old Red Sandstone of Russia,
which Professor Asmus of Dorpat sent to the British Museum, and which
exhibited star-like markings, he abandoned his name of _Chelonichthys_,
and adopted that of _Asterolepis_, or star-scale, which Eichwald had
proposed. Many points, however, respecting this curious fossil remained
to be determined, and it was fortunate for science that Mr. Miller was
enabled to accomplish this object by means of a variety of excellent
specimens which he received from Mr. Robert Dick, “an intelligent
tradesman of Thurso, one of those working men of Scotland, of active
curiosity and well developed intellect, that give character and standing
to the rest.” Agassiz had inferred, from very imperfect fragments, that
the _Asterolepis_ was a strongly-helmed fish of the _Cœlacanths_, or
hollow spine family—that it was probably a flat-headed animal, and that
the discovery of a head or of a jaw might prove that the genus Dendrodus
did not differ from it. All these conjectures were completely confirmed
by Mr. Miller, after a careful examination of the specimens of Mr. Dick.

Before proceeding to describe the structure of the gigantic Asterolepis,
Mr. Miller devotes a long and elaborate chapter to the subject of the
cerebral development of the earlier vertebrata, in order to ascertain
in what manner their true brains were lodged, and to discover the
modification which the cranium, as their protecting box, received in
subsequent periods. This inquiry, which he has conducted with great skill
and ability, is not only highly interesting in itself, but will be found
to have a direct bearing on the great question which it is his object to
discuss and decide.

The facts and reasonings contained in this chapter will, we doubt not,
shake to its very base the bold theory of Professor Oken, which has been
so generally received abroad, and which is beginning to find supporters
even among the solid thinkers of our own country. In the _Isis_ of 1818,
Professor Lorenz Oken has given the following account of the hypothesis
to which we allude. “In August, 1806,” says he, “I made a journey over
the Hartz. I slid down through the wood on the south side, and straight
before me, at my very feet, lay a most beautiful blanched skull of
a hind. I picked it up, turned it round, regarded it intensely;—the
thing was done. ‘It is a vertebral column,’ struck me like a flood of
lightning, ‘to the marrow and bone;’ and since that time the skull has
been regarded as a vertebral column.”

This remarkable hypothesis was at first received with enthusiasm by the
naturalists of Germany, and, among others, by Agassiz, who, from grounds
not of a geological kind, has more recently rejected it. It has been
adopted by our distinguished countryman, Professor Owen, and forms the
central idea in his lately published and ingenious work “On the Nature
of Limbs.” The conclusion at which he arrives, that the fore-limbs of
the vertebrata are the ribs of the occipital bone or vertebra set free,
and (in all the vertebrata higher in the scale than the ordinary fishes)
carried down along the vertebral column by a sort of natural dislocation,
is a deduction from the idea that startled Professor Oken in the forest
of the Hartz. Whatever support this hypothesis might have expected from
Geology, has been struck from beneath it by this remarkable chapter of
Mr. Miller’s work; and though anatomists may for a while maintain it
under the influence of so high an authority as Professor Owen, we are
much mistaken if it ever forms a part of the creed of the geologist.
Mr. Miller indeed has, by a most skilful examination of the heads of
the earliest vertebrata known to geologists, proved that the hypothesis
derives no support from the structure which they exhibit, and Agassiz has
even upon general principles rejected it as untenable.

Mr. Miller’s next chapter on the structure, bulk, and aspect of the
Asterolepis, is, like that which precedes it, the work of a master,
evincing the highest powers of observation and analysis. Its size in the
larger specimens must have been very great; and from a comparison of the
proportion of the head in the Ganoids to the length of the body, which
is sometimes as one to five, or one to six, or one to six and a half,
or even one to seven, our author concludes that the total length of the
specimens in his possession must have been at least eight feet three
inches, or from nine feet nine to nine feet ten inches. The remains of an
Asterolepis found by Mr. Dick at Thurso, indicate a length of from twelve
feet five to thirteen feet eight inches; and one of the Russian specimens
of Professor Asmus must have been from _eighteen_ to _twenty-three_ feet
long. “Hence,” says Mr. Miller, “in the not unimportant circumstance
of size—the most ancient Cœlacanths yet known, instead of taking their
places agreeably to the demands of the development hypothesis among the
sprats, sticklebacks, and minnows of their class, took their place among
its huge basking sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and bulky swordfishes.
They were giants, not dwarfs.” Again, judging by the analogies which
its structure exhibits to that of fishes of the existing period, the
Asterolepis must have been a fish high in the scale of organization.

A specimen of Asterolepis, discovered by Mr. Dick, among the Thurso
rocks, and sent to Mr. Miller, exhibited the singular phenomenon of a
quantity of thick tar lying beneath it, which stuck to the fingers when
lifting the pieces of rock. “What had been once the nerves, muscles, and
blood of this ancient Ganoid, still lay under its bones,” a phenomenon
which our author had previously seen beneath the body of a poor suicide,
whose grave in a sandy bank had been laid open by the encroachments of a
river, the sand beneath it having been “consolidated into a dark colored
pitchy mass,” extending a full yard beneath the body. In like manner,
the animal juices of the Asterolepis had preserved its remains, by “the
pervading bitumen, greatly more conservative in its effects than the oil
and gum of an old Egyptian undertaker.” The bones, though black as pitch
retained to a considerable degree the peculiar qualities of the original
substance, in the same manner as the adipocire of wet burying-grounds
preserves fresh and green the bones which it encloses.

In support of his anti-development views, Mr. Miller devotes his next and
_sixth_ chapter to the recent history, order, and size of the fishes of
the Upper and Lower Silurian rocks. Of these ancient formations, the bone
bed of the Upper Ludlow rocks is the only one which, besides defensive
spines of fish, contains teeth, fragments of jaws, and shagreen points,
whereas, in the inferior deposits, defensive spates alone are found. The
species discovered by Professor Phillips, in the Wenlock shale, were
microscopic; and the author of the _Vestiges_ took advantage of this
insulated fact to support his views, by pronouncing the little creatures
to which the species belonged as the fœtal embryos of their class. Mr.
Miller has, however, even on this ground, defeated his opponent. By
comparing the defensive spines of the _Onchus Murchisoni_ of the Upper
Ludlow bed with those of a recent _Spinax Acanthias_, or dog-fish, and
of the _Cestracion Phillippi_, or Port Jackson shark, he arrives at the
conclusion, that the fishes to which the species belonged must be all of
considerable size; and in the following chapter _on the high standing
of the Placoids_ he shews that the same early fishes were high in
intelligence and organization.

In his _ninth_ chapter on the _History and Progress of Degradation_,
our author enters upon a new and interesting subject. The object of
it is to determine the proper ground on which the standing of the
earlier vertebrata should be decided, namely, the test of what he terms
homological symmetry of organization. In nature there are monster
families, just as there are in families monster individuals—men without
feet, hands, or eyes, or with them in a wrong place—sheep with legs
growing from their necks, ducklings with wings on their haunches, and
dogs and cats with more legs than they require. We have thus, according
to our author—1, _monstrosity through defect of parts_; 2, _monstrosity
through redundancy of parts_; and 3, _monstrosity through displacement of
parts_. This last species, united in some cases with the other two, our
author finds curiously exemplified in the geological history of the fish,
which he considers better known than that of any other division of the
vertebrata; and he is convinced that it is from a survey of the progress
of degradation in the great Ichthyic division that the standing of the
kingly fishes of the earlier periods is to be determined.

In the earliest vertebrate period, namely, the Silurian, our author
shews that the fishes were homologically symmetrical in their
organization, as exhibited in the Placoids. In the second great Ichthyic
period, that of the Old Red Sandstone, he finds the first example in
the class of fishes of _monstrosity, by displacement of parts_. In all
the Ganoids of the period, there is the same departure from symmetry
as would take place in man if his neck was annihilated, and the arms
stuck to the back of the head. In the _Coccosteus_ and _Pterichthys_
of the same period, he finds the first example of _degradation through
defect_, the former resembling a human monster without hands, and the
latter one without feet. After ages and centuries have passed away,
and then after the termination of the Palæozoic period, a change takes
place in the formation of the fish tail. “Other ages and centuries pass
away, during which the reptile class attains to its fullest development
in point of size, organization, and number; and then, after the times
of the cretaceous deposits have begun, we find yet another remarkable
monstrosity of displacement introduced among all the fishes of one very
numerous order, and among no inconsiderable proportion of the fishes
of another. In the newly-introduced Ctenoids (_Acanthopterygii_,) and
in those families of the Cycloids which Cuvier erected into the order
_Malacopterygii sub-brachiati_, the hinder limbs are brought forward and
stuck on to the base of the previously misplaced fore limbs. All the
four limbs, by a strange monstrosity of displacement, are crowded into
the place of the extinguished neck. And such, in the present day, is the
prevalent type among fishes. Monstrosity through _defect_ is also found
to increase; so that the snake-like _apoda_, or feet-wanting fishes,
form a numerous order, some of whose genera are devoid, as in the common
eels and the congers, of only the hinder limbs, while in others, as in
the genera _Muræna_ and _Synbranchus_, both hinder and fore-limbs are
wanting.” From these and other facts, our author concludes that as in
existing fishes we find many more proofs of the monstrosity, both from
displacement and defect of parts, than in all the other three classes
of the vertebrata, and as these monstrosities did not appear early, but
late, “the progress of the race as a whole, though it still retains
not a few of the higher forms, has been a progress not of development
from the low to the high, but of degradation from the high to the low.”
An extreme example of the degradation of distortion, superadded to
that of displacement, may be seen in the flounder, plaice, halibut, or
turbot,—fishes of a family of which there is no trace in the earlier
periods. The creature is twisted half round and laid on its side. The
tail, too, is horizontal. Half the features of its head are twisted to
one side, and the other half to the other, while its wry mouth is in
keeping with its squint eyes. One jaw is straight, and the other like
a bow; and while one contains from _four_ to _six_ teeth, the other
contains from _thirty_ to _thirty-five_.

Aided by facts like these, an ingenious theorist might, as our author
remarks, “get up as unexceptionable a theory of degradation as of
development.” But however this may be, the principle of degradation
actually exists, and “the history of its progress in creation bears
directly against the assumption that the earlier vertebrata were of a
lower type than the vertebrata of the same Ichthyic class which exist
now.”

In his next and _tenth_ chapter, our author controverts with his usual
power the argument in favor of the development hypothesis, drawn from
the predominance of the Brachiopods among the Silurian Molluscs. The
existence of the highly organized Cephalopods, in the same formation,
not only neutralizes this argument, but authorizes the conclusion that
an animal of a very high order of organization existed in the earliest
formation. It is of no consequence whether the Cephalopods, or the
Brachiopods were most numerous. Had there been only one cuttle fish in
the Silurian seas, and a million of Brachiopods, the fact would equally
have overturned the development system.

In the same chapter, Mr. Miller treats of the geological history of
the Fossil flora, which has been pressed into the service of the
development hypothesis. On the authority of Adolphe Brongniart, it was
maintained that, previous to the age of the Lias, “Nature had failed to
achieve a tree—and that the rich vegetation of the Coal Measures had
been exclusively composed of magnificent immaturities of the vegetable
kingdom, of gigantic ferns and club mosses, that attained to the size
of forest trees, and of thickets of the swamp-loving horse-tail family
of plants.” True exogenous trees, however, do exist of vast size, and
in great numbers, in all the coal-fields of our own country, as has
been proved by Mr. Miller. Nay, he himself discovered in the Old Red
Sandstone, _Lignite_, which is proved to have formed part of a true
gymnospermous tree, represented by the pines of Europe and America, or
more probably, as Mr. Miller believes, by the Araucarians of Chili and
New Zealand. This important discovery is pregnant with instruction. The
ancient Conifer must have waved its green foliage over dry land, and it
is not probable that it was the only tree in the primeval forest. “The
ship carpenter,” as our author observes, “might have hopefully taken
axe in hand to explore the woods for some such stately pine as the one
described by Milton,—

    ‘Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
    Of some great admiral.’”

Viewing this _olive leaf_ of the Old Red Sandstone as not at all devoid
of poetry, our author invites us to a voyage from the latest formation up
to the first zone of the Silurian formation,—thus passing from ancient to
still more ancient scenes of being, and finding, as at the commencement
of our voyage, a graceful intermixture of land and water, continent,
river, and sea.

But though the existence of a true Placoid, a real vertebrated fish, in
the Cambrian limestone of Bala, and of true wood at the base of the Old
Red Sandstone, are utterly incompatible with the development hypothesis,
its supporters, thus driven to the wall, may take shelter under the
vague and unquestioned truth that the lower plants and animals preceded
the higher, and that the order of creation was fish, reptiles, birds,
mammalia, quadrumana, and man. From this resource, too, our author
has cut off his opponents, and proceeds to show that such an order of
creation, “at once wonderful and beautiful,” does not afford even the
slightest presumption in favor of the hypothesis which it is adduced to
support.

This argument is carried on in a popular and amusing dialogue in the
_eleventh_ chapter. Mr. Miller shows, in the clearest manner, that
“superposition is not parental relation,” or that an organism lying
above another gives us no ground for believing that the lower organism
was the parent of the higher. The theorist, however, looks only at those
phases of truth which are in unison with his own views; and, when truth
presents no such favorable aspect, he finally wraps himself up in the
folds of ignorance and ambiguity—the winding-sheet of error refuted
and exposed. We have not yet penetrated, says he, in feeble accents,
to the formations which represent the dawn of being, and the simplest
organism may yet be detected beneath the lowest fossiliferous rocks.
This undoubtedly _may be_, and Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Leonard Horner
are of opinion that such rocks may yet be discovered; while Sir Roderick
Murchison and Professor Sedgwick and Mr. Miller are of an opposite
opinion. But even were such rocks discovered to-morrow, it would not
follow that their organisms gave the least support to the development
hypothesis. In the year 1837, when fishes were not discovered in the
Upper Silurian rocks, the theorist would have rightly predicted the
existence of lower fossiliferous beds; but when they are discovered, and
their fossils examined, they furnish the strongest argument that could
be desired against the theory they were expected to sustain. This fact,
no doubt, is so far in favor of the supposition that there may be still
lower fossil-bearing strata; but, as Mr. Miller observes, “The pyramid of
organized existence, as it ascends into the by-past eternity, inclines
sensibly towards its apex,—that apex of ‘_beginning_’ on which, on far
other than geological grounds, it is our privilege to believe. The broad
base of the superstructure planted on the existing scene stretches across
the entire scale on life, animal and vegetable; but it contracts as it
rises into the past;—man,—the quadrumana,—the quadrupedal man,—the bird
and the reptile are each in succession struck from off its breadth, till
we at length see it with the vertebrata, represented by only the fish,
narrowing as it were to a point; and though the clouds of the upper
region may hide its apex, we infer, from the declination of its sides,
that it cannot penetrate much farther into the profound.”

In our author’s next chapter, the _twelfth_ of the series, he proceeds
to examine the “Lamarckian hypothesis of the origin of plants, and its
consequences.”

In his _thirteenth_ chapter, on “The two Floras, marine and terrestrial,”
he has shown that all our experience is opposed to the opinion, that the
one has been transmuted into the other. If the marine had been converted
into terrestrial vegetation, we ought to have, in the Lake of Stennis,
for example, plants of an intermediate character between the algæ of the
sea, and the monocotyledons of the lake. But no such transition-plants
are found. The algæ, as our author observes, become dwarfish and
ill-developed. They cease to exist as the water becomes fresher, “until
at length we find, instead of the brown, rootless, flowerless fucoids and
confervæ of the ocean, the green, rooted, flowering flags, rushes, and
aquatic grasses of the fresh water. Many thousands of years have failed
to originate a single intermediate plant.” The same conclusion may be
drawn from the character of the vegetation along the extensive shores of
Britain and Ireland. No botanist has ever found a single plant in the
transition state.

The _fourteenth_ chapter of the “Footprints” will be perused with great
interest by the general reader. It is a powerful and argumentative
exposure of the development hypothesis, and of the manner in which the
subject has been treated in the “Vestiges.” Whether we consider it in
its nature, in its history, or in the character of the intellects with
whom it originated, or by whom it has been received and supported, Mr.
Miller has shown that it has nothing to recommend it. It existed as a
wild dream before Geology had any being as a science. It was broached
more than a century ago by De Maillet, who knew nothing of the geology
even of his day. In a translation of his Telhamed, published in 1750,
Mr. Miller finds very nearly the same account given of the origin of
plants and animals, as that in the “Vestiges,” and in which the sea
is described as that “great and fruitful womb of nature, in which
organization and life first begin.” Lamarck, though a skilful botanist
and conchologist, was unacquainted with geology; and as he first
published his development hypothesis in 1802, (an hypothesis identical
with that of the “Vestiges,”) it is probable that he was not then a very
skilful zoologist. Nor has Professor Oken any higher claims to geological
acquirements. He confesses that he wrote the first edition of his work
in _a kind of inspiration!_ and it is not difficult to estimate the
intelligence of the inspiring idol that announced to the German sage that
the globe was a vast crystal, a little flawed in the facets, and that
quartz, feldspar, and mica, the three constituents of granite, were the
hail-drops of heavy showers of stone that fell into the original ocean,
and accumulated into rocks at the bottom!

Such is the unscientific parentage of the theories promulgated in the
“Vestiges.” But the author of this work appeals in the first instance to
science. Astronomy, Geology, Botany, and Zoology are called upon to give
evidence in his favor; but the astronomer, geologist, botanist, and the
zoologist, all refuse him their testimony, deny his premises, and reject
his results. “It is not,” as Mr. Miller happily observes, “the illiberal
religionist that casts him off. It is the inductive philosopher.” Science
addresses him in the language of the possessed: “The astronomer I know,
and the geologist I know; but who are ye?” Thus left alone in a cloud
of star-dust, or in brackish water between the marine and terrestrial
flora, he “appeals from science to the want of it,” casts a stone at
our Scientific Institutions, and demands a jury of “ordinary readers,”
as the only “tribunal” by which “the new philosophy is to be truly and
righteously judged.”

The last and _fifteenth_ chapter of Mr. Miller’s work, “On the Bearing
of Final Causes on Geologic History,” if read with care and thought,
will prove at once delightful and instructive. The principle of _final
causes_, or the conditions of existence, affords a wide scope to our
reason in Natural History, but especially in Geology. It becomes an
interesting inquiry, if any reason can be assigned why at certain periods
species began to exist, and became extinct after the lapse of lengthened
periods of time, and why the higher classes of being succeeded the lower
in the order of creation? The incompleteness of geological science,
however, does not permit us to remove, for the present, the veil which
hangs over this mysterious chronology; but our author is of opinion that
in about a quarter of a century, in a favored locality like the British
Islands, geological history “will assume a very extraordinary form.”

It is a singular fact, which will yet lead to singular results, that
Cuvier’s arrangement of the four classes of vertebrate animals should
exhibit the same order as that in which they are found in the strata of
the earth. In the _fish_, the average proportion of the brain to the
spinal cord is only as 2 to 1. In the _reptile_, the ratio is 2½ to 1.
In the _bird_, it is as 3 to 1. In the _mammalia_, it is as 4 to 1; and
in _man_, it is as 23 to 1. No less remarkable is the fœtal progress of
the human brain. It first becomes a brain resembling that of a fish; then
it grows into the form of that of a reptile; then into that of a bird;
then into that of a mammiferous quadruped, and finally it assumes the
form of a human brain, “thus comprising in its fœtal progress an epitome
of geological history, as if man were in himself a compendium of all
animated nature, and of kin to every creature that lives.”

With these considerations, Mr. Miller has brought his subject to the
point at which Science in its onward progress now stands. It is to
embryology we are in future to look for further information upon the
most intimate relations which exist between all organized beings. We may
fairly entertain the hope that the time is not far when we shall not
only fully understand the Plan of Creation, but even lift some corner
of the veil which has hitherto prevented us from forming adequate ideas
of the first introduction of animal and vegetable life upon earth, and
of the changes which both kingdoms have undergone in the succession of
geological ages.

                                                              L. AGASSIZ.

CAMBRIDGE, _September, 1850_.




CONTENTS


                                                                      PAGE

    STROMNESS AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS.—THE LAKE OF STENNIS                  21

    THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES                    37

    THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS.—ITS FAMILY                   48

    CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA.—ITS
      APPARENT PRINCIPLE                                                62

    THE ASTEROLEPIS.—ITS STRUCTURE, BULK, AND ASPECT                    94

    FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS, UPPER AND LOWER.—THEIR RECENT
      HISTORY, ORDER, AND SIZE                                         130

    HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS.—OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED               147

    THE PLACOID BRAIN.—EMBRYONIC CHARACTERISTICS NOT NECESSARILY
      OF A LOW ORDER                                                   160

    THE PROGRESS OF DEGRADATION.—ITS HISTORY                           181

    EVIDENCE OF THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS.—OF THE FOSSIL FLORA.—ANCIENT
      TREE                                                             205

    SUPERPOSITION NOT PARENTAL RELATION.—THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE        230

    LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS.—ITS CONSEQUENCES    243

    THE TWO FLORAS, MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL.—BEARING OF THE
      EXPERIENCE ARGUMENT                                              262

    THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE.—OLDER THAN
      ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS                                          277

    FINAL CAUSES—THEIR BEARING ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY—CONCLUSION          303




LIST OF WOOD-CUTS


                                                                      PAGE

     1. Internal ridge of hyoid plate of _Asterolepis_                  31

     2. Shagreen of _Raja clavata_:—of _Sphagodus_                      54

     3. Scales of _Acanthodes sulcatus_:—shagreen of _Scyllium
          stellare_                                                     55

     4. Scales of _Cheiracanthus microlepidotus_:—shagreen of
          _Spinax Acanthias_                                            56

     5. Section of shagreen of _Scyllium stellare_:—of scales of
          _Cheiracanthus microlepidotus_                                56

     6. Scales of _Osteolepis microlepidotus_:—of an undescribed
          species of _Glyptolepis_                                      57

     7. Osseous points Of Placoid Cranium                               65

     8. Osseous centrum of _Spinax Acanthias_:—of _Raja clavata_        67

     9. Portions of caudal fin of _Cheiracanthus_:—of _Cheirolepis_     69

    10. Upper surface of cranium of Cod                                 72

    11. Cranial buckler of _Coccosteus_                                 74

    12. Cranial buckler of _Osteolepis_                                 75

    13. Upper surface of head of _Osteolepis_                           77

    14. Under surface of head of _Osteolepis_                           79

    15. Head of _Osteolepis_, seen in profile                           80

    16. Cranial buckler of _Diplopterus_                                81

    17. Ditto                                                           82

    18. Palatal dart-head, and group of palatal teeth, of _Dipterus_    83

    19. Cranial buckler of _Dipterus_                                   85

    20. Base of cranium of _Dipterus_                                   86

    21. Under jaw of _Dipterus_                                         87

    22. Longitudinal section of head of _Dipterus_                      88

    23. Section of vertebral centrum of Thornback                       92

    24. Dermal tubercles of _Asterolepis_                               95

    25. Scales of _Asterolepis_                                         96

    26. Portion of carved surface of scale                              96

    27. Cranial buckler of _Asterolepis_                                98

    28. Inner surface of cranial buckler of _Asterolepis_               99

    29. Plates of cranial buckler of _Asterolepis_                     102

    30. Portion of under jaw of _Asterolepis_                          103

    31. Inner side of portion of under jaw of _Asterolepis_            104

    32. Portion of transverse section of reptile tooth of
          _Asterolepis_                                                105

    33. Section of jaw of _Asterolepis_                                106

    34. Maxillary bone?                                                108

    35. Inner surface of operculum of _Asterolepis_                    109

    36. Hyoid plate                                                    110

    37. Nail-like bone of hyoid plate                                  111

    38. Shoulder plate of _Asterolepis_                                112

    39. Dermal bones of _Asterolepis_                                  113

    40. Internal bones of _Asterolepis_                                114

    41. Ditto                                                          115

    42. Ischium of _Asterolepis_                                       116

    43. Joint of ray of Thornback:—of _Asterolepis_                    117

    44. Coprolites of _Asterolepis_                                    118

    45. Hyoid plate of Thurso _Asterolepis_                            124

    46. Hyoid plate of Russian _Asterolepis_                           127

    47. Spine of _Spinax Acanthias_:—fragment of Onondago spine        143

    48. Tail of _Spinax Acanthius_:—of _Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris_    172

    49. Port Jackson Shark (_Cestracion Phillippi_)                    177

    50. Tail of _Osteolepis_                                           195

    51. Tail of _Lepidosteus osseus_                                   196

    52. Tail of Perch                                                  197

    53. _Altingia excelsa_ (Norfolk-Island Pine)                       212

    54. Fucoids of the Lower Old Red Sandstone                         216

    55. Two species of Old Red Fucoids                                 217

    56. Fern (?) of the Lower Old Red Sandstone                        219

    57. Lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone                         221

    58. Internal structure of lignite of Lower Old Red Sandstone       223




STROMNESS AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS. THE LAKE OF STENNIS.


When engaged in prosecuting the self-imposed task of examining in detail
the various fossiliferous deposits of Scotland, in the hope of ultimately
acquainting myself with them all, I extended my exploratory ramble, about
two years ago, into the Mainland of Orkney, and resided for some time in
the vicinity of Stromness.

This busy seaport town forms that special centre, in this northern
archipelago, from which the structure of the entire group can be most
advantageously studied. The geology of the Orkneys, like that of
Caithness, owes its chief interest to the immense development which
it exhibits of one formation,—the Lower Old Red Sandstone,—and to the
extraordinary abundance of its vertebrate remains. It is not too much
to affirm, that in the comparatively small portion which this cluster
of islands contains of the _third_ part of a system regarded only a
few years ago as the least fossiliferous in the geologic scale, there
are more fossil fish enclosed than in _every_ other geologic system
in England, Scotland, and Wales, from the Coal Measures to the Chalk
inclusive. Orkney is emphatically, to the geologist, what a juvenile
Shetland poetess designates her country, in challenging for it a standing
independent of the “Land of Cakes,”—a “Land of Fish;” and, were the trade
once fairly opened up, could supply with ichthyolites, by the ton and the
ship-load, the museums of the world. Its various deposits, with all their
strange organisms, have been uptilted from the bottom against a granitic
axis, rather more than six miles in length by about a mile in breadth,
which forms the great back-bone of the western district of Pomona; and on
this granitic axis—fast jammed in between a steep hill and the sea—stands
the town of Stromness. Situated thus _at the bottom_ of the upturned
deposits of the island, it occupies exactly such a point of observation
as that which the curious eastern traveller would select, in front of
some huge pyramid or hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, as a proper site for
his tent. It presents, besides, not a few facilities for studying with
the geological phenomena, various interesting points in physical science
of a cognate character. Resting on its granitic base, _in front_ of
the strangely sculptured pyramid of three broad tiers,—red, black, and
gray,—which the Old Red Sandstone of these islands may be regarded as
forming, it is but a short half mile from the Great Conglomerate base
of the formation, and scarcely a quarter of a mile more from the older
beds of its central flagstone deposit; while an hour’s sail on the one
hand opens to the explorer the overlying arenaceous deposit of Hoy, and
an hour’s walk on the other introduces him to the Loch of Stennis, with
its curiously mixed flora and fauna. But of the Loch of Stennis and its
productions more anon.

The day was far spent when I reached Stromness: but as I had a fine
bright evening still before me, longer by some three or four degrees of
north latitude than the midsummer evenings of the south of Scotland,
I set out, hammer in hand, to examine the junction of the granite and
the Great Conglomerate, where it has been laid bare by the sea along
the low promontory which forms the western boundary of the harbor. The
granite here is a ternary of the usual components, somewhat intermediate
in grain and color between the granites of Peterhead and Aberdeen;
and the conglomerate consists of materials almost exclusively derived
from it,—evidence enough of itself, that when this ancient mechanical
deposit was in course of forming, the granite—exactly such a compound
then as it is now—was one of the surface rocks of the locality, and
much exposed to disintegrating influences. This conglomerate base of
the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Scotland—which presents, over an area
of many thousand square miles, such an identity of character, that
specimens taken from the neighborhood of Lerwick, in Shetland, or of
Gamrie, in Banff, can scarce be distinguished from specimens detached
from the hills which rise over the Great Caledonian Valley, or from the
cliffs immediately in front of the village of Contin—seems to have been
formed in a vast oceanic basin of primary rock,—a Palæozoic Hudson’s or
Baffin’s Bay,—partially surrounded, mayhap, by primary continents, swept
by numerous streams, rapid and headlong, and charged with the broken
debris of the inhospitable regions which they drained. The graptolite
bearing grauwacke of Banffshire seems to have been the only fossiliferous
rock that occurred throughout the entire extent of this ancient northern
basin; and its few organisms now serve to open the sole vista through
which the geological explorer to the north of the Grampians can catch a
glimpse of an earlier period of existence than that represented by the
ichthyolites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone.

Very many ages must have passed ere, amid waves and currents, the
water-worn debris which now forms the Great Conglomerate could have
accumulated over tracts of sea-bottom from ten to fifteen thousand
square miles in area, to its present depth of from one to four hundred
feet. At length, however, a thorough change took place; but we can only
doubtfully speculate regarding its nature or cause. The bottom of the
Palæozoic basin became greatly less exposed. Some protecting circle of
coast had been thrown up around it; or, what is perhaps more probable,
it had sunk to a profounder depth, and the ancient shores and streams
had receded, through the depression, to much greater distances. And, in
consequence, the deposition of rough sand and rolled pebbles was followed
by a deposition of mud. Myriads of fish, of forms the most ancient
and obsolete, congregated on its banks or sheltered in its hollows;
generation succeeded generation, millions and tens of millions perished
mysteriously by sudden death; shoals after shoals were annihilated; but
the productive powers of nature were strong, and the waste was kept
up. But who among men shall reckon the years or centuries during which
these races existed, and this muddy ocean of the remote past spread out
to unknown and nameless shores around them? As in those great cities of
the desert that lie uninhabited and waste, we can but conjecture their
term of existence from the vast extent of their cemeteries. We only
know that the dark, finely-grained schists in which they so abundantly
occur must have been of comparatively slow formation, and that yet the
thickness of the deposit more than equals the height of our loftiest
Scottish mountains. It would seem as if a period equal to that in which
all human history is comprised might be cut out of a corner of the period
represented by the Lower Old Red Sandstone, and be scarce missed when
away; for every year during which man has lived upon earth, it is not
improbable that the _Pterichthys_ and its contemporaries may have lived a
century. Their last hour, however, at length came. Over the dark-colored
ichthyolitic schists so immensely developed in Caithness and Orkney,
there occurs a pale-tinted, unfossiliferous sandstone, which in the
island of Hoy rises into hills of from fourteen to sixteen hundred feet
in height; and among the organisms of those newer formations of the Old
Red which overlie this deposit, not a species of ichthyolite identical
with the species entombed in the lower schists has yet been detected. In
the blank interval which the arenaceous deposit represents, tribes and
families perished and disappeared, leaving none of their race to succeed
them, that other tribes and families might be called into being, and fall
into their vacant places in the onward march of creation.

Such, so far as the various hieroglyphics of the pile have yet rendered
their meanings to the geologist, is the strange story recorded on the
three-barred _pyramid_ of Stromness. I traced the formation upwards this
evening along the edges of the upturned strata, from where the Great
Conglomerate leans against the granite, till where it merges into the
ichthyolitic flagstones; and then pursued these from older and lower to
newer and higher layers, desirous of ascertaining at what distance over
the base of the system its more ancient organisms first appear, and what
their character and kind. And, embedded in a grayish-colored layer of
hard flag, somewhat less than a hundred yards over the granite, and about
a hundred and sixty feet over the upper stratum of the conglomerate, I
found what I sought,—a well-marked bone,—in all probability the oldest
vertebrate remain yet discovered in Orkney. What, asks the reader, was
the character of this ancient organism of the Palæozoic basin?

As shown by its cancellated texture, palpable to the naked eye, and
still more unequivocally by the irregular complexity of fabric which
it exhibits under the microscope,—by its speck-like life-points or
canaliculi, that remind one of air-bubbles in ice,—its branching
channels, like minute veins, through which the blood must once have
flown,—and its general groundwork of irregular lines of corpuscular
fibre, that wind through the whole like currents in a river studded with
islands,—it was as truly osseous in its composition as the solid bones of
any of the reptiles of the Secondary, or the quadrupeds of the Tertiary
periods. And in form it closely resembled a large roofing-nail. With this
bone our more practised palæontologists are but little acquainted, for
no remains of the animal to which it belonged have yet been discovered
in Britain to the south of the Grampians,[3] nor, except in the Old Red
Sandstone of Russia, has it been detected any where on the Continent.
Nor am I aware that, save in the accompanying wood-cut, (fig. 1,) it has
ever been figured. The amateur geologists of Caithness and Orkney have,
however, learned to recognize it as the “petrified nail.” The length
of the entire specimen in this instance was five seven eighth inches,
the transverse breadth of the head two inches and a quarter, and the
thickness of the stem nearly three tenth parts of an inch. This nail-like
bone formed a characteristic portion of the _Asterolepis_,—so far as
is yet known, the most gigantic ganoid of the Old Red Sandstone, and,
judging from the _place_ of this fragment, apparently one of the first.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.

INTERNAL RIDGE OF HYOID PLATE OF ASTEROLEPSIS.[4]

(One third the natural size, linear.)]

There were various considerations which led me to regard the “petrified
nail” in this case as one of the most interesting fossils I had ever
seen; and, before quitting Orkney, to pursue my explorations farther to
the south, I brought two intelligent geologists of the district,[5] to
mark its place and character, that they might be able to point it out to
geological visitors in the future, or, if they preferred removing it to
their town museum, to indicate to them the stratum in which it had lain.
It showed me, among other things, how unsafe it is for the geologist to
base positive conclusions on merely negative data. Founding on the fact
that, of many hundred ichthyolites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone which
I had disinterred and examined, all were of comparatively small size,
while in the Upper Old Red many of the ichthyolites are of great mass and
bulk, I had inferred that vertebrate life had been restricted to minuter
forms at the commencement than at the close of the system. It had begun,
I had ventured to state in the earlier editions of a little work on the
“Old Red Sandstone,” with an age of dwarfs, and had ended with an age
of giants. And now, here, at the very base of the system, unaccompanied
by aught to establish the contemporary existence of its dwarfs,—which
appear, however, in an overlying bed about a hundred feet higher up,—was
there unequivocal proof of the existence of one of the most colossal of
its giants. But not unfrequently, in the geologic field, has the practice
of basing positive conclusions on merely negative grounds led to a
misreading of the record. From evidence of a kind exactly similar to that
on which I had built, it was inferred, some two or three years ago, that
there had lived no reptiles during the period of the Coal Measures, and
no fish in the times of the Lower Silurian System.

I extended my researches, a few days after, in an easterly direction from
the town of Stromness, and walked for several miles along the shores of
the Loch of Stennis,—a large lake about fourteen miles in circumference,
bare and treeless, like all the other lakes and lochs of Orkney, but
picturesque of outline, and divided into an upper and lower sheet of
water by two low, long promontories, that jut out from opposite sides,
and so nearly meet in the middle as to be connected by a thread-like
line of road, half mound, half bridge. “The Loch of Stennis,” says Mr.
David Vedder, the sailor-poet of Orkney, “is a beautiful Mediterranean in
miniature.” It gives admission to the sea by a narrow strait, crossed,
like that which separates the two promontories in the middle, by a
long rustic bridge; and, in consequence of this peculiarity, the lower
division of the lake is salt in its nether reaches and brackish in its
upper ones, while the higher division is merely brackish in its nether
reaches, and fresh enough in its upper ones to be potable. Viewed from
the east, in one of the long, clear, sunshiny evenings of the Orkney
summer, it seems not unworthy the eulogium of Vedder. There are moory
hills and a few rude cottages in front; and in the background, some
eight or ten miles away, the bold, steep mountain masses of Hoy; while
on the promontories of the lake, in the middle distance, conspicuous
in the landscape, from the relief furnished by the blue ground of the
surrounding waters, stand the tall gray obelisks of Stennis—one group on
the northern promontory, the other on the south,—

    “Old even beyond tradition’s breath.”

The shores of both the upper and lower divisions of the lake were
strewed, at the time I passed, by a line of _wrack_, consisting, for
the first few miles from where the lower loch opens to the sea, of only
marine plants, then of marine plants mixed with those of fresh-water
growth, and then, in the upper sheet of water, of lacustrine plants
exclusively. And the fauna of the loch is, I was informed, of as mixed a
character as its flora,—the marine and fresh-water animals having each
their own reaches, with certain debatable tracts between, in which each
kind expatiates with more or less freedom, according to its specific
nature and constitution,—some of the sea-fish advancing far on the fresh
water, and others, among the proper denizens of the lake, encroaching
far on the salt. The common fresh-water eel strikes out, I was told,
farthest into the sea-water; in which, indeed, reversing the habits
of the salmon, it is known in various places to deposit its spawn. It
seeks, too, impatient of a low temperature, to escape from the cold of
winter, by taking refuge in water brackish enough, in a climate such
as ours, to resist the influence of frost. Of the marine fish, on the
other hand, I found that the flounder got greatly higher than any of
the others, inhabiting reaches of the lake almost entirely fresh. I
have had an opportunity elsewhere of observing a curious change which
fresh water induces in this fish. In the brackish water of an estuary,
the animal becomes, without diminishing in general size, thicker and
more fleshy than when in its legitimate habitat, the sea: but the flesh
loses in quality what it gains in quantity;—it grows flabby and insipid,
and the margin-fin lacks always its strip of transparent fat. But the
change induced in the two floras of the lake—marine and lacustrine—is
considerably more palpable and obvious than that induced in its two
faunas. As I passed along the strait, through which it gives admission
to the sea, I found the commoner fucoids of our sea-coasts streaming
in great luxuriance in the tideway, from the stones and rocks of the
bottom. I marked, among the others, the two species of kelp-weed, so
well known to our Scotch kelp-burners,—_Fucus nodosus_ and _Fucus
vesiculosus_,—flourishing in their uncurtailed proportions; and the
not inelegant _Halidrys siliquosa_, or “tree in the sea,” presenting
its amplest spread of pod and frond. A little farther in, _Halidrys_
and _Fucus nodosus_ disappear, and _Fucus vesiculosus_ becomes greatly
stunted, and no longer exhibits its characteristic double rows of
bladders. But for mile after mile it continues to exist, blent with some
of the hardier confervæ, until at length it becomes as dwarfish and
nearly as slim of frond as the confervæ themselves; and it is only by
tracing it through the intermediate forms that we succeed in convincing
ourselves that, in the brown stunted tufts of from one to three inches
in length, which continue to fringe the middle reaches of the lake,
we have in reality the well-known Fucus before us. Rushes, flags, and
aquatic grasses may now be seen standing in diminutive tufts out of the
water; and a terrestrial vegetation at least continues to exist, though
it can scarce be said to thrive, on banks covered by the tide at full.
The lacustrine flora increases, both in extent and luxuriance, as that of
the sea diminishes; and in the upper reaches we fail to detect all trace
of marine plants: the algæ, so luxuriant of growth along the straits of
this “miniature Mediterranean,” altogether cease; and a semi-aquatic
vegetation attains, in turn, to the state of fullest development any
where permitted by the temperature of this northern locality. A memoir
descriptive of the Loch of Stennis, and its productions, animal and
vegetable, such as old Gilbert White of Selborne could have produced,
would be at once a very valuable and curious document, important to the
naturalist, and not without its use to the geological student.

I know not how it may be with others; but the special phenomena connected
with Orkney that most decidedly bore fruit in my mind, and to which
my thoughts have most frequently reverted, were those exhibited in
the neighborhood of Stromness. I would more particularly refer to the
characteristic fragment of _Asterolepis_, which I detected in its lower
flagstones, and to the curiously mixed, semi-marine, semi-lacustrine
vegetation of the Loch of Stennis. Both seem to bear very directly on
that development hypothesis,—fast spreading among an active and ingenious
order of minds, both in Britain and America, and which has been long
known on the Continent,—that would fain transfer the work of creation
from the department of miracle to the province of natural law, and would
strike down, in the process of removal, all the old landmarks, ethical
and religious.




THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.


Every individual, whatever its species or order, begins and increases
until it attains to its state of fullest development, under certain
fixed laws, and _in consequence_ of their operation. The microscopic
monad develops into a fœtus, the fœtus into a child, the child into
a man; and, however marvellous the process, in none of its stages is
there the slightest mixture of miracle; from beginning to end, all is
progressive development, according to a determinate order of things.
Has _Nature_, during the vast geologic periods, been pregnant, in like
manner, with the human race? and is the species, like the individual,
an effect of progressive development, induced and regulated by law? The
assertors of the revived hypothesis of Maillet and Lamarck reply in the
affirmative. Nor, be it remarked, is there positive atheism involved in
the belief. God might as certainly have _originated_ the species by a
law of development, as he _maintains_ it by a law of development; the
existence of a First Great Cause is as perfectly compatible with the
one scheme as with the other; and it may be necessary thus broadly to
state the fact, not only in justice to the Lamarckians, but also fairly
to warn their non-geological opponents, that in this contest the old
anti-atheistic arguments, whether founded on the evidence of design, or
on the preliminary doctrine of final causes, cannot be brought to bear.

There are, however, beliefs, in no degree less important to the moralist
or the Christian than even that in the being of a God, which seem wholly
incompatible with the development hypothesis. It, during a period so
vast as to be scarce expressible by figures, the creatures now human
have been rising, by _almost_ infinitesimals, from compound microscopic
cells,—minute vital globules within globules, begot by electricity on
dead gelatinous matter,—until they have at length become the men and
women whom we see around us, we must hold either the monstrous belief,
that all the vitalities, whether those of monads or of mites, of fishes
or of reptiles, of birds or of beasts, are individually and inherently
immortal and undying, or that human souls are _not_ so. The difference
between the dying and the undying,—between the spirit of the brute that
goeth downward, and the spirit of the man that goeth upward,—is not a
difference infinitesimally, or even atomically _small_. It possesses
all the breadth of the eternity to come, and is an _infinitely great_
difference. It cannot, if I may so express myself, be shaded off by
infinitesimals or atoms; for it is a difference which—as there can be
no class of beings intermediate in their nature between the dying and
the undying—admits not of gradation at all. What mind, regulated by the
ordinary principles of human belief, can possibly hold that every one
of the thousand vital points which swim in a drop of stagnant water are
inherently fitted to maintain their individuality throughout eternity? Or
how can it be rationally held that a mere progressive step, in itself no
greater or more important than that effected by the addition of a single
brick to a house in the building state, or of a single atom to a body
in the growing state, could ever have produced immortality? And yet,
if the _spirit_ of a monad or of a mollusc be not immortal, then must
there either have been a point in the history of the species at which
a dying brute—differing from its offspring merely by an inferiority of
development, represented by a few atoms, mayhap by a single atom—produced
an undying man, or man in his present state must be a mere animal,
possessed of no immortal soul, and as irresponsible for his actions to
the God before whose bar he is, in consequence, never to appear, as his
presumed relatives and progenitors the beasts that perish. Nor will it
do to attempt escaping from the difficulty, by alleging that God at some
certain link in the chain _might_ have converted a mortal creature into
an immortal existence, by breathing into it a “living soul;” seeing that
a renunciation of any such direct interference on the part of Deity in
the work of creation forms the prominent and characteristic feature of
the scheme,—nay, that it constitutes the very nucleus round which the
scheme has originated. And thus, though the development theory be not
atheistic, it is at least practically tantamount to atheism. For, if man
be a dying creature, restricted in his existence to the present scene of
things, what does it really matter to him, for any one moral purpose,
whether there be a God or no? If in reality on the same religious level
with the dog, wolf, and fox, that are by nature _atheists_,—a nature most
properly coupled with irresponsibility,—to what one practical purpose
should he know or believe in a God whom he, as certainly as they, is
never to meet as his Judge? or why should he square his conduct by
the requirements of the moral code, farther than a low and convenient
expediency may chance to demand?[6]

Nor does the purely Christian objection to the development hypothesis
seem less, but even more insuperable than that derived from the
province of natural theology. The belief which is perhaps of all others
most fundamentally essential to the revealed scheme of salvation, is
the belief that “God created man upright,” and that man, instead of
proceeding onward and upward from this high and fair beginning, to a yet
higher and fairer standing in the scale of creation, sank and became
morally lost and degraded. And hence the necessity for that second
dispensation of recovery and restoration which forms the entire burden
of God’s revealed message to man. If, according to the development
theory, the progress of the “first Adam” was an upward progress, the
existence of the “second Adam”—that “happier man,” according to Milton,
whose special work it is to “restore” and “regain the blissful seat” of
the lapsed race—is simply a meaningless anomaly. Christianity, if the
development theory be true, is exactly what some of the more extreme
Moderate divines of the last age used to make it—an idle and unsightly
excrescence on a code of morals that would be perfect were it away.

I may be in error in taking this serious view of the matter; and, if so,
would feel grateful to the man who could point out to me that special
link in the chain of inference at which, with respect to the bearing of
the theory on the two theologies—natural and revealed—the mistake has
taken place. But if I be in error at all, it is an error into which I
find not a few of the first men of the age,—represented, as a class, by
our Professor Sedgwicks and Sir David Brewsters,—have also fallen; and
until it be shown to _be_ an error, and that the development theory is in
no degree incompatible with a belief in the immortality of the soul—in
the responsibility of man to God as the final Judge—or in the Christian
scheme of salvation—it is every honest man’s duty to protest against any
_ex parte_ statement of the question, that would insidiously represent
it as ethically an indifferent one, or as unimportant in its theologic
bearing, save to “little religious sects and scientific coteries.” In
an address on the fossil flora, made in September last by a gentleman
of Edinburgh to the St. Andrew’s Horticultural Society, there occurs
the following passage on this subject: “Life is governed by external
conditions, and new conditions imply new races; but then as to their
creation, that is the ‘_mystery of mysteries_.’ Are they created by an
immediate fiat and direct act of the Almighty? or has He originally
impressed life with an elasticity and adaptability, so that it shall
take upon itself new forms and characters, according to the conditions
to which it shall be subjected? Each opinion has had, and still has,
its advocates and opponents; but the truth is, that _science_, so far
as it knows, or rather so far as it has had the honesty and courage to
avow, has yet been unable to pronounce a satisfactory decision. _Either
way, it matters little_, _physically or morally_, either mode implies
the same omnipotence, and wisdom, and foresight, and protection; and it
is only your little religious sects and scientific coteries which make
a pother about the matter,—sects and coteries of which it may be justly
said, that they would almost exclude God from the management of his own
world, if not managed and directed in the way that they would have it.”
Now, this is surely a most unfair representation of the consequences,
ethical and religious involved in the development hypothesis. It is not
its compatibility with belief in the existence of a First Great Cause
that has to be established, in order to prove it harmless; but its
compatibility with certain other all-important beliefs, without which
simple Theism is of no moral value whatever—a belief in the immortality
and responsibility of man, and in the scheme of salvation by a Mediator
and Redeemer. Dissociated from these beliefs, a belief in the existence
of a God is of as little _ethical_ value as a belief in the existence of
the great sea-serpent.

Let us see whether we cannot determine what the testimony of Geology,
on this question of creation by development, really is. It is always
perilous to under-estimate the strength of an enemy; and the danger from
the development hypothesis to an ingenious order of minds, smitten with
the novel fascinations of physical science, has been under-estimated
very considerably indeed. Save by a few studious men, who to the
cultivation of Geology and the cognate branches add some acquaintance
with metaphysical science, the general correspondence of the line of
assault taken up by this new school of infidelity, with that occupied
by the old, and the consequent ability of the assailants to bring, not
only the recently forged, but also the previously employed artillery into
full play along its front, has not only not been marked, but even not
so much as suspected. And yet, in order to show that there actually is
such a correspondence, it can be but necessary to state, that the great
antagonist points in the array of the opposite lines, are simply the
_law_ of development _versus_ the _miracle_ of creation. The evangelistic
Churches cannot, in consistency with their character, or with a due
regard to the interests of their people, slight or overlook a form of
error at once exceedingly plausible and consummately dangerous, and which
is telling so widely on society, that one can scarce travel by railway or
in a steamboat, or encounter a group of intelligent mechanics, without
finding decided trace of its ravages.

But ere the Churches can be prepared competently to deal with it, or with
the other objections of a similar class which the infidelity of an age so
largely engaged as the present in physical pursuits will be from time to
time originating they must greatly extend their educational walks into
the field of physical science. The mighty change which has taken place
during the present century, in the direction in which the minds of the
first order are operating, though indicated on the face of the country in
characters which cannot be mistaken, seems to have too much escaped the
notice of our theologians. Speculative theology and the metaphysics are
cognate branches of the same science; and when, as in the last and the
preceding ages, the higher philosophy of the world was metaphysical, the
Churches took ready cognizance of the fact, and, in due accordance with
the requirements of the time, the battle of the Evidences was fought on
metaphysical ground. But, judging from the preparations made in their
colleges and halls, they do not now seem sufficiently aware—though the
low thunder of every railway, and the snort of every steam engine, and
the whistle of the wind amid the wires of every electric telegraph,
serve to publish the fact—that it is in the departments of physics, not
of metaphysics, that the greater minds of the age are engaged,—that the
Lockes, Humes, Kants, Berkeleys, Dugald Stewarts, and Thomas Browns,
belong to the past,—and that the philosophers of the present time, tall
enough to be seen all the world over, are the Humboldts, the Aragos, the
Agassizes, the Liebigs, the Owens, the Herschels, the Bucklands, and the
Brewsters. In that educational course through which, in this country,
candidates for the ministry pass, in preparation for their office,
I find every group of great minds which has in turn influenced and
directed the mind of Europe for the last three centuries, represented,
more or less adequately, save the last. It is an epitome of all kinds
of learning, with the exception of the kind most imperatively required,
because most in accordance with the genius of the time. The restorers of
classic literature—the Buchanans and Erasmuses—we see represented in our
Universities by the Greek and what are termed the Humanity courses; the
Galileos, Boyles, and Newtons, by the Mathematical and Natural Philosophy
courses; and the Lockes, Kants, Humes, and Berkeleys, by the Metaphysical
course. But the Cuviers, the Huttons, the Cavendishes, and the Watts,
with their successors, the practical philosophers of the present age,—men
whose achievements in physical science we find marked on the surface of
the country in characters which might be read from the moon,—are _not_
adequately represented. It would be perhaps more correct to say, that
they are not represented at all;[7] and the clergy, as a class, suffer
themselves to linger far in the rear of an intelligent and accomplished
laity—a full age behind the requirements of the time. Let them not shut
their eyes to the danger which is obviously coming. The battle of the
Evidences will have as certainly to be fought on the field of physical
science, as it was contested in the last age on that of the metaphysics.
And on this new arena the combatants will have to employ new weapons,
which it will be the privilege of the challenger to choose. The old,
opposed to these, would prove but of little avail. In an age of muskets
and artillery, the bows and arrows of an obsolete school of warfare
would be found greatly less than sufficient, in the field of battle, for
purposes either of assault or defence.

“There are two kinds of generation in the world,” says Professor Lorenz
Oken, in his “Elements of Physio-philosophy;” “the creation proper, and
the propagation that is sequent thereupon—or the _generatio originaria_
and _secundaria_. Consequently, no organism has been created of larger
size than an infusorial point. No organism is, nor ever has one been
created, which is not microscopic. Whatever is larger has not been
created, but developed. Man has not been created, but developed.” Such,
in a few brief dogmatic sentences, is the development theory. What,
in order to establish its truth, or even to render it in some degree
probable, ought to be the geological evidence regarding it? The reply
seems obvious. In the first place, the earlier fossils ought to be very
_small_ in size; in the second, very _low_ in organization. In cutting
into the stony womb of nature, in order to determine what it contained
mayhap millions of ages ago, we must expect, if the development theory
be true, to look upon mere embryos and fœtuses. And if we find, instead,
the full grown and the mature, then must we hold that the testimony of
Geology is not only _not in accordance_ with the theory, but in positive
opposition to it. Such, palpably, is the _principle_ on which, in this
matter, we ought to decide. What are the _facts_?

The oldest organism yet discovered in the most ancient geological
system of Scotland in which vertebrate remains occur, _seems_ to be the
_Asterolepis_ of Stromness. After the explorations of many years over a
wide area, I have detected none other equally low in the system; nor have
I ascertained that any brother-explorer in the same field has been more
fortunate. It is, up to the present time, the most ancient Scotch witness
of the great class of fishes that can in this case be brought into court;
nay, it is in all probability the oldest _ganoid_ witness the world has
yet produced; for there appears no certain trace of this order of fishes
in the great Silurian system which lies underneath, and in which, so far
as geologists yet know, organic existence first began. How, then, on the
two relevant points—bulk and organization—does it answer to the demands
of the development hypothesis? Was it a mere fœtus of the finny tribe,
of minute size, and imperfect, embryonic faculty? Or was it of at least
the ordinary bulk, and, for its class, of the average organization?
May I solicit the forbearance of the non-geological reader, should my
reply to these apparently simple questions seem unnecessarily prolix and
elaborate? Peculiar opportunities of observation, and the possession of
a set of unique fossils, enable me to submit to our palæontologists a
certain amount of information regarding this ancient ganoid, which they
will deem at once interesting and new; and the bearing of my statements
on the general argument will, I trust, become apparent as I proceed.




THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. ITS FAMILY.


It had been long known to the continental naturalists, that in certain
Russian deposits, very extensively developed, there occur in considerable
abundance certain animal organisms; but for many years neither their
position nor character could be satisfactorily determined. By some they
were placed too high in the scale of organized being; by others too low.
Kutorga, a writer not very familiarly known in this country, described
the remains as those of mammals;—the Russian rocks contained, he said,
bones of quadrupeds, and, in especial, the teeth of swine: whereas
Lamarck, a better known authority, though not invariably a safe one,—for
he had a trick of dreaming when wide awake, and of calling his dreams
philosophy,—assigned to them a place among the corals. They belonged,
he asserted, as shown by certain star-like markings with which they are
fretted, to the Polyparia. He even erected for their reception a new
genus of Astrea, which he designated, from the little rounded hillock
which rises in the middle of each star, the genus _Monticularia_. It was
left to a living naturalist, M. Eichwald, to fix their true position
zoologically among the class of fishes, and to Sir Roderick Murchison
to determine their position geologically as ichthyolites of the Old Red
Sandstone.

Sir Roderick, on his return from his great Russian campaigns, in which
he fared far otherwise than Napoleon, and accomplished more, submitted
to Agassiz a series of fragments of these gigantic Ganoids; and the
celebrated ichthyologist, who had been introduced little more than
a twelvemonth before to the _Pterichthys_ of Cromarty, was at first
inclined to regard them as the remains of a large cuirassed fish of
the Cephalaspian type, but generically new. Under this impression he
bestowed upon the yet unknown ichthyolite of which they had formed part,
the name _Chelonichthys_, from the resemblance borne by the broken
plates to those of the carapace and plastron of some of the Chelonians.
At this stage, however, the Russian Old Red yielded a set of greatly
finer remains than it had previously furnished; and of these casts were
transmitted by Professor Asmus, of the University of Dorpat, to the
British and London Geological Museums, and to Agassiz. “I knew not at
first what to do,” says the ichthyologist, “with bones of so singular
a conformation that I could refer them to no known type.” Detecting,
however, on their exterior surfaces the star-like markings which had
misled Lamarck, and which he had also detected on the lesser fragments
submitted to him by Sir Roderick, he succeeded in identifying both the
fragments and bones as remains of the same genus and on ascertaining
that M. Eichwald had bestowed upon it, from these characteristic
sculpturings, the generic name _Asterolepis_, or star-scale, he suffered
the name which he himself had originated to drop. Even this second name,
however, which the ichthyolite still continues to bear, is in some degree
founded in error. Its true scales, as I shall by and by show, were not
stelliferous, but fretted by a peculiar style of ornament, consisting
of waved anastomosing ridges, breaking atop into angular-shaped dots,
scooped out internally like the letter V; and were evidently intermediate
in their character between the scales which cover the _Glyptolepis_
and those of the _Holoptychius_. And the stellate markings which M.
Eichwald graphically describes as minute paps rising out of the middle
of star-like wreaths of little leaflets, were restricted to the dermal
plates of the head.

Agassiz ultimately succeeded in classing the bones which had at first so
puzzled him, into two divisions—interior and dermal; and the latter he
divided yet further, though not without first lodging a precautionary
protest, founded on the extreme obscurity of the subject, into cranial
and opercular. Of the interior bones he specified two,—a super-scapular
bone, (_supra-scapulaire_,)—that bone which in osseous fishes completes
the scapular arch or belt, by uniting the scapula to the cranium; and
a maxillary or upper jaw-bone. But his world-wide acquaintance with
existing fishes could lend him no assistance in determining the places
of the dermal bones: they formed the mere fragments of a broken puzzle,
of which the key was lost. Even in their detached and irreducible state,
however, he succeeded in basing upon them several shrewd deductions. He
inferred, in the first place, that the _Asterolepis_ was not, as had
been at first supposed, a cuirassed fish, which took its place among
the Cephalaspians, but a strongly helmed fish of that Cœlacanth family
to which the _Holoptychius_ and _Glyptolepis_ belong; in the second,
that, like several of its bulkier cogeners, it was in all probability
a broad, flat-headed animal; and, in the third, that as its remains
are found associated in the Russian beds with numerous detached teeth
of large size,—the boar tusks of Kutorga—which present internally that
peculiar microscopic character on which Professor Owen has erected his
Dendrodic or tree-toothed family of fishes,—it would in all likelihood
be found that both bones and teeth belonged to the same group. “It
appears more than probable,” he said, “that one day, by the discovery of
a head or an entire jaw, it will be shown that the genera _Dendrodus_
and _Asterolepis_ form but one.” As we proceed, the reader will see how
justly the ichthyologist assigned to the _Asterolepis_ its place among
the Cœlacanths, and how entirely his two other conjectures regarding it
have been confirmed. “I have had in general,” he concluded, “but small
and mutilated fragments of the creature’s bones submitted to me, and
of these, even the surface ornaments not well preserved; but I hope
the immense materials with which the Old Red Sandstone of Russia has
furnished the savans of that country will not be lost to science; and
that my labors on this interesting genus, incomplete as they are, will
excite more and more the attention of geologists, by showing them how
ignorant we are of all the essential facts concerning the history of the
first inhabitants of our globe.”

I know not what the savans of Russia have been doing for the last few
years; but mainly through the labors of an intelligent tradesman of
Thurso, Mr. Robert Dick,—one of those working men of Scotland of active
curiosity and well-developed intellect, that give character and standing
to the rest,—I am enabled to justify the classification and confirm the
conjectures of Agassiz. Mr. Dick, after acquainting himself, in the
leisure hours of a laborious profession, with the shells, insects, and
plants of the northern locality in which he resides, had set himself to
study its geology; and with this view he procured a copy of the little
treatise on the Old Red Sandstone to which I have already referred, and
which was at that time, as Agassiz’s Monograph of the Old Red fishes had
not yet appeared, the only work specially devoted to the palæontology
of the system, so largely developed in the neighborhood of Thurso. With
perhaps a single exception,—for the Thurso rocks do not yet seem to have
yielded a _Pterichthys_,—he succeeded in finding specimens, in a state
of better or worse keeping, of all the various ichthyolites which I had
described as peculiar to the Lower Old Red Sandstone. He found, however,
what I had _not_ described,—the remains of apparently a very gigantic
ichthyolite; and, communicating with me through the medium of a common
friend, he submitted to me, in the first instance, drawings of his new
set of fossils; and ultimately, as I could arrive at no satisfactory
conclusion from the drawings, he with great liberality made over to me
the fossils themselves. Agassiz’s Monograph was not yet published; nor
had I an opportunity of examining, until about a twelvemonth after,
the casts, in the British Museum, of the fossils of Professor Asmus.
Besides, all the little information, derived from various sources, which
I had acquired respecting the Russian _Chelonichthys_,—for such was its
name at the time,—referred it to the cuirassed type, and served but to
mislead. I was assured, for instance, that Professor Asmus regarded
his set of remains as portions of the plates and paddles of a gigantic
_Pterichthys_, of from twenty to thirty feet in length. And so, as I had
recognized in the Thurso fossils the peculiarities of the _Holoptychian_
(Cœlacanth) family, I at first failed to identify them with the remains
of the great Russian fish. All the larger bones sent me by Mr. Dick were,
I found, cerebral; and the scales associated with these indicated, not
a cuirass-protected, but a scale-covered body and exhibited, in their
sculptured and broadly imbricated surfaces, the well-marked Cœlacanth
style of disposition and ornament. But though I could _not_ recognize in
either bones or scales the remains of one ichthyolite more of the Old
Red Sandstone, “that could be regarded as manifesting as peculiar a type
among fishes as do the Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri among reptiles,”[8]
I was engaged at the time in a course of inquiry regarding the cerebral
development of the earlier vertebrata, that made me deem them scarce less
interesting than if I could. Ere, however, I attempt communicating to the
reader the result of my researches, I must introduce him, in order that
he may be able to set out with me to the examination of the _Asterolepis_
from the same starting-point, to the Cœlacanth family,—indisputably one
of the oldest, and not the least interesting, of its order.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.

a. _Shagreen of the Thornback (Raja clavata.)_

b. _Shagreen of Sphagodus,—a placoid of the Upper Silurian._[9]]

So far as is yet known, all the fish of the earliest fossiliferous
system belonged to the placoid or “_broad plated_” order,—a great
division of fishes, represented in the existing seas by the Sharks and
Rays,—animals that to an internal skeleton of cartilage unite a dermal
covering of points, plates, or spines of enamelled bone, and have their
gills fixed. The dermal or cuticular bones of this order vary greatly in
form, according to the species or family: in some cases they even vary,
according to their place, on the same individual. Those button-like
tubercles, for instance, with an enamelled thorn, bent like a hook,
growing out of the centre of each, which run down the back and tail, and
stud the pectorals of the thorn-back, (_Raja clavata_,) differ very much
from the smaller thorns, with star-formed bases, which roughen the other
parts of the creature’s body; and the bony points which mottle the back
and sides of the sharks are, in most of the known species, considerably
more elongated and prickly than the points which cover their fins, belly,
and snout. The extreme forms, however, of the shagreen tubercle or plate
seem to be those of the upright prickle or spine on the one hand, and of
the slant-laid, rhomboidal, scale-shaped plate on the other. The minuter
thorns of the ray (fig. 2, _a_) exemplify the extreme of the prickly
type; the fins, abdomen, and anterior part of the head of the spotted
dog-fish (_Scyllium stellare_) are covered by lozenge-shaped little
plates, which glisten with enamel, and are so thickly set that they cover
the entire surface of the skin, (fig. 3, _b_,)—and these seem equally
illustrative of the scale-like form. They are shagreen points passing
into osseous scales, without, however, becoming really such; though they
approach them so nearly in the shape and disposition of their upper
disks, that the true scales, also osseous, of the _Acanthodes sulcatus_,
(fig. 3, _a_,) a Ganoid of the Coal Measures, can scarce be distinguished
from them, even when microscopically examined. It is only when seen in
section that the distinctive difference appears. The true scale of the
Acanthodes, though considerably elevated in the centre, seems to have
been planted on the skin; whereas the scale-like shagreen of the dog-fish
is elevated over it on an osseous pedicle or footstalk (fig. 5, _a_) as
a mushroom is elevated over the sward on its stem; and the base of the
stalk is found to resemble in its stellate character that of a shagreen
point of the prickly type. The apparent scale is, we find, a bony prickle
bent at right angles a little over its base, and flattened into a
rhomboidal disk atop.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.

a. _Scales of Acanthodes sulcatus._

b. _Shagreen of Scyllium stellare, (Snout.)_

(Mag. eight diameters.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 4.

a. _Scales of Cheiracanthus microlepidotus._

b. _Shagreen of Spinax Acanthias. (Snout.)_

(Mag. eight diameters.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 5.

a. _Section of shagreen of Scyllium stellare._

b. _Under surface of do._

c. _Section of scales of Cheiracanthus microlepidotus._

d. _Under surface of do._

(Mag. eight diameters.)]

In small fragments of shagreen, (fig. 2 _b_) which have been detected in
the bone-bed of the Upper Ludlow Rocks, (Upper Silurian,) and constitute
the most ancient portions of this substance known to the palæontologist,
the osseous tubercles are, as in the minuter spikes of the ray, of the
upright thorn-like type; they merely serve to show that the placoids
of the first period possessed, like those of the existing seas, an
ability of secreting solid bone on their cuticular surfaces; and that,
though at least such of them as have bequeathed to us specimens of
their dermal armature possessed it in the form farthest removed from
that of their immediate successors the ganoid fishes, they resembled
them not less in the substance of which their dermoskeletal, than in
that of which their endoskeletal, parts were composed. For the internal
skeleton in both orders, during these early ages, seems to have been
equally cartilaginous, and the cuticular skeleton equally osseous. In
the ichthyolitic formation immediately over the Silurians,—that of the
Lower Old Red Sandstone,—the Ganoids first appear; and the members of at
least one of the families of the deposit, the Acanths,—a family rich in
genera and species,—seem to have formed connecting links between this
second order and their placoid predecessors. They were covered with true
scales (fig. 4, _a_,) and their free gills were protected by gill-covers;
and so they must be regarded as real Ganoids but as the shagreen of the
spotted dog-fish nearly approaches, in form and character, to ganoid
scales, without being really such, the scales of this family, on the
other hand, approached equally near, without changing their nature, to
the shagreen of the Placoids, especially to that of the spiked dogfish,
(_Spinax Acanthias_.) (Fig. 4, _b_.) We even find on their under surfaces
what seems to be an approximation to the characteristic footstalk.
They so considerably thicken in the middle from their edges inwards,
(fig. 5, _c_,) as to terminate in their centres in obtuse points.
With these shagreen-like scales, the heads, bodies, and fins of all
the species of at least two of the Acanth genera,—_Cheiracanthus_ and
_Diplacanthus_,—were as thickly covered as the heads, bodies, and fins
of the sharks are with their shagreen; and so slight was the degree of
imbrication, that the portion of each scale overlaid by the two scales in
immediate advance of it did not exceed the one twelfth part of its entire
area. In the scale of the _Cheiracanthus_ we find the covered portion
indicated by a smooth, narrow band, that ran along its anterior edges,
and which the furrows that fretted the exposed surface did not traverse.
It may be added, that both genera had the anterior edge of their fins
armed with strong spines,—a characteristic of several of the Placoid
families.

[Illustration: Fig. 6.

a. _Scales of Osteolepis macrolepidotus._

b. _Scales of an undescribed species of Glyptolepis._[10]

(The single scales mag. two diameters;—the others nat. size.)]

In the Dipterian genera _Osteolepis_ and _Diplopterus_ the scales
were more unequivocally such than in the Acanths, and more removed
from shagreen. The under surface of each was traversed longitudinally
by a raised bar, which attached it to the skin, and which, in the
transverse section, serves to remind one of the shagreen footstalk.
They are, besides, of a rhomboidal form; and, when seen in the finer
specimens, lying in their proper places on what had been once the
creature’s body, they seem merely laid down side by side in line, like
those rows of glazed tiles that pave a cathedral floor; but on more
careful examination, we find that each little tile was deeply grooved
on its higher side and end, (for it lay diagonally in relation to the
head,) like the flags of a stone roof, (fig. 6, _a_,)—that its lateral
and anterior neighbors impinged upon it along these grooves to the
extent of about one third its area,—and that it impinged, in turn,
to the same extent on the scales that bordered on it posteriorly and
latero-posteriorly. Now, in the Cœlacanth family, (and on this special
point the foregoing remarks are intended to bear,) the scales, which were
generally of a round or irregularly oval form, (fig. 6, _b_,) overlapped
each other to as great an extent as in any of the existing fishes of
the Cycloid or Ctenoid orders,—to as great an extent, for instance, as
in the carp, salmon, or herring. In a slated roof there is no part on
which the slates do not lie double, and along the lower edge of each
tier they lie triple;—there is more of slate covered than of slate seen:
whereas in a tile-roof, the covered portion is restricted to a small
strip running along the top and one of the edges of each tile, and the
tiles do not lie double in more than the same degree in which the slates
lie triple. The scaly cover of the two genera of Dipterians to which
I have referred was a cover on the _tile_-roof principle; and this is
an exceedingly common characteristic of the scales of the Ganoids. The
scaly cover of the Cœlacanths, on the other hand, was a cover on the
_slate_-roof principle;—there was in some of their genera about one third
more of each scale covered than exposed; and this is so rare a ganoidal
mode of arrangement, that, with the exception of the _Dipterus_,—a genus
which, though it gives its name to the Dipterian sept, differed greatly
from every other Dipterian,—I know not, beyond the limits of the ancient
Cœlacanth family, a single Ganoid that possessed it. The bony covering of
the Cœlacanths was _farthest_ removed in character from shagreen, as that
of their contemporaries the Acanths approximated to it most nearly; they
were, in this respect, the two extremes of their order; and did we find
the Cœlacanths in but the later geological formations, while the Acanths
were restricted to the earlier, it might be argued by assertors of the
development hypothesis, that the amply imbricated, slate-like scale of
the latter had been developed in the lapse of ages from the shagreen
tubercle, by passing in its downward course—broadening and expanding
as it descended—through the minute, scarcely imbricated disks of the
Acanths, and the more amply imbricated tile-like rhombs of the Dipterians
and Palæonisci, until it had reached its full extent of imbrication in
the familiar modern type exemplified in both the Cœlacanths and the
ordinary fishes. But such is not the order which nature has observed;—the
two extremes of the ganoid scale appear together in the same early
formation: both become extinct at a period geologically remote; and the
ganoid scales of the existing state of things which most nearly resemble
those of ancient time are scales formed on the intermediate or tile-roof
principle.

The scales of the Cœlacanths were, in almost all the genera which
compose the family, of great size; in some species, of the greatest size
to which this kind of integument ever attained. Of a Cœlacanth of the
Coal Measures, the _Holoptychius Hibberti_, the scales in the larger
specimens were occasionally from five to six inches in diameter. Even
in the _Holoptychius nobilissimus_, in an individual scarcely exceeding
two and a half feet in length, they measured from an inch and a half to
an inch and three quarters each way. In the splendid specimen of this
last species, in the British Museum, there occur but fourteen scales
between the ventrals, though these lie low on the creature’s body, and
the head; and in a specimen of a smaller species,—the _Holoptychius
Andersoni_,—but about seventeen. The exposed portion of the scale was
in most species of the family curiously fretted by intermingled ridges
and furrows, pits and tubercles, which were either boldly relieved, as
in the _Holoptychius_, or existed, as in the _Glyptolepis_, as slim,
delicately chiselled threads, lines, and dots. The head was covered by
strong plates, which were roughened with tubercles either confluent or
detached, or hollowed, as in the _Bothriolepis_, into shallow pits. The
jaws were thickly set with an outer range of true fish teeth, and more
thinly with an inner range of what seem _reptile_ teeth, that stood up,
tall and bulky, behind the others, like officers on horseback seen over
the heads of their foot-soldiers in front. The _double_ fins,—pectorals
and ventrals,—were characterized each by a thick, angular, scale-covered
centre, fringed by the rays; and they must have borne externally
somewhat the form of the sweeping paddles of the Ichthyosaurian genus,—a
peculiarity shared also by the double fins of the _Dipterus_. The
_single_ fins, in all the members of the family of which specimens
have been found sufficiently entire to indicate the fact, were four in
number,—an anal, a caudal, and two dorsal fins; and, with the exception
of the anterior dorsal, which was comparatively small, and bent downwards
along the back, as if its rays had been distorted when young,[11] they
were all of large size. They crowded thickly on the posterior portion of
the body,—the anterior dorsal opposite the ventrals, and the posterior
dorsal opposite the anal fin. The fin-rays of the various members of the
family, and such of their spinous processes as have been detected, were
hollow tubular bones; or rather, like the larger pieces in the framework
of the Placoids, they were cartilaginous within, and covered externally
by a thin osseous crust or shell, which alone survives; and to this
peculiarity they owe their family name, Cœlacanth, or “hollow-spine.”
The internal hollow, _i. e._ cartilaginous centre, was, however,
equally a characteristic of the spinous processes of the _Coccosteus_.
In their general proportions, the Cœlacanths, if we perhaps except one
species,—the _Glyptolepis microlepidotus_,—were all squat, robust,
strongly-built fishes, of the Dirk Hatterick or Balfour-of-Burley type;
and not only in the larger specimens gigantic in their proportions, but
remarkable for the strength and weight of their armor, even when of but
moderate stature. The specimen of _Holoptychius nobilissimus_ in the
British Museum could have measured little more than three feet from snout
to tail when most entire; but it must have been nearly a foot in breadth,
and a bullet would have rebounded flattened from its scales. And such
was that ancient Cœlacanth family, of which the oldest of our Scotch
Ganoids,—the _Asterolepis_ of Stromness,—formed one of the members, and
which for untold ages has had no living representative.

Let us now enter on our proposed inquiry regarding the cerebral
development of the earlier vertebrata, and see whether we cannot
ascertain after what manner the first true brains were lodged, and
what those modifications were which their protecting box, the cranium,
received in the subsequent periods. Independently of its own special
interest, the inquiry will be found to have a direct bearing on our
general subject.




CEREBRAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. ITS APPARENT PRINCIPLE.


It is held by a class of naturalists, some of them of the highest
standing, that the skulls of the vertebrata consist, like the columns
to which they are attached, of vertebral joints, composed each, in the
more typical forms of head, as they are in the trunk, of five parts or
elements,—the centrum or body, the two spinous processes which enclose
the spinal cord, and the two ribs. These cranial vertebræ, four in
number, correspond, it is said, to the four senses that have their seat
in the head: there is the nasal vertebra, the centrum of which is the
vomer, its spinal processes the nasal and ethmoid bones, and its ribs the
_upper_ jaws; there is the ocular vertebra, the centrum of which is the
anterior portion of the sphenoid bone, its spinal processes the frontals,
and its ribs the _under_ jaws; there is the lingual vertebra, the centrum
of which is the posterior sphenoid bone, its spinal processes the
parietals, and its ribs the hyoid and branchial bones,—portions of the
skeleton largely developed in fishes; and, lastly, there is the auditory
vertebra, the centrum of which is the base of the occipital bone, and its
spinal processes the occipital crest, and which in the osseous fishes
bears attached to it, as its ribs, the bones of the scapular ring. And
the cerebral segments thus constructed we find represented in typical
diagrams of the skull, as real vertebræ. Professor Owen, in his lately
published treatise on “The Nature of Limbs,”—work charged with valuable
fact, and instinct with philosophy,—figures in his draught of the
archetypal skeleton of the vertebrata, the four vertebræ of the head, in
a form as unequivocally such as any of the vertebræ of the neck or body.

Now, for certain purposes of generalization, I doubt not that the
conception may have its value. There are in all nature and in all
philosophy certain central ideas of general bearing, round which, at
distances less or more remote, the subordinate and particular ideas
arrange themselves,

    “Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb.”

In the classifications of the naturalist, for instance, all _species_
range round some central _generic_ idea; all genera round some central
idea, to which we give the name of _order_; all orders round some central
idea of _class_; all classes round some central idea of _division_;
and all divisions round the interior central idea which constitutes
a _kingdom_. Sir Joshua Reynolds forms his theory of beauty on this
principle of central ideas. “Every species of the animal, as well as
of the vegetable creation,” he remarks, “may be said to have a fixed
or determinate form, towards which nature is continually inclining,
like various lines terminating in a centre; or it may be compared to
pendulums vibrating in different directions over one central point,
which they all cross, though only one of their number passes through
any other point.” He instances, in illustrating his theory, the Grecian
_beau ideal_ of the human nose, as seen in the statues of the Greek
deities. It formed a straight line; whereas all deformity of nose is of
a convex or concave character, and occasioned by either a rising above
or a sinking below this medial line of beauty. And it may be of use, as
it is unquestionably of interest, to conceive, after this manner, of a
certain type of skeleton, embodying, as it were, the central or primary
type of all vertebral skeletons, and consisting of a double range of
rings, united by the bodies of the vertebræ, as the two rings of a
figure 8 are united at their point of junction; the upper ring forming
the enclosure of the brain,—spinal, and cephalic; the lower that of
the viscera,—respiratory, circulatory, and digestive. Such is the idea
embodied in Professor Owen’s archetypal skeleton. It is a series of
vertebræ composing double rings,—their _brain_-rings comparatively small
in the vertebræ of the trunk, but of much greater size in the vertebræ
of the head. But it must not be forgotten, that central ideas, however
necessary to the classification of the naturalist, are not historic
facts. We may safely hold, with the philosophic painter, that the outline
of the typical human nose is a straight line; but it would be very
unsafe to hold, as a consequence, that the first men had all straight
noses. And when we find it urged by at least one eminent assertor of the
development hypothesis,—Professor Oken,—that light was the main agent in
developing the substance of nerve,—that the nerves, ranged in pairs, in
turn developed the vertebræ, each vertebra being but “the periphery or
envelope of a pair of nerves,”—and that the nerves of those four senses
of smell, sight, taste, and hearing, which, according to the Professor,
“make up the head,” originated the four cranial vertebræ which constitute
the skull,—it becomes us to test the central idea, thus converted into a
sort of historic myth, by the realities of actual history. What, then,
let us inquire, is the real history of the cerebral development of the
vertebrata, as recorded in the rocks of the earlier geologic periods?

[Illustration: Fig. 7.

_Osseous points of placoid cranium._[12]

(Mag. twelve diameters)]

Though the vertebrata existed in the ichthyic form throughout the vastly
extended Silurian period, we find in that system no remains of the
cranium: the Silurian fishes _seem_, as has been already said, (page
53,) to have been exclusively Placoid, and the purely cartilaginous box
formed by nature for the protection of the brain in this order has in
no case been preserved. Teeth, and, in at least one or two instances,
the minute jaws over which they were planted have been found, but no
portion of the skull. We know, however, that in the fishes of the same
order which now exist, the cranium consists of one undivided piece of a
cartilaginous substance, set thickly over its outer surface with minute
polygonal points of bone, (fig. 7,) composed internally of star-like
rays, that radiate from the centre of ossification, and that present, in
consequence, seen through a microscope, the appearance of the polygonal
cells of a coral of the genus Astrea. The pattern induced is that of
stars set within polygons. Along the sides or top of this unbroken
cranial box, that exhibits no mark of suture, we find the perforations
through which the nerves of smell, sight, taste, and hearing passed from
the brain outwards, and see that they have failed to originate distinct
vertebral envelopes for themselves;—they all lodge in one undivided
mansion-house, and have merely separate doors. We find, further, that
the homotypal _ribs_ of the entire cranium consist, not of four, but
simply of a single pair, attached to the occiput, and which serves both
to suspend the jaws, upper and nether, in their place under the middle of
the head, and to lend support to the hyoid and branchial framework; while
the scapular ring we find existing, as in the higher vertebrata, not as
a cerebral, but as a cervical or dorsal appendage. In the wide range
of the animal kingdom there are scarce any two pieces of organization
that less resemble one another in form than the vertebræ of the placoids
resemble their skulls; and the difference is not merely external, but
extends to even their internal construction. In both skull and vertebræ
we detect an union of bone and cartilage; but the bone of each vertebra
forms an internal continuous nucleus, round which the cartilage is
arranged, whereas in the skulls it is the cartilage that is internal, and
the bone is spread in granular points over it. If we dip the body of one
of the dorsal vertebræ of a herring into melted wax, and then withdraw
it, we will find it to represent in its crusted state the vertebral
centrum of a Placoid,—soft without, and osseous within; but in order
to represent the placoid skull, we would have first to mould it out of
one unbroken piece of wax, and then to cover it over with a priming of
bone-dust. And such is the effect of this arrangement, that, while the
skull of a Placoid, exposed to a red heat, falls into dust, from the
circumstance that the supporting framework on which the granular bone
was arranged perishes in the fire, the vertebral centrum, whose internal
framework is itself bone, and so _not_ perishable, comes out in a state
of beautiful entireness,—resembling in the thornback a squat sand-glass,
elegantly fenced round by the lateral pillars, (fig. 8, _b_;) and in
the dog-fish (_a_) a more elongated sand-glass, in which the lateral
pillars are wanting. Such are the heads and vertebral joints of the
existing Placoids; and such, reasoning from analogy, seem to have been
the character and construction of the heads and vertebral joints of the
Placoids of the Silurian period,—earliest-born of the Vertebrata.

[Illustration: Fig. 8.

a. _Osseous centrum of Spinax Acanthias._

b. _Osseous centrum of Raja clavata._

(Nat. size.)]

The most ancient brain-bearing craniums that have come down to us
in the fossil state, are those of the Ganoids of the Lower Old Red
Sandstone; and in these fishes the true skull appears to have been
as entirely a simple cartilaginous box, as that of the Placoids of
either the Silurian period or of the present time, or of those existing
Ganoids, the sturgeons. In the Lower Old Red genera _Cheiracanthus_ and
_Diplacanthus_, though the heads are frequently preserved as amorphous
masses of colored matter, we detect no trace of internal bone, save
perhaps in the gill-covers of the first-named genus, which were fringed
by from eighteen to twenty minute osseous rays. The cranium seems to have
been covered, as in the shark family, by skin, and the skin by minute
shagreen-like scales; and all of the interior cerebral framework which
appears underneath exists simply as faint impressions of an undivided
body, covered by what seem to be osseous points,—the bony molecules,
it is probable, which encrusted the cartilage. The jaws, in the better
specimens, are also preserved in the same doubtful style, and this state
of keeping is the common one in deposits in which every true bone,
however delicate, presents an outline as sharp as when it occupied its
place in the living animal. The dermal or skin-skeleton of both genera,
which consisted, as has been shown (pages 55, 56) of shagreen-like
osseous scales and slender spines, both brilliantly enamelled, is
preserved entire; where as the interior framework of the head exists as
mere point speckled impressions; and the inference appears unavoidable
that parts which so invariably differ in their state of keeping now, must
have essentially differed in their substance originally.

[Illustration: Fig. 9.

a. _Portion of caudal fin of Cheiracanthus._[13]

b. _Portion of caudal fin of Cheirolepis Cummingiæ._

(Mag. three diameters.)]

Now, in the _Cheiracanthus_ we detect the first faint indications of
a peculiar arrangement of the dermal skeleton, in relation to certain
parts of the skeleton within, which—greatly more developed in some of its
contemporaries—led to important results in the general structure of these
Ganoids, and furnishes the true key to the character of the early ganoid
head. In such of the existing Placoids as I have had an opportunity of
examining, the only portions of the dermal skeleton of bone which conform
in their arrangement to portions of the interior skeleton of cartilage,
are the teeth, which are always laid on a base of skin right over the
jaws: there is also an approximation to arrangement of a corresponding
kind, though a distant one, in those hook-armed tubercles of certain
species of rays which run along the vertebral column; but in the shagreen
by which the creatures are covered I have been able to detect no such
arrangement. Whether it occurs on the fins, the body, or the head, or in
the scale form, or in that of the prickle, it manifests the same careless
irregularity. And on the head and body of the _Cheiracanthus_, and on
all its fins save one, the shagreen-like scales, though laid down more
symmetrically in lines than true shagreen, manifested an equal absence
of arrangement in relation to the framework within. On that one fin,
however;—the caudal,—the scales, passing from their ordinary rhomboidal
to a more rectangular form, ranged themselves in right lines over the
internal rays, (fig. 9, _a_,) and imparted to these such strength as a
splint of wood or whalebone fastened over a fractured toe or finger
imparts to the injured digit,—a provision which was probably rendered
necessary in the case of this important organ of motion, from the
circumstance that it was the only fin which the creature possessed that
was not strengthened and protected anteriorly by a strong spine. In the
_Cheirolepis_,—a contemporary fish, characterized, like its cogeners the
_Cheiracanthus_ and _Diplacanthus_, by shagreen-like scales, but in which
the spines were wanting,—we find a farther development of the provision.
In all the fins the richly-enamelled dermal-covering was arranged in
lines over the rays, (fig. 9, _b_;) and the scale, which assumes in the
fins, like the scales on the tail of the _Cheiracanthus_, though somewhat
more irregularly, a rectangular shape, is so considerably elongated,
that it assumes for its normal character as a scale, that of the joint
of an external ray. A similar arrangement of external protection takes
place in this genus over the bones of the head; the cartilaginous jaws
receive their osseous dermal covering, and, with these, the hyoid bones,
the opercules, and the cranium. And it is in these dermal plates,
which covered an interior skull, of which, save in one genus,—the
_Dipterus_,—not a vestige remains in any of the Old Red fishes thus
protected, that we first trace what seem to be the homologues of the
cranial bones of the osseous fishes,—at least their homologues so far as
the _cuticular_ can represent the _internal_. They appear for the first
time, not as modified spinous processes, broadened, as in the carapace
of the Chelonians, into _osseous_ plates, but like those _corneous_
external plates of this order of reptiles, (known in one species as the
tortoise-shell of commerce,) the origin of which is purely cuticular,
and which evince so little correspondence in their divisions with the
sutures of the bones on which they rest, that they have been instanced,
in their relation to the joinings beneath, as admirable illustrations of
the _cross-banding_ of the mechanician.

In the heads of the osseous fishes, the cranium proper, though
consisting, like the skulls of birds, reptiles, and mammals, of several
bones, exists from snout to nape, and from mastoid to mastoid, as
one unbroken box; whereas all the other bones of the head, such as
the maxillaries and intermaxillaries, the lower jaws, the opercular
appendages, the branchial arches, and the branchiostegous rays,
are connected but by muscle and ligament, and fall apart under the
putrefactive influences, or in the process of boiling. This unbroken box,
which consists, in the cod, of twenty-five bones, is the _homologue_ of
that cranial box of the Placoids which consists of one entire piece, and
the _homotype_, according to Oken, of the bodies and spinal processes of
four vertebræ; while the looser bones which drop away represent their
_ribs_. The upper surface of the box,—that extending from the nasal
bone to the nape,—is the only part over which a dermal buckler could
be laid, as it is the only part with which the external skin comes in
contact; and so it is between this upper surface and the cranial bucklers
of the earlier Ganoids that we have to institute comparisons. For it
is a curious fact, that, with the exception of the Old Red genera
_Acanthodus_, _Cheiracanthus_, and _Diplacanthus_,[14] all the Ganoids of
the period in which Ganoids first appear _have_ dermal bucklers placed
right over their true skulls, and that these, though as united in their
parts as the bones proper to the cranium in quadrupeds and fishes, are
composed of several pieces, furnished each with its independent centre
of ossification. The Dipterians, the Cœlacanths, the Cephalaspians, and
at least one genus placed rather doubtfully among the Acanths,—the genus
_Cheirolepis_,—all possessed cranial bucklers extending from the nape to
the snout, in which the plates, various, in the several genera, in form
and position, were fast _soldered_ together, though in every instance the
lines of suture were distinctly marked.

[Illustration: Fig. 10.

UPPER SURFACE OF CRANIUM OF COD.[15]

A, _Occipital bone_. B, B, _Parietals_. C, C, C, _Superior frontal_. D,
D, _Anterior frontal_. I, _Nasal bone_. F, F, _Posterior frontals_. E, E,
_Mastoid bones_. 2, 2, _Eye orbits_. a, a, _Par-occipital bones_.]

On each side of this external cranium the various cerebral plates, like
the corresponding cerebral _ribs_ in the osseous fishes, were free, at
least not anchylosed together; and some of their number unequivocally
performed, in part at least, the functions of two of these cerebral
ribs, viz. the upper and under jaws, with the functions of the opercular
appendages attached to the latter. In the cod, as in most other osseous
fishes, the upper portion of the cranium consists of thirteen bones,
which represent, however, only seven bones in the human skull,—the nasal,
the frontal, the two parietal, the occipital, and one-half the two
temporal bones. And whereas in man, and in most of the mammals, there are
four of these placed in the medial line,—the four which, according to the
assertors of the vertebral theory, form the spinal crests of the four
cerebral vertebræ,—in the cod there are but three. The super-occipital
bone, A, (fig. 10,) pieces on to the superior frontal, C, C, C; and the
parietals, B, B, which in the human subject from the upper and middle
portions of the cranial vault, are thrust out laterally and posteriorly,
and take their places, in a subordinate capacity, on each side of the
super-occipital. This is not an invariable arrangement among fishes;—in
the carp genus, for instance, the parietals assume their proper medial
place between the occipital and frontal bones; but so very general is
the displacement, that Professor Owen regards it as characteristic of
the great ichthyic class, and as the first example in the vertebrata,
reckoning from the lower forms upwards, of a sort of natural dislocation
among the bones,—“a modification,” he remarks, “which, sometimes
accompanied by great change of place, has tended most to obscure the
essential nature of parts, and their true relations to the archetype.”

[Illustration: Fig. 11.

CRANIAL BUCKLER OF COCCOSTEUS DECIPIENS.

a, a, _Points of attachment to the cuirass which covered the upper part
of the creature’s body_.]

Of all the cerebral bucklers of the first ganoid period, that which
best bears comparison with the cranial front of the cod is the buckler
of the _Coccosteus_, (fig. 11.) The general proportions of this portion
of the ancient Cephalaspian head differ very considerably from those of
the corresponding part in the modern cycloid one; but in their larger
divisions, the modern and the ancient answer bone to bone. Three osseous
plates in the _Coccosteus_, A, C, I, the homologues, apparently, of the
occipital, frontal, and nasal bones, range along the medial line. The
apparent homologues of the parietals, B, B, occupy the same position
of lateral displacement as the parietals of the cod and of so many
other fishes. The posterior frontals, F, and the anterior frontals,
D, also occupy places relatively the same, though the latter, which
are of greater proportional size, encroach much further, laterally and
posteriorly, on the superior frontal C, C, C, and sweep entirely round
the upper half of the eye orbits, 2, 2. The apparent homologue of the
mastoid bone, E, which also occupies its proper place, joins posteriorly
to a little plate, a, imperfectly separated in most specimens from the
parietal, but which seems to represent the par-occipital bone; and it is
a curious circumstance, that as, in many of the osseous fishes, it is to
these bones that the forks of the scapular arch are attached, they unite
in the _Coccosteus_ in furnishing, in like manner, a point of attachment
to the cuirass which covered the upper part of the creature’s body. Of
the true internal skull of the _Coccosteus_ there remains not a vestige
Like that of the sturgeon, it must have been a perishable cartilaginous
box.

[Illustration: Fig. 12.

CRANIAL BUCKLER OF OSTEOLEPIS.]

In the _Osteolepis_,—an animal the whole of whose external head I have,
at an expense of some labor, and from the examination of many specimens,
been enabled to restore,—the cranial buckler (fig. 12) was divided in a
more arbitrary style; and we find that an element of uncertainty mingles
with our inferences regarding it, from the circumstance that some of its
lines of division, especially in the frontal half, were not real sutures,
but formed merely a kind of surface-tatooing, resorted to as if for
purposes of ornament. The cranial buckler of the _Asterolepis_ exhibited,
as I shall afterwards have occasion to show, a similar peculiarity;—both
had their pseudo-sutures, resembling those false joints introduced by the
architect into his rusticated basements, in order to impart the necessary
aspect of regularity to what is technically termed the coursing and
banding of the fabric. We can however, determine, notwithstanding the
induced obscurity that the buckler of the _Osteolepis_ was divided
transversely in the middle into two main parts or segments,—an occipital
part, C, and a frontal part, A; and that the occipital segment _seems_
to include also the parietal and mastoid plates, and the frontal segment
to comprise, with its own proper plates, not only the nasal plate, but
also the representative of the anterior part of the vomer. All, however,
is obscure. But in our uncertainty regarding the homologies of the
divisions of this dermal buckler, let us not forget the homology of the
buckler itself, as a whole, with the upper surface of the true cranium
in the osseous fishes. Though frequently crushed and broken, it exists
in all the finer specimens of my collection as a symmetrically arranged
collocation of enamelled plates, as firmly united into one piece,
though they all indicate their distinct centres of ossification, as the
corresponding surface of the cranium in the carp or cod. The lateral
curves in the frontal part immediately opposite the lozenge-shaped plate
in the centre, show the position of the eyes, which were placed in this
genus, as in some of the carnivorous turtles, immediately over the
mouth,—an arrangement common to almost all the Ganoids of the Lower Old
Red Sandstone. The nearly semicircular termination of the buckler formed
the creature’s snout; and in the _Osteolepis_, as in the _Glyptolepis_
and the _Diplopterus_, it was armed on the under side, like the vomer of
so many of the osseous fishes, with sharp teeth. Some of my specimens
indicate the nasal openings a little in advance of the eyes. The nape of
the creature was covered by three detached plates, (9, 9, 9, fig. 13,)
which rested upon anterior dorsal scales, and whose homologies, in the
osseous fishes, may possibly be found in those bones which, uniting
the shoulder-bones to the head, complete the scapular belt or ring. The
operculum we find represented by a single plate (8) which had attached to
it, as its sub-operculum, a plate (13) of nearly equal size, (see figs.
14 and 15.) Four small plates (2, 4, 5) formed the under curve of the
eyes, described in many of the osseous fishes by a chain of small bones
or ossicles; a considerably larger plate (6) occupied the place of the
preopercular bone; while the intermaxillaries had their representatives
in well-marked plates, (3, 3,) which, in the genera _Osteolepis_,
_Diplopterus_, and _Glyptolepis_, we find bristling so thickly with
teeth along their lower edges, as to remind us of the miniature saws
employed by the joiner in cutting out circular holes. These external
intermaxillaries did not, as in the perch or cod, meet in front of the
nasal bone and vomer, but joined on at the side, a little in advance of
the eyes, leaving the rounded termination of the cranial buckler, which,
like the intermaxillaries, was thickly fringed with teeth, to form, as
has been already said, the creature’s snout.

[Illustration: Fig. 13.

UPPER PART OF HEAD OF OSTEOLEPIS.]

The under jaws (10)—strongly-marked bones in at least all the Dipterian
and Cœlacanth genera—we find represented externally by massy plates,
bearing, like those of the upper jaw, their range of teeth. As shown
in a well-preserved specimen of the lower jaw of _Holoptychius_, in
my possession, they were boxes of bone enclosing a bulky nucleus of
cartilage, which, in approaching towards the condyloid process, where
great strength was necessary, was thickly traversed by osseous cancelli,
and passed at the joint into true bone. It is in the under jaws of the
earlier Ganoids that we first detect a true union of the external with
the internal skeleton,—of the bony plates and teeth, which were _mere
plates and teeth of the skin_, with the osseous, granular walls which
enclosed at least all the larger pieces of the cartilaginous framework
of the interior. The jaws of the Rays and Sharks, formed of cartilage,
and fenced round on their sides and edges by their thin coverings of
polygonal, bony points, are wholly internal and skin-covered; whereas
the teeth, which rest on the soft cuticular integument right over them,
are as purely dermal as the surrounding shagreen. Teeth and shagreen
may, we find, be alike stripped off with the skin. Now, in the earlier
ganoidal jaw, two sides of the osseous box which it composed,—its outer
and under sides,—were mere dermal plates, representative of the skin
of the placoids, or of their shagreen; while the other two,—its upper
and inner sides,—seem to have been developments of the interior osseous
walls which covered the endo-skeletal cartilage. Nor is it unworthy of
notice, that the reptile fishes of the period had their _ichthyic_ teeth
ranged along the edge of an exterior _dermal_ plate which covered the
outer side of the jaw; whereas their _reptile_ teeth were planted on
a plate, apparently of interior development, which covered its upper
edge. It is further worthy of remark, that while the teeth of the dermal
plate,—themselves also dermal,—seem as if they had grown out of it, and
formed part of it,—just as the teeth of the Placoids grew out of the
skin on which they rest,—the _reptile_ teeth within rested in shallow
pits,—the first faint indications of true sockets.

[Illustration: Fig. 14.

UNDER PART OF HEAD OF OSTEOLEPIS.[16]]

[Illustration: Fig. 15.

HEAD OF OSTEOLEPIS, SEEN IN PROFILE.]

That space included within the arch formed by the sweep of the under
jaws, which we find occupied in the osseous fishes by the hyoid bones and
the branchiostegous rays, was filled up externally, in the Dipterians
and Cœlacanths, and in at least two genera of Cephalaspians, by dermal
plates; in some genera, such as the _Diplopterus_, by three plates; in
others, such as the _Holoptychius_ and _Glyptolepis_, by two; and in
the _Asterolepis_, as we shall afterwards see, by but a single plate.
In the _Osteolepis_ these plates were increased to five in number, by
the little plates 14, 14, (fig. 14,) which, however, may have been also
present in the _Diplopterus_, though my specimens fail to show them. The
general arrangement was of much elegance,—an elegance, however, which,
in the accompanying restorations, the dislocation of the free plates,
drawn apart to indicate their detached character, somewhat tends to
obscure. But the position of the eyes must have imparted to the animal
a sinister reptile-like aspect. The profile, (fig. 15,) the result, not
of a chance-drawn outline, arbitrarily filled up, but produced by the
careful arrangement in their proper places of actually existing plates,
serves to show how perfectly the dermo-skeletal parts of the creature
were developed. Some of the animals with which we are best acquainted, if
represented by but their cuticular skeleton, would appear simply as sets
of hoofs and horns. Even the tortoise or pengolin would present about the
head and limbs their gaps and missing portions; but the dermo-skeleton
of the _Osteolepis_, composed of solid bone, and burnished with enamel,
exhibited the outline of the fish entire, and, with the exception of
the eye, the filling up of all its external parts. Presenting outside,
in its original state, no fragment of skin or membrane, and with even
its most flexible organs sheathed in enamelled bone, the _Osteolepis_
must have very much resembled a fish carved in ivory; and, though so
effectually covered, it would have appeared, from the circumstance, that
it wore almost all its bone outside, as naked as the human teeth.

[Illustration: Fig. 16.

CRANIAL BUCKLER OF DIPLOPTERUS.]

[Illustration: Fig. 17.

CRANIAL BUCKLER OF DIPLOPTERUS.]

The cranial buckler of the _Diplopterus_ (fig. 16) somewhat resembled
that of its fellow-dipterian the _Osteolepis_, but exhibited greater
elegance of outline. My first perfect specimen, which I owe to the
kindness of Mr. John Miller, of Thurso, an intelligent geologist of the
north, reminded me, as it glittered in jet-black enamel on its ground
of pale gray, of those Roman cuirasses which one sees in old prints,
impaled on stakes, as the central objects in warlike trophies formed
of spoils taken in battle. The rounded snout represented the chest and
shoulders, the middle portion the waist, and the expansion at the nape
the piece of dress attached, which, like the Highland kilt, fell adown
the thighs. The addition of a fragment of a sleeve, suspended a little
over the eye orbits, 2, 2, seemed all that was necessary in order to
render the resemblance complete. But as I disinterred the buried edges of
the specimen with a graver, the form, though it grew still more elegant,
became less that of the ancient coat of armor; the snout expanded into
a semicircle; the eye orbits gradually deepened; and the entire fossil
became not particularly like any thing but the thing it once was,—the
cranial buckler of the _Diplopterus_. The print (fig. 17) exhibits its
true form. It consists of two main divisions, occipital (A) and frontal,
(C, fig. 16;) and in each of these we find a pair of smaller divisions,
with what seem to be indications of yet further division, marked, not by
lines, but by dots; though I have hitherto failed to determine whether
the plates which these last indicate possess their independent centres of
ossification. Not unfrequently, however, has the comparative anatomist
to seek the analogues of two bones in one; nor is it at least _more_
difficult to trace in the faint divisions of the cranial buckler of the
_Diplopterus_, the homologues of the occipital, frontal, parietal,
mastoid, and nasal bones, than to recognize the representatives of the
carpals of the middle and ring finger in man, in the cannon bone of the
fore leg of the ox. I may mention in passing, that the little central
plate of the frontal division, (1, fig. 16,) which so nearly corresponds
with that of the _Osteolepis_, occurred, though with considerable
variations of form and homology, and some slight difference of position,
in all the Ganoids of the Old Red Sandstone whose craniums were covered
with an osseous buckler, and that its place was always either immediately
between the eyes or a very little over them. Its never-failing recurrence
shows that it must have had _some_ meaning, though it may be difficult
to say what. In the _Coccosteus_ it takes the form of the male dovetail,
which united the nasal plate or snout to the plate representative
of the superior frontal. Of the cartilaginous box which formed the
interior skull of either _Osteolepis_, or _Diplopterus_, or, with but
one exception, of the interior skulls of any of their contemporaries, no
trace, as I have said, has yet been detected. The solitary exception in
the case is, however, one of singular interest.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.

a. _Palatal dart-head._

b. _Group of palatal teeth._]

In a collection of miscellaneous fragments sent me by Mr. Dick from the
rocks of Thurso, I detected patches of palatal teeth ranged in nearly the
quadratures of circles, and which radiated outwards from the rectangular
angle or centre, (fig. 18, _b_.) And with the patches there occurred
plates exactly resembling the barbed head of a dart, (_a_,) with which
I had been previously acquainted, though I had failed to determine their
character or place. The excellent state of keeping of some of Mr. Dick’s
specimens now enabled me to trace the patches with the dart-head, and
several other plates, to a curious piece of palatal mechanism, ranged
along the base of a ganoid cranium, covered externally by a brightly
enamelled buckler, and to ascertain the order in which patches and plates
occurred. And then, though not without some labor, I succeeded in tracing
the buckler with which they were associated to the _Dipterus_,—a fish
which, though it has engaged the attention of both Cuvier and Agassiz,
has not yet been adequately restored. It is on an ill-preserved Orkney
specimen of the cranial buckler of this Ganoid that the ichthyologist has
founded his genus _Polyphractus_; while groupes of its palatal teeth from
the Old Red of Russia he refers to a supposed Placoid,—the _Ctenodus_.
But in the earlier stages of palæontological research, mistakes of this
character are wholly unavoidable. The palæontologist who did avoid them
would be either very unobservant, or at once very rash and very fortunate
in his guesses. If, ere an entire skeleton of the _Ichthyosaurus_
had turned up, there had been found in different localities, in the
Liasic formation, a beak like that of a porpoise, teeth like that of
a crocodile, a head and sternum like that of a lizard, paddles like
those of a cetacean, and vertebræ like those of a fish, it would have
been greatly more judicious, and more in accordance with the existing
analogies, to have erected, provisionally at least, places specifically,
or even generically separated, in which to range the separate pieces,
than to hold that they had all united in one anomalous genus; though such
was actually the fact. And Agassiz, in erecting three distinct genera
out of the fragments of a single genus, has in reality acted at once
more prudently and more intelligently than if he had avoided the error
by rashly uniting parts which in their separate state indicate no tie of
connection.

[Illustration: Fig. 19.

CRANIAL BUCKLER OF DIPTERUS.]

[Illustration: Fig. 20.

BASE OF CRANIUM OF DIPTERUS.]

The cranial buckler of the _Dipterus_ (fig. 19) was, like that of the
_Diplopterus_, of great beauty. In some of the finer specimens, we find
the enamel ornately tatooed, within the more strongly-marked divisions,
by delicately traced lines, waved and bent, as if upon the principle
of Hogarth; and though the lateral plates are numerous and small, and
defy the homologies, we may trace in those of the central line, from the
snout to the nape, what seem to be the representatives of the frontal,
parietal, and occipital bones,—the parietals ranging, as in the skull
of the carp and in that of most of the mammals, in their proper place
in the medial line. But the under surface of the cranium, armed, as on
the upper surface, with plates of bone, exhibited an arrangement still
more peculiar, (fig. 20.) Its rectangular patches of palatal teeth, its
curious dart-like bone, placed immediately behind these, and attached,
as the dart-head is attached to the handle, to a broad lozenge-shaped
plate, with two strong osseous processes projecting on either side, forms
such a _tout ensemble_ as is unique among fishes. Even here, however,
there may be traced at least a shade of homological resemblance to the
bones which form the base of the osseous skull. The single lozenge-shaped
plate, (A,) with its dart-head, occupies the place of the basi-occipital
bone; the posterior portion of the vomer seems represented by a strong
bony ridge, extending towards the snout; two separate bones, each bearing
one of the angular patches of teeth, corresponds to the sphenoid bone
and its alæ; and attached laterally to each of these there is the strong
projecting bone, on which the lower jaw appears to have hinged, and
which apparently represents the lower part of the temporal bone. Not less
singular was the form of the creature’s under jaw, (fig. 21.) I know no
other fish-jaw, whether of the recent or the extinct races, that might
be so readily mistaken for that of a quadruped. It exhibits not only the
condyloid, but also the coronoid processes; and, save that it broadens
on its upper edges, where in mammals the grinders are placed, so as to
furnish field enough for angular patches of teeth, which correspond with
the angular patches in the palate, it might be regarded, found detached,
as at least a reptilian, if not mammalian, bone. The disposition of
the palatal teeth of the _Dipterus_ will scarce fail to remind the
mechanist of the style of grooving resorted to in the formation of
mill-stones for the grinding of flour; nor is it wholly improbable that,
in correspondence with the rotatory motion of the stones to which the
grooving is specially adapted, jaws so hinged may have possessed some
such power of lateral motion as that exemplified by the human subject in
the use of the molar teeth.

[Illustration: Fig. 21.

UNDER JAW OF DIPTERUS.]

The protection afforded by the osseous covering of both the upper and
under surface of the cranium of this ichthyolite has resulted, in
several instances, in the preservation, though always in a greatly
compressed state, of the cranium itself, and the consequent exhibition
of two very important cranial cavities, the brain-pan proper, and the
passage through which the spinal cord passed into the brain. In the
sturgeon the brain occupies nearly the middle of the head; and there
is a considerable part of the occipital region traversed by the spine
in a curved channel, which, seen in profile, appears wide at the nape,
but considerably narrower where it enters the brain-pan, and altogether
very much resembling the interior of a miniature hunting-horn. And such
exactly was the arrangement of the greater cavities in the head of the
_Dipterus_. The portion of the cranium which was overlaid by what may be
regarded as the occipital plate was traversed by a cavity shaped like a
Lilliputian bugle-horn; while the hollow in which the brain was lodged
lay under the two parietal plates, and the little elliptical plate in
the centre. The accompanying print, (fig. 22,) though of but slight
show, may be regarded by the reader with some little interest, as a not
inadequate representation of the most ancient brain-pan on which human
eye has yet looked,—as, in short, the type of cell in which, myriads of
ages ago, in at least one genus, that mysterious substance was lodged, on
whose place and development so very much in the scheme of creation was
destined to depend. The specimen from which the figure is taken was laid
open laterally by chance exposure to the waves on the shores of Thurso,
another specimen, cut longitudinally by the saw of the lapidary, yields a
similar section, but greatly more compressed in the cavities; on which,
of course, as unsupported hollows, the compression to which the entire
cranium had been exposed chiefly acted. When the top and bottom of a
box are violently forced together, it is the empty space which the box
encloses that is annihilated in consequence of the violence.

[Illustration: Fig. 22.

LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF HEAD OF DIPTERUS]

It is deserving of notice, that the analogies of the cranial cavities
in this ancient Ganoid should point so directly on the cranial cavities
of that special Ganoid of the present time which unites a true skull of
cartilage to a dermal skull of osseous plates,—a circumstance strongly
corroborative of the general evidence, negative and positive, on which
I have concluded that the true skulls of the first Ganoids were also
cartilaginous. It is further worthy of observation, that in all the
sections of the cranium of _Dipterus_ which I have yet examined, the
internal line is continuous, as in the Placoids, from nape to snout,
and that the true skull presents no trace of those cerebral vertebræ of
which skulls are regarded by Oken and his disciples as developments.
Historically at least, the progress of the ichthyic head seems to have
been a progress from simple cartilaginous boxes to cartilaginous boxes
covered with osseous plates, that performed the functions whether active
or passive, of internal bones; and then from external plates to the
interior bones which the plates had previously represented, and whose
proper work they had done.

The principle which rendered it necessary that the divisions which exist
in the dermal skulls of the first Ganoids should so closely correspond
with the divisions which exist in the internal skulls of the osseous
fishes of a greatly later period, does not seem to lie far from the
surface. Of the solid parts of the ichthyic head, a certain set of
pieces afford protection to the brain and cerebral nerves, and to some
of the organs of the senses, such as those of seeing and hearing; while
another certain set of pieces constitute the framework through which an
important class of functions, manducatory and respiratory, are performed.
The protective bones of merely passive function are fixed, whereas the
bones of active function, such as the jaws, the osseous framework of the
opercules, and the hyoid bones, are to the necessary extent free, _i.
e._ capable of independent motion. Of course, the detached character
necessary to the free cerebral bones would be equally necessary in
cerebral plates united dermally to the pieces of the cartilaginous
framework, which performed in the ancient fish the functions of these
free bones. And hence jaw plates, opercular plates, and hyoid plates,
whose homological relation with recent jaws and opercular and hyoid
bones cannot be mistaken. They were operative in performing identical
mechanical functions, and had to exist, in consequence, in identical
mechanical conditions. And an equally simple, though somewhat different
principle, seems to have regulated the divisions of the fixed cranial
bucklers of the Old Red Ganoids, and to have determined their homologies
with the fixed cerebral bones of the osseous fishes.

These cranial bucklers, extending from nape to snout, protected the
exposed upper surface of the cartilaginous skull, and conformed to it in
shape, as a helmet conforms to the shape of the head, or a breast-plate
to the shape of the chest. And as the cartilaginous heads resembled in
general outline the osseous ones, the buckler which covered their upper
surface resembled in general outline the upper surface of the osseous
skull. It was in no case entirely a flat plate; but in every species
rounded over the snout and in most species at the sides; and so, in
order that its characteristic proportions might be preserved throughout
the various stages of growth in the head which it covered, it had to be
formed from several distinct centres of ossification, and to extend in
area around the edges of the plates originated from these. The workman
finds no difficulty in adding to the size of a piece of straight wall,
whether by heightening or lengthening it; but he cannot add to the size
of a dome or arch, without first taking it down, and then erecting it
anew on a larger scale. In the domes and arches of the animal kingdom,
the problem is solved by building them up of distinct pieces, few or
many, according to the demands of the figure which they compose, and
rendering these pieces capable of increase along their edges. It is on
this principle that the Cystidea, the Echinidæ, the Chelonian carapace
and plastron, and the skulls of the osseous Vertebrata, are constructed.
It is also the principle on which the cranial bucklers of the ancient
Ganoids were formed.[17] And from the general resemblance in figure of
these bucklers to the upper surface of the osseous skull, the separate
parts necessary for the building up of the one were anticipated, by many
ages, in the building up of the other; just as we find external arches
of stone which were erected two thousand years ago, constructed on the
same principle, and relatively of the same parts, as internal arches of
brick built in the present age. Doubtless, however, with this mechanical
necessity for correspondence of parts in the formation of corresponding
erections, there may have mingled that regard for typical resemblance
which seems so marked a characteristic of the _style_, if I may so
express myself, in which the Divine Architect gives expression to his
ideas. The external osseous buckler He divided after the general pattern
which was to be exemplified, in latter times, in the divisions of the
internal osseous skull; as if in illustration of that “ideal exemplar”
which dwelt in his mind from eternity, and on the palpable existence
of which sober science has based deductions identical in their scope
and bearing with some of the sublimest doctrines of the theologian.
“The recognition,” says Professor Owen, “of an ideal exemplar for the
vertebrated animals, proves that the knowledge of such a being as man
existed before man appeared; for the Divine mind which planned the
archetype also foreknew all its modifications. The archetypal idea was
manifested in the flesh, under divers such modifications, upon this
planet, long prior to the existence of those animal species that actually
exemplify it.”

But while we find place in that geological history in which every
character is an organism, for the “ideal exemplar” of Professor Owen,
we find _no_ place in it for the vertebræ-developed skull of Professor
Oken. The true genealogy of the head runs in an entirely different line.
The nerves of the cerebral senses did not, we find, originate cerebral
vertebræ, seeing that the heads of the first and second geologic periods
had their cerebral nerves, but _not_ their cerebral vertebræ; and that
what are regarded as cerebral-vertebræ appear for the first time, not in
the early fishes, but in the reptiles of the Coal formation. The line of
succession through the fish, indicated by the Continental assertor of
the development hypothesis, is a line cut off. All the existing evidence
conspires to show that the placoid heads of the Silurian system were,
like the placoid heads of the recent period, mere cartilaginous boxes;
and that in the succeeding system there existed ganoidal heads, that
to the internal cartilaginous box added external plates of bone, the
homologues, apparently,—so far at least as the merely cuticular could
be representative of the endo-skeletal,—of the opercular, maxillary,
frontal, and occipital bones in the osseous fishes of a long posterior
period,—fishes that were not ushered upon the scene until after the
appearance of the reptile in its highest forms and of even the marsupial
quadruped.




THE ASTEROLEPIS, ITS STRUCTURE, BULK, AND ASPECT.


With the reader, if he has accompanied me thus far, I shall now pass
on to the consideration of the remains of the _Asterolepis_. Our
preliminary acquaintance with the cerebral peculiarities of a few of
its less gigantic contemporaries will be found of use in enabling us to
determine regarding a class of somewhat resembling peculiarities which
characterized this hugest Ganoid of the Old Red Sandstone.

[Illustration: Fig. 24.

_Dermal tubercles of Asterolepis_

(Mag. two diameters.)]

The head of the _Asterolepis_, like the heads of all the other
Cœlacanths, and of all the Dipterians, was covered with osseous
plates,—its body with osseous scales; and, as I have already had occasion
to mention, it is from the star-like tubercles by which the cerebral
plates were fretted that M. Eichwald bestowed on the creature its
generic name. Agassiz has even erected species on certain varieties in
the pattern of the stars, as exhibited on detached fragments; but I am
far from being satisfied that we are to seek in their peculiarities of
style the characters by which the several species were distinguished.
The stellar form of the tubercle seems to have been its normal or most
perfect form as it was also, with certain modifications, that of the
tubercle of the _Coccosteus_ and _Pterichthys_; but its development as
a complete star was comparatively rare: in most cases the tubercles
existed without the rays,—frequently in the insulated pap-like shape,
but not rarely confluent, or of an elongated or bent form; and when to
these the characteristic rays were added, the stars produced were of a
rather eccentric order,—stars somewhat resembling the shadows of stars
seen in water. Individual specimens have already been found, on which, if
we recognize the form of the tubercle as a specific character, several
species might be erected. The accompanying wood-cut (fig. 24) represents,
from a Thurso specimen, what seems to be the true normal pattern of
these cerebral carvings. Seen in profile (_b_) the tubercles resemble
little hillocks, perforated at their base by single lines of thickly-set
caves; while seen from above, (_a_,) the narrow piers of bone by which
the caves are divided take the form of rays. The reader will scarce fail
to recognise in this print the coral _Monticularia_ of Lamarck, or to
detect, in at least the profile, the peculiarity which suggested the name.

[Illustration: Fig. 25.

SCALES OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(Nat. size.)

a. _Inner surface of scale._

b. _Exterior surface._]

[Illustration: Fig. 26.

PORTION OF CARVED SURFACE OF SCALE.

(Mag. four diameters.)]

The scales which covered the creature’s body (fig. 25) were, in
proportion to its size, considerably smaller and thinner than those
of the _Holoptychius_, which, however, they greatly resemble in their
general style of sculpture. Each, on the lower part of its exposed
field, was, we see, fretted by longitudinal anastomosing ridges, which,
in the upper part, break into detached angular tubercles, placed with
the apex downwards, and hollowed, leaf-like, in the centre; while that
covered portion which was overlaid by the scales immediately above we
find thickly pitted by microscopic hollows, that give to this part of the
field, viewed under a tolerably high magnifying power, a honeycombed
appearance. The central and lower parts of the interior surface of the
scale (_a_) are in most of the specimens irregularly roughened; while a
broad, smooth band, which runs along the top and sides, and seems to have
furnished the line of attachment to the creature’s body, is comparatively
smooth. The exterior carvings, though they demand the assistance of
the lens to see them aright, are of singular elegance and beauty; as
perhaps the accompanying wood-cut, (fig. 26,) which gives a magnified
view of a portion of the scale immediately above (_b_) from the middle
of the honeycombed field on the right side, to where the anastomosing
ridges bend gracefully in their descent, may in some degree serve to
show. I have seen a richly inlaid coat of mail, which was once worn by
the puissant Charles the Fifth; but its elaborate carvings, though they
belonged to the age of Benvenuto Cellini, were rude and unfinished,
compared with those which fretted the armor of the _Asterolepis_.

[Illustration: Fig. 27.

CRANIAL BUCKLER OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One fifth nat. size, linear.)]

The creature’s cranial buckler, which was of great size and strength,
might well be mistaken for the carapace of some Chelonian fish of no
inconsiderable bulk. The cranial bucklers of the larger Dipterians
were ample enough to have covered the corresponding part in the skulls
of our middle-sized market-fish, such as the haddock and whiting; the
buckler of a _Coccosteus_ of the extreme size would have covered, if
a little altered in shape, the upper surface of the skull of a cod,
but the cranial buckler of _Asterolepis_, from which the accompanying
wood-cut was taken, (fig. 27,) would have considerably more than covered
the corresponding part in the skull of a large horse; and I have at
least one specimen in my collection which would have fully covered
the front skull of an elephant. In the smaller specimens, the buckler
somewhat resembles a laborer’s shovel divested of its handle, and sorely
rust-eaten along its lower or cutting edge. It consisted of plates,
connected at the edges by flat squamous sutures, or, as a joiner might
perhaps say, _glued_ together in _bevelled_ joints. And in consequence
of this arrangement, the same plates which seem broad on the exterior
surface appear comparatively narrow on the interior one, and _vice
versa_; the occipital plate, (_a_,) which, running from the nape along
the centre of the buckler, occupies so considerable a space on its outer
surface, exhibits inside a superficies reduced at least one half. Like
nine tenths of its contemporaries, the _Asterolepis_ exhibits the little
central plate between the eyes; but the eye orbits, unlike those of the
_Coccosteus_, and of all the Dipterian genera, which were half-scooped
out of the cranial buckler, half-encircled by detached plates, were
placed completely within the field of the buckler,—a circumstance in
which they resemble the eye orbits of the _Pterichthys_, and, among
existing fish, those of the sea-wolf. The characteristic is also a
distinctive one in Cuvier’s second family of the Acanthopterygii,—the
“fishes with hard cheeks.” A deep line immediately over the eyes, which,
however, indicated no suture, but seems to have been merely ornamental,
forms a sort of rudely tatooed eyebrow; the marginal lines parallel to
the lateral edges of the buckler were also mere tatooings; but all the
others indicated joints which, though more or less anchylosed, had a
real existence. So flat was the surface, that the edge of a ruler rests
upon it, in my several specimens, both lengthwise and across; but it was
traversed by two flat ridges, which, stretching from the corners of the
latero-posterior, _i. e._ parietal, plates, (_b_, _b_,) converged at the
little plate between the eyes, while along the centre of the depressed
angle which they formed, a third ridge, equally flat with the others, ran
towards the same point of convergence from the nape. The three ridges,
when strongly relieved by a slant light, resemble not inadequately an
impression, on a large scale, of the Queen’s broad arrow.

[Illustration: Fig. 28.

INNER SURFACE OF CRANIAL BUCKLER OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One fifth nat. size, linear.)]

The inner surface of the cranial buckler of _Asterolepis_, (fig.
28,)—that which rested on the cartilaginous box which formed the
creature’s interior skull,—stands out in bolder relief from the stone
than its outer surface, and forms a more picturesque object. Like the
inner surfaces of the bucklers of _Coccosteus_ and _Pterichthys_, but
much more thickly than these, it was traversed by minute channelled
markings, somewhat resembling those striæ which may be detected in the
flatter bones of the ordinary fishes, and which seem in these to be
mere interstices between the osseous fibres. And in the plates, as in
the bones, they radiate from the centres of ossification, which are
comparatively dense and massy, towards the thinner overlapping edges.
These radiating lines are equally well marked in the cerebral bones of
the human fœtus. The three converging ridges on the outer surface we
find on the inner surface also,—the lateral ones a little bent in the
middle, but so directly opposite those outside, that the thickening of
the buckler which takes place along their line is at least as much a
consequence of their inner as of their outer elevation over the general
platform. A fourth bar ran transversely along the nape, and formed the
cross beam on which the others rested; for the three longitudinal ridges
may be properly regarded as three strong beams, which, extending from
the transverse beam at the nape to the front, where they converged like
the spokes of a wheel at the nave, gave to the cranial roof a degree of
support of which, from its great flatness, it may have stood in need. In
cranial bucklers in which the average thickness of the plates does not
exceed three _eighth_ parts of an inch, their thickness in the centre of
the ridges exceeds three _quarters_. The head of the largest crocodile
of the existing period is defended by an armature greatly less strong
than that worn by the _Asterolepis_ of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. Why
this ancient Ganoid should have been so ponderously helmed we can but
doubtfully guess; we only know, that when nature arms her soldiery, there
are assailants to be resisted and a state of war to be maintained. The
posterior central plate, the homologue apparently of the occipital bone,
was curiously carved into an ornate massive leaf, like one of the larger
leaves of a Corinthian capital, and terminated beneath, where the stem
should have been, in a strong osseous knob, fashioned like a pike head.
Two plates immediately over it, the homologues of the superior frontal
bone, with the little nasal plate which, perched atop in the middle,
lay between the creature’s eyes, resembled the head and breast in the
female figure, at least not less closely than those of the “lady in the
lobster;” the posterior frontal plates in which the outer and nether
half of the eye orbits were hollowed formed a pair of sweeping wings,
and thus in the centre of the buckler we are presented with the figure
of an angel, robed and winged, and of which the large sculptured leaf
forms the body, traced in a style in no degree more rude than we might
expect to see exemplified on the lichen-encrusted shield of some ancient
tombstone of that House of Avenel which bore as its arms the effigies
of the Spectre Lady. Children have a peculiar knack in detecting such
resemblances; and the discovery of the angel in the cranium of the
_Asterolepis_ I owe to one of mine.

[Illustration: Fig. 29.

PLATE OF CRANIAL BUCKLER OF ASTEROLEPIS.]

It is on this inner side of the cranial buckler, where there are no such
pseudo-joinings indicated as on the external surface, that the homologies
of the plates of which it is composed can be best traced. It might be
well, however, ere setting one’s self to the work of comparison, to
examine the skulls of a few of the osseous fishes of our coast, and to
mark how very considerably they differ from one another in their lines of
suture and their general form. The cerebral divisions of the conger-eel,
for instance, are very unlike those of the haddock or whiting; and the
sutures in the head of the gurnard are dissimilarly arranged from those
in the head of the perch. And after tracing the general type in the
more anomalous forms, and finding, with Cuvier, that in even these the
“skull consists of the same bones, though much subdivided, as the skulls
of the other vertebrata,” we will be the better qualified for grappling
with the not greater anomalies which occur in the cranial buckler of the
_Asterolepis_. The occipital plate, _A_, _a_, _a_, (fig. 29,) occupies
its ordinary place opposite the centre of the nape; the two parietals, B,
B, rest beside it in their usual ichthyic position of displacement; the
superior frontal we find existing, as in the young of many animals, in
two pieces, C, C; the nasal plate I, placed immediately in advance of it,
is flanked, as in the cod, by the anterior frontals, D, D; the posterior
frontals, F, F, which, when viewed as in the print, from beneath, seem of
considerable size, and describe laterally and posteriorly about one half
the eye orbits, have their area on the exterior surface greatly reduced
by the overriding squamose sutures of the plates to which they join; and
lastly, two of these overlying plates, E, E,—which, occurring in the
line of the lateral bar or beam, are of great strength and thickness,
and lie for two thirds of their length along the parietals, and for the
remaining third along the superior frontals,—represent the mastoid bones.
Such, so far as I have been yet able to read the cranial buckler of the
_Asterolepis_, seem to be the homologies of its component plates.

[Illustration: Fig. 30.

PORTION OF UNDER JAW OF ASTEROLEPIS, (OUTER SIDE.)

(One half nat. size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 31.

PORTION OF UNDER JAW OF ASTEROLEPIS, (INNER SIDE.)

(One half nat. size.)]

There were no parts of the animal more remarkable than its jaws. The
under jaws,—for the nether maxillary consisted, in this fish, as in
the placoid fishes, and in the quadrupeds generally, of two pieces
joined in the middle,—were, like those of the _Holoptychius_, boxes
of bone, which enclosed central masses of cartilage. The outer and
under sides were thickly covered with the characteristic star-like
tubercles; and along the upper margin or lip there ran a thickly-set row
of small broadly-based teeth, planted as directly on the edge of the
exterior plate as iron spikes on the upper edge of a gate (fig. 30.)
Mr. Parkinson expresses some wonder, in his work on fossils, that, in
a fine ichthyolite in the British Museum, not only the _teeth_ should
have been preserved, but also the _lips_; but we now know enough of
the construction of the ancient Ganoids to cease wondering. The _lips_
were formed of as solid bone as the teeth themselves, and had as fair a
chance of being preserved entire; just as the metallic rim of a _cogged_
wheel has as fair a chance of being preserved as the metallic cogs that
project from it. Immediately behind the front row,—in which the teeth
present the ordinary ichthyic appearance,—there ran a thinly-set row of
huge _reptile_ teeth, based on an interior platform of bone, which formed
the top of the cartilage-enclosing box composing the jaw. These were at
once bent outwards and twisted laterally, somewhat like nails that have
been drawn out of wood by the claw of a carpenter’s hammer, and bent
awry with the wrench, (fig. 31.) They were furrowed longitudinally from
point to base by minute thickly-set striæ and were furnished laterally,
in most of the specimens though not in all, with two sharp cutting
edges. The reptile had as yet no existence in creation; but we see its
future coming symbolized in the dentition of this ancient Ganoid: it,
as it were, shows us the _crocodile_ lying entrenched behind the fish.
The interior structure of these reptile teeth is very remarkable. In the
longitudinal section we find numerous cancelli, ranged lengthwise along
the outer edges, but much crossed, net-like, within,—greatly more open
towards the base than at the point,—and giving place in the centre to a
hollow space, occasionally traversed by a few slim osseous partitions.
In the transverse section these cancelli are found to radiate from
the open centre towards the circumference, like the spokes of a wheel
from the nave; and each spoke seems as if, like Aaron’s rod, it had
become instinct with vegetative life, and had sprouted into branch and
blossom. Seen in a microscope of limited field, that takes in, as in
the accompanying print, (fig. 32,) not more than a fourth part of the
section, the appearance presented is that of a well-trained wall tree.
And hence the generic name _Dendrodus_, given by Professor Owen to teeth
found detached in the deposits of Moray, when the creatures to which they
had belonged were still unknown,—a name, however, which will, I suspect,
be found synonymous rather with that of a family than of a genus; for
so far as I have yet examined, I find that the dendrodic or tree-like
tooth, was in at least the Old Red Sandstone, a characteristic of all
the Cœlacanth family. I may mention, however, as a curious subject of
inquiry, that the Cœlacanths of the Coal Measures seem to have had their
reptile teeth formed of pure ivory,—a substance, which I have not yet
detected among the reptile-fish of the Old Red. Towards the base of the
reptile teeth of _Asterolepis_, the interstices between the branches
greatly widen, as in the branches of a tree in winter divested of its
foliage, (fig. 33, _c_;) the texture also opens towards the base in the
_fish_-teeth, outside, in which, however, the pattern in the transverse
section is greatly less complex and ornate than that which the reptile
teeth exhibits. When cut across near the point, they appear each as a
thick ring, (_b_,) traversed by lines that radiate towards the centre;
when cut across about half way down, they somewhat resemble, seen under
a high magnifying power those cast-iron wheels on which the engineer
mounts his railway carriages, (_a_.) In the longitudinal section their
line of junction with the jaw is marked by numerous openings, but by no
line of division, and they appear as thickly dotted by what were once
canaliculi, or life points, as any portion of the dermal bone on which
they rest.

[Illustration: Fig. 32.

PORTION OF TRANSVERSE SECTION OF REPTILE TOOTH OF ASTEROLEPIS

a. _Nat. size._

b. _Mag. twelve diameters._]

[Illustration: Fig. 33.

A. _Section of Jaw of Asterolepis._

c. _Reptile tooth as shown in section._

a, b, & c. _Row of ichthyic teeth in dermal plate of jaw._

B. _Magnified representatives of ichthyic teeth, a and b, in_ A.]

It seems truly wonderful, when one considers it, to what minute and
obscure ramifications that variety of pattern which nature so loves to
maintain is found to descend. It descends in the fishes, both recent
and extinct, to even the microscopic structure of their teeth; and
we find, in consequence, not less variety of figure in the sliced
fragments of the teeth of the ichthyolites of a single formation, than
in the carved blocks of an extensive calico print-yard. Each _species_
has its own distinct pattern, as if, in all the individuals of which
it consisted, the same block had been employed to stamp it; and each
_genus_ its own general _type_ of pattern, as if the same radical idea,
variously altered and modified, had been wrought upon in all. In the
_Dendrodic_ (Cœlacanth?) family, for instance, it is the radical type,
that from a central nave there should radiate, spoke-like, a number
of arborescent branches; but in the several genera and species of the
family, the branches belong, if I may so express myself, to different
shrubs, and present dissimilar outlines. It has appeared to me, that
at least a _presumption_ against the transmutation of species might be
based on those inherent peculiarities of structure which are thus found
to pervade the entire texture of the framework of animals. If we find
erections differing from one another merely in external form, we have
no difficulty in conceiving how, by additions and alterations, they
might be brought to exhibit a perfect uniformity of plan and aspect:
_transmutation_,—_development_,—_progression_,—(if one may use such
terms,)—seem possible in such circumstances. But if the buildings differ
from each other, not only in external form, but also in every brick and
beam, bolt and nail, no mere scheme of external alteration could ever
induce a real resemblance. Every brick would have to be taken down, and
every beam and bolt removed. The problem could not be wrought by the
remodelling of an old house: the only mode of solving it would be by the
erection of a new one.

[Illustration: Fig. 34.

MAXILLARY BONE?

(One fourth nat. size, linear.)]

Of the upper maxillary bones of the _Asterolepis_, I only know that
a considerable fragment of one of the pieces, recognized as such by
Agassiz, has been found in the neighborhood of Thurso by Mr. Dick,
unaccompanied, however, by any evidence respecting its place or function.
It exhibits none of the characteristic tubercles of the dermal bones,
and no appearance of teeth; but is simply a long bent bone, resembling
somewhat less than the half of an ancient bow of steel or horn,—such
a bow as that which Ulysses bended in the presence of the suitors.
By some of the Russian geologists this bone was at first regarded as
a portion of the arm or wing of some gigantic _Pterichthys_. In the
accompanying print (fig. 34) I have borrowed the general outline from
that of a specimen of Professor Asmus, of which a cast may be seen in
the British Museum; while the shaded portion represents the fragment
found by Mr. Dick. The intermaxillary bones, like the dermal plates of
the lower jaw, were studded by star-like tubercles, and bristled thickly
along their lower edges with the ichthyic teeth, flanked by teeth of
the reptilian character. The opercules of the animal consisted, as in
the sturgeon, of single plates (fig. 35) of great massiveness and size,
thickly tubercled outside, without trace of joint or suture, and marked
on their under surface by channelled lines, that radiate, as in the other
plates, from the centre of ossification. That space along the nape which
intervened between the opercules, was occupied, as in the _Dipterus_ and
_Diplopterus_, by three plates, which covered rather the anterior portion
of the body than the posterior portion of the head, and which, in the
restoration of _Osteolepis_, (fig. 13,) appear as the plates, 9, 9, 9. I
can say scarce any thing regarding the lateral plates which lay between
the intermaxillaries and the cranial buckler, and which exist in the
_Osteolepis_, fig. 13, as the plates 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7; nor do I know how
the snout terminated, save that in a very imperfect specimen it exhibits,
as in the _Diplopterus_ and _Osteolepis_, a rounded outline, and was set
with teeth.

[Illustration: Fig. 35.

INNER SURFACE OF OPERCULUM OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One fifth nat. size, linear.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 36.

HYOID PLATE.

(One ninth nat. size, linear.)]

That space comprised within the arch of the lower jaws, in which the
hyoid bone and branchiostegous rays of the osseous fishes occur, was
filled by a single plate of great size and strength, and of singular
form, (fig. 36;) and to this plate, existing as a steep ridge running
along the centre of the interior surface, and thickening into a massy
knob at the anterior termination, that nail-shaped organism, which I have
described as one of the most characteristic bones of the _Asterolepis_,
belonged. In the _Osteolepis_, the space corresponding to that occupied
by this hyoid plate was filled, as shown in fig. 14, by five plates of
not inelegant form; and the divisions of the arch resembled those of
a small Gothic window, in which the single central mullion parts into
two branches atop. In the _Holoptychius_ and _Glyptolepis_ there were
but two plates; for the central mullion, _i. e._ line of division,
did not branch atop; and in the _Asterolepis_, where there was no
line of division, the strong nail-like bone occupied the place of the
central mullion. The hyoidal armature of the latter fish was strongest
in the line in which the others were weakest. Each of the five hyoid
plates of the _Osteolepis_, or of the two plates of the _Glyptolepis_
or _Holoptychius_, had its own centre of ossification; and in the
single plate of _Asterolepis_, the centre of ossification, as shown by
the radiations of the fibre, was the nail-head. This head, placed in
immediate contact with the strong boxes of bone which composed the under
jaw, just where their central joining occurred, seems to have lent them
a considerable degree of support, which at such a juncture may have been
not unnecessary. In some of the nail-heads, belonging, it is probable, to
a different species of _Asterolepis_ from that in which the nail figured
in page 7, and the plate in the opposite page, occurred,—for its general
form is different, (fig. 37,)—there appear well-marked ligamentary
impressions closely resembling that little spongy pit in the head of the
human thigh-bone to which what is termed the round ligament is attached.
The entire hyoid-plate, viewed on its outer side, resembles in form the
hyoid-bone,—or cartilage rather,—of the spotted dog-fish, (_Scyllium
stellare_;) but its area was at least a hundred times more extensive
than in the largest _Scyllium_, and, like all the dermal plates of the
_Asterolepis_, it was thickly fretted by the characteristic tubercles.
In the Ray, as in the Sharks, the piece of thin cartilage of which this
plate seems the homologue, is a flat, semi-transparent disk; and there
is no part of the animal in which the progress of those bony molecules
which encrust the internal framework may be more distinctly traced, as if
in the act of creeping over what they cover, in slim threads or shooting
points,—and much resembling new ice creeping in a frosty evening over the
surface of a pool.

[Illustration: Fig. 37.

NAIL-LIKE BONE OF HYOID PLATE.

(One half nat. size.)]

That suite of shoulder-bones that in the osseous fishes forms the belt
or frame on which the opercules rest, and furnishes the base of the
pectorals, was represented in the _Asterolepis_, as in the sturgeon, by a
ring of strong osseous plates, which, in one of the two species of which
trace is to be found among the rocks of Thurso, were curiously fretted
on their external surfaces, and in the other species comparatively
smooth. The largest, or coracoidian plate of the ring, as it occurs in
the more ornate species, (fig. 38,) might be readily enough mistaken,
when seen with only its surface exposed for the ichthyodorulite of
some large fish, allied, mayhap, to the _Gyracanthus formosus_ of the
Coal Measures; but when detached from the stone, the hollow form and
peculiar striæ of the inferior surface serve to establish its true
character as a dermal plate. The diagonal furrowings which traversed
it, as the twisted flutings traverse a Gothic column moulded after the
type of the Apprentice Pillar in Roslin chapel, seem to have underlaid
the edge of the opercule; at least I find a similar arrangement in the
shoulder-plates of a large species of _Diplopterus_, which are deeply
grooved and furrowed where the opercule rested, as if with the design of
keeping up a communication between the branchiæ and the external element,
even when the gill-cover was pressed closely down upon them. And,—as in
these shoulder-plates of the _Diplopterus_ the furrows yield their place
beyond the edge of the opercule to the punctulated enamel common to the
outer surface of all the creature’s external plates and scales,—we find
them yielding their place, in the shoulder-plates of the _Asterolepis_,
to the starred tubercles.

[Illustration: Fig. 38.

SHOULDER (_i. e._ CORACOID?) PLATE OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One third nat. size, linear.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 39.

DERMAL BONES OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One third nat. size, linear.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 40.

INTERNAL BONES OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One half nat. size, linear.)]

A few detached bones, that bear on their outer surfaces the dermal
markings, must have belonged to that angular-shaped portion of the head
which intervened between the cranial buckler and the intermaxillary bone;
but the key for assigning to them their proper place is still to find;
and I suspect that no amount of skill on the part of the comparative
anatomist will ever qualify him to complete the work of restoration
without it. I have submitted to the reader the cranial bucklers of
_five_ several genera of the ganoids of the Old Red Sandstone; but no
amount of study bestowed on these would enable even the most skilful
ichthyologist to restore a _sixth_; nor is the lateral area of the head,
which was, I find, variously occupied in each genus, less difficult to
restore than the buckler which surmounted it. Two of the more entire of
these dermal bones I have figured (fig. 39, _a_ and _b_) in the hope
of assisting future inquirers, who, were they to pick up all the other
plates, might yet be unable, lacking the figured ones, to complete the
whole. The curiously-shaped plate _a_, represented in its various sides
by the figures 1, 2, 3, is of an acutely angular form in the transverse
section, (the external surface, 1, forming an angle which varies from
thirty to forty-five degrees with the base, 3;) and as it lay, it is
probable when in its original place, immediately under the edge of the
cranial buckler, it may have served to commence the line of deflection
from the flat top of the head to the steep descent of the sides, just
as what are technically termed the _spur_-stones in a gable-head serve
to commence the line of deflection from the vertical outline of the
wall to the inclined line of the roof, or as the spring-stones of an
arch serve to commence the curve. A few internal bones in my possession
are curious, but exceedingly puzzling. The bone _a_, fig. 40, which
resembles a rib, or branchiostegous ray, of one of the ordinary fishes,
formed apparently part of that osseous _style_ which in fishes such as
the haddock and cod we find attached to the suite of shoulder-bones, and
which, according to Cuvier, is the analogue of the coracoidian bone,
and, according to Professor Owen, the analogue of the clavicle. Fig.
_b_ is a mere fragment, broken at both ends, but exhibiting, in a state
of good keeping, lateral expansions, like those of an ancient halbert.
Fig. _c_, 41, which is also a fragment, though a more considerable
one, bears in its thicker and straighter edge a groove like that of an
ichthyodorulite, which, however, the bone itself in no degree resembles.
Fig. _d_ is a flat bone, of a type common in the skeleton of fishes, but
which, in mammals, we find exemplified in but the scapulars. It seems,
like these, to have furnished the base to which some suite of movable
bones was articulated,—in all likelihood that proportion of the carnal
bonelets of the pectoral fins which are attached in the osseous fishes
to its apparent homologue, the radius. Fig. _e_, a slim light bone,
which narrows and thickens in the centre, and flattens and broadens at
each end, was probably a scapula or shoulder-blade,—a bone which in
most fishes _splices_ on, as a sailor would say, by squamose jointings,
to the coracoidian bone at the one end, and the super-scapular bone at
the other. As indicated by its size, it must have belonged to a small
individual: it is, however, twice as long, and about six times as bulky,
as the scapula of a large cod.

[Illustration: Fig. 41.

INTERNAL BONES OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One third nat. size, linear.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 42.

ISCHIUM OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(One half nat. size, linear.)]

Of the bone represented in fig. 42, I have determined, from a Cromarty
specimen, the place and use: it formed the interior base to which
one of the ventral fins was attached. In all fishes the bones of the
hinder extremities are inadequately represented: in none do we find the
pelvic arch complete; and to that nether portion of it which we do find
represented, and which Professor Owen regards as the homologue of the
_os ischium_ or hip-bone, the homologues of the metatarsal and toe-bones
are attached, to the exclusion of the bones of the thigh and leg. In the
Abdominales,—fishes such as the salmon and carp,—that have the ventrals
placed behind the abdomen, in the position analogous to that in which
the hinder legs of the reptiles and mammals occur, the ischiatic bones
generally exist as flat triangular plates, with their heads either
turned _inwards_ and downwards, as in the herring, or _outwards_ and
downwards, as in the pike; whereas in some of the cartilaginous fishes,
such as the Rays and Sharks, they exist as an undivided cartilaginous
band, stretched transversely from ventral to ventral. And such, with
but an upward direction, appears to have been their position in the
_Asterolepis_. They seem to have united at the narrow neck A, over the
middle of the lower portion of the abdomen; and to the notches of the
flat expansion B,—notches which exactly resemble those of the immensely
developed carpal bones of the Ray,—five metatarsal bones were attached,
from which the fin expanded. It is interesting to find the number in this
ancient representative of the vertebrata restricted to five,—a number
greatly exceeded in most of the existing fishes, but which is the true
normal number of the vertebrate sub-kingdom as shown in all the higher
examples such as man, the _quadrumana_, and in most of the _carnaria_.
The form of this bone somewhat resembles that of the analogous bone in
those fishes, such as the perch and gurnard, cod and haddock, which have
their ventrals suspended to the scapular belt; but its position in the
Cromarty specimen, and that of the ventrals in the various specimens of
the Cœlacanth family in which their place is still shown, forbids the
supposition that _it_ was so suspended,—a circumstance in keeping with
all the existing geological evidence on the subject, which agrees in
indicating, that of the low type of fishes that have, monster-like, their
_feet_ attached to their necks, the Old Red Sandstone does not afford a
trace. This inferior type, now by far the most prevalent in the ichthyic
division of the animal kingdom, does not seem to have been introduced
until near the close of the Secondary period, long after the fish had
been degraded from its primal place in the fore front of creation. In
one of my specimens a few fragments of the rays are preserved, (fig. 43,
_b_.) They are about the eighth part of an inch in diameter: depressed
in some cases in the center, as if, over the internal hollow formed by
the decay of the cartilaginous centre, the bony crust of which they are
composed had given way; and, like the rays of the thornback, they are
thickened at the joints, and at the processes by which they were attached
to the ischiatic base. It may be proper, I should here state, that of
some of the internal bones figured above I have no better evidence that
they belonged to the _Asterolepis_, than that they occur in the same
beds with the dermal plates which bear the characteristic star-like
markings,—that they are of very considerable size,—and that they formed
no part of the known fishes of the formation.

[Illustration: Fig. 43.

a. _Single joint of ray of Thornback._

b. _Single joint of ray of Asterolepis._]

[Illustration: Fig. 44.

COPROLITES OF ASTEROLEPIS.

(Nat. Size.[18])]

On exactly the same grounds I infer that certain large coprolites of
common occurrence in the Thurso flagstones, which contain the broken
scales of Dipterians, and exhibit a curiously twisted form, (fig. 44,)
also belonged to the _Asterolepis_; and from these, that the creature
was carnivorous in its habits,—an inference which the character of
its teeth fully corroborates; and farther, that, like the sharks and
rays, and some of the extinct Enaliosaurs, it possessed the spiral
disposition of intestine. Paley, in his chapter on the compensatory
contrivances palpable in the structure of various animals, refers to a
peculiar substitutory provision which occurs in a certain amphibious
animal described in the Memoirs of the French Academy. “The reader
will remember,” he says, “what we have already observed concerning the
_intestinal_ canal,—that its length, so many times exceeding that of the
body, promotes the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, by giving
room for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through a greater space.
This long intestine, whenever it occurs, is in other animals disposed in
the abdomen from side to side, in returning folds. But in the animal now
under our notice, the matter is managed otherwise. The same intention is
mechanically effectuated, but by a mechanism of a different kind. The
animal of which I speak is an amphibious quadruped, which our authors
call the Alopecias or sea-fox. The intestine is straight from one end to
the other but in this straight, and consequently short intestine, is a
winding, cork-screw, spiral passage, through which the food, not without
several circumvolutions, and, in fact, by a long route, is conducted to
its exit. Here the shortness of the gut is _compensated_ by the obliquity
of the perforation.” This structure of intestine, which all the true
Placoids possess, and at least the Sturiones among existing Ganoids,
seems to have been an exceedingly common one during both the Palæozoic
and Secondary periods. It has left its impress on all the better
preserved coprolites of the Coal Measures, so abundant in the shales of
Newhaven and Burdie House, and on those of the Lias and Chalk. It seems
to be equally a characteristic of well nigh all the bulkier coprolites
of the Lower Old Red Sandstone.[19] In these, however, it manifests
a peculiar trait, which I have failed to detect in any of the recent
fishes; nor have I yet seen it indicated, in at least the same degree, by
the Carboniferous or Secondary coprolitic remains. In the bowels which
moulded the coprolites of Lyme-Regis, of the Chalk, and of the Newhaven
and Granton beds, a single screw must have winded within the cylindrical
tube, as a turnpike stair winds within its hollow shaft; and such also is
the arrangement in the existing Sharks and Rays; whereas the bowels which
moulded the coprolites of the Lower Old Red Sandstone must have been
traversed by triple or quadruple screws laid closely together, as we find
the stalk of an old-fashioned wine-glass traversed by its thickly-set
spiral lines of thread-like china. And so, while on the surface of both
the Secondary and Carboniferous coprolites there is space between the
screw-like lines for numerous cross markings that correspond to the
thickly set veiny branches which traverse the sides of the recent placoid
bowel, the entire surface of the Lower Old Red coprolites is traversed
by the spiral markings. Is there nothing strange in the fact, that after
the lapse of mayhap millions of years,—nay, it is possible, millions
of ages,—we should be thus able to detect at once general resemblance
and special dissimilarity in even the most perishable parts of the most
ancient of the Ganoids?

I must advert, in passing, to a peculiarity exemplified in the state of
keeping of the bones of this ancient Ganoid, in at least the deposits
of Orkney and Caithness. The original animal matter has been converted
into a dark-colored bitumen, which in some places, where the remains
lie thick, pervades the crevices of the rocks, and has not unfrequently
been mistaken for coal. In its more solid state it can hardly be
distinguished, when used in sealing a letter,—a purpose which it serves
indifferently well,—from black wax of the ordinary quality; when more
fluid, it adheres scarce less strongly to the hands than the coal-tar of
our gas-works and dock-yards. Underneath a specimen of _Asterolepis_,
first pointed out to me in its bed among the Thurso rocks by Mr. Dick,
and which, at my request, he afterwards raised and sent me to Edinburgh,
packed up in a box, there lay a quantity of thick tar, which stuck as
fast to my fingers, on lifting out the pieces of rock, as if I had laid
hold of the planking of a newly tarred yawl. What had been once the
nerves, muscles, and blood of this ancient Ganoid still lay under its
bones, and reminded me of the appearance presented by the remains of a
poor suicide, whose solitary grave, dug in a sandy bank in the north
of Scotland, had been laid open by the encroachments of a river. The
skeleton, with pieces of the dress still wrapped round it, lay at length
along the section; and, for a full yard beneath, the white dry sand was
consolidated into a dark-colored pitchy mass, by the altered animal
matter which had escaped from it, percolating downwards, in the process
of decay.

In consequence of the curious chemical change which has thus taken place
in the animal juices of the _Asterolepis_, its remains often occur in
a state of beautiful preservation: the pervading bitumen, greatly more
conservative in its effects than the oils and gums of an old Egyptian
undertaker, has maintained, in their original integrity, every scale,
plate, and bone. They may have been much broken ere they were first
committed to the keeping of the rock, or in disentangling them from
its rigid embrace; but they have, we find, caught no harm when under
its care. Ere the skeleton of the Bruce, disinterred after the lapse of
five centuries, was recommitted to the tomb, such measures were taken
to secure its preservation, that, were it to be again disinterred, even
after as many more centuries had passed, it might be found retaining
unbroken its gigantic proportions. There was molten pitch poured over
the bones, in a state of sufficient fluidity to permeate all the pores,
and fill up the central hollows, and which, soon hardening around
them, formed a bituminous matrix, in which they may lie unchanged for
a thousand years. Now, exactly such was the process to which nature
resorted with these gigantic skeletons of the Old Red Sandstone. Like the
bones of the Bruce, they are bones steeped in pitch; and so thoroughly
is every pore and hollow still occupied, that, when cast into the fire,
they flame like torches. Though black as jet, they still retain, too,
in a considerable degree, the peculiar _qualities_ of the original
substance. The late Mr. George Sanderson of Edinburgh, one of the most
ingenious lapidaries in the kingdom, and a thoroughly intelligent man,
made several preparations for me, for microscopic examination, from
the teeth and bones; and though they were by far the oldest vertebrate
remains he had ever seen, they exhibited, he informed me, in the
working, more of the characteristics of recent teeth and bone than any
other fossils he had ever operated upon. Recent bone when in the course
of being reduced on the wheel to the degree of thinness necessary to
secure transparency, is apt, under the heat induced by the friction, to
acquire a springy elasticity, and to start up from the glass slip to
which it has been cemented; whereas bone in the fossil state usually
lies as passive, in such circumstances, as the stone which envelopes
it. Mr. Sanderson was, however, surprised to find that the bone of the
_Asterolepis_ still retained its elasticity, and was scarce less liable,
when heated, to start from the glass,—a peculiarity through which he at
first lost several preparations. I have seen a human bone that had for
ages been partially embedded in a mass of adipocere, partially enveloped
in the common mould of a churchyard, exhibit two very different styles
of keeping. In the adipocere it was as fresh and green as if it had
been divested of the integuments only a few weeks previous; whereas the
portion which projected into the mould had become brittle and porous, and
presented the ordinary appearance of an old churchyard bone. And what the
adipocere had done for the human bone in this case, seems to have been
done for the bones of the _Asterolepis_ by the animal bitumen.

[Illustration: Fig. 45.

HYOID PLATE OF THURSO ASTEROLEPIS.[20]

(One fifth the nat. size, linear.)]

The size of the _Asterolepis_ must, in the larger specimens, have been
very great. In all those ganoidal fishes of the Old Red Sandstone that
had the head covered with osseous plates, we find that the cranial
buckler bore a certain definite proportion,—various in the several genera
and species,—to the length of the body. The drawing-master still teaches
his pupils to regulate the proportions of the human figure by the seven
head-lengths which it contains; and perhaps shows them how an otherwise
meritorious draftsman,[21] much employed half an age ago in drawing for
the wood-engraver, used to render his figures squat and ungraceful by
making them a head too short. Now, those ancient Ganoids which possessed
a cranial buckler may, we find, be also measured by head-lengths. Thus,
in the _Coccosteus decipiens_, the length of the cranial buckler from
nape to snout equalled one fifth the entire length of the creature
from snout to tail. The entire length of the _Glyptolepis_ was equal to
about five one half times that of its cranial buckler. The _Pterichthys_
was formed in nearly the same proportions. The _Diplopterus_ was fully
seven times the length of its buckler: and the _Osteolepis_ from six and
a half to seven. In all the cranial bucklers of the _Asterolepis_ yet
found, the snout is wanting. The very fine specimen figured in page 99
(fig. 28) terminates abruptly at the little plate between the eyes, the
specimen figured in page 98 (fig. 27) terminates at the upper line of
the eye. The terminal portion which formed the snout is wanting in both,
and we thus lack the measure, or _module_, as the architect might say,
by which the proportions of the rest of the creature were regulated.
We can, however, very nearly approximate to it. A hyoid plate in my
collection (fig. 45) is, I find, so exactly proportioned in size to the
cranial buckler, (fig. 28,) that it might have belonged to the same
individual; and by fitting it in its proper place, and then making the
necessary allowance for the breadth of the nether jaw, which swept two
thirds around it, and was surmounted by the snout, we ascertain that
the buckler, when entire, must have been, as nearly as may be, a foot
in length. If the _Asterolepis_ was formed in the proportions of the
_Coccosteus_, the buckler (fig. 28) must have belonged to an individual
five feet in length; if in the proportions of the _Pterichthys_ or
_Glyptolepis_, to an individual five and a half feet in length; and
if in those of the _Diplopterus_ or _Osteolepis_, to an individual of
from six and a half to seven feet in length. Now I find that the hyoid
plate can be inscribed—such is its form—in a semicircle, of which the
nail-shaped ridge in the middle (if we strike off a minute portion of the
sharp point, usually wanting in detached specimens) forms very nearly
the radius, and of which the diameter equals the breadth of the cranial
buckler, along a line drawn across at a distance from the nape, equal
to two thirds of the distance between the nape and the eyes. Thus, the
largest diameter of a hyoid plate which belonged to a cranial buckler a
foot in length is, I find, equal to seven one quarter inches, while the
length of its nape somewhat exceeds three five eighth inches. The nail of
the Stromness specimen measures five and a half inches. It must have run
along a hyoid plate eleven inches in transverse breadth, and have been
associated with a cranial buckler eighteen one eighth inches in length;
and the _Asterolepis_ to which it belonged must have measured from snout
to tail, if formed, as it probably was, in the proportions of its brother
Cœlacanth the _Glyptolepis_, eight feet three inches; and if in those
of the _Diplopterus_, from nine feet nine to ten feet six inches. This
oldest of Scottish fish—this earliest-born of the Ganoids yet known—was
at least as bulky as a large porpoise.

It was small, however, compared with specimens of the _Asterolepis_
found elsewhere. The hyoid plate figured in page 110, (fig. 36,)—a
Thurso specimen which I owe to the kindness of Mr. Dick,—measures
nearly fourteen inches, and the cranial buckler of the same individual,
fifteen one fourth inches, in breadth. The latter, when entire, must
have measured twenty-three one half inches in length; and the fish to
which it belonged, if formed in the proportions of the _Glyptolepis_,
ten feet six inches; and if in those of the _Diplopterus_, from twelve
feet five to thirteen feet eight inches in length. Did the shield still
exist in its original state as a buckler of tough, enamel-crusted bone,
it might be converted into a Highland target, nearly broad enough to
cover the ample chest of a Rob Roy or Allan M’Aulay, and strong enough to
dash aside the keenest broadsword. Another hyoid plate found by Mr. Dick
measures sixteen one half inches in breadth; and a cast in the British
Museum, from one of the Russian specimens of Professor Asmus, (fig. 46,)
twenty-four inches. The individual to which this last plate belonged
must, if built in the shorter proportions, have measured eighteen, and if
in the longer, twenty-three feet in length. The two hyoid plates of the
specimen of _Holoptychius_ in the British Museum measure but four and a
half inches along that transverse line in which the Russian _Asterolepis_
measures two feet, and the largest Thurso specimen sixteen inches and a
half. The maxillary bone of a cod-fish two and a half feet from snout to
tail measures three inches in length. One of the Russian maxillary bones
in the possession of Professor Asmus measures in length twenty-eight
inches. And that space circumscribed by the sweep of the lower jaw
which it took, in the Russian specimen, a hyoid plate twenty-four
inches in breadth to fill, could be filled in the two-and-a-half-feet
cod by a plate whose breadth equalled but an inch and a half. Thus, in
the not unimportant circumstance of size, the most ancient Ganoids yet
known, instead of taking their places, agreeably to the demands of the
development hypothesis, among the sprats, sticklebacks, and minnows of
their class, took their place among its huge basking sharks, gigantic
sturgeons, and bulky sword-fishes. They were giants, not dwarfs.

[Illustration: Fig. 46.

HYOID PLATE OF RUSSIAN ASTEROLEPIS.

(One twelfth the natural size, linear.)]

But what of their organization? Were they fishes low or high in the
scale? On this head we can, of course, determine merely by the analogies
which their structure exhibits to that of fishes of the existing
period; and these point in three several directions;—in two of the
number, directly on genera of the high Ganoid order; and in the third,
on the still higher Placoids and Enaliosaurs. No trace of vertebræ
has yet been found; and so we infer—lodging, however, a precautionary
protest, as the evidence is purely negative, and therefore it some
degree inconclusive—that the vertebral column of the _Asterolepis_
was, like that of the sturgeon, cartilaginous. Respecting its external
covering, we positively know, as has been already shown, that, like
the _Lepidosteus_ of America and the _Polypterus_ of the Nile, it was
composed of strong plates and scales of solid bone; and, regarding its
dentition, that, as in these last genera, and even more decidedly than
in these, it was of the mixed ichthyic-reptilian character,—an outer row
of thickly-set fish-teeth being backed by an inner row of thinly-set
reptile-teeth. And its form of coprolite indicates the spiral disposition
of intestine common to the Rays and Sharks of the existing period, and
of the Ichthyosauri of the Secondary ages. Instead of being, as the
development hypothesis would require, a fish low in its organization,
it seems to have ranged on the level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian
families ever called into existence. Had an intelligent being, ignorant
of what was going on upon earth during the week of creation, visited
Eden on the morning of the sixth day, he would have found in it many
of the inferior animals, but no trace of man. Had he returned again in
the evening, he would have seen, installed in the office of keepers of
the garden, and ruling with no tyrant sway as the humble monarchs of
its brute inhabitants, two mature human creatures, perfect in their
organization, and arrived at the full stature of their race. The entire
evidence regarding them, in the absence of all such information as that
imparted to Adam by Milton’s angel, would amount simply to this, that
in the morning man _was not_, and that in the evening he _was_. There,
of course, could not exist, in the circumstances, a single appearance
to sanction the belief that the two human creatures whom he saw walking
together among the trees at sunset had been “developed from infusorial
points,” not created mature. The evidence would, on the contrary,
lie all the other way. And in no degree does the geologic testimony
respecting the earliest Ganoids differ from what, in the supposed case,
would be the testimony of Eden regarding the earliest men. Up to a
certain point in the geologic scale we find that the Ganoids _are not_;
and when they at length make their appearance upon the stage, they enter
large in their stature and high in their organization.




FISHES OF THE SILURIAN ROCKS—UPPER AND LOWER. THEIR RECENT HISTORY,
ORDER, AND SIZE.


But the system of the Old Red Sandstone represents the _second_, not
the _first_, great period of the world’s history. There was a preceding
period at least equally extended, perhaps greatly more so, represented
by the Upper and Lower Silurian formations. And what is the testimony
of this morning period of organic existence, in which, so far as can
yet be shown, vitality, in the planet which man inhabits, and of whose
history or productions he knows anything, was first associated with
matter? May not the development hypothesis find a standing in the system
representative of this earliest age of creation, which it fails to find
in the system of the Old Red Sandstone?

It has been confidently asserted, not merely that it _may_, but that it
_does_. Ever since the publication, in 1839, of Sir Roderick Murchison’s
great work on the Silurian System, it had been known that the remains
of fishes occur in a bed of the “Ludlow Rock,”—one of the most modern
deposits of the _Upper_ Silurian division; and subsequent discoveries
both in England and America, had shown that even the _base_ of this
division has its ichthyic organisms. But for year after year, the
lower half of the system,—a division more than three thousand feet in
thickness,—had failed, though there were hands and eyes busy among its
deposits, to yield any vertebrate remains. During the earlier half of
the first great period of organic existence, though the polyparia,
radiata, articulata, and mollusca, existed, as their remains testified,
by myriads, fish had, it was held, not yet entered upon the scene; and
the assertors of the development theory founded largely on the presumed
fact of their absence. “It is still customary,” says the author of the
“Vestiges of Creation,” in his volume of “Explanations,” “to speak of
the earliest fauna as one of an elevated kind. When rigidly examined, it
is not found to be so. IN THE FIRST PLACE, IT CONTAINS NO FISH. There
were seas supporting crustacean and molluscan life, but _utterly devoid
of a class of tenants who seem able to live in every example of that
element which supports meaner creatures_. This single fact, that only
invertebrated animals now lived, is surely in itself a strong proof that,
in the course of nature, _time_ was necessary for the creation of the
superior creatures. And if so, it undoubtedly is a powerful evidence of
such a theory of development as that which I have presented. If not, let
me hear an equally plausible reason for the great and amazing fact, that
seas were for numberless ages destitute of fish. I fix my opponents down
to the consideration of this fact, so that no diversion respecting high
molluscs shall avail them.” And how is this bold challenge to be met?

Most directly, and after a fashion that at once discomfits the challenger.

It might be rationally enough argued in the case, that the author of
the “Vestiges” was building greatly more on a piece of purely negative
evidence,—the presumed absence of fish from the Lower Silurian
formations,—than purely negative evidence is, from its nature as such,
suited to bear; that only a very few years had passed since it was known
that vertebrate remains occurred in the _Upper_ Silurian, and only a
few more since they had been detected in the Old Red Sandstone; nay,
that within the present century their frequent occurrence in even the
Coal Measures was scarce suspected; and that, as his argument, had it
been founded twelve years ago on the supposed absence of fishes from
the Upper Silurian, or twenty years ago on the supposed absence of
fishes from the Old Red Sandstone, would have been quite as plausible
in reference to its negative data then as in reference to its negative
data now, so it might now be quite as erroneous as it assuredly would
have been then. Or it might be urged, that the fact of the absence of
fish from the Lower Silurians, even were it really a fact, would be in
no degree less reconcilable with the theory of creation by direct act,
than with the hypothesis of gradual development. The fact that Adam
did not exist during the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth days
of the introductory week of Scripture narrative, furnishes no argument
whatever against the fact of his creation on the sixth day. And the
remark would of course equally apply to the non-existence of fishes
during the Lower Silurian period, had they been really non-existent
at the time, and to their sudden appearance in that of the Upper. But
the objection admits of a greatly more conclusive answer. “I fix my
opponents down,” says the author of the “Vestiges,” “to the consideration
of this fact,” _i. e._ that of the absence of fishes from the earliest
fossiliferous formations. And I, in turn, fix you down, I reply, to the
consideration of the antagonist fact, not negative, but positive, and
now, in the course of geological discovery, fully established, that
fishes were _not_ absent from the earliest fossiliferous formations.
From none of the great geological formations were fishes absent,—not
even from the formations of the Cambrian division. “The Lower Silurian,”
says Sir Roderick Murchison, in a communication with which, in 1847, he
honored the writer of these chapters, “is no longer to be viewed as an
invertebrate period; for the _Onchus_ (species not yet decided) has been
found in the Llandeilo Flags and in the Lower Silurian rocks of Bala.
In one respect I am gratified by the discovery; for the form is so very
like that of the _Onchus Murchisoni_ of the Upper Ludlow rock, that it
is clear the Silurian system is one great natural-history series, as is
proved, indeed, by all its other organic remains.” It may be mentioned
further, in addition to this interesting statement, that the Bala spine
was detected in its calcareous matrix by the geologists of the Government
Survey, and described to Sir Roderick as that of an _Onchus_, by a very
competent authority in such matters,—Professor Edward Forbes, and that
the annunciation of the existence of spines of fishes in the Llandeilo
Flags we owe to one of the most cautious and practised geologists of the
present age,—Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge.

So much for the _fact_ of the existence of vertebrata in the Lower
Silurian formations, and the _argument_ founded on their presumed
absence. Let me now refer—their presence being determined—to the tests
of size and organization. Were these Silurian fishes of a bulk so
inconsiderable as in any degree to sanction the belief that they had
been developed shortly before from microscopic points? Or were they of a
structure so low as to render it probable that their development was at
the time incomplete? Were they, in other words, the embryos and fœtuses
of their class? or did they, on the contrary, rank with the higher and
larger fishes of the present time?

It is of importance that not only the direct _bearing_, but also the
actual _amount_, of the evidence in this case, should be fairly stated.
So far as it extends, the testimony is clear; but it does not extend
far. All the vertebrate remains yet detected in the Silurian System,
if we except the debris of the Upper Ludlow bone-bed, might be sent
through the Post-Office in a box scarcely twice the size of a copy of
the “Vestiges.” The naturalist of an exploring party, who, in crossing
some unknown lake, had looked down over the side of his canoe, and seen
a few fish gliding through the obscure depths of the water, would be but
indifferently qualified, from what he had witnessed, to write a history
of _all_ its fish. Nor, were the some six or eight individuals of which
he had caught a glimpse to be of small size, would it be legitimate for
him to infer that only small-sized fish lived in the lake; though, were
there to be some two or three large ones among them, he might safely
affirm the contrary. Now, the evidence regarding the fishes of the
Silurian formation very much resembles what that of the naturalist would
be, in the supposed case, regarding the fishes of the unexplored lake;
with, however, this difference, that as the deposits of the ancient
system in which they occur have been examined for years in various parts
of the world, and all its characteristic organisms, save the ichthyic
ones, found in great abundance and fine keeping, we may conclude that
the fish of the period were comparatively few. The palæontologist, so
far as the question of number is involved, is in the circumstances, not
of the naturalist who has only once crossed the unknown lake, but of the
angler who, day after day, casts his line into some inland sea abounding
in shell-fish and crustacea, and, after the lapse of months, can scarce
detect a nibble, and, after the lapse of years, can reckon up all the
fish which he has caught as considerably under a score. The existence
of this great division of the animal kingdom, like that of the earlier
reptiles during the Carboniferous period, did not form a prominent
characteristic of those ages of the earth’s history in which they began
to be.

The earliest discovered vertebral remains of the system—those of the
Upper Ludlow rock—were found in digging the foundations of a house at
Ludford, on the confines of Shropshire, and submitted, in 1838, by
Sir Roderick Murchison to Agassiz, through the late Dr. Malcolmson of
Madras. I used at the time to correspond on geological subjects with Dr.
Malcolmson,—an accomplished geologist and a good man, too early lost to
science and his friends,—and still remember the interest which attached
on this occasion to his communication bearing the Paris post-mark,
from which I learned for the first time that there existed ichthyic
fragments greatly older than even the ichthyolites of the Lower Old Red
Sandstone, and which made me acquainted with Agassiz’s earliest formed
decision regarding them. Though existing in an exceedingly fragmentary
condition,—for the materials of the thin dark-colored layer in which
they had lain seemed as if they had been triturated in a mortar,—the
ichthyologist succeeded in erecting them into six genera; though it may
be very possible,—as some of these were formed for the reception of
detached spines, and others for the reception of detached teeth,—that,
as in the case of _Dipterus_ and _Asterolepis_, the fragments of but
a single genus may have been multiplied into two genera or more. And
minute scale-like markings, which mingled with the general mass, and
were at first regarded as the impressions of real scales, have been
since recognized as of the same character with the scale-like markings
of the _Seraphim_ of Forfarshire, a huge crustacean. Even admitting,
however, that a set of teeth and spines, with perhaps the shagreen points
represented in page 54, fig. 2, _b_, in addition, may have all belonged
to but a single species of fish, there seem to be materials enough,
among the remains found, for the erection of two species more. And we
have evidence that at least two of the three kinds were fishes of the
Placoid order, (_Onchus Murchisoni_ and _Onchus tenuistriatus_,) and—as
the supposed scales must be given up—no good evidence that the other kind
was not. The ichthyic remains of the Silurian System next discovered
were first introduced to the notice of geologists by Professor Phillips,
at the meeting of the British Association in 1842.[22] They occurred,
he stated, in a quarry near Hales End, at the base of the Upper Ludlow
rock, immediately over the Aymestry Limestone, and were so exceedingly
diminutive, that they appeared to the naked eye as mere discolored spots;
but resolved under the microscope into scattered groupes of minute
spines, like those of the _Cheiracanthus_, with what seemed to be still
more minute _scales_, or, perhaps,—what in such circumstances could
scarce be distinguished from scales,—shagreen points of the scale-like
type. The next ichthyic organism detected in the Silurian rocks occurred
in the Wenlock Limestone, a considerably lower and older deposit, and was
first described in the “Edinburgh Review” for 1845 by a vigorous writer
and masterly geologist, (generally understood to be Professor Sedgwick of
Cambridge,) as “a characteristic portion of a fish undoubtedly belonging
to the Cestraciont family of the Placoid order.” In the “American
Journal of Science” for 1846, Professor Silliman figured, from a work
of the States’ Surveyors, the defensive spine of a Placoid found in the
Onondago Limestone of New York,—a rock which occurs near the base of the
Upper Silurian System, as developed in the western world;[23] and in
the same passage he made reference to a mutilated spine detected in a
still lower American deposit,—the Oriskany Sandstone. In the Geological
Journal for 1847, it was announced by Professor Sedgwick, that he had
found “_defences of fishes_” in the Upper Llandeilo Flags, and by Sir
Roderick Murchison, that the “defence of an _Onchus_” had been detected
by the geologists of the Government survey, in the Limestone near Bala.
Sir Roderick referred in the same number to the remains of a fish found
by Professor Phillips in the Wenlock Shale. And such, up to the present
time, is the actual _amount_ of the evidence with which we have to deal,
and the dates of its piecemeal production. Let us next consider the
_order of its occurrence in the geologic scale_.

                          {             +-----+
                          { Upper       |     |   Fish, 1838,
                          { Ludlow.     |  1  |   (Murchison.)
                          {             |     |   Fish, 1842,
                          {             +-----+   (Phillips.)
                          { Aymestry    |     |
                          { Limestone.  |  2  |
                          {             +-----+
    UPPER SILURIAN ROCKS. { Lower       |     |
                          { Ludlow.     |  3  |
                          {             +-----+
                          { Wenlock     |     |   Fish, 1845,
                          { Limestone.  |  4  |   (Sedgwick.)
                          {             |     |   Fish, 1846,
                          {             +-----+   (Silliman.)
                          { Wenlock     |  5  |   Fish, 1847.
                          { Shale.      |     |   (Phillips.)
                                        +-----+
                                         -----
                          {             +-----+
                          { Caradoc     |     |
                          { Sandstone,  |  6  |
                          { &c.         |     |
    LOWER SILURIAN ROCKS. {             +-----+
                          { Llandeilo   |     |   Fish, 1847,
                          { Flags, &c.  |  7  |   (Sedgwick.)
                          {             +-----+
                                         -----
                          {             +-----+
                          { Plynlimmon  |     |
                          { Group.      | _a_ |
                          {             +-----+
                          { Bala        |     |   Fish, 1847,
    CAMBRIAN ROCKS.       { Limestone.  | _b_ |   (Geologists of
                          {             |     |   Government
                          {             +-----+   Survey.)
                          { Snowdon     |     |
                          { Group.      | _c_ |   Fucoids.
                          {             |     |
                          {             +-----+

The better marked sub-divisions of the Silurian System, as described
in the great work specially devoted to it, may be regarded as seven
in number. An eight has since been added, by the transference of the
Tilestones from the lower part of the Old Red Sandstone group, to the
upper part of the Silurian group underneath; but in order the better to
show how ichthyic discovery has in its slow course penetrated into the
depths, I shall retain the divisions recognized as those of the system
when that course began. The highest or most modern Silurian deposit,
then, (No. 1 of the accompanying diagram,) is the _Upper_ Ludlow Rock;
and it is in the superior strata of this division that the bone-bed
discovered in 1838 occurs; while the exceedingly minute vertebrate
remains described by Professor Phillips in 1842 occur in its base. The
division next in the descending order is the Aymestry Limestone, (No. 2;)
the next (No. 3.) the _Lower_ Ludlow rock; then (No. 4.) the Wenlock or
Dudley Limestone occurs; and then, last and oldest deposit of the _Upper_
Silurian formation, the Wenlock shale, (No. 5.) It is in the fourth, or
Wenlock Limestone division, that the defensive spine described in the
“Edinburgh Review” for 1845 as the oldest vertebrate organism known at
the time, was found;[24] while the vertebrate organism found by Professor
Phillips belongs to the fifth, or base deposit of the Upper Silurian.
Further, the American spines of Onondago and Oriskany, described in 1846,
occurred in rocks deemed contemporary with those of the Wenlock division.
We next cross the line which separates the base of the Upper from the top
of the Lower Silurian deposits, and find a great arenaceous formation,
(No. 6,) known as the Caradoc Sandstones; while the Llandeilo Flags, (No.
7,) the formation upon which the sandstones rest, compose, according to
the sections of Sir Roderick, published in 1839, the lowest deposit of
the Lower Silurian rocks. And it is in the upper part of this lowest
member of the system that the ichthyic defences, announced in 1847 by
Professor Sedgwick, occur. Vertebrate remains have now been detected in
the same relative position in the _seventh_ and _most ancient_ member
of the system, that they were found to occupy in its _first_ and _most
modern_ member ten years ago. But this is not all. Beneath the Lower
Silurian division there occur vast fossiliferous deposits, to which the
name “Cambrian System” was given, merely provisionally, by Sir Roderick,
but which Professor Sedgwick still retains as representative of a
distinct geologic period; and it is in these, greatly below the Lower
Silurian base line, as drawn in 1839, that the Bala Limestones occur.
The Plynlimmon rocks (_a_)—a series of conglomerate, grauwacke, and
slate beds, several thousand yards in thickness—intervene between the
Llandeilo Flags and the Limestones of Bala, (_b_.) And, of consequence,
the defensive spine of the _Onchus_, announced in 1847 as detected in
these limestones by the geologists of the Government Survey, must have
formed part of a fish that perished many ages ere the oldest of the Lower
Silurian formations _began_ to be deposited.

Let us now, after this survey of both the amount of our materials, and
the order and time of their occurrence, pass on to the question of size,
as already stated. Did the ichthyic remains of the Silurian System,
hitherto examined and described, belong to large or to small fishes? The
question cannot be altogether so conclusively answered as in the case
of those Ganoids of the Lower Old Red Sandstone whose dermal skeletons
indicate their original dimensions and form. In fishes of the Placoid
order, such as the Sharks and Rays, the dermal skeleton is greatly less
continuous and persistent than in such Ganoids as the Dipterians and
Cœlacanths; and when their remains occur in the fossil state, we can
reason, in most instances, regarding the bulk of the individuals of which
they formed part, merely from that of detached teeth or spines, whose
proportion to the entire size of the animals that bore them cannot be
strictly determined. We can, indeed, do little more than infer, that
though a large Placoid may have been armed with but small spines or
teeth, a small Placoid could not have borne very large ones. And to this
Placoid order all the Silurian fish, from the Aymestry Limestone to the
Cambrian deposits of Bala inclusive, unequivocally belong. Nor, as has
been already said, is there sufficient evidence to show that any of the
ichthyic remains of the Upper Ludlow rocks do _not_ belong to it. It is
peculiarly the order of the system. The Ludlow bone-bed contains not
only defensive spines, but also teeth, fragments of jaws, and shagreen
points; whereas, in all the inferior deposits which yield any trace of
the vertebrata, the remains are those of defensive spines exclusively.
Let us, then, take the defensive spine as the part on which to found our
comparison.

One of the best marked Placoids of the Upper Ludlow bone-bed is that
_Onchus Murchisoni_ to which the distinguished geologist whose name it
bears refers, in his communication, as so nearly resembling the oldest
Placoid yet known,—that of the Bala Limestone. And the living fishes
with which the _Onchus Murchisoni_ must be compared, says Agassiz,
though “the affinity,” he adds, “may be rather distant,” are those of
the genera “_Cestracion_, _Centrina_, and _Spinax_.” I have placed
before me a specimen of recent _Spinax_, of a species well known to
all my readers on the sea-coast, the _Spinax Acanthias_, or common
dog-fish, so little a favorite with our fishermen. It measures exactly
two feet three inches in length; and of the defensive spines of its two
dorsals,—these spear-like thorns on the creature’s back immediately in
advance of the fins, which so frequently wound the fisher’s hand,—the
anterior and smaller measures, from base to point, an inch and a half,
and the posterior and larger, two inches. I have also placed before me
a specimen of _Cestracion Phillippi_, (the Port Jackson Shark,) a fish
now recognized as the truest existing analogue of the Silurian Placoids.
It measures twenty-two three fourth inches in length, and is furnished,
like _Spinax_, with two dorsal spines, of which the anterior and larger
measures from base to point one one half inch, and the posterior and
smaller, one one fifth inch. But the defensive spine of the _Onchus
Murchisoni_, as exhibited in one of the Ludlow specimens, measures,
though mutilated at both ends, three inches and five eighth parts in
length. Even though existing but as a fragment, it is as such nearly
twice the length of the largest spine of the dog-fish, unmutilated and
entire, and considerably _more_ than twice the length of the largest
spine of the Port Jackson Shark. The spines detected by Professor
Phillips, in an inferior stratum of the same upper deposit, were, as
has been shown, of microscopic minuteness; and when they seemed to
rest on the extreme horizon of ichthyic existence as the most ancient
remains of their kind, the author of the “Vestiges” availed himself of
the fact. He regarded the little creatures to which they had belonged
is the fœtal embryos of their class, or—to employ the language of the
Edinburgh Reviewer—as “the tokens of Nature’s first and half-abortive
efforts to make fish out of the lower animals.” From the latter editions
of his work, the paragraph to which the Reviewer refers has, I find,
been expunged; for the horizon has greatly extended, and what seemed
to be its line of extreme distance has travelled into the middle of
the prospect. But that the passage should have at all existed is a not
uninstructive circumstance, and shows how unsafe it is, in more than
external nature, to regard the line at which, for the time, the landscape
closes, and heaven and earth seem to meet, as in reality the world’s end.
The Wenlock spine, though certainly not microscopic, is, I am informed
by Sir Philip Egerton, of but small size; whereas the contemporary spine
of the Onondago Limestone, though comparatively more a fragment than the
spine of the Upper Ludlow _Onchus_,—for it measures only three inches in
length,—is at least five times as bulky as the largest spine of _Spinax
Acanthias_. Representing one of the massier fishes disporting amid the
some four or five small ones, of which in my illustration, the naturalist
catches a glimpse in fording the unknown lake, it at least serves to
show that all the Silurian ichthyolites must not be described as small,
seeing that not only might many of its undetected fish have been large,
but that some of those which _have_ been detected were actually so.
Another American spine, of nearly the same formation,—for it occurs in
a limestone, varying from twenty to seventy feet in thickness, which
immediately overlies that of the Onondago deposit, though still more
fragmentary than the first, for its length is only two three eighth
inches,—maintains throughout a nearly equal thickness,—a circumstance
in itself indicative of considerable size; and in positive bulk it
almost rivals the Onondago one. Of the Lower Silurian and Bala fishes no
descriptions or figures have yet appeared. And such, up to the present
time, is the testimony derived from this department of Geology, so far
as I have been able to determine it, regarding the size of the ancient
Silurian vertebrata. “No organism,” says Professor Oken, “is, nor ever
has one been, created, which is not microscopic.” The Professor’s pupils
and abettors, the assertors of the development hypothesis, appeal to
the geological evidence as altogether on _their_ side in the case; and
straightway a few witnesses enter court. But, lo! among the expected
dwarfs, there appear individuals of more than the average bulk and
stature.

[Illustration: Fig. 47.

a. _Posterior Spine of Spinax Acanthias._

b. _Fragment of Onondago Spine._

(Natural Size.)]

Still, however, the question of organization remains. Did these ancient
Placoid fishes stand high or low in the scale? According to the poet,
“What can we reason but from what we know?” We are acquainted with the
Placoid fishes of the present time; and from these only, taking analogy
as our guide, can we form any judgment regarding the rank and standing
of their predecessors, the Placoids of the geologic periods. But the
consideration of this question, as it is specially one on which the
later assertors of the development hypothesis concentrate themselves, I
must, to secure the space necessary for its discussion, defer till my
next chapter. Meanwhile, I am conscious I owe an apology to the reader
for what he must deem tedious minuteness of description, and a too
prolix amplitude of statement. It is only by representing things as they
actually are, and in the true order of their occurrence, that the effect
of the partially selected facts and exaggerated descriptions of the
Lamarckian can be adequately met. True, the disadvantages of the more
sober mode are unavoidably great. He who feels himself at liberty to
arrange his collected shells, corals, and fish-bones, into artistically
designed figures, and to select only the pretty ones, will be of course
able to make of them a much finer show than he who is necessitated to
represent them in the order and numerical proportions in which they occur
on some pebbly beach washed by the sea. And such is the advantage, in a
literary point of view, of the ingenious theorist, who, in making figures
of his geological facts, takes no more of them than suits his purpose,
over the man who has to communicate the facts as he finds them. But the
homelier mode is the true one. “Could we obtain,” says a distinguished
metaphysician, “a distinct and full history of all that has passed in
the mind of a child, from the beginning of life and sensation till it
grows up to the use of reason,—how its infant faculties began to work,
and how they brought forth and ripened all the various notions, opinions,
and sentiments which we find in ourselves when we come to be capable
of reflection,—this would be a treasure of natural history which would
probably give more light into the human faculties than all the systems
of philosophers about them since the beginning of the world. But it is
in vain,” he adds, “to wish for what nature has not put within the reach
of our power.” In like manner, could we obtain, it may be remarked, a
full and distinct account of a single class of the animal kingdom, from
its first appearance till the present time, “this would be a treasure
of natural history which would cast more light” on the origin of living
existences, and the true economy of creation, than all the theories of
all the philosophers “since the beginning of the world.” And in order to
approximate to such a history as nearly as possible,—and it does seem
possible to approximate near enough to substantiate the true readings of
the volume, and to correct the false ones,—it is necessary that the real
vestiges of creation should be carefully investigated, and their order of
succession ascertained.




HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS.—OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED.


We have seen that some of the Silurian Placoids were large of size: the
question still remains, Were they high in intelligence and organization?

The Edinburgh Reviewer, in contending with the author of the “Vestiges,”
replies in the affirmative, by claiming for them the first place among
fishes. “Taking into account,” he says, “the brain and the whole nervous,
circulating, and generative systems, they stand at the highest point of
a natural ascending scale.” They are fishes, he again remarks, that rank
among “the very highest types of their class.”

“The fishes of this early age, and of all other ages previous to
the Chalk,” says his antagonist, in reply, “are, for the most part,
cartilaginous. The cartilaginous fishes—_Chondropterygii_ of Cuvier—are
placed by that naturalist as a second series in his descending scale;
being, however, he says, ‘in some measure _parallel to the first_.’
How far this is different from their being the highest types of the
fish class, need not be largely insisted upon. Linnæus, again, was so
impressed by the low characters of many of this order, that he actually
ranked them with worms. Some of the cartilaginous fishes, nevertheless,
have certain peculiar features of organization, chiefly connected with
reproduction, in which they excel other fish; but such features are
partly partaken of by families in inferior sub-kingdoms, showing that
they cannot truly be regarded as marks of grade in their own class. When
we look to the great fundamental characters particularly to the framework
for the attachment of the muscles, what do we find?—why, that of these
Placoids,—‘the highest types of their class,’—it is barely possible to
establish their being vertebrata at all, the back-bone having generally
been too slight for preservation, although the vertebral columns of later
fossil fishes are as entire as those of any other animals. In many of
them traces can be observed of the muscles having been attached to the
external plates, strikingly indicating their low grade as vertebrate
animals. The Edinburgh Reviewer ‘highest types of their class’ are in
reality a separate series of that class, generally inferior, taking the
leading features of organization of structure as a criterion, but when
details of organization are regarded, stretching farther, both downward
and upward, than the other series; so that, looking at one extremity, we
are as much entitled to call them the lowest, as the Reviewer, looking at
another extremity, is to call them the ‘highest of their class.’ Of the
general inferiority there can be no room for doubt. Their cartilaginous
structure is, in the first place, analogous to the embryonic state of
vertebrated animals in general. The maxillary and intermaxillary bones
are in them rudimental. Their tails are finned on the under side only,—an
admitted feature of the salmon in an embryonic stage; and the mouth is
placed on the under side of the head,—also a mean and embryonic feature
of structure. These characters are essential and important, whatever
the Edinburgh Reviewer may say to the contrary; they are the characters
which, above all, I am chiefly concerned in looking to, for they are
features of embryonic progress, and embryonic progress is the grand key
to the theory of development.”

Such is the ingenious piece of special pleading which this most popular
of the Lamarckians directs against the standing and organization of the
earlier fishes. Let us examine it somewhat in detail, and see whether
the slight admixture of truth which it contains serves to do aught more
than to render current, like the gilding of a counterfeit guinea spread
over the base metal, the amount of error which lies beneath. I know
not a better example than that which it furnishes, of the entanglement
and perplexity which the meshes of an artificial classification, when
converted, in argumentative processes, into symbols and abstractions, are
sure to involve subjects simple enough in themselves.

Fishes, according to the classification of a preponderating majority
of the ichthyologists that have flourished from the earliest times
down to those of Agassiz, have been divided into two great series, the
_Ordinary_ or osseous, and the _Chondropterygii_ or cartilaginous. And
these two divisions of the class, instead of being ranged consecutively
in a continuous line, the one in advance of the other, have been
ranged in two parallel lines, the one directly abreast of the other.
There is this further peculiarity in the arrangement, that the line
of the cartilaginous series, from the circumstance that some of its
families rise higher and some sink lower in the scale than any of the
ordinary fishes, outflanks the array of the osseous series at both
ends. The front which it presents contains fewer genera and species
than that of the osseous division; but, like the front of an army drawn
out in single file, it extends along a greater length of ground. And
to this long-fronted series of the cartilaginous, or, according to
Cuvier, _chondropterygian_ fishes, the Placoid families of Agassiz
belong,—among the rest, the Placoids of the Silurian formations, Upper
and Lower. But though all the Placoids of this latter naturalist be
cartilaginous fishes, all cartilaginous fishes are not Placoids. The
_Sturionidæ_ are cartilaginous, and are, as such, ranked by Cuvier
among the _Chondropterygii_, whereas Agassiz places them in his Ganoid
order. Many of the extinct fishes, too, such as the _Acanthodei_,
_Dipteridæ_, _Cephalaspidæ_, were, as we have seen, cartilaginous in
their internal framework, and yet true Ganoids notwithstanding. The
principle of Agassiz’s classification wholly differs from that of Cuvier
and the older ichthyologists; for it is a classification founded, not
on the character of the internal but on that of the cuticular or dermal
skeleton. And while to the geologist it possesses great and obvious
advantages over every other,—for of the earlier fishes very little more
than the cuticular skeleton survives,—it has this further recommendation
to the naturalist, that, (in so far at least as its author has been true
to his own principles,) instead of anomalously uniting the highest and
lowest specimens of their class,—the fishes that most nearly approximate
to the reptiles on the one hand, and the fishes that sink furthest
towards the worms on the other,—it gathers into one consistent order all
the individuals of the higher type, distinguished above their fellows
by their development of brain, the extensive range of their instincts,
and the perfection of their generative systems. Further, the history of
animal existences, as recorded in the sedimentary rocks of our planet,
reads a recommendation of this scheme of classification which it extends
to no other. We find that in the progress of creation the fishes _began
to be_ by groupes and septs, arranged according to the principle on which
it erects its orders. The Placoids came first, the Ganoids succeeded
them, and the Ctenoids and Cycloids brought up the rear. The march has
been marshalled according to an appointed programme, the order of which
it is peculiarly the merit of Agassiz to have ascertained.

Now, may I request the reader to mark, in the first place that what we
have specially to deal with at the present stage of the argument are the
Placoid fishes of the Silurian formations, Upper and Lower. May I ask him
to take note, in the second, that the long-fronted _chondropterygian_
series of Cuvier, though it includes, as has already been said, the
Placoid order of Agassiz,—just as the red-blooded division of animals
includes the bimana and quadrumana,—is no more to be regarded as
_identical_ with the Placoids, than the red-blooded animals are to be
regarded as identical with the apes or with the human family. It simply
includes them in the character of _one_ of the three great divisions into
which it has been separated,—the division ranged, if I may so express
myself, on the extreme right of the line; its middle portion, or main
body, being composed of the _Sturiones_, a family on the general level of
the osseous fishes; while, ranged on the extreme left, we find the low
division of the _Suctorii_, _i. e._ Cyclostomi, or Lampreys. But with
the middle and lower divisions we have at present nothing to do; for of
neither of them, whether _Sturiones_ or _Suctorii_, does the Silurian
System exhibit a trace. Further be it remarked, that the scheme of
classification which gives an abstract standing to the _Chondropterygii_,
is in itself merely a certain perception of resemblance which existed
in certain minds, having _cartilage_ for its general idea; just as
another certain perception of resemblance in one other certain mind
had _cuticular skeleton_ for its general idea, and as yet another
perception of resemblance in yet other certain minds had _red blood_
for its general idea. As shown by the disparities which obtain among
the section which the scheme serves to separate from the others, it no
more determines rank or standing than that greatly more ancient scheme
of classification into “ring-streaked and spotted,” which served to
distinguish the flocks of the patriarch Jacob from those of Laban his
father-in-law, but which did not distinguish goats from sheep, nor sheep
from cattle.

The effect of introducing, after this manner, generalizations made
altogether irrespective of _rank_, and avowedly without reference to it,
into what are inherently and specifically _questions of rank_, admits of
a simple illustration.

Let us suppose that it was not with the standing of the Silurian Placoids
that we had to deal, but with that of the _mammals_ of the recent
period, including the _quadrumana_, and even the _bimana_, and that we
had ventured to describe them, in the words of the Edinburgh Reviewer,
as “the very highest types of their class.” What would be thought of
the reasoner who, in challenging the justice of the estimate, would
argue that these creatures, men as well as monkeys, belonged simply to
that division of red-blooded animals which includes, with the bimana
and quadrumana, the frog, the gudgeon, and the _earthworm_?—a division,
he might add, “which, when details of organization are regarded,
stretches farther, both downward and upward,” than that division of the
white-blooded animals to which the crab, the spider, the cuttle-fish,
and the dragon fly belong; “so that, looking at one extremity, any one
is as much entitled to call the red-blooded animals the lowest division,
as any other, looking at another extremity, is to call them the highest
division, of animals.” What, it might well be asked in reply, has the
earthworm, with its red-blood to do in a question respecting the place
and standing of the bimana? Or what, in the parallel case, have the
_Suctorii_—the worms of Linnæus—to do in a question respecting the
place and standing of the real Placoids? True it is that, according to
one principle of classification, now grown somewhat obsolete, men and
earthworms are equally red-blooded animals; true it is that, according
to another principle of classification, the Placoids of Agassiz and the
cartilaginous worms of Linnæus are equally _Chondropterygii_. The bimana
and the earthworm have their red blood in common; the glutinous hag and
the true Placoids have as certainly their internal cartilage in common;
and if the fact of the red blood of the worm lowers in no degree the rank
of the bimana, then, on the same principle, the fact of the internal
cartilage of the glutinous hag cannot possibly detract from the standing
of the true Placoid. In both cases they are creatures that entirely
differ,—the earthworms from the bimana, and the cartilaginous _worms_
from the Placoids; and the classification which tags them together,
whether it be that of Aristotle or that of Cuvier, cannot be converted
into a sort of minus quantity, of force enough to detract from the value
and standing of the bimana in the one case, or of the true Placoids
in the other. It is in no degree derogatory to the human family that
earthworms possess red blood; it is in no degree derogatory to the true
Placoids that the _Suctorii_ possess cartilaginous skeletons.

Let the reader now mark the use which has been made, by the author of
the “Vestiges,” of the name and authority of Linnæus. “Linnæus,” he
states, “was so impressed by the low character of many of this order,
(the _Chondropterygii_,) that he actually ranked them with worms.” Now,
what is the fact here? Simply that Linnæus had no such general order as
the _Chondropterygii_ in his eye at all. Though chiefly remarkable as a
naturalist for the artificialness of his classifications, his estimate
of the cartilaginous fishes was remarkable—though carried too far in its
extremes, and in some degree founded in error—for an opposite quality.
It was an estimate formed, in the main, on a natural basis. Instead of
taking their cartilaginous skeleton into account, he looked chiefly at
their standing as animals; and, struck with that extent of front which
they present, and with both their superiority on the extreme right, and
their inferiority on the extreme left, to the ordinary fishes, he erected
them into two separate orders, the one lower and the other higher than
the members of the osseous line. And so far was he from regarding the
true Placoids—those _Chondropterygii_ which to an internal skeleton of
cartilage add external plates, points, or spines of bone—as low in the
scale, that he actually raised them above fishes altogether, by erecting
them into an order of reptiles,—the older _Amphibia Nantes_. Surely, if
the name of Linnæus was to be introduced into this controversy at all, it
ought to have been in connection with _this_ special fact; seeing that
the point to be determined in the question under discussion is simply
the place and standing of that very order which the naturalist rated so
high,—not the place and standing of the order which he degraded. It so
happens that there is one of the _Chondropterygii_ which, so far from
being a true Placoid, does not possess a single osseous plate, point, or
spine: it is a worm like creature, without eyes, without movable jaws,
without vertebral joints, without scales, always enveloped in slime, and
greatly abhorred by our Scotch boatmen of the Moray Frith, who hold that
it burrows, like the grave-worm, in the decaying bodies of the dead.
And this creature, “the glutinous hag,” or, according to north-country
fishermen, the “ramper-eel,” or “poison-ramper,” was regarded by Linnæus
as belonging, not to the class of fishes, but to the Vermes. Now, _this_
is the special fact with which, in the development controversy, the
author of the “Vestiges” connects the name of the Swedish naturalist!
All the fish of the Silurian System belonged to that true Placoid order
which Linnæus, impressed by its high standing, erected into an order,
not of worms, but of reptiles. He elevated A, the true Placoid, while he
degraded B, the glutinous hag. But it was necessary to the argument of
the author of the “Vestiges” that the earliest existing fish should be
represented as fish low in the scale; and so he has cited the name and
authority of Linnæus in its bearing against the glutinous hag B, as if
it had borne against the standing of the true Placoid A. The Patagonians
are the tallest and bulkiest men in the world, whereas their neighbors,
the Fuegians are a slim and diminutive race. And if, in some controversy
raised regarding the real size of the more gigantic tribe, they were to
be described as the “very _tallest_ types of their class,” any statement
in reply, to the effect that some trustworthy voyager had examined
certain races of the extreme south of America, and had found that they
were both short and thin, would be neither relevant in its facts nor
legitimate in its bearing. But if the controversialist who thus strove
to strengthen his case by the voyager’s authority, was at the same time
fully aware that the voyager had seen not only the diminutive Fuegians,
but also the gigantic Patagonians, and that he had described these last
as very gigantic indeed, the introduction of the statement regarding the
smaller race, when he wholly sank the statement regarding the larger,
would be not merely very irrelevant in the circumstances, but also very
unfair. Such, however, is the style of statement to which the author of
the “Vestiges” has (I trust inadvertently) resorted in this controversy.

It is not uninstructive to mark how slowly and gradually the naturalists
have been groping their way to a right classification in the ichthyic
department of their science, and how it has been that identical
perception of resemblance, having _cartilage_ for its general idea,
to which the author of the “Vestiges” attaches so much importance,
that has served mainly to retard their progress. Not a few of the more
distinguished among their number deemed it too important a distinction
to be regarded as merely secondary; and so long as it was retained as
a primary characteristic, the fishes failed to range themselves in the
natural order;—dissimilar tribes were brought into close neighborhood,
while tribes nearly allied were widely separated. It failed, as has
been shown, to influence Linnæus; and though he no doubt pressed his
peculiar views too far when he degraded the glutinous hag into a worm,
and elevated the Sharks and Rays into reptiles, it is certainly worthy
of remark, that, in the scheme of classification which is now regarded
as the _most natural_,—that of Professor Muller, modified by Professor
Owen,—the ichthyic worms of the Swede are placed in the first and
lowest order of fishes,—the _Dermopteri_,—and the greater part of his
ichthyic reptiles, in the eleventh and highest,—the _Plagiostomi_. Cuvier
yielded, as has been shown, to the idea of resemblance founded on the
_material_ of the ichthyic framework, and so ranged his fishes into two
parallel lines. Professor Oken, after first enunciating as law that “the
characteristic _organ_ of fishes is the osseous system,” confessed the
“great difficulty” which attaches to the question of skeletal “texture
or substance,” and finally gave up the distinction founded on it as
obstinately irreducible to the purposes of a natural classification.
“The cartilaginous fishes,” he says, “appear to belong to each other,
and are also usually arranged together; yet amongst them we find those
species, such as the Lampreys, which obviously occupy the lowest grade
of all fishes, while the Sharks and Rays remind us of the Reptilia.”
And so, sinking the consideration of texture altogether, he placed the
family of the Lamprey, including the glutinous hag, at the bottom of the
scale, and the Sharks and Rays at the top. Agassiz’s system, peculiarly
his own, has had the rare merit, as I have shown, of furnishing a key
to the history of the fish in its several dynasties, which we may in
vain seek in any other. His divisions,—if, retaining his strongly-marked
Placoids and Ganoids, as orders stamped in the mint of nature, we throw
his perhaps less obviously divisible Ctenoids and Cycloids into one
order,—the corneous or horn-covered,—are scarcely less representative
of periods than those great classes of the vertebrata, mammals, birds,
reptiles, and fishes, which we find not less regularly ranged in their
order of succession in the geologic record than in the “Animal Kingdom”
of Cuvier,—a shrewd corroboration, in both cases, I am disposed to
think, of the rectitude of the arrangement. What seems to be the special
defect of his system is, that having erected his four orders, and then
finding a certain number of residuary families that, on his principle
of cuticular character, stubbornly refused to fall into any determinate
place, he distributed them among the others, with reference chiefly to
the totally distinct principle of Cuvier. Thus the _Suctorii_, soft,
smooth, slimy-skinned fishes, that do not possess a single placoid
character, and are not true Placoids, he has yet placed in his Placoid
order, influenced, apparently, by the “perception of resemblance that
has _cartilage_ for its central idea;” and the effect has been a massing
into one anomalous and entangled group the fishes of the first period
of geologic history, with fishes of which we do not find a trace save
in the existing scene of things, and of the highest families of their
class with families that occupy the lowest place. But we live in an age
in which even the benefactors of the world of mind cannot make false
steps with impunity; and so, while Agassiz’s _three_ ichthyic orders will
continue to be recognized by the palæontologist as the orders of three
great geologic periods, the _Suctorii_ have already been struck from off
his higher fishes by the classification of Muller and Owen, and carried
to that lowest point in the scale (indicated by Linnæus and Oken) which
their inferior standing renders so obviously the natural one. Some of
my readers may perhaps remember how finely Bacon, in his “Wisdom of the
Ancients,” interprets the old mythologic story of Prometheus. Prometheus,
says the philosopher, had conferred inestimable favors on men, by
moulding their forms into shape, and bringing them fire from heaven; and
yet they complained of him and his teachings to Jupiter. And the god,
instead of censuring their ingratitude, was pleased with the complaint,
and rewarded them with gifts. In putting nature to the question, it is
eminently wholesome to be doubting, cross-examining, complaining; ever
demanding of our masters and benefactors the philosophers, that they
should reign over us, not arbitrarily and despotically,

    “Like the old kings, with high exacting looks,
    Sceptred and globed,”

but like our modern constitutional monarchs, who govern by law; and,
further, that an appeal from their decisions on all subjects within the
jurisdiction of Nature should for ever be open to Nature herself. The
seeming ingratitude of such a course, if the “complaints” be made in a
right spirit and on proper grounds, Jupiter always rewards with gifts.

Let us now see for ourselves, in this spirit, whether there may not be
something absolutely derogatory, in the existence of a cartilaginous
skeleton, to the creatures possessing it; or whether a deficit of
internal bone may not be greatly more than neutralized, as it assuredly
must have been in the view of Linnæus, Muller, and Owen, by a larger than
ordinary share of a vastly more important substance.




THE PLACOID BRAIN. EMBRYONIC CHARACTERISTICS NOT NECESSARILY OF A LOW
ORDER.


That special substance, according to whose mass and degree of development
all the creatures of this world take rank in the scale of creation,
is not _bone_, but _brain_. Were animals to be ranged according to
the solidity of their bones, the class of birds would be assigned the
first place; the family of the _Felidæ_, including the tiger and lion,
the second; and the other terrestrial carnivora the third. Man and the
herbivorous animals, though tolerably low in the scale, would be in
advance of at least the reptiles. Most of these, however, would take
precedence of the sagacious _Delphinidæ_; the osseous fishes would
come next in order; the true Placoids would follow, succeeded by the
_Sturiones_; and the _Suctorii_, _i. e._ Cyclostomi or Lampreys, would
bring up the rear. There would be evidently no order here: the utter
confusion of such an arrangement, like that of the bits of a dissected
map flung carelessly out of its box by a child, would of itself
demonstrate the inadequacy and erroneousness of the regulating principle.
But how very different the appearance presented, when for _solidity of
bone_ we substitute _development of brain_! Man takes his proper place
at the head of creation; the lower mammalia follow,—each species in
due order, according to its modicum of intelligence; the birds succeed
the mammalia; the reptiles succeed the birds; the fishes succeed the
reptiles; next in the long procession come the invertebrate animals; and
these, too, take rank, if not according to their development of brain
proper, at least according to their development of the _substance_ of
brain. The occipital nervous ganglion of the scorpion greatly exceeds
in size that of the earthworm; and the occipital nervous ring of the
lobster, that of the intestinal Ascaris. At length, when we reach the
lowest or _acrite_ division of the animal kingdom, the substance of
brain altogether disappears. It has been calculated by naturalists, that
in the vertebrata, the brain in the class of fishes bears an average
proportion to the spinal cord of about two to one; in the class of
reptiles, of about two and a half to one; in the class of birds, of about
three to one; in the class of mammals, of about four to one; and in the
high-placed, sceptre-bearing human family, a proportion of not less than
_twenty-three_ to one. It is palpably according to development of brain,
not development of bone, that we are to determine points of precedence
among the animals,—a fact of which no one can be more thoroughly aware
than the author of the “Vestiges” himself. Of this let me adduce a
striking instance, of which I shall make further use anon.

“All life,” says Oken, “is from the sea; none from the continent.
Man also is a child of the warm and shallow parts of the sea in the
neighborhood of the land.” Such also was the hypothesis of Lamarck and
Maillet. In following up the view of his masters, the author of the
“Vestiges” fixes on the _Delphinidæ_ as the sea-inhabiting progenitors
of the simial family, and, through the simial family, of man For that
highest order of the mammalia to which the _Simiadæ_ (monkeys) belong,
“there remains,” he says, “a basis in the _Delphinidæ_, the last and
smallest of the cetacean tribes. This affiliation has a special support
in the brain of the dolphin family, which is distinctly allowed to be,
in proportion to general bulk, the greatest among mammalia next to the
orang-outang and man. We learn from Tiedemann, that each of the cerebral
hemispheres is composed, as in man and the monkey tribe, of three
lobes,—an anterior, a middle, and a posterior; and these hemispheres
present much more numerous circumvolutions and grooves than those of any
other animal. Here it might be rash to found any thing upon the ancient
accounts of the dolphin,—its familiarity with man, and its helping him
in shipwreck and various marine disasters; although it is difficult to
believe these stories to be altogether without some basis in fact. There
is no doubt, however, that the dolphin evinces a predilection for human
society, and charms the mariner by the gambols which it performs beside
his vessel.”

Here, then, the author of the “Vestiges” palpably founds on a large
development of brain in the dolphin, and on the manifestation of a
correspondingly high order of instincts,—and this altogether irrespective
of the structure or composition of the creature’s internal skeleton. The
substance to which he looks as all-important in the case is _brain_, not
_bone_. For were he to estimate the standing of the dolphin, not by its
brain, but by its skeleton, he would have to assign to it a place, not
only _not_ in advance of its brethren the _mammalia_ of the sea, but
even in the rear of the _reptiles_ of the sea, the marine tortoises, or
turtles,—and scarce more than abreast of the osseous fishes. “Fishes,”
says Professor Owen, in his “Lectures on the Vertebrate Animals,”
“have the least proportion of earthy matter in their bones; birds the
largest. The mammalia, especially the active, predatory species, have
more earth, or harder bones, than reptiles. In each class, however, there
are differences in the density of bone among its several members. For
example, in the fresh-water fishes, the bones are lighter, and retain
more animal matter, than in those which swim in the denser sea. And in
the _dolphin_, a warm-blooded marine animal, they differ little in this
respect from those of the sea-fish.” Such being the fact, it is surely
but fair to inquire of the author of the “Vestiges,” why he should
determine the rank and standing of the _Delphinidæ_ according to one set
of principles, and the rank and standing of the Placoids according to
another and entirely different set? If the _Delphinidæ_ are to be placed
high in the scale, notwithstanding the softness of their skeletons,
simply because their brains are large, why are the Placoids to be
placed low in the scale, notwithstanding the largeness of their brains,
simply because their skeletons are soft? It is not too much to demand,
that on the principle which he himself recognizes as just, he should
either degrade the dolphin or elevate the Placoid. For it is altogether
inadmissible that he should reason on one set of laws when the exigencies
of his hypothesis require that creatures with soft skeletons should be
raised in the scale, and on another and entirely different set when its
necessities demand that they should be depressed.

But do the Placoids possess in reality a large development of brain? I
have examined the brains of almost all the common fish of our coast, both
osseous and cartilaginous, not, I fear, with the skill of a Tiedemann,
but all the more intelligently in consequence of what Tiedemann had
previously done and written: and so I can speak with some little
confidence on the subject, so far at least as my modicum of experience,
thus acquired, extends. Of all the common fish of the Scottish seas,
the spotted or lesser dog-fish bears, in proportion to its size, the
largest brain; the gray or picked dog-fish ranks next in its degree
of development; the Rays, in their various species, follow after; and
the osseous fishes compose at least the great body of the rear; while
still further behind, there lags a hapless class—the _Suctorii_, one of
which, the glutinous hag, has scarce any brain, and one, the _Amphioxus_
or lancelet, wants brain altogether. I have compared the brain of the
spotted dog-fish with that of a young alligator, and have found that in
scarce any perceptible degree was it inferior, in point of bulk, and very
slightly indeed in point of organization, to the brain of the reptile.
And the instincts of this Placoid family,—one of the truest existing
representatives of the Placoids of the Silurian System[25] to which we
can appeal,—correspond, we invariably find, with their superior cerebral
development. I have seen the common dog-fish, _Spinax Acanthias_,
hovering in packs in the Moray Frith, some one or two fathoms away from
the side of the herring boat from which, when the fishermen were engaged
in hauling their nets, I have watched them, and have admired the caution
which, with all their ferocity of disposition, they rarely failed to
manifest;—how they kept aloof from the net, even more warily than the
cetacea themselves,—though both dog-fish and cetacea are occasionally
entangled;—and how, when a few herrings were shaken loose from the
meshes they at once darted upon them, exhibiting for a moment, through
the green depths, the pale gleam of their abdomens, as they turned upon
their sides to seize the desired morsels,—a motion rendered necessary
by the position of the mouth in this family; and how next, their object
accomplished, they fell back into their old position, and waited on as
before. And I have been assured by intelligent fishermen, that at the
deep-sea white-fishing, in which baited hooks, not nets, are employed,
the degree of shrewd caution exercised by these creatures seems more
extraordinary still. The hatred which the fisher bears to them arises not
more from the actual amount of mischief which they do him, than from the
circumstance that in most cases they persist in doing it with complete
impunity to themselves. I have seen, said an observant Cromarty fisherman
to the writer of these chapters, a pack of dog-fish watching beside
our boat, as we were hauling our lines, and severing the hooked fish,
as they passed them, at a bite, just a little above the vent, so that
they themselves escaped the swallowed hook; and I have frequently lost,
in this way, no inconsiderable portion of a fishing. I have observed,
however, he continued, that when a fresh pack of hungry dog-fish came
up, and joined the pack that had been robbing us so coolly, and at their
leisure, a sudden rashness would seize the whole,—the united packs would
become a mere heedless mob, and, rushing forward, they would swallow
our fish entire, and be caught themselves by the score and the hundred.
We may see something very similar to this taking place among even the
shrewder mammalia. When pig refuses to take his food, his mistress
straightway calls upon the cat, and, quickened by the dread of the coming
rival, he gobbles up his rations at once. With the comparatively large
development of brain, and the corresponding manifestations of instinct,
which the true Placoids exhibit, we find other unequivocal marks of a
general superiority to their class. In their reproductive organs they
rank not with the common fishes, nor even with the lower reptiles,
but with the Chelonians and the Sauria. Among the Rays, as among the
higher animals, there are individual attachments formed between male and
female: their eggs unlike the mere spawn of the osseous fishes, or of
even the Batrachians, are, like those of the tortoise and the crocodile,
comparatively few in number, and of considerable size: their young,
too, like the young of birds and of the higher reptiles, pass through
no such metamorphosis as those of the toad and frog, or of the amphibia
generally. And some of their number—the common dog-fish for instance—are
ovoviviparous, bringing forth their young, like the common viper and the
viviparous lizard, alive and fully formed.

“But such features,” says the author of the “Vestiges,” referring
chiefly to certain provisions connected with the reproductory system
in the Placoids, “are partly partaken of by families in inferior
sub-kingdoms, showing that they cannot truly be regarded as marks of
grade in their own class.” Nay, single features do here and there occur
in the inferior sub-kingdoms, which very nearly resemble single features
in the placoid character and organization, which even very nearly
resemble single features in the _human_ character and organization; but
is there any of the inferior sub-kingdoms in which there occurs such
a _collocation_ of features? or does such a collocation occur in any
class of animals—setting the Placoids wholly out of view—which is not
a high class? Nay, further, does there occur in any of the inferior
sub-kingdoms—existing even as a single feature—that most prominent,
leading characteristic of this series of fishes,—a large brain?

But is not the “cartilaginous structure” of the Placoids analogous to
the embryonic state of vertebrated animals in general? Do not the other
placoid peculiarities to which the author of the “Vestiges” refers,—such
as the heterocercal or one-sided tail, the position of the mouth on the
under side of the head, and the rudimental state of the maxillaries
and intermaxillaries,—bear further analogies with the embryonic state
of the higher animals? And is not “embryonic progress the grand key to
the theory of development?” Let us examine this matter. “These are the
characters,” says this ingenious writer, “which, above all, I am chiefly
concerned in looking to; for they are features of embryonic progress, and
embryonic progress is the grand key to the theory of development.” Bold
assertion, certainly; but, then, assertion is not argument! The statement
is not a reason for the faith that is in the author of the “Vestiges,”
but simply an avowal of it; it is simply a confession, not a defence,
of the Lamarckian creed; and, instead of being admitted as embodying a
first principle, it must be put stringently to the question, in order to
determine whether it contain a principle at all.

In the first place, let us remark, that the cartilaginous structure
of the Placoids bears no very striking analogy to the cartilaginous
structure of the higher vertebrata in the embryonic state. In the case
of the _Delphinidæ_, with their soft skeletons, the analogy is greatly
more close. Bone consists of animal matter, chiefly gelatinous, hardened
by a diffusion of inorganic earth. In the bones of young and fœtal
mammalia, inhabitants of the land, the gelatinous prevails; in the old
and middle-aged there is a preponderance of the earth. Now, in the bones
of the dolphin there is comparatively little earth. The analogies of
its internal skeleton bear, not on the skeletons of its brethren the
mature full-grown mammals of the land, but on the skeletons of their
immature or fœtal offspring. But in the case of the true Placoids that
analogy is faint indeed. Their skeletons contain true bone;—the vertebral
joints of the Sharks and Rays possess each, as has been shown, an osseous
nucleus, which retains, when subjected to the heat of a common fire,
the complete form of the joint; and their cranial framework has its
surface always covered over with hard osseous points. But though their
skeletons possess thus their modicum of bone, unlike those of embryonic
birds or mammals, they contain, in what is properly their cartilage, no
gelatine. The analogy signally fails in the very point in which it has
been deemed specially to exist. The cartilage of the _Chondropterygii_
is a substance so essentially different from that of young or embryonic
birds and mammals, and so unique in the animal kingdom, that the heated
water in which the one readily dissolves has no effect whatever upon the
other. It is, however, a curious circumstance, exemplified in some of the
Shark family,[26] though it merely serves, in its exceptive character,
to establish the general fact, that while the rays of the double fins,
which answer to the phalanges, are all formed of this _indissoluble_
cartilage, those rays which constitute their outer framework, with the
rays which constitute the framework of all the single fins, are composed
of a _mucoidal_ cartilage, which boils into glue. At certain definite
lines a change occurs in the texture of the skeleton; and it is certainly
suggestive of thought, that the difference of substance which the change
involves distinguishes that part of the skeleton which is homologically
representative of the skeletons of the higher vertebrata, from that part
of it which is peculiar to the creature as a fish, viz. the dorsal and
caudal rays, and the extremities of the double fins. These emphatically
ichthyic portions of the animal may be dissipated by boiling, whereas
what Linnæus would perhaps term its _reptilian_ portion abides the heat
without reduction.

But is not the one-sided tail, so characteristic of the sharks, and of
almost all the ancient Ganoids, also a characteristic of the young salmon
just burst from the egg? Yes, assuredly; and, so far as research on the
subject has yet extended, of not only the salmon, but of _all_ the other
osseous fishes in their fœtal state. The salmon, on its escape from the
egg, is a little monster of about three quarters of an inch in length,
with a huge heart-shaped bag, as bulky as all the rest of its body,
depending from its abdomen. In this bag provident nature has packed up
for it, in lieu of a nurse, food for five weeks; and, moving about every
where in its shallow pool, with its provision knapsack slung fast to it,
it reminds one disposed to be fanciful, save that its burden is on the
wrong side, of Scottish soldiers of the olden time summoned to attend
their king in war,—

    “Each on his _back_, a slender store,
    His forty days’ provision bore,
      As ancient statutes tell.”

Around that terminal part of the creature’s body traversed by the
caudal portion of the vertebral column, which commences in the salmon
immediately behind the ventrals, there runs at this period, and for the
ensuing five weeks in which it does not feed, a membranous fringe or fin,
which exactly resembles that of the tadpole, and which, existing simply
as an expansion of the skin, exhibits no mark or rays. In the place of
the true caudal fin, however, we may detect with the assistance of a
lens, an internal framework with two well-marked lobes, and ascertain,
further, that this tail is set on awry,—the effect of a slight upward
bend in the creature’s body. And when viewed in a strong light as a
transparency, we perceive that the spinal cord takes the same upward
bend, and, as in the sturgeon, passes in an exceedingly attenuated
form into the upper lobe. What may be regarded as the _design_ of the
arrangement is probably to be found in the peculiar form given to the
little creature by the protuberan bag in front. A wise instinct teaches
it, from the moment of its exclusion from the egg, to avoid its enemies.
In the instant the human shadow falls upon its pool, we see it darting
into some recess at the side or bottom, with singular alacrity; and in
order to enable it to do so, and to steer itself aright,—as, like an
ill-trimmed vessel, deep in the water ahead, the balance of its body
is imperfect,—there is, if I may so express myself, a heterocercal
peculiarity of helm required. It has got an irregularly-developed tail to
balance an irregularly-developed body, as skiffs _lean_ on the one beam
and _full_ on the other require, in rowing, a cast of the rudder to keep
them straight in their course.

Sinking altogether, however, the final cause of the peculiarity, and
regarding it simply as a _fœtal_ one, that indicates a certain stage
of imperfection in the creature in which it occurs, on what principle,
I ask, are we to infer that what is a sign of immaturity in the young
of one set of animals, is a mark of inferior organization in the adult
forms of another set? The want of eyes in any of the animal families, or
the want of organs of progression, or a fixed and sedentary condition,
like that of the oyster, are all marks of great inferiority. And yet,
if we admit the principle, that what are evidences of immaturity in
the young members of one family are signs of inferior organization in
the fully-grown members of another, it could easily be shown that eyes
and legs are defects, and that the unmoving oyster stands higher in the
scale than the ever-restless fish or bird. The immature _Tubularia_
possess locomotive powers, whereas in their fully developed state they
remain fixed to one spot in their convoluted tubes. The immature _Lepas_
is furnished with members well adapted for swimming, and with which it
swims freely; as it rises towards maturity, these become blighted and
weak; and, when fully grown,—fixed by its fleshy pedicle to the rock or
floating log to which it attached itself in its transition state,—it is
no longer able to swim. The immature _Balanus_ is furnished with two
eyes: in its state of maturity these are extinguished, and it passes its
period of full development in darkness. Further, it is not generally held
that in the human family a white skin is a decided mark of degradation,
but rather the reverse; and yet nothing can be more certain than that
the Negro fœtus has a white skin. Since eyes, and organs of progression,
and a power of moving freely, and a white skin, are mere embryonic
peculiarities in the _Balanus_, the _Lepas_, the _Tubularia_, and the
Negro, and yet are in themselves, when found in the mature animal,
evidences of a high, not of a low standing, on what principle, I ask are
we to infer that the peculiarity of a heterocercal tail, embryonic in the
salmon, is, when found in the mature Placoid, an evidence, not of a high
standing, but of a low? Every true analogy in the case favors an exactly
opposite view. In the heterocercal or one-sided tail, the vertebral
joints gradually diminish, as in the tails of the _Sauria_ and _Ophidia_,
till they terminate in a point; whereas the homocercal tail common to the
osseous fishes exhibits no true analogy with the tails of the higher
orders. Its abruptly terminating vertebral column, immensely developed
posterior processes, and broadly expanded osseous rays, seem to be simply
a few of the many marks of decline and degradation which fishes, the
oldest of the vertebrata, exhibit in this late age of the world, and
which, in at least the earlier geologic periods, when they were greatly
younger as a class, they did not betray.

[Illustration: Fig. 48.

a. _Tail of Spinax Acanthias._

b. _Tail of Ichthyosaurus Tenuirostris_, (Buckland.)]

In illustration of this view, I would fain recommend to the reader a
simple experiment. Let him procure the tail of a common dog-fish, (fig.
48, _a_,) and cutting it across about half an inch above where the
caudal fin begins, let him boil it smartly for about half an hour. He
will first see it swell and then burst, all around those thinner parts
of the fin that are traversed by the caudal rays,—wholly mucoidal, as
shown by this test, in their texture, and which yield to the boiling
water, as if formed of isinglass. They finally dissolve, and drop away,
with the surrounding cuticular integument; and then there only remains,
as the insoluble framework of the whole, the bodies of the vertebræ,
with their neural and hœmal processes. The tail has now lost much of its
ichthyic character, and has acquired, instead, a considerable degree of
resemblance to the reptilian tail, as exemplified in the saurians. I
have introduced into the wood-cut, for the purpose of comparison, the
tail of the ichthyosaurus, (_b_.) It consists, like the other, of a
series of gradually diminishing vertebræ, and must have also supported,
says Professor Owen, a propelling fin, placed vertically, as in the
shark, which, however, from its perishable nature, has in every instance
disappeared in the earth, as that of the dog-fish disappears in the
boiling water. It will be seen that its processes are comparatively
smaller than those of the fish, and that the bodies of its vertebræ are
shorter and bulkier; but there is at least a general correspondence of
the parts; and were the tail of the crocodile, of which the vertebral
bodies are slender and the processes large, to be substituted for that of
the enaliosaur here, the correspondence would be more marked still. After
thus _developing_ the tail of the reptile out of that of the fish,—as the
cauldron-bearing Irish magician of the tale developed young ladies out
of old women,—simply by _boiling_, let the reader proceed to a second
stage of the experiment, and see whether he may not be able still further
to develope the reptilian tail so obtained, into that of the mammal, by
_burning_. Let him spread it out on a piece of iron hoop, and thrust it
into the fire; and then, after exposure for some time to a red heat has
consumed and dissipated its merely cartilaginous portions, such as the
neural and hœmal processes, with the little pieces which form the sides
of the neural arch, and left only the whitened bodies of the vertebræ,
let him say whether the bony portion which remains does not present a
more exact resemblance to the mammiferous tail—that of the dog, for
example—than any thing else he ever saw. The Lamarckians may well deem it
an unlucky circumstance, that one special portion of their theory should
demand the depreciation of the heterocercal tail, seeing that it might be
represented with excellent effect in another, as not merely a connecting
link in the upward march of progression between the tail of the true fish
and that of the true reptile, but as actually containing in itself—as
the caterpillar contains the future pupa and butterfly—the elements of
the reptilian and mammiferous tail. If there be any virtue in analogy,
the heterocercal tail is, I repeat, of a decidedly higher type than the
homocercal one. It furnishes the first example in the vertebrata of the
coccygeal vertebræ diminishing to a point, which characterizes not only
all the higher reptiles, but also all the higher mammals, and which we
find represented by the _Os coccygis_ in man himself. But to this special
point I shall again refer.

With regard to that rudimentary state of the _occipital_ framework of
the Placoids to which the author of the “Vestiges” refers, it may be but
necessary to say that, notwithstanding the simplicity of their box-like
skulls, they bear in their character, as cases for the protection of
the brain, at least as close an analogy to the skulls of the higher
animals, as those of the osseous fishes, which consist usually of the
extraordinary number of from sixty to eighty bones,—a mark—the author of
the “Vestiges” himself being judge in the case—rather of inferiority than
the reverse. “Elevation is marked in the scale,” we find him saying,
“by an animal exchanging a multiplicity of parts serving one end, for
a smaller number.” The skull of a cod consists of about thrice as many
separate bones as that of a man. But I do not well see that in this case
the fact either of _simplicity_ in excess or of _multiplicity_ in excess
can be insisted upon in either direction, as a proper basis for argument.
Nearly the same remark applies to the maxillaries as to the skull. The
under jaw in man consists of a single bone; that of the thornback—if we
do not include the two suspending _ribs_, which belong equally to the
upper jaw—of two bones, (the number in all the mammiferous quadrupeds:)
that of the cod of four bones, and, if we include the suspending
_ribs_, of twelve. On what principle are we to hold, with _one_ as the
representative number of the highest type of jaw, that _two_ indicates
a lower standing than _four_, or _four_ than _twelve_? In reference to
the further statement, that in many of the ancient fishes “traces can
be observed of the muscles having been attached to the external plates,
strikingly indicating their low grade as vertebrate animals,” it may
be answer enough to state, that the peculiarity in question was not a
characteristic of the _most_ ancient fishes,—the Placoids of the Silurian
system,—but of some Ganoids of the succeeding systems. The reader may
remember, as a case in point, the example furnished by the nail-like bone
of _Asterolepis_, figured in page 111, in which there exists depressions
resembling that of the round ligament in the head of the quadrupedal
thigh-bone. And as for the remark that the opening of the mouth of
the Placoid, “on the under side of the head,” is indicative of a low
embryonic condition, it might be almost sufficient to remark, in turn,
that the lowest family of fishes—that to which the supposed worms of
Linnæus belong—have the mouth not under, but at the anterior termination
of the head,—in itself an evidence that the position of the mouth at the
extremity of the muzzle, common to the greater number of the osseous
fishes, can be no very high character, seeing that the humblest of the
_Suctorii_ possess it; and that many osseous fishes, whose mouths open,
not on the under, but the upper side of the snout, as in the distorted
and asymmetrical genus _Platessa_, are not only in no degree superior to
their bony neighbors, and far inferior to the placoid ones, but bear,
in direct consequence of the arrangement, an expression of unmistakable
stupidity. The objection, however, admits of a greatly more conclusive
reply.

[Illustration: Fig. 49.

PORT JACKSON SHARK, (_Cestracion Phillippi_.)]

“This fish, to speak in the technical language of Agassiz,” says the
Edinburgh Reviewer, in reference to the ancient ichthyolite of the
Wenlock Shale, “undoubtedly belongs to the Cestraciont family of the
Placoid order,—proving to demonstration that the oldest known fossil fish
[1845] belongs to the highest type of that division of the vertebrata.”
I may add, that the character and family of this ancient specimen was
determined by our highest British authority in fossil ichthyology,
Sir Philip Egerton. And it is in depreciation of Professor Sedgwick’s
statement regarding its high standing that the author of the “Vestiges”
refers to the supposed inferiority indicated by a mouth opening, not at
the extremity of the muzzle, but under the head. Let us, then, fully
grant, for the argument’s sake, that the occurrence of the mouth in the
muzzle _is_ a sign of superiority, and its occurrence under the head a
mark of great inferiority, and then ascertain how the fact stands with
regard to the _Cestracion_. “The Cestracion sub-genus,” says Mr. James
Wilson, in his admirable treatise on fishes, which forms the article
ICHTHYOLOGY in the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” “has the temporal aperture,
the anal fin, and rounded teeth, of _Squalus Mustelus_; _but the mouth is
TERMINAL, or AT THE EXTREMITY OF THE POINTED MUZZLE_.” The accompanying
figure, (fig. 49,) taken from a specimen of _Cestracion_ in the
collection of Professor John Fleming, may be recorded as of some little
interest, both from its direct bearing on the point in question, and from
the circumstance that it represents, not inadequately for its size, the
sole surviving species (_Cestracion Phillippi_) of the oldest vertebrate
family of creation. With this family, so far as is yet known, ichthyic
existence first began. It does not appear that on the globe which we
inhabit there was ever an ocean tenanted by living creatures at all that
had not its _Cestracion_,—a statement which could not be made regarding
any other vertebrate family. In Agassiz’s “Tabular View of the Genealogy
of Fishes,” the Cestracionts, and they only, sweep across the entire
geologic scale. And, as shown in the figure, the mouth in this ancient
family, instead of opening, as in the ordinary sharks, under the middle
of the head, to expose them to the suspicion of being creatures of low
and embryonic character, opened in a broad, honest-looking muzzle, very
much resembling that of the hog. The mouths of the most ancient Placoids
of which we know any thing, _did not_, I reiterate, _open under their
heads_.

But why introduce the element of embryonic progress into this question
at all? It is not a question of embryonic progress. The very legerdemain
of the sophist—the juggling by which he substitutes his white balls
for black, or converts his pigeons into crows—consists in the art of
attaching the conclusions founded on the facts or conditions of one
subject, to some other subject essentially distinct in its nature.
Gestation is not creation. The history of the young of animals in their
embryonic state is simply the history of the fœtal young; just as the
history of insect transformation, in which it has been held by good men,
but weak reasoners, that there exists direct evidence of the doctrine
of the resurrection, is the history of insect transformation, and of
nothing else. True, the human mind is so constituted that it converts
all nature into a storehouse of comparisons and analogies; and this fact
of the metamorphosis of the creeping caterpillar, after first passing
through an intermediate period of apparent death as an inert aurelia,
into a winged image, seemed to have seized on the human fancy at a very
early age, as wonderfully illustrative of life, death, and the future
state. The Egyptians wrapped up the bodies of their dead in the chrysalis
form, so that a mummy, in their apprehension, was simply a human pupa,
waiting the period of its enlargement; and the Greeks had but one word
in their language for butterfly and the soul. But not the less true is
it, notwithstanding, that the facts of insect transformation furnish no
legitimate key to the totally distinct facts of a resurrection of the
body, and of a life after death. And on what principle, then, are we to
trace the origin of past dynasties in the changes of the fœtus if not
the rise of the future dynasty in the transformations of the caterpillar?
“These [embryonic] characters [that of the heterocercal tail, and of the
mouth of the ordinary shark type] are essential and important,” remarks
the author of the “Vestiges,” “whatever the Edinburgh Reviewer may say
to the contrary;—they are the characters which, above all, I am chiefly
concerned in looking to, for they are the features of embryonic progress,
and embryonic progress is the grand key to the theory of development.”
Yes; the grand key to the theory of _fœtal_ development; for embryonic
progress _is_ fœtal development. But on what is the assertion based
that they form a key to the history of creation? Aurelia are not human
bodies laid out for the sepulchre, nor are butterflies human souls;
as certainly gestation is not creation, nor a life of months in the
uterus a succession of races for millions of ages outside of it. On
what grounds, then, is the assertion made? Does it embody the result
of a discovery or announce the message of a revelation? Did the author
of the “Vestiges” find it out for himself, or did an angel from heaven
tell it him? If it be a discovery, show us, we ask, the steps through
which you have been conducted to it; if a revolution produce, for our
satisfaction, the evidence on which it rests. For we are not to accept
as data, in a question of science, idle comparisons or vague analogies,
whether produced through the intentional juggling of the sophist, or
involuntarily conjured up in the dreamy delirium of an excited fancy.

It is one of the difficulties incident to the task of replying to any
dogmatic statement of error, that every mere annunciation of a false
fact or false principle must be met by elaborate counter-statement or
carefully constructed argument and that prolixity is thus unavoidably
entailed on the controversialist who labors to set right what his
antagonist has set wrong. The promulgator of error may be lively and
entertaining, whereas his pains-taking confutator runs no small risk of
being tedious and dull. May I, however, solicit the forbearance of the
reader, if, after already spending much time in skirmishing on ground
taken up by the enemy,—one of the disadvantages incident to the mere
defendant in a controversy of this nature,—I spend a little more in
indicating what I deem the proper ground on which the standing of the
earlier vertebrata should be decided. To the test of _brain_ I have
already referred, as all-important in the question: I would now refer to
the test of what may be termed _homological symmetry of organization_.




THE PROGRESS OF DEGRADATION. ITS HISTORY.


Though all animals be fitted by nature for the life which their instincts
teach them to pursue, naturalists have learned to recognize among them
certain aberrant and mutilated forms, in which the type of the special
class to which they belong seems distorted and degraded. They exist
as the monster _families_ of creation, just as among families there
appear from time to time monster _individuals_,—men, for instance,
without feet, or hands, or eyes, or with their feet, hands, or eyes
grievously misplaced,—sheep with their fore legs growing out of their
necks, or ducklings with their wings attached to their haunches. Among
these degraded races, that of the footless serpent, which “goeth upon
its belly,” has been long noted by the theologian as a race typical, in
its condition and nature, of an order of hopelessly degraded beings,
borne down to the dust by a clinging curse; and, curiously enough, when
the first comparative anatomists in the world give _their_ readiest
and most prominent instance of degradation among the denizens of the
natural world, it is this very order of footless reptiles that they
select. So far as the geologist yet knows, the Ophidians did not appear
during the Secondary ages, when the monarchs of creation belonged to
the reptilian division, but were ushered upon the scene in the times of
the Tertiary deposits, when the mammalian dynasty had supplanted that
of the Iguanodon and Megalosaurus. Their ill omened birth took place
when the influence of their house was on the wane, as if to set such a
stamp of utter hopelessness on its fallen condition, as that set by the
birth of a worthless or idiot heir on the fortunes of a sinking family.
The degradation of the Ophidians consists in the absence of limbs,—an
absence total in by much the greater number of their families, and
represented in others, as in the boas and pythons, by mere abortive
hinder limbs concealed in the skin; but they are thus not only _monsters
through defect of parts_, if I may so express myself, but also _monsters
through redundancy_, as a vegetative repetition of vertebra and ribs, to
the number of three or four hundred, forms the special contrivance by
which the want of these is compensated. I am also disposed to regard the
poison-bag of the venomous snakes as a mark of degradation;—it seems,
judging from analogy, to be a protective provision of a low character,
exemplified chiefly in the invertebrate families,—ants, centipedes,
and mosquitos,—spiders, wasps, and scorpions. The higher carnivora
are, we find, furnished with unpoisoned weapons, which, like those of
civilized man, are sufficiently effective, simply from the excellence
of their construction, and the power with which they are wielded, for
every purpose of assault or defence. It is only the squalid savages and
degraded boschmen of creation that have their feeble teeth and tiny
stings steeped in venom, and so made formidable. _Monstrosity through
displacement of parts_ constitutes yet another form of degradation; and
this form, united, in some instances, to the other two, we find curiously
exemplified in the geological history of the fish,—a history which, with
all its blanks and missing portions, is yet better known than that of
any other division of the vertebrata. And it is, I am convinced, from a
survey of the progress of degradation in the great ichthyic division,—a
progress recorded as “with a pen of iron in the rock for ever,”—and not
from superficial views founded on the cartilaginous or non-cartilaginous
texture of the ichthyic skeleton, that the standing of the kingly fishes
of the earlier periods is to be adequately determined. Any other mode
of survey, save the parallel mode which takes development of brain into
account, evolves, we find, nothing like principle, and lands the inquirer
in inextricable difficulties and inconsistencies.

In all the higher non-degraded vertebrata we find a certain uniform
type of skeleton, consisting of the head, the vertebral column, and
four limbs; and these last, in the various symmetrical forms, whether
exemplified in the higher fish, the higher reptiles, the higher birds,
the higher mammals, or in man himself, occur always in a certain
determinate order. In all the mammals, the scapular bases of the fore
limbs begin opposite the eighth vertebra from the skull backwards, the
seven which go before being cervical or neck vertebræ; in the birds,—a
division of the vertebrata that, from their peculiar organization,
require longer and more flexible necks than the mammals,—the scapulars
begin at distances from the occiput, varying, according to the species,
from opposite the thirteenth to opposite the twenty-fourth vertebra;
and in the reptiles—a division which, according to Cuvier, “presents
a greater diversity of forms, characters, and modes of gait, than any
of the other two,”—they occur at almost all points, from opposite
the second vertebra, as in the frog, to opposite the thirty-third or
thirty-fourth vertebra, as in some species of plesiosaurus. But in
all,—whether mammals, birds, or undegraded reptiles,—they are so placed,
that the creatures possess _necks_, of greater or less length, as an
essential portion of their general type. The hinder limbs have also in
all these three divisions of the animal kingdom their typical place.
They occur opposite, or very nearly opposite, the posterior termination
of the abdominal cavity, and mark the line of separation between the
vertebræ of the trunk (dorsal, lumbar, and sacral) and the third and
last, or _caudal_ division of the column,—a division represented in
man by but four vertebræ, and in the crocodile by about thirty-five,
but which is found to exist, as I have already said, in all the more
perfect forms. The limbs, then, in all the symmetrical animals of the
first three classes of the vertebrata, mark the three great divisions of
the vertebral column,—the division of the _neck_, the division of the
_trunk_, and the division of the _tail_. Let us now inquire how the case
stands with the fourth and lowest class,—that of the fishes.

In those existing Placoids that represent the fishes of the earliest
vertebrate period, the places of the double fins,—pectorals and
ventrals,—which form in the ichthyic class the true homologues of the
limbs, correspond to the places which these occupy in the symmetrical
mammals, birds, and reptiles. The scapular bases of the fore or pectoral
fins ordinarily begin opposite the twelfth or fourteenth vertebra;[27]
but they range, as in man and the mammals, in a forward direction, so
that the fins themselves are opposite the eighth or tenth. The pelvic
bases of the ventral fins are placed nearly opposite the base of the
abdomen, so that, as in all the symmetrical animals, the vent opens
between, or nearly between, those hinder limbs which the bases support.
In the Rays, which, so far as is yet known, did not appear in creation
until the Secondary ages had begun, the bases of the fore limbs, _i.
e._ pectoral fins, are attached to the lower part of a huge cervical
vertebra, nearly equal in length to _all_ the trunk vertebræ united; and
in the Chimeridæ, which also first appear in the Secondary division,
they are attached, as in the osseous fishes, to the hinder part of the
head. But in the representatives of all those Silurian Placoids yet
known, of which the family can be determined, or any thing with safety
predicated, the cervical division is found to occur as a series of
vertebræ: they present in this, as in the hinder portion of their bodies,
the homological symmetry of organization typical of that vertebral
sub-kingdom to which they belong.

In the second great period of ichthyic existence,—that of the Old
Red Sandstone,—we find the first example, in the class of fishes, of
“monstrosity through _displacement_ of parts,” and apparently also—in
at least two genera, though the evidence on this head be not yet quite
complete—of “monstrosity through _defect_ of parts.” In all the Ganoids
of the period, with (so far as we can determine the point) only two
exceptions, the scapular bases of the fore limbs are brought forward
from their typical place opposite the base of the cervical vertebræ, and
stuck on to the occipital plate. There occurs, in consequence, in one
great order of the ichthyic class, such a departure from the symmetrical
type as would take place in a monster example of the human family in
whom the neck had been annihilated, and the arms stuck on to the back of
the head. And in the genera _Coccosteus_ and _Pterichthys_ we find the
first example of degradation through _defect_. In the _Pterichthys_ the
_hinder_ limbs seem wanting, and in the _Coccosteus_ we find no trace
of the _fore_ limbs. The one resembles a monster of the human family
born without hands, and the other a monster born without feet. Ages
and centuries pass, and long unreckoned periods come to a close; and
then, after the termination of the Palæozoic period, we see that change
taking place in the form of the ichthyic tail, to which I have already
referred, (and to which I must refer at least once more,) as singularly
illustrative of the progress of degradation. Yet other ages and centuries
pass away, during which the reptile class attains to its fullest
development, in point of size, organization, and number; and then, after
the times of the Cretaceous deposits have begun, we find yet another
remarkable monstrosity of displacement introduced among all the fishes of
one very numerous order, and among no inconsiderable proportion of the
fishes of another. In the newly-introduced Ctenoids, (_Acanthopterygii_,)
and in those families of the Cycloids which Cuvier erected into the order
_Malacopterygii sub-brachiati_, the hinder limbs are brought forward,
and stuck on to the base of the previously misplaced fore limbs. All the
four limbs, by a strange monstrosity of displacement, are crowded into
the place of the extinguished neck. And such, at the present day, is the
prevalent type among fishes. Monstrosity through _defect_ is also found
to increase; so that the snake-like _apoda_, or feet-wanting fishes, form
a numerous order, some of whose genera are devoid, as in the common eels
and the congers, of only the hinder limbs, while in others, as in the
genera Muræna and Synbranchus, both hinder and fore limbs are wanting.
In the class of fishes, as fishes now exist, we find many more evidences
of the monstrosity which results from both the misplacement and defect
of parts, than in the other three classes of the vertebrata united, and
knowing their geological history better than that of any of the others,
we know, in consequence, that the monstrosities did not appear _early_,
but _late_, and that the progress of the race as a whole, though it
still retains not a few of the higher forms, has been a progress, not of
development from the low to the high, but of degradation from the high to
the low.

The reader may mark for himself, in the flounder, plaice, halibut, or
turbot,—fishes of a family of which there appears no trace in the earlier
periods,—an extreme example of the degradation of distortion superadded
to that of displacement. At a first glance the _limbs_ seem but to
exhibit merely the amount of natural misarrangement and misorder common
to the _Acanthopterygii_ and _Sub-brachiati_;—the base of the pectorals
are stuck on to the head, and the base of the ventrals attached to that
of the pectorals. From the circumstance, however, that the creature is
twisted half round and laid on its side, we find that at least one of the
pairs of double fins—the pectorals—perform the part of single fins,—one
projecting from the animal’s superior, the other from its inferior side,
in the way the anal and dorsal fins project from the upper and under
surfaces of other fishes; while its real dorsal and anal fins, both
developed very largely, and—in order to preserve its balance—in about an
equal degree, and wonderfully correspondent in form, perform, from their
lateral position, the functions of single fins. Indeed, at a first glance
they seem the analogues of the largely-developed pectorals of a very
different family of flat fishes,—the Rays. It would appear as if single
and double fins, by some such mutual agreement as that which, according
to the old ballad, took place between the churl of Auchtermuchty and his
wife, had agreed to exchange callings, and perform each the work of the
other. The tail, too, possesses, in consequence of the twist, not the
vertical position of other fish-tails, but is spread out horizontally,
like the tails of the cetacea. It is however, in the head of the flounder
and its cogeners that we find the more extraordinary distortions
exemplified. In order to accommodate it to the general twist, which
rendered lateral what in other fishes is dorsal and abdominal, and dorsal
and abdominal what in other fishes is lateral, one half its features had
to be twisted to the one side, and the other half to the other. The face
and cranium have undergone such a change as that which the human face and
cranium would undergo, were the eyes to be drawn towards the left ear,
and the mouth towards the right. The skull, in consequence, exhibits, in
its fixed bones, a strange Cyclopean character, unique among the families
of creation: it has its one well-marked eye orbit opening, like that of
Polyphemus, direct in the middle of the fore part of its head; while
the other, external to the cranium altogether, we find placed among the
free bones, directly over the maxillaries. And the wry mouth—twisted in
the opposite direction, as if to keep up such a balance of deformity as
that which the breast-hump of a hunchback forms to the hump behind—is in
keeping with the squint eyes. The jaws are strangely asymmetrical. In
symmetrical fishes the two bones that compose the anterior half of the
lower jaw are as perfectly correspondent in form and size as the left
hand or left foot is correspondent, in the human subject, to the _right_
hand or _right_ foot; but not such their character in the flounder.
The one is a broad, short, nearly straight bone; the other is larger,
narrower, and bent like a bow; and while the one contains only from four
to six teeth, the other contains from thirty to thirty-five. Scarcely in
the entire ichthyic kingdom are there any two jaws that less resemble
one another than the two halves of the jaw of the flounder, turbot,
halibut, or plaice. The intermaxillary bones are equally ill matched:
the one is fully twice the size of the other, and contains about thrice
as many teeth. That bilateral symmetry of the skeleton which is so
_invariable_ a characteristic of the vertebrata, that ordinary observers,
who have eyes for only the rare and the uncommon, fail to remark it,
but which a Newton could regard as so wonderful, and so thoroughly in
harmony with the uniformity of the planetary system, has scarce any
place in the asymmetrical head of the flounder. There exists in some of
our north country fishing villages an ancient apologue, which, though
not remarkable for point or meaning, at least serves to show that this
peculiar example of distortion the rude fishermen of a former age were
observant enough to detect. Once on a time the fishes met, it is said, to
elect a king; and their choice fell on the herring. “The herring king!”
contemptuously exclaimed the flounder, a fish of consummate vanity, and
greatly piqued on this occasion that its own presumed claims should have
been overlooked; “where, then, am I?” And straightway, in punishment of
its conceit and rebellion, “its eyes turned to the back of its head.”
Here is there a story palpably founded on the degradation of misplacement
and distortion, which originated ages ere the naturalist had recognized
either the term or the principle.

It would be an easy matter for an ingenious theorist, not much disposed
to distinguish between the minor and the master laws of organized
being, to get up quite as unexceptionable a theory of degradation as
of development. The one-eyed, one-legged Chelsea pensioner, who had a
child, unborn at the time, laid to his charge, agreed to recognize his
relationship to the little creature, if, on its coming into the world,
it was found to have a green patch over its eye, and a wooden leg.
And, in order to construct a hypothesis of progressive degradation,
the theorist has but to take for granted the transmission to other
generations of defects and compensating redundancies at once as extreme
and accidental as the loss of eyes or limbs, and the acquisition of
timber legs or green patches. The snake, for instance, he might regard as
a saurian, that, having accidentally lost its limbs, exerted itself to
such account throughout a series of generations, in making up for their
absence, as to spin out for itself, by dint of writhing and wriggling,
rather more than a hundred additional vertebræ, and to alter, for
purposes of greater flexibility, the structure of all the rest. And as
fishes, when nearly stunned by a blow, swim for a few seconds on their
side, he might regard the flounders as a race of half-stunned fishes,
previously degraded by the misplacement of their limbs, that, instead of
recovering themselves from the blow given to some remote parent of the
family, had expended all their energies in twisting their mouths round
to what chanced to be the under side on which they were laid, and their
eyes to what chanced to be the upper, and that made their pectorals
serve for anal and dorsal fins, and their anal and dorsal fins serve
for pectorals. But while we must recognize in nature certain laws of
disturbance, if I may so speak, through which, within certain limits,
traits which are the result of habit or circumstance in the parents are
communicated to their offspring, we would err as egregiously, did we
take only these into account, without noting that infinitely stronger
antagonist law of reproduction and restoration which, by ever gravitating
towards the original type, preserves the integrity of races, as the
astronomer would, who, in constructing his orrery, recognized only that
law of propulsion through which the planets speed through the heavens,
without taking into account that antagonist law of gravitation which,
by maintaining them in their orbits, insures the regularity of their
movements. The law of restoration would recover and right the stunned
fish laid on its side; the law of reproduction would give limbs to the
offspring of the mutilated saurian. We have evidence, in the extremeness
of the degradation in these cases, that it cannot be a degradation
hereditarily derived from accident. Nature is, we find, active, not in
perpetuating the accidental wooden legs and green patches of ancestors
in their descendants, but in restoring to the offspring the true limbs
and eyes which the parents have lost. It is, however, not with a theory
of hereditary degradation, but a hypothesis of gradual development, that
I have at present to deal; and what I have to establish as proper to
the present stage of my argument is, that this principle of degradation
really exists, and that the history of its progress in creation bears
directly against the assumption that the earlier vertebrata were of a
lower type than the vertebrata of the same ichthyic class which exist
now.[28]

The progress of the ichthyic tail, as recorded in geologic history,
corresponds with that of the ichthyic limbs. And as in the existing
state of things we find fishes that _nearly_ represent, in this respect,
all the great geologic periods,—I say _nearly_, not _fully_, for I
am acquainted with no fish adequately representative of the period
of the Old Red Sandstone,—it may be well to cast a glance over the
_contemporary_ series, as illustrative of the _consecutive_ one. In those
Placoids of the shark family that to a large brain unite homological
symmetry of organization, and represent the fishes of the first period,
we find, as I have already shown, that the vertebræ gradually diminish
in the caudal division of the column, until they terminate in a point,—a
circumstance in which they resemble not merely the betailed reptiles,
but also all the higher mammiferous quadrupeds, and even man himself.
And it is this peculiarity, stamped upon the less destructible portions
of the framework of the tail,—vertebræ and processes,—rather than the
one-sided or heterocercal form of the surrounding fin, composed of but
a mucoidal substance, that constitutes its grand characteristic; seeing
that in some Placoid genera, such as _Scyllium Stellare_, the terminal
portion of the fin is scarce less largely developed above than below,
and that in others, as in most of the Ray family, the under lobe of the
fin is wholly wanting. In the sturgeon,—one of the few Ganoids of the
present time,—we become sensible of a peculiar modification in this
heterocercal type of tail: the lower lobe is, we find, composed, as in
_Spinax_ and _Scyllium_, of rays exclusively; while through the centre
of the upper lobe there runs an acutely angular patch of lozenge-shaped
plates, like that which runs through the centre of the double fins of
_Dipterus_ and the Cœlacanths. But while in the sharks the gradually
diminishing vertebræ stand out in bold relief, and form the thickest
portion of the tail, that which represents them in the sturgeon (the
angular patch) is slim and thin,—slimmer in the middle than even at the
sides;—in part a consequence, no doubt, of the want, in this fish, of
solid vertebræ, but a consequence also of the extreme attenuation of the
nervous cord, in its prolongation into the lobe of the fin. Further,
the rays of the tail—its peculiarly ichthyic portion, which are purely
mucoidal in _Spinax_, _Scyllium_, and _Cestracion_—have become osseous in
the sturgeon. The _fish_ has _set_ and become _fixed_, as cement sets in
a building, or colors are fixed by a mordant. And it is worthy of special
remark that, correspondent with the peculiarly _ichthyic_ development
of tail in this fish, we find the prevailing ichthyic displacement of
the fore limbs. Again, in the _Lepidosteus_, another of the true Ganoids
which still exist, the internal angle of the upper lobe of the tail
wholly disappears, and with the internal angle the prolongation of the
nervous cord. Still, however, it is what the tail of the sturgeon would
become were the angular patch to be obliterated, and rays substituted
instead,—it is a tail set on awry. And in this fish also we find the
ichthyic displacement of fore limb. One step more, and we arrive at
the homocercal or equal-lobed tail, which seems to attain to its most
extreme type in those fishes in which, as in the perch and flounder, the
last vertebral joint, either very little or very abruptly diminished
in size, expands into broad processes without homologue in the higher
animals, on which the caudal rays rest as their bases. And in by much the
larger proportion of these fishes all the four limbs are slung round the
neck;—they at once exhibit the homocercal tail in its broadest type, and
displacement of limb in its most extreme form.

[Illustration: Fig. 50.

TAIL OF OSTEOLEPIS.]

[Illustration: Fig. 51.

TAIL OF LEPIDOSTEUS OSSEUS.]

Now, in tracing the geologic history of the ichthyic tail, we find these
several steps or gradations from the heterocercal to the homocercal,
represented by periods and formations. The Siluran periods may be
regarded as representative of that true heterocercal tail of the
Placoids, exemplified in _Spinax_, (page 172, fig. 48,) and _Cestracion_,
(page 177, fig. 49.) The whole caudal portion of this latter animal,
commencing immediately behind the ventrals, is, as becomes a true
tail, slim, when compared with its trunk; the vertebræ are of very
considerable solidity; the rays mucoidal; and where the spinal column
runs into the terminal fin, it takes such an upward turn as that which
the horse-jockey imparts, by the process of _nicking_, to the tails of
the hunter and the racehorse. And with the heterocercal tail, so true in
its homologies to the tails of the higher vertebrata, we find associated,
as has been shown, the true homological position of the fore limbs.
With the commencement of the Old Red Sandstone the ganoidal tail first
presents itself; and we become sensible of a change in the structure
of the attached fin, similar to that exemplified in the caudal rays of
the sturgeon. As shown by the irregularly-angular patch of scales which
in all the true Cœlacanths, and almost all the Dipterians,[29] runs
through the _upper_ lobe of the fin, and terminates in a point, (see
fig. 50,) it must have possessed the gradually diminishing vertebræ, or
a diminishing spinal cord, their analogue; but the rays, fairly _set_,
as their state of keeping in the rocks certify, exist as narrow oblong
plates of solid bone; and their anterior edges are strengthened by a line
of osseous defences, that pass from scales into rays. And in harmonious
accompaniment with this fairly _stereotyped_ edition of the ichthyic
tail, we find, in the fishes in which it appears, the first instance of
displacement of _limb_,—the bases of the pectorals being removed from
their original position, and stuck on to the nape of the neck. It may
be remarked, in passing, that in the tails of two ganoidal genera of
this period,—the _Coccosteus_ and _Pterichthys_,—the analogies traceable
lie rather in the direction of the tails of the Rays than in those of
the Sharks; and that one of these, the _Coccosteus_, seems, as has been
already intimated, to have had no pectorals, while it is doubtful whether
in the _Pterichthys_ the pectorals were not attached to the shoulder,
instead on the head. In the Carboniferous and Permian systems there
occur, especially among the numerous species of the genus _Palæoniscus_,
tails of the type exemplified by the internal angle of the tail of
the sturgeon: the lozenge-shaped scales run in acutely angular patches
through their upper lobes; but such is their extreme flatness, as shown
by the disposition of the enamelled covering, that it appears exceedingly
doubtful whether any vertebral column ran beneath;—they seem but to have
covered greatly diminished prolongations of the spinal cord. In the
base of the Secondary division,—another long stage towards the existing
state of things,—we find, with the homocercal tail, which now appears
for the first time, numerous tails like that of the _Lepidosteus_, (fig.
51,) of an intermediate type;—they are rather tails set on awry than
truly heterocercal. The diminished cord has disappeared from among the
fin rays. In the numerous Lepidoid genus, and the genera _Semionotus_
and _Tetra gonolepis_,—all ganoidal fishes of the Secondary period—this
intermediate style is very marked; while in their contemporaries of the
genera _Uræus_, _Microdon_, and _Pycnodus_, we find the earliest examples
of true homocercal tails. And in the Ctenoids and Cycloids of the Chalk
the homocercal tail receives its fullest development. It finds bases for
its rays in broad non-homological processes, that spread out behind
abruptly-terminating vertebræ, (fig. 52,) in the same period in which,
by a strange process of degradation, the four ichthyic limbs are first
gathered into a cluster, and hung about the neck.[30]

[Illustration: Fig. 52.

TAIL OF PERCH.]

I am aware that by some very distinguished comparative anatomists, among
the rest Professor Owen, the attachment, so common among fishes, of the
scapular arch and the fore limbs to the occipital bone, is regarded,
not as a displacement, but as a normal and primary condition of the
parts. Recognizing in the scapular bones the _ribs_ of the occipital
_centrum_, the anatomists of this school of course consider them, when
found articulated to the occiput, as in their proper and original place,
and as in a state of natural dislocation when removed, as in all the
reptiles, birds, and mammals, farther down. We find Professor Oken
borrowing support to his hypothesis from this view. The limbs, he tells
us, are simply ribs, that in the course of ages have been set free, and
have become by development what they now are. And it is unquestionably
a curious and interesting fact, that there are certain animals, such
as the crocodile, in which every centrum of the vertebral column, and
of every _vertebra_ of the head, has its ribs or rib-like appendages,
with the exception of the occipital _centrum_. And it is another equally
curious fact, that there is another certain class of animals, such as
the osseous horn-covered fishes, with the Sturionidæ, Salamandroidei,
and at least one genus among the Placoids, (the Chimæroidei,) in which
this occipital centrum bears as its _ribs_ the scapular bones, with
their appendages the fore limbs. It is the _centrum_ without _ribs_
that is selected in these animals as the centrum to which the scapular
_ribs_ should be attached. Be it remembered, however, that while it
is unquestionably the part of the comparative anatomist to determine
the relations and homologies of those parts of which all animals are
composed, and to interpret the significancy in the scale of being of the
various modes and forms in which they exist, it is as unquestionably the
part of the geologist to declare their history, and the order of their
succession _in time_. The questions which fall to be determined by the
geologist and anatomist are entirely different. It is the function of the
anatomist to decide regarding the high and the low, the typical and the
aberrant; and so, beginning at what is lowest or highest in the scale,
or least or most symmetrical in type, he passes through the intermediate
forms to the opposite extreme: and such is the order natural and proper
to his science. It is the vocation of the geologist, on the other hand,
to decide regarding the early and the late. It is with _time_, not with
_rank_, that he has to deal. Nor is it in the least surprising that he
should seem at issue with the comparative anatomist, when, in classifying
his groupes of organized being according to the periods of their
appearance, there is an order of arrangement forced upon him, different
from that which, on an entirely different principle, the anatomist
pursues. Nor can there be a better illustration of a collision of this
kind, than the one furnished by the case in point. That peculiarity of
structure which, as the lowest in the vertebral skeleton, is to the
comparative anatomist the primary and original one, and which, as such,
furnishes him with his starting point, is to the geologist not primary,
but secondary, simply because it was not primary, but secondary, in the
order of its occurrence. It belongs, so far as we yet know, not to the
_first_ period of vertebrate existence, but to the _second_; and appears
in geologic history as does that savage state which certain philosophers
have deemed the original condition of the human species, in the history
of civilization, when read by the light of the Revealed Record, under the
shadow of those gigantic ruins of the East that date only a few centuries
after the Flood. It is found to be a _degradation_ first introduced
during the lapse of an intermediate age,—not the normal condition which
obtained during the long cycles of the primal one. It indicates, not the
starting point from which the race of creation began, but the stage of
retrogradation beyond it at which the pilgrims who set out in a direction
opposite to that of the goal first arrived.[31]

This fact of degradation, strangely indicated in geologic history, with
reference to all the greater divisions of the animal kingdom, has often
appeared to me a surpassingly wonderful one. We can see but imperfectly,
in those twilight depths to which all such subjects necessarily belong;
and yet at times enough does appear to show us what a very superficial
thing infidelity may be. The general advance in creation has been
incalculably great. The lower divisions of the vertebrata preceded
the higher;—the fish preceded the reptile, the reptile preceded the
bird, the bird preceded the mammiferous quadruped, and the mammiferous
quadruped preceded man. And yet, is there one of these great divisions
in which, in at least some prominent feature, the present, through this
mysterious element of degradation, is not inferior to the past? There
was a time in which the ichthyic form constituted the highest example
of life; but the seas during that period did not swarm with fish of the
degraded type. There was, in like manner, a time when all the carnivora
and all the herbivorous quadrupeds were represented by reptiles; but
there are no such magnificent reptiles on the earth now as reigned over
it then. There was an after time, when birds seem to have been the sole
representatives of the warm-blooded animals; but we find, from the prints
of their feet left in sandstone, that the tallest men might have

    “Walked under their huge legs, and peeped about.”

Further, there was an age when the quadrupedal mammals were the magnates
of creation; but it was an age in which the sagacious elephant, now
extinct, save in the comparatively small Asiatic and African circles, and
restricted to two species, was the inhabitant of every country of the Old
World, from its southern extremity to the frozen shores of the northern
ocean; and when vast herds of a closely allied and equally colossal genus
occupied its place in the New. And now, in the times of the high-placed
human dynasty,—of those formally delegated monarchs of creation, whose
nature it is to look behind them upon the past, and before them, with
mingled fear and hope, upon the future,—do we not as certainly see the
elements of a state of ever-sinking degradation, which is to exist for
ever, as of a state of ever-increasing perfectibility, to which there is
to be no end? Nay, of a higher race, of which we know but little, this
much we at least know, that they long since separated into two great
classes,—that of the “elect angels,” and of “angels, that kept not their
first estate.”




EVIDENCE OF THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS—OF THE FOSSIL FLORA. ANCIENT TREE.


After dwelling at such length on the earlier fishes, it may seem scarce
necessary to advert to their lower contemporaries the mollusca,—that
great division of the animal kingdom which Cuvier places second in the
descending order, in his survey of the entire series, and first among the
invertebrates; and which Oken regards as the division out of which the
immediately preceding class of the vertebral animals have been developed.
“The fish,” he says, “is to be viewed as a mussel, from between whose
shells a monstrous abdomen has grown out.” There is, however, a
peculiarity in the molluscan group of the Silurian system, to which I
must be permitted briefly to refer, as, to employ the figure of Sterne,
it presents “two handles” of an essentially different kind, and as in all
such two-handled cases, the mere special pleader is sure to avail himself
of only the handle which best suits his purpose for the time.

Cuvier’s first and highest class of the molluscs is formed of what are
termed the Cephalopods,—a class of creatures possessed of great freedom
of motion: they can walk, swim, and seize their prey; they have what even
the lowest fishes such as the lancelet, want,—a brain enclosed in a
cartilaginous cavity in the head, and perfectly formed organs of sight;
they possess, too, what is found in no other mollusc,—organs of hearing;
and in sagacity and activity they prove more than matches for the smaller
fishes, many of which they overmaster and devour. With this highest
class there contrasts an exceedingly low molluscous class at the bottom
of the scale, or, at least, at what is now the bottom of the scale; for
they constitute Cuvier’s _fifth_ class; while his _sixth_ and last, the
Cirrhopodes, has been since withdrawn from the molluscs altogether,
and placed in a different division of the animal kingdom. And this low
class, the Brachiopods, are creatures that, living in bivalve shells,
unfurnished with spring hinges to throw them open, and always fast
anchored to the same spot, can but thrust forth, through the interstitial
chinks of their prison-houses, spiral arms, covered with cilia, and
winnow the water for a living. Now, it so happens that the molluscan
group of the Silurian system is composed chiefly of these two extreme
classes. It contains some of the other forms; but they are few in number,
and give no character to the rocks in which they occur. There was nothing
by which I was more impressed, in a visit to a Silurian region, than that
in its ancient graveyards, as in those of the present day, though in a
different sense, the high and the low should so invariably meet together.
It is, however, not impossible that, in even the present state of things,
a similar union of the extreme forms of the marine mollusca may be taking
place in deep-sea deposits. Most of the intermediate forms provided
with shells capable of preservation, such as the shelled Gasteropoda
and the Conchifers, are either littoral, or restricted to comparatively
small depths; whereas the Brachiopoda are deep-sea shells; and the
Cephalopoda may be found voyaging far from land, in the upper strata
of the sea above them. Even in the seas that surround our own island,
the Brachiopodous molluscs—terebratula and crania—have been found, ever
since deep-sea dredging became common, to be not very rare shells; and in
the Mediterranean, where they are less rare still, fleets of Argonauts,
the representatives of a highly organized family of the Cephalopods, to
which it is now believed the Bellerophon of the Palæozoic rocks belonged,
may be seen skimming along the surface, with sail and oar, high over the
profound depths in which they lie. And, of course, when death comes, that
comes to high and low, the remains of both Argonauts and Brachiopods
must lie together at the bottom, in beds almost totally devoid of the
intermediate forms.

Now, the author of the “Vestiges,” in maintaining his hypothesis,
suspends it on the handle furnished him by the immense abundance of the
Silurian Brachiopods. The Silurian period, he says, exhibits “a scanty
and most defective development of life; so much so, that Mr. Lyell calls
it, _par excellence_, the age of Brachiopods, with reference to the by
no means exalted bivalve shell-fish which forms its predominant class.
Such being the actual state of the case, I must persist in describing
even the fauna of this age, which we now know was not the first, as,
generally speaking, such a humble exhibition of the animal kingdom as
we might expect, upon the development theory, to find at an early stage
of the history of organization.” The reader will at once discern the
fallacy here. The Silurian period was peculiarly an age of Brachiopods,
for in no other period were Brachiopods so numerous, specifically or
individually, or of such size or importance; whereas it was not _so
peculiarly_ an age of Cephalopods, for these we find introduced in still
greater numbers during the Liasic and Oolitic periods. In 1848, when
Professor Edward Forbes edited the Palæontological map of Britain and
Ireland, which forms one of the very admirable series of “Johnstone’s
Physical Atlas,” the Cephalopods of the Silurian rocks of England and
Wales were estimated at forty-eight species, and the Brachiopods at
one hundred and fifty; whereas at the same date there were two hundred
and five Cephalopods of the Oolitic formations enumerated, and but
fifty-four Brachiopods. It is the molluscs of the inferior, not those
of the superior class, that constitute (with their contemporaries the
Trilobites) the characteristic fossils of the Silurian rocks; and hence
the propriety of the distinctive name suggested by Sir Charles Lyell.
But in the development question, what we have specially to consider is,
not the _numbers_ of the low, but the _standing_ of the high. A country
may be distinctively a country of flocks and herds, or a country of
the carnivorous mammalia, or, like New South Wales or the Galapagos, a
country of marsupial animals or of reptiles. Its human inhabitants may
be merely a few hunters or shepherds, too inconsiderable in numbers, and
too much like their brethren elsewhere, to give it any peculiar standing
as a home of men. But in estimating the highest point in the scale to
which the animal kingdom has attained within its limits, it is of its few
men, not of its many beasts, that we must take note. And the point to be
specially decided regarding the organisms of the Silurian system, in this
question, is, not the proportion in _number_ which the lower forms bore
to the higher, but the exact _rank_ which the higher bore in the scale
of existence. Did the system furnish but a single Cephalopod or a single
fish, we would yet have as certainly to determine that the chain of being
reached as high as the Cephalopod or the fish, as if the remains of these
creatures constituted its most abundant fossils. The chain of animal
life reached quite as high on the evening of the sixth day of creation,
when the human family was restricted to a single pair, as it does now,
when our statists reckon up by millions the inhabitants of the greater
capitals of the world; and the special pleader who, in asserting the
contrary, would insist on determining the point, not by the _rank_ of the
men of Eden, but by the _number_ of minnows or sticklebacks that swarmed
in its rivers, might be perhaps deemed ingenious in his expedients, but
certainly not very judicious in the use of them. It is worthy of remark,
however, that the Brachiopods of those Palæozoic periods in which the
group occupied such large space in creation, consisted of greatly larger
and more important animals than any which it contains in the present day.
It has yielded to what geological history shows to be the common fate,
and sunk into a state of degradation and decline.

The geological history of the vegetable, like that of the animal kingdom,
has been pressed into the service of the development hypothesis; and
certainly their respective courses, both in actual arrangement and in
their relation to human knowledge, seem wonderfully alike. It is not
much more than twenty years since it was held that no exogenous plant
existed during the Carboniferous period. The frequent occurrence of
Coniferæ in the Secondary deposits had been conclusively determined
from numerous specimens; but, founding on what seemed a large amount of
negative evidence, it was concluded that, previous to the Liasic age,
nature had failed to achieve a tree, and that the rich vegetation of the
Coal Measures had been exclusively composed of magnificent immaturities
of the vegetable kingdom,—of gigantic ferns and club-mosses, that
attained to the size of forest trees, and of thickets of the swamp-loving
horsetail family of plants, that well nigh rivalled in height those
forests of masts which darken the rivers of our great commercial cities.
Such was the view promulgated by M. Adolphe Brongniart; and it may be
well to remark that, so far as the evidence on which it was based was
positive, the view was sound. It _is_ a fact, that inferior orders of
plants were developed in those ages in a style which, in their present
state of degradation, they never exemplify: they took their place, not,
as now, among the pigmies and abortions of creation, but among its
tallest and goodliest productions. It is, however, _not_ a fact that they
were the highest vegetable forms of their time. True exogenous trees
also existed in great numbers and of vast size. In various localities
in the coal fields of both England and Scotland,—such as Lennel Braes
and Allan Bank in Berwickshire, High-Heworth, Fellon, Gateshead, and
Wideopen near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and in quarries to the west of the
city of Durham,—the most abundant fossils of the system are its true
woods. In the quarry of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, three huge trunks
have been laid open during the last twenty years, within the space of
about a hundred and fifty yards, and two equally massy trunks, within
half that space, in the neighboring quarry of Granton, all low in the
Coal Measures. They lie diagonally athwart the strata,—at an angle of
about thirty,—with the nether and weightier portion of their boles
below, like snags in the Mississippi; and we infer, from their general
direction, that the stream to which they reclined must have flowed from
nearly north-east to south-west. The current was probably that of a
noble river, which reflected on its broad bosom the shadow of many a
stately tree. With the exception of one of the Granton specimens, which
still retains its strong-kneed roots, they are all mere portions of
trees, rounded at both ends as if by attrition or decay; and yet one
of these portions measures about six feet in diameter by sixty-one feet
in length; another four feet in diameter by seventy feet in length; and
the others, of various thickness, but all bulky enough to equal the
masts of large vessels, range in length from thirty-six to forty-seven
feet. It seems strange to one who derives his supply of domestic fuel
from the Dalkeith and Falkirk coal-fields, that the Carboniferous
flora could ever have been described as devoid of trees. I can scarce
take up a piece of coal from beside my study fire, without detecting
in it fragments of carbonized wood, which almost always exhibit the
characteristic longitudinal fibres, and not unfrequently the medullary
rays. Even the trap-rocks of the district enclose, in some instances,
their masses of lignite, which present in their transverse sections,
when cut by the lapidary, the net-like reticulations of the coniferæ.
The fossil botanist, who devoted himself chiefly to the study of
microscopic structure, would have to decide, from the facts of the case,
not that trees were absent during the Carboniferous period, but that,
in consequence of their having been present in amazing numbers, their
remains had entered more palpably and extensively into the composition
of coal than those of any other vegetable.[32] So far as is yet known,
they all belonged to the two great divisions of the coniferous family,
araucarians and pines. The huge trees of Craigleith and Granton were of
the former tribe, and approximate more nearly to _Altingia excelsa_, the
Norfolk-Island pine,—a noble araucarian, that rears its proud head from a
hundred and sixty to two hundred feet over the soil, and exhibits a green
and luxuriant breadth of foliage rare among the Coniferæ,—than any other
living tree.

[Illustration: Fig. 53.

ALTINGIA EXCELSA, (NORFOLK-ISLAND PINE.)

_From a young specimen in the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh._]

Beyond the Coal Measures terrestrial plants become extremely rare. The
fossil botanist, on taking leave of the lower Carboniferous beds, quits
the land, and sets out to sea; and it seems in no way surprising, that
the specimens which he there adds to his herbarium should consist mainly
of _Fucaceæ_ and _Conferveæ_. The development hypothesis can borrow no
support from the simple fact, that while a high terrestrial vegetation
grows upon dry land, only algæ grow in the sea; and even did the Old Red
Sandstone and Silurian systems furnish, as their vegetable organisms,
fucoids exclusively, the evidence would amount to no more than simply
this, that the land of the Palæozoic periods produced plants of the land,
and the sea of the Palæozoic periods produced plants of the sea.

In the Upper Old Red Sandstone,—the formation of the _Holoptychius_
and the _Stagonolepis_,—the only vegetable remains which I have yet
seen are of a character so exceedingly obscure and doubtful, that all
I could venture to premise regarding them is, that they _seem_ to be
the fragments of sorely comminuted fucoids. In the formation of the
Middle Old Red,—that of the Cephalaspis and the gigantic lobster of
Carmylie,—the vegetable remains are at once more numerous and better
defined. I have detected among the gray micaceous sandstones of
Forfarshire a fucoid furnished with a thick, squat stem, that branches
into numerous divergent leaflets or fronds, of a slim parallelogrammical,
grass-like form, and which, as a whole, somewhat resembles the scourge
of cords attached to a handle with which a boy whips his top. And
Professor Fleming describes a still more remarkable vegetable organism
of the same formation, “which, occurring in the form of circular, flat
patches, composed each of numerous smaller contiguous circular pieces, is
altogether not unlike what might be expected to result from a compressed
berry, such as the bramble or rasp.” In the Lower Old Red,—the formation
of the _Coccosteus_ and _Cheiracanthus_,—the remains of fucoids are more
numerous still. There are gray slaty beds among the rocks of Navity, that
owe their fissile character mainly to their layers of carbonized weed;
and “among the rocks of Sandy-Bay, near Thurso,” says Mr. Dick, “the
dark impressions of large fucoids are so numerous, that they remind one
of the interlaced boughs and less bulky pine-trunks that lie deep in our
mosses.” A portion of a stem from the last locality, which I owe to Mr.
Dick, measures three inches in diameter; but the ill-compacted cellular
tissue of the algæ is but indifferently suited for preservation; and so
it exists as a mere coaly film, scarcely half a line in thickness.

The most considerable collection of the Lower Old Red fucoids which
I have yet seen is that of the Rev. Charles Clouston of Sandwick, in
Orkney,—a skilful cultivator of geological science, who has specially
directed his palæontological inquiries on the vegetable remains of the
flagstones of his district, as the department in which most remained
to be done; but his numerous specimens only serve to show what a
poverty-stricken flora that of the ocean of the Lower Old Red Sandstone
must have been. I could detect among them but two species of plants;—the
one an imperfectly preserved vegetable, more nearly resembling a
club-moss than aught else which I have seen, but which bore on its
surface, instead of the well-marked scales of the _Lycopodiaceæ_,
irregular rows of tubercles, that, when elongated in the profile, as
sometimes happens, might be mistaken for minute, ill-defined leaves;
the other, a smooth-stemmed fucoid, existing on the stone in most cases
as a mere film, in which, however, thickly-set longitudinal fibres are
occasionally traceable, and which may be always distinguished from the
other by its sharp-edged outline, and from the circumstance that its
stems continue to retain the same diameter for considerable distances,
after throwing off at acute angles numerous branches nearly as bulky
as themselves. In a Thurso specimen, about two feet in length, which I
owe to the kindness of Mr. Dick, there are stems continuous throughout,
that, though they ramify in that space into from six to eight branches,
are nearly as thick atop as at bottom. They are the remains, in all
probability, of a long, flexible weed, that may have somewhat resembled
those fucoids of the intertropical seas, which, streaming slantwise
in the tide, rise not unfrequently to the surface in from fifteen to
twenty fathoms of water; and as, notwithstanding their obscurity,
they are among the most perfect specimens of their class yet found,
and contrast with the stately araucarians of the Coal Measures, in a
style which cannot fail to delight the heart of every assertor of the
development hypothesis, I present them to the reader from Mr. Dick’s
specimen, in a figure (fig. 54) which, however slight its interest, has
at least the merit of being true. The stone exhibits specimens of the two
species of Mr. Clouston’s collection,—the sharp-edged, finely-striated
weed, _a_, and that roughened by tubercles, _b_; which, besides the
distinctive character manifested on its surface, differs from the other
in rapidly losing breath with every branch which it throws off, and,
in consequence, runs soon to a point. The cut on the opposite page
(fig. 55) represents not inadequately the cortical peculiarities of
the two species when best preserved. The surface of the tubercled one
will perhaps remind the Algologist of the knobbed surface of the thong
or receptacle of _Himanthalia lorea_, a recent fucoid, common on the
western coast of Scotland, but rare on the east. An Orkney specimen
lately sent me by Mr. William Watt, from a quarry at Skaill, has much
the appearance of one of the smaller ferns, such as the moor-worts, sea
spleen-worts, or maiden-hairs. It exists as an impression in diluted
black, on a ground of dark gray, and has so little sharpness of outline,
that, like minute figures in oil-paintings, it seems more distinct when
viewed at arm’s length than when microscopically examined; but enough
remains to show that it must have been a terrestrial, not a marine
plant. The accompanying print (fig. 56) may be regarded as no unfaithful
representation of this unique fossil its state of imperfect keeping.
The vegetation of the Silurian system, from its upper beds down till
where we reach the zero of life, is, like that of the Old Red Sandstone,
almost exclusively fucoidal. In the older fossiliferous deposits of the
system in Sweden, Russia, the Lake Districts of England, Canada, and
the United States, fucoids occur, to the exclusion, so far as is yet
known, of every other vegetable form; and such is their abundance in some
localities, that they render the argillaceous rocks in which they lie
diffused, capable of being fired as an alum slate, and exist in others
as seams of a compact anthracite, occasionally used as fuel. They also
occur in those districts of Wales in which the place and sequence of the
various Silurian formations were first determined, though apparently
in a state of keeping from which little can be premised regarding
their original forms. Sir Roderick Murchison sums up his notice of the
vegetable remains of the system in the province whence it derives its
name, by stating that he had submitted his specimens to “Mr. Robert Brown
and Dr. Greville, and that neither of these eminent botanists were able
to say much more regarding them than that they were fucoid-like bodies.”

[Illustration: Fig. 54.

FUCOIDS OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE.

a. _Smooth-stemmed species._

b. _Tubercled species._

(One sixth nat. size, linear.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 55.

a. _Smooth-stemmed species._

b. _Tubercled species._

(Natural size.)]

Such are the vegetable organisms of the Old Red Sandstone and Silurian
systems: they are the remains of the ancient marine plants of ancient
marine deposits and, as such, lend quite as little support to the
development hypothesis as the recent algæ of our existing seas. The
case, stated in its most favorable form, amounts simply to this,—that
at certain early periods,—represented by the Upper and Lower Silurian
and the Old Red deposits,—the seas produced sea-plants; and that, at
a certain later period,—that of the Carboniferous system,—the land
produced land-plants. But even this, did it stand alone, would be a _too_
favorable statement. I have seen, on one occasion, the fisherman bring
up with his nets, far in the open sea, a wild rose-bush, that, though
it still bore its characteristic thorns, was encrusted with serpula,
and laden with pendulous lobularia. It had been swept from its original
habitat by some river in flood, that had undermined and torn down the
bank on which it grew; and after floating about, mayhap for months, had
become so saturated with water, that it could float no longer. And in
that single rose-bush, dragged up to the light and air from its place
among Sertularia, Flustra, Serpula, and the deep-sea fucoids, I had as
certain an evidence of the existence of the dicotyledonous plant, as if
I had all the families of the Rosaecæ before me. Now, we are furnished
by the more ancient formations with evidence regarding the existence
of a terrestrial vegetation, such as that which the rose-bush in this
case supplied. We cannot expect that the proofs should be numerous. In
the chart of the Pacific attached to the better editions of “Cook’s
Voyages,” there are several notes along the tract of the great navigator,
that indicate where, in mid ocean, trees or fragments of trees had been
picked up. These entries, however, are but few, though they belong to all
the three voyages together: if I remember aright, there are only five
entries in all,—two in the Northern, and three in the Southern Pacific.
The floating shrub or tree, at a great distance from land, is of rare
occurrence in even the present scene of things, though the breadth of
land be great, and trees numerous; and in the times of the Silurian and
Old Red Sandstone systems, when the breadth of land was apparently _not_
great, and trees and shrubs, in consequence, _not_ numerous, it must
have been of rarer occurrence still. We learn, however, from Sir Charles
Lyell, that in the “Hamilton group of the United States,—a series of
beds that corresponds in many of its fossils with the Ludlow rocks of
England,—plants allied to the _Lepidodendra_ of the Carboniferous type
are abundant; and that in the lower Devonian strata of New York the same
plants occur associated with ferns.” And I am able to demonstrate, from
an interesting fossil at present before me, that there existed in the
period of the Lower Old Red Sandstone vegetable forms of a class greatly
higher than either _Lepidodendra_ or ferns.

[Illustration: Fig. 56.

FERN? OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE.

(Natural size.)]

[Illustration: Fig. 57.

LIGNITE OF THE LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE.

(One third nat. size, linear.)]

In my little work on the Old Red Sandstone, I have referred to an
apparent lignite of the Lower Old Red of Cromarty, which presented, when
viewed by the microscope, marks of the internal fibre. The surface,
when under the glass, resembled, I said, a bundle of horse-hairs lying
stretched in parallel lines: and in this specimen alone, it was added,
had I found aught in the Lower Old Red Sandstone approaching to proof of
the existence of dry land. About four years ago I had this lignite put
stringently to the question by Mr. Sanderson, and deeply interesting was
the result. I must first mention, however, that there cannot rest the
shadow of a doubt regarding the place of the organism in the geologic
scale. It is unequivocally a fossil of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. I
found it partially embedded, with many other nodules half-disinterred
by the sea, in an ichthyolitic deposit, a few hundred yards to the
east of the town of Cromarty, which occurs more than four hundred
feet over the Great Conglomerate base of the system. A nodule that
lay immediately beside it contained a well-preserved specimen of the
_Coccosteus Decipiens_; and in the nodule in which the lignite itself
is contained, (fig. 57,) the practised eye may detect a scattered group
of scales of _Diplacanthus_, a scarce less characteristic organism of
the lower formation. And what, asks the reader, is the character of this
very ancient vegetable,—the most ancient, by three whole formations,
that has presented its internal structure to the microscope? Is it as
low in the scale of development as in the geological scale? Does this
venerable Adam of the forest appear, like the Adam of the infidel, as a
squalid, ill-formed savage, with a rugged shaggy nature, which it would
require the suggestive necessities of many ages painfully to lick into
civilization? Or does it appear rather like the Adam of the poet and the
theologian, independent, in its instantaneously-derived perfection, of
all after development?

    “Adam, the goodliest man of men since born
    His sons.”

Is its tissue vascular or cellular, or, like that of some of the
cryptogamia, intermediate? Or what, in fine, is the nature and bearing
of its mute but emphatic testimony, on that doctrine of progressive
development of late so strangely resuscitated?

In the first place, then, this ancient fossil is a true wood,—a
Dicotyledonous or Polycotyledonous _Gymnosperm_, that, like the pines
and larches of our existing forests, bore naked seeds, which, in their
state of germination, developed either double lobes to shelter the embryo
within, or shot out a fringe of verticillate spikes, which performed
the same protective functions, and that, as it increased in bulk year
after year, received its accessions of growth in outside layers. In
the transverse section the cells bear the reticulated appearance which
distinguish the coniferæ, (fig. 58, _a_;) the lignite had been exposed
in its bed to a considerable degree of pressure; and so the openings
somewhat resemble the meshes of a net that has been drawn a little awry;
but no general obliteration of their original character has taken place,
save in minute patches, where they have been injured by compression or
the bituminizing process. All the tubes indicated by the openings are, as
in recent coniferæ, of nearly the same size; and though, as in many of
the more ancient lignites, there are no indications of annual rings, the
direction of the medullary rays is distinctly traceable. The longitudinal
sections are rather less distinct than the transverse one; in the section
parallel to the radius of the stem or bole the circular disks of the
coniferæ were at first not at all detected; and, as since shown by a
very fine microscope, they appear simply as double and triple lines of
undefined dots, (_b_,) that somewhat resemble the stippled markings
of the miniature painter; nor are the openings of the medullary rays
frequent in the tangental section (_i. e._ that parallel to the bark,)
(_c_;) but nothing can be better defined than the peculiar arrangement
of the woody fibre, and the longitudinal form of the cells. Such is the
character of this, the most ancient of lignites yet found, that yields
to the microscope the peculiarities of its original structure. We find
in it an unfallen _Adam_,—not a half-developed savage.[33]

[Illustration: Fig. 58.

INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF LIGNITE OF LOWER OLD RED SANDSTONE.

a. _Transverse section._

b. _Longitudinal section, (parallel to radius, or medullary rays.)_

c. _Longitudinal section, (tangental, or parallel to the bark.)_

(Mag. forty diameters.)]

The olive leaf which the dove brought to Noah established at least three
important facts, and indicated a few more. It showed most conclusively
that there was dry land, that there were olive trees, and that the
climate of the surrounding region, whatever change it might have
undergone, was still favorable to the development of vegetable life.
And, further, it might be very safely inferred from it, that if olive
trees had survived, other trees and plants must have survived also; and
that the dark muddy prominences round which the ebbing currents were fast
sweeping to lower levels, would soon present, as in antediluvian times,
their coverings of cheerful green. The olive leaf spoke not of merely
a partial, but of a general vegetation. Now, the coniferous lignite of
the Lower Old Red Sandstone we find charged, like the olive leaf, with
a various and singularly interesting evidence. It is something to know,
that in the times of the _Coccosteus_ and _Asterolepis_ there existed dry
land, and that that land wore, as at after periods, its soft, gay mantle
of green. It is something also to know, that the verdant tint was not
owing to a profuse development of the mere immaturities of the vegetable
kingdom,—crisp, slow-growing lichens, or watery spore-propagated fungi
that shoot up to their full size in a night,—nor even to an abundance
of the more highly organized families of the liverworts and the mosses.
These may have abounded then, as now; though we have not a shadow of
evidence that they did. But while we have no proof whatever of _their_
existence, we have conclusive proof that there existed orders and
families of a rank far above them. On the dry land of the Lower Old
Red Sandstone, on which, according to the theory of Adolphe Brogniart,
nothing higher than a lichen or a moss could have been expected, the
ship-carpenter might have hopefully taken axe in hand, to explore the
woods for some such stately pine as the one described by Milton,—

    “Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
    Of some great admiral.”

Viewed simply in its picturesque aspect, this _olive leaf_ of the Old
Red seems not at all devoid of poetry. We sail upwards into the high
geologic zones, passing from ancient to still more ancient scenes of
being; and, as we voyage along, find ever in the surrounding prospect,
as in the existing scene from which we set out, a graceful intermixture
of land and water, continent, river, and sea. We first coast along the
land of the Tertiary, inhabited by the strange quadrupeds of Cuvier,
and waving with the reeds and palms of the Paris Basin; the land of the
Wealden, with its gigantic iguanodon rustling amid its tree ferns and
its cycadeæ, comes next; then comes the green land of the Oolite, with
its little pouched insectivorous quadruped, its flying reptiles, its
vast jungles of the Brora equisetum, and its forests of the Helmsdale
pine; and then, dimly as through a haze, we mark, as we speed on, the
thinly scattered islands of the New Red Sandstone, and pick up in our
course a large floating leaf, veined like that of a cabbage, which not a
little puzzles the botanists of the expedition. And now we near the vast
Carboniferous continent, and see along the undulating outline, between us
and the sky, the strange forms of a vegetation, compared with which that
of every previously seen land seems stunted and poor. We speed day after
day along endless forests, in which gigantic club-mosses wave in air a
hundred feet over head, and skirt interminable marshes, in which thickets
of reeds overtop the mast-head. And, where mighty rivers come rolling to
the sea, we mark, through the long-retiring vistas which they open into
the interior, the higher grounds of the country covered with coniferous
trees, and see doddered trunks of vast size, like those of Granton
and Craigleith, reclining under the banks in deep muddy reaches, with
their decaying tops turned adown the current. At length the furthermost
promontory of this long range of coast comes full in view: we near it,—we
have come up abreast of it: we see the shells of the Mountain Limestone
glittering white along its further shore, and the green depths under our
keel lightened by the flush of innumerable corals; and then, bidding
farewell to the land forever,—for so the geologists of but five years
ago would have advised,—we launch into the unmeasured ocean of the Old
Red, with its three consecutive zones of animal life. Not a single patch
of land more do those geologic charts exhibit which we still regard as
new. The zones of the Silurian and Cambrian succeed the zones of the Old
Red; and, darkly fringed by an obscure bank of cloud ranged along the
last zone in the series, a night that never dissipates settles down upon
the deep. Our voyage, like that of the old fabulous navigators of five
centuries ago, terminates on the sea in a thick darkness, beyond which
there lies no shore and there dawns no light. And it is in the middle of
this vast ocean, just where the last zone of the Old Red leans against
the first zone of the Silurian, that we have succeeded in discovering
a solitary island unseen before,—a shrub-bearing land, much enveloped
in fog, but with hills that at least look green in the distance. There
are patches of floating sea-weed much comminuted by the surf all around
it; and on one projecting headland we see clear through our glasses a
cone-bearing tree.

This certainly is not the sort of arrangement demanded by the exigencies
of the development hypothesis. A true wood at the base of the Old Red
Sandstone, or a true Placoid in the Limestones of Bala, very considerably
beneath the base of the Lower Silurian system, are untoward misplacements
for the purposes of the Lamarckian; and who that has watched the progress
of discovery for the last twenty years, and seen the place of the
earliest ichthyolite transferred from the Carboniferous to the Cambrian
system, and that of the earliest exogenous lignite from the Lias to the
Lower Devonian, will now venture to say that fossil wood may not yet
be detected as low in the scale as any vegetable organism whatever, or
fossil fish as low as the remains of any animal? But though the response
of the earlier geologic systems be thus unfavorable to the development
hypothesis, may not men such as the author of the “Vestiges” urge, that
the geologic evidence, taken as a whole, and in its bearing on groupes
and periods, establishes the general fact that the lower plants and
animals preceded the higher,—that the conifera, for instance, preceded
our true forest trees, such as the oak and elm,—that, in like manner, the
fish preceded the reptile, that the reptile preceded the bird, that the
bird preceded the mammiferous quadruped and the quadrumana, and that the
mammiferous quadruped and the quadrumana preceded man? Assuredly yes!
They may and do urge that Geology furnishes evidence of such a succession
of existences; and the arrangement seems at once a very wonderful and
very beautiful one. Of that great and imposing procession of being of
which this world has been the scene, the programme has been admirably
marshalled. But the order of the arrangement in no degree justifies the
inference based upon it by the Lamarckian. The fact that fishes and
reptiles were created on an earlier day than the beasts of the field
and the human family, gives no ground whatever for the belief that “the
peopling of the earth was one of a natural kind, requiring time,” or that
the reptiles and fishes have been not only the predecessors, but also the
progenitors of the beasts and of man. The geological phenomena, even had
the author of the “Vestiges” been consulted in their arrangement, and
permitted to determine their sequence, would yet have failed to furnish,
not merely an adequate foundation for the development hypothesis,
but even the slightest presumption in its favor. In making good the
assertion, may I ask the reader to follow me through the details of a
simple though somewhat lengthened illustration?




SUPERPOSITION NOT PARENTAL RELATION. THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE.


Several thousand years ago, ere the upheaval of the last of our raised
beaches, there existed somewhere on the British coast a submarine bed,
rich in sea-weed and the less destructible zoophytes, and inhabited by
the commoner crustaceæ and molluscs. Shoals of herrings frequented it
every autumn, haunted by their usual enemies the dog-fish, the cod, and
the porpoise; and, during the other seasons of the year, it was swum
over by the ling, the hake, and the turbot. A considerable stream, that
traversed a wide extent of marshy country, waving with flags and reeds,
and in which the frog and the newt bred by millions, entered the sea
a few hundred yards away, and bore down, when in flood, its modicum
of reptilian remains, some of which, sinking over the submarine bed,
found a lodgment at the bottom. Portions of reeds and flags were also
occasionally entombed, with now and then boughs of the pine and juniper,
swept from the higher grounds. Through frequent depositions of earthy
matter brought down by the streamlet, and of sand thrown up by the sea,
a gradual elevation of the bottom went on, till at length the deep-sea
bed came to exist as a shallow bank, over which birds of the wader family
stalked mid-leg deep when plying for food; and on one occasion a small
porpoise, losing his way, and getting entangled amid its shoals, perished
on it, and left his carcass to be covered up by its mud and silt. That
elevation of the land, or recession of the sea, to which the country owes
its last acquired marginal strip of soil, took place, and the shallow
bank became a flat meadow, raised some six or eight feet above the
sea-level. Herbs, shrubs, and trees, in course of time covered it over;
and then, as century succeeded century, it gathered atop a thick stratum
of peaty mould, embedding portions of birch and hazel bushes, and a few
doddered oaks. When in this state, at a comparatively recent period,
an Italian boy, accompanied by his monkey, was passing over it, when
the poor monkey, hard-wrought and ill-fed, and withal but indifferently
suited originally for braving the rigors of a keen northern climate,
lay down and died, and his sorrowing master covered up the remains. Not
many years after, the mutilated corpse of a poor shipwrecked sailor was
thrown up, during a night-storm, on the neighboring beach: it was a mere
fragment of the human frame,—a mouldering unsightly mass, decomposing
in the sun; and a humane herd-boy, scooping out a shallow grave for it,
immediately over that of the monkey, buried it up. Last of all, a farmer,
bent on agricultural improvement, furrowed the flat meadow to the depth
of some six or eight feet, by a broad ditch, that laid open its organic
contents from top to bottom. And then a philosopher of the school of
Maillet and Lamarck, chancing to come that way, stepped aside to examine
the phenomena, and square them with his theory.

First, along the bottom of the deep ditch he detects marine organisms of
a low order, and generally of a small size There are dark indistinct
markings traversing the gray silt which he correctly enough regards
as the remains of fucoids and blent with these, he finds the stony
cells of flustra, the calcareous spindles of the sea-pen, the spines
of echinus, and the thin granular plates of the crustacea. Layers of
mussel and pecten shells come next, mixed up with the shells of buccinum,
natica, and trochus. Over the shells there occur defensive spines of
the dog-fish, blent with the button-like, thornset boucles of the ray.
And the minute skeletons of herrings, with the vertebral and cerebral
bones of cod, rest over these in turn. He finds, also, well-preserved
bits of reed, and a fragment of pine. Higher up, the well-marked bones
of the frog occur, and the minute skeleton of a newt; higher still, the
bones of birds of the diver family; higher still, the skeleton of a
porpoise; and still higher, he discovers that of a monkey, resting amid
the decayed boles and branches of dicotyledonous plants and trees. He
pursues his search, vastly delighted to find his doctrine of progressive
development so beautifully illustrated; and last of all he detects, only
a few inches from the surface, the broken remains of the poor sailor. And
having thus collected his facts, he sets himself to collate them with
his hypothesis. To hold that the zoophytes had been created zoophytes,
the molluscs molluscs, the fishes fishes, the reptiles reptiles, or the
man a man, would be, according to our philosopher, alike derogatory to
the Divine wisdom and to the acumen and vigor of the human intellect: it
would be “_distressing to him to be compelled to picture the power of
God, as put forth in any other manner than in those slow, mysterious,
universal laws, which have so plainly an eternity to work in_;” nor,
with so large an amount of evidence before him as that which the ditch
furnishes,—evidence conclusive to the effect that creation is but
development,—does he find it necessary either to cramp his faculties or
outrage his taste, by a weak yielding to the requirements of any such
belief.

Meanwhile the farmer,—a plain, observant, elderly man, comes up, and
he and the philosopher enter into conversation. “I have been reading
the history of creation in the side of your deep ditch,” says the
philosopher, “and find the record really very complete. Look there,” he
adds, pointing to the unfossiliferous strip that runs along the bottom
of the bank; “there, life, both vegetable and animal, first began. It
began, struck by electricity out of albumen, as a congeries of minute
globe-shaped atoms,—each a hollow sphere within a sphere, as in the
well-known Chinese puzzle; and from these living atoms were all the
higher forms progressively developed. The ditch, of course, exhibits
none of the atoms with which being first commenced; for the atoms don’t
keep;—we merely see their place indicated by that unfossiliferous band
at the bottom; but we may detect immediately over it almost the first
organisms into which—parting thus early into the two great branches of
organic being—they were developed. _There_ are the fucoids, first-born
among vegetables,—and _there_ the zoophytes, well nigh the lowest of the
animal forms. The fucoids are marine plants; for, according to Oken,
‘all life is from the sea,—none from the continent;’ but _there_, a few
feet higher, we may see the remains of reeds and flags,—semi-aqueous,
semi-aerial plants of the comparatively low monocotyledonous order into
which the fucoids were developed; higher still we detect fragments
of pines, and, I think, juniper,—trees and shrubs of the land of an
intermediate order, into which the reeds and flags were developed
in turn; and in that peaty layer immediately beneath the vegetable
mould, there occur boughs and trunks of blackened oak,—a noble tree
of the dicotyledonous division,—the highest to which vegetation in its
upward course has yet attained. Nor is the progress of the other great
branch of organized being—that of the animal kingdom—less distinctly
traceable. The zoophytes became crustacea and molluscs,—the crustacea
and molluscs, dog-fishes and herrings,—the dog-fish, a low placoid,
shot up chiefly into turbot, cod, and ling; but the smaller osseous
fish was gradually converted into a batrachian reptile; in short,
the herring became a frog,—an animal that still testifies to its
ichthyological origin, by commencing life as a fish. Gradually, in
the course of years, the reptile, expanding in size and improving in
faculty, passed into a warm-blooded porpoise; the porpoise at length,
tiring of the water as he began to know better, quitted it altogether,
and became a monkey, and the monkey by slow degrees improved into
man,—yes, into man, my friend, who has still a tendency, especially
when just shooting up to his full stature, and studying the ‘Vestiges,’
to resume the monkey. Such, Sir, is the true history of creation, as
clearly recorded in the section of earth, moss, and silt, which you have
so opportunely laid bare. Where that ditch now opens, the generations
of the man atop lived, died, and were developed. _There_ flourished
and decayed his great-great-great-great-grandfather the sea-pen,—his
great-great-great-grandfather the mussel,—his great-great-grandfather
the herring,—his great-grandfather the frog,—his grandfather the
porpoise,—and his father the monkey. And _there_ also lived, died, and
were developed, the generations of the oak, from the kelp-weed and tangle
to the reed and the flag, and from the reed and the flag, to the pine,
the juniper, the hazel, and the birch.”

“Master,” replies the farmer, “I see you are a scholar and, I suspect,
a wag. It would take a great deal of believing to believe all that.
In the days of my poor old neighbor the infidel weaver, who died of
_delirium tremens_ thirty years ago, I used to read Tom Paine; and, as I
was a little wild at the time, I was, I am afraid, a bit of a sceptic.
It wasn’t easy work always to be as unbelieving as Tom, especially when
the conscience within got queasy; but it would be a vast deal easier,
Master, to _doubt_ with Tom than to _believe_ with you. I am a plain
man, but not quite a fool; and as I have now been looking about me in
this neighborhood for the last forty years, I have come to know that it
gives no assurance that any one thing grew out of any other thing because
it chances to be found atop of it, Master. See, yonder is Dobbin lying
lazily atop of his bundle of hay; and yonder little Jack, with bridle in
hand, and he in a few minutes will be atop of Dobbin. And all I see in
that ditch, Master, from top to bottom, is neither more nor less than a
certain top-upon-bottom order of things. I see sets of bones and dead
plants lying on the top of other sets of bones and dead plants,—things
lying atop of things, as I say, like Dobbin on the hay and Jack upon
Dobbin. I doubt not the sea was once here, Master, just as it was once
where you see the low-lying field yonder, which I won from it ten years
ago. I have carted tangle and kelp-weed where I now cut clover and
rye-grass, and have gathered periwinkles where I now see snails. But it
is _clean against experience_, as my poor old neighbor the weaver used
to say,—against _my_ experience, Master,—that it was the kelp-weed that
became the rye-grass, or that the periwinkles freshened into snails.
The kelp-weed and periwinkles belong to those plants and animals of the
sea that we find growing in _only_ the sea; the rye-grass and snails,
to those plants and animals of the land that we find growing on _only_
the land. It is contrary to all experience, and all testimony too, that
the one passed into the other, and so I cannot believe it; but I do
and must believe, instead,—for it is not contrary to experience, and
much according to testimony,—that the Author of all created both land
productions and sea productions at the ‘times before appointed,’ and
‘determined the bounds of their habitation.’ ‘By faith we understand
that the worlds were framed by the word of God;’ and I find I can be
a believer on God’s terms at a much less expense of credulity than an
infidel on yours.”

But in this form at least it can be scarce necessary that the argument
should be prolonged.

The geological phenomena, I repeat, even had the author of the “Vestiges”
been consulted in their arrangement, and permitted to determine their
sequence, would fail to furnish a single presumption in favor of the
development hypothesis. Does the ditch-side of my illustration furnish it
with a single favoring presumption? The arrangement and sequence of the
various organisms are complete in both the zoological and phytological
branch. The flag and reed succeed the fucoid; the fir and juniper succeed
the flag and reed; and the hazel, birch, and oak succeed the fir and
juniper. In like manner, and with equal regularity, zoophytes, the
radiata, the articulata, mollusca, fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals,
are ranged, the superior in succession over the inferior classes, in
the true ascending order; and yet we at once see that the evidence of
the ditch-side, amounting in the aggregate to no more than this, that
the remains of the higher lie over those of the lower organisms, gives
not a shadow of support to the hypothesis that the lower produced the
higher. For, according to the honest farmer, the fact that any one thing
is found lying on the top of any other thing, furnishes no presumption
whatever that the thing below stands in the relation of parent to
the thing above. And the evidence which the well-ranged organisms of
the ditch-side do not furnish, the organisms of the entire geologic
scale, even were they equally well ranged, would fail to supply. The
fossiliferous portion of the ditch-side of my illustration may be, let us
suppose, some five or six _feet_ in thickness; the fossiliferous portion
of the earth’s crust must be some five or six _miles_ in thickness.
But the mere circumstance of space introduces no new element into
the question. Equally in both cases the fact of superposition is not
_identical_ with the fact of parental relation, nor even in any degree an
_analogous_ fact.

As, however, the succession of remains in the fossiliferous series of
rocks is infinitely less favorable to the development hypothesis than
that of the organisms of the ditch-side, it is not very surprising
that the disciples of the development school should be now evincing a
disposition to escape from the ascertained facts of Geology, and the
legitimate conclusions based upon these, unto unknown and unexplored
provinces of the science; or that they should be found virtually urging,
that though some of the ascertained facts may seem to bear against them,
the facts not yet ascertained may be found telling in their favor.
Such, in effect, is the course taken by the author of the “Vestiges,”
in his “Explanations,” when, availing himself of a difference of
opinion which exists among some of our most accomplished geologists
regarding the first epochs of organized existence, he takes part with
the section who hold that we have not yet penetrated to the deposits
representative of the dawn of being, and that fossil-charged formations
may yet be detected beneath the oldest rocks of what is now regarded
as the lowest fossiliferous system. Sir Charles Lyell and Mr. Leonard
Hornet represent the abler and better-known assertors of this last view;
while Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Sedgwick rank among the more
distinguished assertors of the antagonist one. It would be of course
utterly presumptuous in the writer of these pages to attempt deciding
a question regarding which such men differ; but in forming a judgment
for myself, various considerations incline me to hold, that the point
is now very nearly determined at which, to employ the language of Sir
Roderick, “life was first breathed into the waters.” The pyramid of
organized existence, as it ascends in the by-past eternity, inclines
sensibly towards its apex,—that apex of “_beginning_” in which, on
far other than geological grounds, it is our privilege to believe.
The broad base of the superstructure, planted on the existing _now_,
stretches across the entire scale of life, animal and vegetable; but it
contracts as it rises into the past;—man—the quadrumana—the quadrupedal
mammal—the bird—and the reptile—are each in succession struck from off
its breadth, till we at length see it with the vertebrata, represented
by only the fish, narrowing, as it were, to a point; and though the
clouds of the upper region may hide its extreme apex, we infer from the
declination of its sides, that it cannot penetrate much farther into the
profound. When Steele and Addison were engaged in breaking up, piecemeal,
their Spectator Club,—killing off good Sir Roger de Coverly with a
defluction, marrying Will Honeycomb to his tenant’s daughter, and sending
away Captain Sentry and Sir Andrew Freeport to their estates to the
country,—it was shrewdly inferred that the “Spectator” himself was very
soon to quit the field; and the sudden discontinuance of his lucubrations
justified the inference. And a corresponding style of reasoning, based
on the corresponding fact of the breaking up and piecemeal disappearance
of the group of organized being, seems equally admissible. It is
somewhat difficult to conceive how at least _many_ more volumes of the
geologic record than the known ones could be got up without the _club_.
Further,—so far as yet appears, the fish must have lived in advance of
the reptile during the three protracted periods of the Old Red Sandstone,
the two still more protracted periods of the Upper and Lower Silurians,
and the perhaps more protracted period still of the Cambrian deposits;—in
all, apparently, a greatly more extended space than that in which the
reptile lived in advance of the quadrupedal mammal, or the quadrupedal
mammal lived in advance of man. On principles somewhat similar to those
on which, with reference to the average term of life, the genealogist
fixes the probable period of some birth in his chain of succession of
which he cannot determine the exact date, it seems natural to infer that
the _birth_ of the fish should have taken place at least not earlier than
the times of the Cambrian system.

There is another consideration, of at least equal, if not greater
weight. A general correspondence is found to obtain in widely-separated
localities, in the organic contents of that lowest band of the Lower
Silurian or Cambrian system in which fossils have been detected. In
Russia, in Sweden, in Norway, in the Lake district of England, and in
the United States, there are certain rocks which occupy relatively
the same place, and enclose what may be described generally as the
same remains. They occur in Scandinavia as that “fucoidal band” of Sir
Roderick Murchison which forms the base of the vast Palæozoic basin of
the Baltic; they exist in Cumberland and Westmoreland as the Skiddaw
slates of Professor Sedgwick, and bear also their fucoidal impressions,
blent with graptolites; they are present in North America as those
Potsdam sandstones of the States’ geologists in which fucoids so abound,
mixed with a minute lingula, that they impart to some portions of the
strata a carboniferous character. But with these deep-lying beds in
all the several localities, thousands of miles apart, in which their
passage into the inferior deposits has been traced, fossils cease. And
why cease with them? In one locality the ancient ocean may have been of
such a depth in the period immediately _previous_, and represented, in
consequence, by the strata immediately _beneath_, that no animal could
have _lived_ at its bottom,—though I do not well see why the remains
of those animals who, like the shark and pilot-fish, are frequently
seen swimming over the profoundest depths, might not, did such exist
at the time, be notwithstanding _found_ at its bottom; or in another
locality every trace of organization in the nether rocks may have been
obliterated, at some posterior period, by fire. But it is difficult to
imagine that that uniform cessation of organized life at one point, which
seems to have conducted Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Sedgwick
to their conclusion, should have been thus a mere effect of accident.
Accident has its laws, but uniformity is not one of them; and should the
experience be invariable, as it already seems extensive, that immediately
beneath the fucoidal beds organic remains cease, I do not see how the
conclusion is to be avoided, that they represent the period in which at
least _existences capable of preservation_ were first introduced. Every
case of coincident cessation which has occurred since the determination
of the second case, must be reckoned, not simply as an additional
unit in evidence, but, on the principles which determine mathematical
probability, as a unit multiplied first by the chances against its
occurrence, regarded as a mere contingency in that exact formation, and
second, by the sum of all the previous occurrences at the same point.

In this curious question, however, which it must be the part of future
explorers in the geological field definitely to settle, the Lamarckian
can have no legitimate stake. It is but natural that, in his anxiety to
secure an ultimate retreat for his hypothesis, he should desire to see
that darkness in which ghosts love to walk settling down on the extreme
verge of the geological horizon, and enveloping in its folds the first
beginnings of life. But even did the cloud exist, it is, if I may so
express myself, on its nearer side, where there is light,—not within nor
beyond it, where there is none,—that the battle must be fought. It is to
Geology _as it is known to be_, that the Lamarckian has appealed,—not
to Geology as it is _not_ known to be. He has summoned into court
_existing_ witnesses; and, finding their testimony unfavorable, he seeks
to neutralize their evidence by calling from the “vasty deep,” of the
unexamined and the obscure, witnesses that “won’t come,”—that by the
legitimate authorities are not known even to exist,—and with which he
himself is, on his own confession, wholly unacquainted, save in the old
scholastic character of mere possibilities. The _possible_ fossil can
have no more standing in this controversy than the “_possible angel_.”
He tells us that we have not yet got down to that base-line of all the
fossiliferous systems at which life first began; and very possibly we
have not. But what of that? He has carried his appeal to Geology _as it
is_;—he has referred his case to the testimony of the _known_ witnesses,
for in no case can the _unknown_ ones be summoned or produced. It is on
the evidence of the known, and the known only, that the exact value of
his claims must be determined; and his appeal to the unknown serves but
to show how thoroughly he himself feels that the actually ascertained
evidence bears against him. The severe censure of Johnson on reasoners of
this class is in no degree over-severe. “He who will determine,” said the
moralist, “against that which he knows, because there may be something
which he knows not,—he that can set hypothetical possibility against
acknowledged certainty,—is not to be admitted among reasonable beings.”

But the honest farmer’s reminiscences of his deceased neighbor the
weaver, and his use at second-hand of Hume’s experience-argument,
naturally lead me to another branch of the subject.




LAMARCKIAN HYPOTHESIS OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS. ITS CONSEQUENCES.


I have said that the curiously-mixed, semi-marine, semi-lacustrine flora
of the Lake of Stennis became associated in my mind, like the ancient
_Asterolepis_ of Stromness, with the development hypothesis. The fossil,
as has been shown, represents not inadequately the geologic evidence in
the question,—the mixed vegetation of the lake may be regarded as forming
a portion of the phytological evidence.

“All life,” says Oken, “is from the sea. Where the sea organism, by
self-elevation, succeeds in attaining into form, there issues forth
from it a higher organism. Love arose out of the sea-foam. The primary
mucus (that in which electricity originates life) was, and is still,
generated in those very parts of the sea where the water is in contact
with earth and air, and thus upon the shores. The first creation of the
organic took place where the first mountain summits projected out of the
water,—indeed, without doubt, in India, if the Himalaya be the highest
mountain. _The first organic forms, whether plants or animals, emerged
from the shallow parts of the sea._” Maillet wrote to exactly the same
effect a full century ago. “In a word,” we find him saying, in his
“Telliamed,” “do not herbs, plants, roots, grains, and all of this kind
that the earth produces and nourishes, come from the sea? Is it not at
least natural to think so, since we are certain that all our habitable
lands came originally from the sea? Besides, in small islands far from
the continent, which have appeared but a few ages ago at most, and where
it is manifest that never any man had been, we find shrubs, herbs, roots,
and sometimes animals. Now, you must be forced to own either that these
productions owed their origin to the sea, or to a new creation, which is
absurd.”

It is a curious fact, to which, in the passing, I must be permitted to
call the attention of the reader, that all the leading assertors of the
development hypothesis have been bad geologists. Maillet had for his
errors and deficiencies the excellent apology that he wrote more than
a hundred years ago, when the theory of a universal ocean, promulgated
by Leibnitz nearly a century earlier, was quite as good as any of the
other theories of the time, and when Geology, as a science, had no
existence. And so we do not wonder at an ignorance which was simply that
of his age, when we find him telling his readers that plants _must_
have originated in the sea, seeing that “all our habitable lands came
originally from the sea;” meaning, of course, by the statement, not at
all what the modern geologist would mean were he to employ even the same
words, but simply that there was a time when the universal ocean covered
the whole globe, and that, as the waters gradually diminished, the
loftier mountain summits and higher table-lands, in appearing in their
new character as islands and continents, derived their flora from what,
in a universal ocean could be the only possible existing flora,—that
of the sea. But what shall we say of the equally profound ignorance
manifested by Professor Oken, a living authority, whom we find prefacing
for the Ray Society, in 1847, the English translation of his “Elements
of Physio-philosophy?” “The first creation of the organic took place,”
we find him saying, “where the first mountain summits projected out
of the sea,—_indeed, without doubt, in India, if the Himalaya be the
highest mountain_.” Here, evidently, in this late age of the world, in
which Geology _does_ exist as a science, do we find the ghost of the
universal ocean of Leibnitz walking once more, as if it had never been
laid. Is there now in all Britain even a tyro geologist so unacquainted
with geological fact as not to know that the richest flora which the
globe ever saw had existed for myriads of ages, and then, becoming
extinct, had slept in the fossil state for myriads of ages more, ere
the highest summits of the Himalayan range rose over the surface of the
deep? The Himalayas disturbed, and bore up along with them in their
upheaval, vast beds of the Oolitic system. Belemnites and ammonites have
been dug out of their sides along the line of perpetual snow, seventeen
thousand feet over the level of the sea. What in the recent period form
the loftiest mountains of the globe, existed as portions of a deep-sea
bottom, swum over by the fishes and reptiles of the great Secondary
period, when what is now Scotland had its dark forests of stately
pine,—represented in the present age of the world by the lignites of
Helmsdale, Eathie, and Eigg,—and when the plants of a former creation
lay dead and buried deep beneath, in shales and fire-clay,—existing as
vast beds of coal, or entombed in solid rock, as the brown massy trunks
of Granton and Craigleith. And even ere these last existed as living
trees, the coniferous lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone found at
Cromarty had passed into the fossil state, and lay as a semi-calcareous,
semi-bituminous mass, amid perished _Dipterians_ and extinct _Coccostei_.
So much for the Geology of the German Professor. And be it remarked,
that the _actualities_ in this question can be determined by only the
geologist. The mere naturalist may indicate from the analogies of his
science, what possibly _might_ have taken place, but what really _did_
take place, and the true order in which the events occurred, it is the
part of the geologist to determine. It cannot be out of place to remark,
further, that geological discovery is in no degree responsible for the
infidelity of the development hypothesis; seeing that, in the first
place, the hypothesis _is greatly more ancient than the discoveries_,
and, in the second, that its more prominent assertors are _exactly the
men who know least of geological fact_. But to this special point I shall
again refer.

The author of the “Vestiges” is at one, regarding the supposed marine
origin of terrestrial plants, with Maillet and Oken; and he regards the
theory, we find him stating in his “Explanations,” as the true key to
the well-established fact, that the vegetation of groupes of islands
generally corresponds with that of the larger masses of land in their
neighborhood. Marine plants of the same kinds crept out of the sea, it
would seem, upon the islands on the one hand, and upon the larger masses
of land on the other, and thus produced the same flora in each; just as
tadpoles, after passing their transition state, creep out of their canal
or river on the opposite banks, and thus give to the fields or meadows on
the right-hand side a supply of frogs, of the same appearance and size
as those poured out upon the fields and meadows of the left. “Thus, for
example,” we find him saying, “the Galapagos exhibit general characters
in common with South America; and the Cape de Verd islands, with Africa.
They are, in Mr. Darwin’s happy phrase, satellites to those continents,
in respect of natural history. Again,” he continues, “when masses of
land are only divided from each other by narrow seas, there is usually a
community of forms. The European and African shores of the Mediterranean
present an example. Our own islands afford another of far higher value.
It appears that the flora of Ireland and Great Britain is various, or
rather that we have five floras or distinct sets of plants, and that
each of these is partaken of by a portion of the opposite continent.
There are, first, a flora confined to the west of Ireland, and imparted
likewise to the north-west of Spain; second, a flora in the south-west
promontory of England and of Ireland, extending across the Channel to
the north-west coast of France; third, one common to the south-east
of England and north of France; fourth, an Alpine flora developed in
the Scottish and Welsh Highlands, and intimately related to that of
the Norwegian Alps; fifth, a flora which prevails over a large part of
England and Ireland, ‘mingled with other floras, and diminishing slightly
as we proceed westward:’ this bears intimate relation with the flora
of Germany. Facts so remarkable would force the meanest fact-collector
or species-demonstrator into generalization. The really ingenious man
who lately brought them under notice (Professor Edward Forbes) could
only surmise, as their explanation, that the spaces now occupied by the
intermediate seas must have been dry land at the time when these floras
were created. In that case, either the original arrangement of the
floras, or the selection of land for submergence, must have been apposite
to the case in a degree far from usual. The necessity for a simpler cause
is obvious, and it is found in the hypothesis of a _spread of terrestrial
vegetation from the sea into the lands adjacent_. The community of forms
in the various regions opposed to each other merely indicates a distinct
marine creation in each of the oceanic areas respectively interposed, and
which would naturally advance into the lands nearest to it, as far as
circumstances of soil and climate were found agreeable.”

Such, regarding the origin of terrestrial vegetation, are the views
of Maillet, Oken, and the author of the “Vestiges.” They all agree in
holding that the plants of the land existed in their first condition as
weeds of the sea.

Let me request the reader at this stage, ere we pass on to the
consideration of the experience-argument, to remark a few incidental,
but by no means unimportant, consequences of the belief. And, first, let
him weigh for a moment the comparative demands on his credulity of the
theory by which Professor Forbes accounts for the various floras of the
British Islands, and that hypothesis of transmutation which the author of
the “Vestiges” would so fain put in its place, as greatly more simple,
and, of course, more in accordance with the principles of human belief.
In order to the reception of the Professor’s theory, it is necessary to
hold, in the first place, that the creation of each species of plant
took place, not by repetition of production in various widely-separated
centres, but in some single centre, from which the species propagated
itself by seed, bud, or scion, across the special area which it is now
found to occupy. And this, in the first instance, is of course as much an
assumption as any of those assumed numbers or assumed lines with which,
in algebra and the mathematics, it is necessary in so many calculations
to set out, in quest of some required number or line, which, without the
assistance of the assumed ones, we might despair of ever finding. But
the assumption is in itself neither unnatural nor violent; there are
various very remarkable analogies which lend it support; the facts which
seem least to harmonize with it are not wholly irreconcilable, and are,
besides, of a merely exceptional character; and, further, it has been
adopted by botanists of the highest standing.[34] It is necessary to
hold, in the second place, in order to the reception of the theory, that
the area of the earth’s surface occupied by the British Islands and the
neighboring coasts of the Continent once stood fifty fathoms higher, in
relation to the existing sea-level, than it does now,—a belief which,
whatever its specific grounds or standing in this particular case, is
at least in strict accordance with the general geological phenomena of
subsidence and elevation, and which, so far from outraging any experience
founded on observation or testimony, runs in the same track with what
is known of wide areas now in the course of sinking, like that on the
Italian coast, in which the Bay of Baiæ and the ruins of the temple of
Serapis occur, or that in Asia, which includes the Run of Cutch; or of
what is known of areas in the course of rising, like part of the coast
of Sweden, or part of the coast of South America, or in Asia along the
western shores of Aracan. Whereas, in order to close with the _simpler_
antagonistic belief of the author of the “Vestiges,” it is necessary
to hold, _contrary_ to all experience, that _dulce_ and _henware_[35]
became, through a very wonderful metamorphosis, cabbage and spinnage;
that kelp-weed and tangle bourgeoned into oaks and willows; and that
_slack_, _rope-weed_, and _green-raw_,[36] shot up into mangel-wurzel,
rye-grass, and clover. _Simple_, certainly! An infidel on terms such
as these could with no propriety be regarded as an _unbeliever_. It is
well that the New Testament makes no such extraordinary demands on human
credulity.

Let us remark further, at this stage, that, judging from the generally
received geological evidence in the case, very little time seems to be
allowed by the author of the “Vestiges” for that miraculous process of
transmutation through which the low algæ of our sea-shores are held to
have passed into high orders of plants which constitute the prevailing
British flora. The boulder clay, which rises so high along our hills,
and which, as shown by its inferior position on the lower grounds, is
decidedly the most ancient of the country’s superficial deposits, is yet
so modern, geologically, that it contains only recent shells. It belongs
to that cold, glacial, post-Tertiary period, in which what is now Britain
existed as a few groupes of insulated hill-tops, bearing the semi-arctic
vegetation of our fourth flora,—that true _Celtic_ flora of the country
which we now find, like the country’s Celtic races of our own species,
cooped up among the mountains. The fifth or Germanic flora must have
been introduced, it is held, at a later period, when the climate had
greatly meliorated. And if we are to hold that the plants of this last
flora were _developed_ from sea-weed, not propagated across a continuity
of land from the original centre in Germany, or borne by currents from
the mouths of the Germanic rivers,—the theory of Mon. C. Martins,—then
must we also hold that that development took place since the times of
the boulder clay, and that fucoids and confervæ became dicotyledonous
and monocotyledonous plants during a brief period, in which the _Purpura
lapillus_ and _Turritella terebra_ did not alter a single whorl, and
the _Cyprina islandica_ and _Astarte borealis_ retained unchanged each
minute projection of their hinges, and each nicer peculiarity of their
muscular impressions. _Creation_ would be greatly less wonderful than a
sudden transmutative process such as this, restricted in its operation
to groupes of English, Irish, and Manx plants, identical with groupes
in Germany, when all the various organisms around them, such as our
sea-shells, continued to be exactly what they had been for ages before.
A process of development from the lowest to the highest forms, rigidly
restricted to the flora of a country, would be simply the miracle of
Jonah’s gourd several thousand times repeated.

I must here indulge in a few remarks more, which, though they may seem of
an incidental character, have a direct bearing on the general subject.
The geologist infers, in all his reasonings founded on fossils, that a
race or species has existed from some one certain point in the scale
to some other certain point, if he find it occurring at both points
together. He infers on this principle, for instance, that the boulder
clay, which contains only _recent_ shells, belongs to the _recent_ or
post-Tertiary period; and that the Oolite and Lias, which contain _no_
recent shells, represent a period whose existences have all become
extinct. And all experience serves to show that his principle is a sound
one. In creation there are many species linked together, from their
degree of similarity, by the _generic_ tie; but no perfect verisimilitude
obtains among them, unless hereditarily derived from the one, two, or
more individuals, of contemporary origin, with which the race began.
True, there are some races that have spread over very wide circles,—the
circle of the human family has become identical with that of the globe;
and there are certain plants and animals that, from peculiar powers of
adaptation to the varieties of soil and climate,—mayhap also from the
tenacious vitality of their seeds, and their facilities of transport by
natural means,—are likewise diffused very widely. There are plants,
too, such as the common nettle and some of the ordinary grasses, which
accompany civilized man all over the globe, he scarce knows how, and
spring up unbidden where-ever he fixes his habitation. He, besides,
carries with him the common agricultural weeds: there are localities
in the United States, says Sir Charles Lyell, where these _exotics_
outnumber the native plants; but these are exceptions to the prevailing
economy of distribution; and the circles of species generally are
comparatively limited and well defined. The mountains of the southern
hemisphere have, like those of Switzerland and the Scotch Highlands,
their forests of coniferous trees; but they furnish no Swiss pines or
Scotch firs; nor do the coasts of New Zealand or Van Dieman’s Land
supply the European shells or fish. True, there may be much to puzzle
in the identity of what may be termed the exceptional plants, equally
indigenous, apparently, in circles widely separated by space. It has
been estimated that there exist about a hundred thousand vegetable
species, and of these, thirty Antarctic forms have been recognized by
Dr. Hooker as identical with European ones. Had Robinson Crusoe failed
to remember that he had shaken the old corn-bag where he found the wheat
and barley ears springing up on his island, he might have held that he
had discovered a new centre of the European cerealia. And the process
analogous to the shaking of the bag is frequently a process _not_ to be
remembered. There are several minute lochans in the Hebrides and the west
of Ireland in which there occurs a small plant of the cord-rush family,
(_Eriocaulon septangulare_,) which, though common in America, is nowhere
to be found on the European Continent. It is the only British plant
which belongs to no other part of Europe. How was it transported across
the Atlantic? Entangled, mayhap, in the form of a single seed,—for its
seeds are exceedingly light and small,—in the plumage of some water-fowl,
free of both sea and lake, it had been carried in the germ from the
weed-skirted edge of some American swamp or mere, to some mossy lochan of
Connaught or of Skye; and one such seed transported by one such accident,
unique in its occurrence in thousands of years, would be quite sufficient
to puzzle all the botanists forever after. I have seen the seed of one
of our Scotch grasses, that had been originally caught in the matted
fleece of a sheep reared among the hills of Sutherland, and then wrought
into a coarse, ill-dressed woollen cloth, carried about for months in a
piece of underclothing. It might have gone over half the globe in that
time, and, when cast away with the worn vestment, might have originated
a new circle for its species in South America or New Holland. There are
seeds specially contrived by the Great Designer to be carried far from
their original habitats in the coats of animals,—a mode which admits
of transport to much greater distances than the mode, also extensively
operative, of consigning them for conveyance to their stomachs; and when
we see the work in its effects, we are puzzled by the want of a record
of an emigratory process, of which, in the circumstances, no record
could possibly exist. Unable to make out a case for the “shaking of the
bag,” we bethink us, in the emergency, of repetition of creation. But
in circles separated by _time_, not space,—by _time_, across whose dim
gulfs no voyager sails, and no bird flies, and over which there are
no means of transport from the point where a race once fails, to any
other point in the future,—we find no repetition of species. If the
production of perfect duplicates or triplicates in independent centres
were a law of nature, our works of physical science could scarce fail
to tell us of identical species found occurring in widely-separated
systems,—Scotch firs and larches, for instance, among the lignites of
the Lias, or _Cyprina islandica_ and _Ostrea edulis_ among the shells
of the Mountain Limestone. But never yet has the geologist found in his
systems or formations any such evidence as facts such as these might be
legitimately held to furnish, of the independent _de novo_ production of
individual members of any single species. On the contrary, the evidence
lies so entirely the other way, that he reasons on the existence of a
family relation obtaining between all the members of each species, as
one of his best established principles. If members of the same species
may exist through _de novo_ production, without hereditary relationship,
so thoroughly, in consequence, does the fabric of geological reasoning
fall to the ground, that we find ourselves incapacitated from regarding
even the bed of common cockle or mussel shells, which we find lying a few
feet from the surface on our raised beaches, as of the existing creation
at all. Nay, even the human remains of our moors may have belonged, if
our principle of relationship in each species be not a true one, to
some former creation, cut off from that to which we ourselves belong,
by a wide period of death. All palæontological reasoning is at an end
forever, if identical species can originate in independent centres,
widely separated from each other by periods of time; and if they fail to
originate in periods separated by time, how or why in centres separated
by space?

Let the reader remark further, the bearing of those facts from which this
principle of geological reasoning has been derived, on the development
hypothesis. We find species restricted to circles and periods; and though
stragglers are occasionally found outside the circle in the existing
state of things, never are they found beyond their period among the
remains of the past. It was profoundly argued by Cuvier, that _life_
could not possibly have had a chemical origin. “In fact,” we find him
remarking, “life exercising upon the elements which at every instant
form part of the living body, and upon those which it attracts to it, an
action contrary to that which would be produced without it by the usual
chemical affinities, it is inconsistent to suppose that it can itself
be produced by these affinities.” And the phenomena of restriction to
circle and period testify to the same effect. Nothing, on the one hand,
can be more various in character and aspect than the organized existences
of the various circles and periods; nothing more invariable, on the
other, than the results of chemical or electrical experiment. And yet,
to use almost the words of Cuvier, “we know of no other power in nature
capable of reuniting previously separated molecules,” than the electric
and the chemical. To these agents, accordingly, all the assertors of the
development hypothesis have had recourse for at least the _origination_
of life. Air, water, earth existing as a saline mucus, and an active
persistent electricity, are the creative ingredients of Oken. The
author of the “Vestiges” is rather less explicit on the subject: he
simply refers to the fact, that the “basis of all vegetable and animal
substances consists of nucleated cells,—that is, of cells having granules
within them;” and states that globules of a resembling character “can
be produced in albumen by electricity;” and that though albumen itself
has not yet been produced by artificial means,—the only step in the
process of creation which is wanting,—it is yet known to be a chemical
composition, the mode of whose production may “be any day discovered in
the laboratory.” Further, he adopts, as part of the foundation of his
hypothesis, the pseudo-experiment of Mr. Weekes, who holds that out of
certain saline preparations, acted upon by electricity, he can produce
certain living animalcula of the mite family;—the vital and the organized
out of the inorganic and the dead. In all such cases, electricity, or
rather, according to Oken, galvanism, is regarded as the vitalizing
principle. “_Organism_,” says the German, “is _galvanism_ residing in
a thoroughly homogeneous mass.... A galvanic pile pounded into atoms
must become alive. In this manner nature brings forth organic bodies.”
I have even heard it seriously asked whether electricity be not God!
Alas! could such a god, limited in its capacity of action, like those
“gods of the plains” in which the old Syrian trusted, have wrought, in
the character of Creator, with a variety of result so endless, that in
no geologic period has repetition taken place? In all that purports to
be experiment on the development side of the question, we see nothing
else save repetition. The _Acarus Crossi_ of Mr. Weekes is not a new
species, but the _repetition_ of an old one, which has been long known
as the _Acarus horridus_, a little bristle-covered creature of the mite
family, that harbors in damp corners among the debris of outhouses, and
the dust and dirt of neglected workshops and laboratories. Nay, even a
change in the chemical portion of the experiment by which he believed the
creature to be produced, failed to secure variety. A powerful electric
current had been sent, in the first instance, through a solution of
silicate of potash, and, after a time, the _Acarus horridus_ crawled out
of the fluid. The current was then sent through a solution of nitrate of
copper, and after a due space, the _Acarus horridus_ again creeped out.
A solution of ferro-cyanate of potash was next subjected to the current,
and yet again, and in greater numbers than on the two former occasions,
there appeared, as in virtue, it would seem, of its extraordinary
appetency, _to be_ the same ever-recurring _Acarus horridus_. How, or
in what form, the little creature should have been introduced into the
several experiments, it is not the part of those who question their
legitimacy to explain; it is enough for us to know, that individuals of
the family to which the _Acarus_ belongs are so remarkable for their
powers of life, even in their fully developed state, as to resist, for
a time, the application of boiling water, and to live long in alcohol.
We know, further, that the _germs_ of the lower animals are greatly
more tenacious of vitality than the animals themselves; and that they
may exist in their state of embryonism in the most unthought of and
elusive forms; nay,—as the recent discoveries regarding alterations of
generation have conclusively shown,—that the germ which produced the
parent may be wholly unlike the germ that produces its offspring, and
yet identical with that which produced the parent’s parent. Save on
the theory of a quiescent vitality, maintained by seeds for centuries
within a few inches of the earth’s surface, we know not how a layer of
shell, sand, or marl, spread over the bleak moors of Harris, should
produce crops of white clover, where only heath had grown before; nor
how brakes of doddered furze burnt down on the slopes of the Cromarty
Sutors should be so frequently succeeded by thickets of raspberry. We
are not, however to give up the _unknown_,—that illimitable province in
which science discovers,—to be a wild region of dream, in which fantasy
may invent. There are many dark places in the field of human knowledge
which even the researches of ages may fail wholly to enlighten; but no
one derives a right from that circumstance to people them with chimeras
and phantoms. They belong to the philosophers of the future,—not to the
visionaries of the present. But while it is not our part to explain
_how_, in the experiments of Mr. Weekes, the chain of life from life has
been maintained unbroken, we can most conclusively show, that that world
of organized existence of which we ourselves form part, is, and ever has
been, a world, not of tame repetition, but of endless variety. It is
palpably not a world of _Acaridæ_ of one species, nor yet of creatures
developed from these, under those electric or chemical laws of which
the grand characteristic is invariability of result. The vast variety
of its existences speak not of the operation of _unvarying laws_, that
represent, in their uniformity of result, the unchangeableness of the
Divinity, but of _creative acts_, that exemplify the infinity of His
resources.

Let the reader yet further remark, if he has followed me through these
preliminary observations, what is really involved in the hypothesis of
the author of the “Vestiges,” regarding the various floras common to
the British islands and the Continent. If it was upon his scheme that
England, Ireland, and the mainland of Europe came to possess an identical
flora, production _de novo_ and by repetition of the same species must
have taken place in thousands of instances along the shores of each
island and of the mainland. His hypothesis demands that the sea-weed on
the coast of Ireland should have been developed, first through lower, and
then higher forms, into thousands of terrestrial plants,—that exactly
the same process of development from sea-weed into terrestrial plants of
the same species should have taken place on the coast of England, and
again on the coasts of the Continent generally,—and that identically
the same vegetation should have been originated in this way in at least
three great centres. And if plants of the same species could have had
three distinct centres of organization and development, why not three
hundred, or three thousand, or three hundred thousand? Nor will it do
to attempt escaping from the difficulty, by alleging that there is the
groundwork in the case of at least a common marine vegetation to start
from; and that thus, if we have not properly the existence of the direct
hereditary tie among the various individuals of each species, we may yet
recognize at least a sort of collateral relationship among them, derived
from the relationship of their marine ancestry. For relationship, in even
the primary stage, the author of the “Vestiges” virtually repudiates, by
adopting, as one of the foundations of his hypothesis, with, of course,
all the legitimate consequences, the experiments of Mr. Weekes. The
animalculæ-making process is instanced as representative of the first
stage of being,—that in which dead inorganic matter assumes vitality;
and it corresponds, in the zoological branch, to the production of a
low marine vegetation in the phytological one. A certain semi-chemical,
semi-electrical process, originates, time after time, certain numerous
low forms of life, identical in species, but connected by no tie of
relationship: such is the presumed result of the Weekes experiment.
A certain further process of development matures low forms of life,
thus originated, into higher species, also identical, and also wholly
unconnected by the family tie: such are the consequences legitimately
involved in that island-vegetation theory promulgated by the author of
the “Vestiges.” And be it remembered that Mr. Weekes’ process, so far as
it is simply electrical and chemical, is a process which is as capable
of having been gone through in all times and all places, as that other
process of strewing marl upon a moor, through which certain rustic
experimenters have held that they produced white clover. It could have
been gone through during the Carboniferous or the Silurian period; for
all truly chemical and electrical experiments would have resulted in
manifestations of the same phenomena then as now:—an acid would have
effervesced as freely with an alkali; and each fibre of an electrified
feather—had feathers then existed—would have stood out as decidedly apart
from all its neighbors. We must therefore hold, if we believe with the
author of the “Vestiges,” first, from the Weekes experiment, that in all
times, and in all places, every centre of a certain chemical and electric
action would have become a new centre of creation to certain _recent_
species of low, but not _very_ low, organization; and, second, from his
doctrine regarding the identity of the British and Continental floras,
that in the course of subsequent development from these low forms, the
process in each of many widely-separated centres,—widely separated both
by space and time,—would be so nicely correspondent with the process in
all the others, that the same higher _recent_ forms would be matured in
all. And to doctrines such as these, the experience of all Geologists,
all Phytologists, all Zoologists, is diametrically opposed. If these
doctrines be true, _their_ sciences are false in their facts, and idle
and unfounded in their principles.




THE TWO FLORAS, MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. BEARING OF THE EXPERIENCE
ARGUMENT.


Is the reader acquainted with the graphic verse, and scarce less
graphic prose, in which Crabbe describes the appearances presented by
a terrestrial vegetation affected by the waters of the sea? In both
passages, as in all his purely descriptive writings, there is a solidity
of truthful observation exhibited, which triumphs over their general
homeliness of vein.

                      “On either side
    Is level fen, a prospect wild and wide,
    With dykes on either hand, by ocean self-supplied.
    Far on the right the distant sea is seen,
    And salt the springs that feed the marsh between;
    Beneath an ancient bridge the straitened flood
    Rolls through its sloping banks of slimy mud;
    Near it a sunken boat resists the tide,
    That frets and hurries to the opposing side;
    The rushes sharp, that on the borders grow,
    Bend their brown florets to the stream below,
    Impure in all its course, in all its progress slow.
    Here a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom,
    Nor wears a rosy blush, nor sheds perfume.
    The few dull flowers that o’er the place are spread,
    Partake the nature of their fenny bed;
    Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom,
    Grows the salt lavender, that lacks perfume;
    Here the dwarf sallows creep, the septfoil harsh,
    And the soft slimy mallow of the marsh.
    Low on the ear the distant billows sound,
    And just in view appears their stony bound.”

“The ditches of a fen so near the ocean,” says the poet, in the note
which accompanies this passage, “are lined with irregular patches of a
coarse-stained laver; a muddy sediment rests on the horse-tail and other
perennial herbs which in part conceal the shallowness of the stream; a
fat-leaved, pale-flowering scurvy-grass appears early in the year, and
the razor-edged bullrush in the summer and autumn. The fen itself has a
dark and saline herbage: there are rushes and _arrow-head_; and in a few
patches the flakes of the cotton-grass are seen, but more commonly the
_sea-aster_, the dullest of that numerous and hardy genus; a _thrift_,
blue in flower, but withering, and remaining withered till the winter
scatters it; the _salt-wort_, both simple and shrubby; a few kinds of
grass changed by the soil and atmosphere; and low plants of two or three
denominations, undistinguished in the general view of scenery;—such is
the vegetation of the fen where it is at a small distance from the ocean.”

And such are the descriptions of Crabbe, at once a poet and a botanist.
In referring to the blue tint exhibited in salt-fens by the pink-colored
flower of the _thrift_, (_Statice Armeria_,) he might have added, that
the general green of the terrestrial vegetation likewise assumes, when
subjected to those modified marine influences under which plants of
the land can continue to live, a decided tinge of blue. It is further
noticeable, that the general brown of at least the larger algæ presents,
as they creep upwards upon the beach to meet with these, a marked tinge
of yellow. The prevailing brown of the one flora approximates towards
yellow,—the prevailing green of the other towards blue; and thus,
instead of mutually merging into some neutral tint, they assume at their
line of meeting directly antagonistic hues.

But what does experience say regarding the transmutative conversion of
a marine into a terrestrial vegetation,—that experience on which the
sceptic founds so much? As I walked along the green edge of the Lake
of Stennis, selvaged by the line of detached weeds with which a recent
gale had strewed its shores, and marked that for the first few miles the
accumulation consisted of marine algæ, here and there mixed with tufts
of stunted reeds or rushes, and that as I receded from the sea it was
the algæ that became stunted and dwarfish, and that the reeds, aquatic
grasses, and rushes, grown greatly more bulky in the mass, were also
more fully developed individually, till at length the marine vegetation
altogether disappeared, and the vegetable debris of the shore became
purely lacustrine,—I asked myself whether here, if anywhere, a transition
flora between lake and sea ought not to be found? For many thousand years
ere the tall gray obelisks of Stennis, whose forms I saw this morning
reflected in the water, had been torn from the quarry, or laid down in
mystic circle on their flat promontories, had this lake admitted the
waters of the sea, and been salt in its lower reaches and fresh in its
higher. And during this protracted period had its quiet, well-shattered
bottom been exposed to no disturbing influences through which the
delicate process of transmutation could have been marred or arrested.
Here, then, if in any circumstances, ought we to have had in the broad,
permanently brackish reaches, at least indications of a vegetation
intermediate in its nature between the monocotyledons of the lake and the
algæ of the sea; and yet not a vestige of such an intermediate vegetation
could I find among the up-piled debris of the mixed floras, marine
and lacustrine. The lake possesses no such intermediate vegetation. As
the water freshens in its middle reaches, the algæ become dwarfish and
ill-developed; one species after another ceases to appear, as the habitat
becomes wholly unfavorable to it, until at length we find, instead of
the brown, rootless, flowerless fucoids and confervæ of the ocean, the
green, rooted, flower-bearing flags, rushes, and aquatic grasses of
the fresh water. Many thousands of years have failed to originate a
single intermediate plant. And such, tested by a singularly extensive
experience, is the general evidence.

There is scarce a chain-length of the shores of Britain and Ireland that
has not been a hundred and a hundred times explored by the botanist,—keen
to collect and prompt to register every rarity of the vegetable kingdom;
but has he ever yet succeeded in transferring to his herbarium a single
plant caught in the transition state? Nay, are there any of the laws
under which the vegetable kingdom exists better known than those laws
which fix certain species of the algæ to certain zones of coast, in which
each, according to the overlying depth of water and the nature of the
bottom, finds the only habitat in which it can exist? The rough-stemmed
tangle (_Laminaria digitata_) can exist no higher on the shore than
the low line of ebb during stream-tides; the smooth-stemmed tangle
(_Laminaria saccharina_) flourishes along an inner belt, partially
uncovered during the ebbs of the larger neaps; the forked and cracker
kelp-weeds (_Fucus serratus_ and _Fucus nodosus_) thrive in a zone still
less deeply covered by water, and which even the lower neaps expose. And
at least one other species of kelp-weed, the _Fucus vesiculosus_, occurs
in a zone higher still, though, as it creeps upwards on the rocky beach,
it loses its characteristic bladders, and becomes short and narrow of
frond. The thick brown tufts of _Fucus canaliculatus_, which in the lower
and middle reaches of the Lake of Stennis I found heaped up in great
abundance along the shores, also rises high on rocky beaches,—so high in
some instances, that during neap-tides it remains uncovered by the water
for days together. If, as is not uncommon, there be an escape of land
springs along the beach, there may be found, where the fresh water oozes
out through the sand and gravel, an upper terminal zone of the confervæ,
chiefly of a green color, mixed with the ribbon-like green layer, (_Ulva
latissima_,) the purplish-brown layer, (_Porphyra laciniata_,) and still
more largely with the green silky Enteromorpha, (_E. compressa_.)[37]
And then, decidedly within the line of the storm-beaches of winter,—not
unfrequently in low sheltered bays, such as the Bay of Udale or of
Nigg, where the ripple of every higher flood washes,—we may find the
vegetation of the land—represented by the sentinels and picquets of
its outposts—coming down, as if to meet with the higher-growing plants
of the sea. In salt marshes the two vegetations may be seen, if I may
so express myself, _dovetailed_ together at their edges,—at least one
species of club-rush (_Scirpus maritimus_) and the common saltwort and
glasswort (_Salsola kali_ and _Salicornia procumbens_) encroaching so far
upon the sea as to mingle with a thinly-scattered and sorely-diminished
fucus,—that bladderless variety of the _Fucus vesiculosus_ to which I
have already referred, and which may be detected in such localities,
shooting forth its minute brown fronds from the pebbles. On rocky
coasts, where springs of fresh water come trickling down along the
fissures of the precipices, the observer may see a variety of _Rhodomenia
palmata_—the fresh-water dulse of the Moray Frith—creeping upwards from
the lower limits of production, till just where the common gray balanus
ceases to grow. And there, short and thick, and of a bleached yellow
hue, _it_ ceases also; but one of the commoner marine confervæ,—the
_Conferva arcta_, blent with a dwarfed _Enteromorpha_,—commencing a
very little below where the dulse ends, and taking its place, clothes
over the runnels with its covering of green for several feet higher:
in some cases, where it is frequently washed by the upward dash of the
waves, it rises above even the flood-line; and in some crevice of the
rock beside it, often as low as its upper edge, we may detect stunted
tufts of the sea-pink or of the scurvy-grass. But while there is thus
a vegetation intermediate _in place_ between the land and the sea, we
find, as if it had been selected purposely to confound the transmutation
theory, that it is in no degree intermediate in character. For, while
it is chiefly marine weeds of the lower division of the confervæ that
creep upwards from the sea to meet the vegetation of the land, it is
chiefly terrestrial plants of the higher division of the dicotyledons
that creep downwards from the land to meet the vegetation of the sea.
The salt-worts, the glass-worts, the arenaria, the thrift, and the
scurvy-grass, are all dicotyledonous plants. Nature draws a deeply-marked
line of division where the requirements of the transmutative hypothesis
would demand the nicely graduated softness of a shaded one; and,
addressing the strongly marked floras on either hand, even more sternly
than the waves themselves, demands that to a certain definite bourne
should they come, and no farther.

But in what form, it may be asked, or with what limitations, ought the
Christian controversialist to avail himself, in this question, of the
experience argument? Much ought to depend, I reply, on the position
taken up by the opposite side. We find no direct reference made by the
author of the “Vestiges” to the anti-miracle argument, first broached
by Hume, in a purely metaphysical shape, in his well-known “Inquiry,”
and afterwards thrown into the algebraic form by La Place, in his
_Essai philosophique sur les Probabilités_. But we do not detect its
influences operative throughout the entire work. It is because of
some felt impracticability on the part of its author, of attaining
to the prevailing belief in the _miracle_ of creation, that he has
recourse, instead, to the so-called _law_ of development. The _law_ and
the _miracle_ are the alternatives placed before him; and, rejecting
the _miracle_, he closes with the _law_. Now, in such circumstances,
he can have no more cause of complaint, if, presenting him with the
experience argument of Hume and La Place, we demand that he square
the evidence regarding the existence of his _law_ strictly according
to its requirements, than the soldier of an army that charged its
field-pieces with rusty nails would have cause of complaint if he found
himself wounded by a missile of a similar kind, sent against him by
the artillery of the enemy. You cannot, it might be fairly said, in
addressing him, acquiesce in the miracle here, because, as a violation of
the laws of nature, there are certain objections, founded on invariable
experience, which bear direct against your belief in it. Well, here
are the objections, in the strongest form in which they have yet been
stated; and here is your hypothesis respecting the development of marine
algæ into terrestrial plants. We hold that against that hypothesis
the objections bear at least as directly as against any miracle
whatever,—nay, that not only is it contrary to an invariable experience,
but opposed also to all testimony. We regard it as a mere idle dream.
Maillet dreamed it,—and Lamarck dreamed it,—and Oken dreamed it; but none
of them did more than merely dream it: its existence rests on exactly the
same basis of evidence as that of Whang the miller’s “monstrous pot of
gold and diamonds,” of which he dreamed three nights in succession, but
which he never succeeded in finding. If we are in error in our estimate,
here is the argument, and here the hypothesis; give us, in support of the
hypothesis, the amount of evidence, founded on a solid experience, which
the argument demands.

But to leave the experience argument in exactly the state in which it
was left by Hume and La Place, would be doing no real justice to our
subject. It is in that state quite sufficient to establish the fact,
that there can be no real escape from belief in _acts of creation_ never
witnessed by man, to _processes of development_ never witnessed by man;
seeing that a presumed _law_ beyond the cognizance of experience must be
as certainly rejected, on the principle of the argument, as a presumed
_miracle_ beyond that cognizance. It places the presumed _law_ and the
presumed _miracle_ on exactly the same level. But there is a palpable
flaw in the anti-miracle argument. It does not prove that miracles _may
not have taken place_, but that miracles, whether they have taken place
or no, are _not to be credited_, and this simply because they _are_
miracles, _i. e._ violations of the established laws of nature. And if it
be possible for events to take place which man, on certain principles,
is imperatively required not to credit, these principles must of course
serve merely to establish a discrepancy between the actual _state_ of
things, and what is to be _believed_ regarding it. And thus, instead of
serving purposes of truth, they are made to subserve purposes of error;
for the existence of truth in the mind is neither more nor less than the
existence of certain conceptions and beliefs, adequately representative
of what actually _is_, or what really _has taken place_.

I cannot better illustrate this direct tendency of the anti-miracle
argument to destroy truth in the mind, by bringing the mental beliefs
into a state of nonconformity with the possible and actual, than by a
quotation from La Place himself: “We would not,” he says, “give credit
to a man who would affirm that he saw a hundred dice thrown into the
air, and that they all fell on the same faces. If we had ourselves been
spectators of such an event, we would not believe our own eyes till we
had scrupulously examined all the circumstances, and assured ourselves
that there was no trick or deception. After such an examination, we would
not hesitate to admit it, notwithstanding its great improbability; and no
one would have recourse to an inversion of the laws of vision in order to
account for it.” Now, here is the principle broadly laid down, that it
is impossible to communicate by the evidence of testimony, belief in an
event which _might_ happen, and which, if it happened, _ought_ on certain
conditions to be credited. No one knew better than La Place himself, that
the _possibility_ of the event which he instanced could be represented
with the utmost exactitude by figures. The probability, in throwing a
single die, that the ace will be presented on its upper face, is as one
in six,—six being the entire number of sides which the cube can possibly
present, and the side with the ace being one of these;—the probability
that in throwing a _pair_ of dice the aces of both will be at once
presented on their upper faces, is as one in thirty-six, as against the
one sixth chance of the ace being presented by the one, there are also
six chances that the ace of the other should not concur with it;—and in
throwing _three_ dice, the probability that their three aces should be at
once presented is, of course, on the same principle, as one in six times
thirty-six, or, in other words, as one in two hundred and sixteen. And
thus, in ascertaining the exact degree of probability of the hundred aces
at once turning up, we have to go on multiplying by six, for each die we
add to the number, the product of the immediately previous calculation.
Unquestionably, the number of chances _against_, thus balanced with
the single chance _for_, would be very great; but its existence as a
definite number would establish, with all the force of arithmetical
demonstration, the _possibility_ of the event; and if an eternity were
to be devoted to the throwing into the air of the hundred dice, it would
occur an _infinite number of times_. And yet the principle of Hume and La
Place forms, when adopted, an impassable gulf between this possibility
and human belief. The possibility might be embodied, as we see, in an
actual occurrence,—an occurrence witnessed by hundreds; and yet the
anti-miracle argument, as illustrated by La Place, would cut off all
communication regarding it between these hundreds of witnesses, however
unexceptionable their character as such, and the rest of mankind. The
principle, instead of giving us a right rule through which the beliefs
in the mind are to be rendered correspondent with the reality of things,
goes merely to establish a certain imperfection of transmission from one
mind to another, in consequence of which, realities in fact, if very
extraordinary ones, could not possibly be received as objects of belief,
nor the mental appreciation of things be rendered adequately concurrent
with the state in which the things really existed.

Nor is the case different when, for a _possibility_ which the
arithmetician can represent by figures, we substitute the _miracle_
proper. Neither Hume nor La Place ever attempted to show that miracles
could not take place; they merely directed their argument against a
belief in them. The wildest sceptic must admit, if in any degree a
reasonable man, that there _may_ exist a God, and that that God _may_
have given laws to nature. No _demonstration_ of the non-existence of a
Great First Cause has been ever yet attempted, nor, until the knowledge
of some sceptic extends over all space, ever _can_ be rationally
attempted. Merely to _doubt_ the fact of God’s existence, and to give
reasons for the doubt, must till then form the highest achievements of
scepticism. And the God who _may_ thus exist, and who _may_ have given
laws to nature, _may_ also have revealed himself to man, and, in order to
secure man’s reasonable belief in the reality of the revelation, _may_
have temporarily suspended in its operation some great natural law,
and have thus shown himself to be its Author and Master. Such seems to
be the philosophy of miracles; which are thus evidently not only _not_
impossibilities, but even not _improbabilities_. Even were we to permit
the sceptic himself to fix the numbers representative of those several
_mays_ in the case, which I have just repeated, the chances against
them, so to speak, would be less by many thousand times than the chances
against the hundred dice of La Place’s illustration all turning up
aces. The existence of a Great First Cause is at least as probable—the
sceptic himself being judge in the matter—as the _non_-existence of a
Great First Cause; and so the probability in this first stage of the
argument, instead of being, as in the case of the single die, only one
to six, is as one to one. Again,—in accordance with an expectation so
general among the human family as to form one of the great instincts of
our nature,—an instinct to which every form of religion, true or false,
bears evidence,—it is in no degree less probable that this God should
have revealed himself to man, than that he should _not_ have revealed
himself to man; and here the chances are again as one to one,—not, as in
the second stage of the calculation on the dice, as one to thirty-six.
Nor, in the third and last stage, is it less probable that God, in
revealing himself to man should have given miraculous evidence of the
truth of the revelation, so that man “might believe in Him for His work’s
sake,” than that He should _not_ have done so; and here yet again the
chances are as one to one,—not as one to two hundred and sixteen. No
rational sceptic could fix the chances lower; nay, no rational sceptic,
so far as the _existence_ of a Great First Cause is concerned, would be
inclined to fix them so low: and yet it is in order to annihilate all
belief in a possibility against which the chances are so few as to be
represented—scepticism itself being the actuary in the case—by three
units, that Hume and La Place have framed their argument. Miracles _may_
have taken place,—the probabilities against them, stated in their most
extreme and exaggerated form, are by no means many or strong; but we are
nevertheless not to believe that they _did_ take place, simply because
miracles they were. Now, the effect of the establishment of a principle
such as this would be simply, I repeat, the destruction of the ability
of transmitting certain beliefs, however well founded originally, from
one set or generation of men to another. These beliefs the first set
or generation might, on La Place’s own principles, be compelled to
entertain. The evidence of the senses, however wonderful the event
which they certified, is not, he himself tells us, to be resisted. But
the conviction which, on one set of principles, these men were on no
account to resist, the men that came immediately after them were, on
quite another set of principles, on no account to entertain. And thus
the anti-miracle argument, instead of leading, as all true philosophy
ought, to an exact correspondence between the realities of things and
the convictions received by the mind regarding them, palpably forms a
bar to the reception of beliefs, adequate to the possibilities of actual
occurrence or event, and so constitutes an imperfection or flaw in the
mental economy, instead of working an improvement. And, in accordance
with this view, we find that in the economy of minds of the very highest
order this imperfection or flaw has had no place. Locke studied and wrote
upon the subject of miracles proper, and exhibited in his “Discourse”
all the profundity of his extraordinary mind; and yet Locke was a
believer. Newton studied and wrote on the subject of miracles of another
kind,—those of prophecy; and he also, as shown by his “Observations on
the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse,” was a believer. Butler
studied and wrote on the subject of miracles, chiefly in connection with
“Miraculous Revelation;” and he also was a believer. Chalmers studied
and wrote on the subject of miracles in his “Evidences,” after Hume, La
Place, and Playfair had all promulgated their peculiar views regarding
it; and he also was a believer. And in none of the truly distinguished
men of the present day, though all intimately acquainted with the
anti-miracle argument, is this flaw or imperfection found to exist: on
the contrary, they all hold, as becomes the philosophic intellect and
character, that whatever is possible may occur, and that whatever occurs
ought, on the proper evidence, to be believed.

But though the experience argument is of no real force, and, as shown by
the beliefs of the higher order of minds, of no real effect, when brought
to bear against miracles supported by the proper testimony, _it is_ of
great force and effect when brought to bear, not against _miracles_,
but against some presumed _law_. It is experience, and experience only,
that determines what is or is not law, and it is law, and law only,
that constitutes the subject-matter of ordinary experience. Experience,
in determining what is really miracle, does so simply through its
positive knowledge of law: by knowing law, it knows also what would be a
violation of it. And so miracle cannot possibly form the subject-matter
of experience in the sense of Hume. For did miracle constitute the
subject-matter of experience, the law of which the miracle was a
violation _could not_: most emphatically, in this case, were there “no
law” there could be “no transgression;” and so experience would be unable
to recognize, not only the existence of the law transgressed, but also
of the miracle, in its character as such, which was a transgression of
the law. We determine from experience that there exists a certain fixed
law, known among men as the law of gravitation; and that, in consequence
of this law, if a human creature attempt standing upon the sea, he will
sink into it; or if he attempt rising from the earth into the heavens,
he will remain fixed to the spot on which the attempt is made. Such, in
these cases, would be the direct effects of this gravitation _law_; and
any presumed law antagonistic in its character could not be other than a
law contrary to that invariable experience by which the existence of the
real law in the case is determined. But certain it is—for the evidence
regarding the facts cannot be resisted, and by the greatest minds has
not been resisted—that a man _did_ once walk upon the sea without
sinking into it, and _did_ once ascend from the earth into the sky; and
these _miracles_ ought not to be tested—and by earnest inquirers after
truth really never have been tested—by any experience of the uniformity
of the law of which they were professed transgressions, seeing it was
essentially and obviously necessary that, in order to serve the great
moral purpose which God intended by them, the law which they violated
should have been a uniform law, and that they should have been palpable
violations of it. But while the experience argument is thus of no
value when directed against well-attested _miracle_, it is, as I have
said, all-potent when directed against presumed _law_. Of law we know
nothing, I repeat, except what experience tells us. A miracle contrary
to experience in the sense of Hume is simply a miracle; a presumed law
contrary to experience is no law at all. For it is from experience, and
experience only, that we know any thing of natural law. The argument
of Hume and La Place is perfect, as such, when directed against the
development visions of the Lamarckian.




THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. OLDER THAN ITS ALLEGED
FOUNDATIONS.


When Maillet first promulgated his hypothesis, many of the departments
of natural history existed as mere regions of fable and romance; and,
in addressing himself to the _Muscadins_ of Paris, in a popular work as
wild and amusing as a fairy tale, he could safely take the liberty, and
he did take it very freely, of exaggerating the marvellous, and adding
fresh fictions to the untrue. And in preparing them for his theory of
the metamorphoses of a marine into a terrestrial vegetation, he set
himself, in accordance with his general character, to show that really
the transmutation did not amount to much. “I know you have resided a
long time,” his Indian Philosopher is made to say, “at Marseilles. Now,
you can bear me witness, that the fishermen there daily find in their
nets, and among their fish, plants of a hundred kinds, with their fruits
still upon them; and though these fruits are not so large and so well
nourished as those of our earth, yet the species of these plants is in
no other respect dubious. They there find clusters of white and black
grapes, peach-trees, pear-trees, prune-trees, apple-trees, and all sorts
of flowers. When in that city, I saw, in the cabinet of a curious
gentleman, a prodigious number of those sea-productions of different
qualities, especially of rose-trees, which had their roses very red when
they came out of the sea. I was there presented with a cluster of black
sea-grapes. It was at the time of the vintage, and there were two grapes
perfectly ripe.”

Now, all this, and much more of the same nature, addressed to the
Parisians of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, passed, I doubt not,
wonderfully well; but it will not do now, when almost every young girl,
whether in town or country, is a botanist, and works on the algæ have
become popular. Since Maillet wrote, Hume promulgated his argument on
Miracles, and La Place his doctrine of Probabilities. There can be no
doubt that these have exerted a wholesome influence on the laws of
evidence; and by these laws, as restricted and amended,—laws to which,
both in science and religion, we ourselves conform,—we insist on trying
the Lamarckian hypothesis, and in condemning it,—should it be found to
have neither standing in experience nor support from testimony,—as a
mere feverish dream, incoherent in its parts and baseless in its fabric.
Give, we ask, but one well-attested instance of transmutation from the
algæ to even the lower forms of terrestrial vegetation common on our
sea-coasts, and we will keep the question open, in expectation of more.
It will not do to tell us—as Cuvier was told, when he appealed to the
fact, determined by the mummy birds and reptiles of Egypt, of the fixity
of species in all, even the slightest particulars, for at least three
thousand years—that immensely extended periods of time are necessary to
effect specific changes, and that human observation has not been spread
over a period sufficiently ample to furnish the required data regarding
them. The apology is simply a confession that, in these ages of the
severe inductive philosophy, you have been dreaming your dream, cut off,
as if by the state of sleep, from all the tangibilities of the real
waking-day world, and that you have not a vestige of testimony with which
to support your ingenious vagaries.

But on another account do we refuse to sustain the excuse. It is
_not true_ that human observation has not been spread over a period
sufficiently extended to furnish the necessary data for testing the
development hypothesis. In one special walk,—that which bears on the
supposed transmutation of algæ into terrestrial plants,—human observation
_has_ been spread over what is strictly analogous to _millions_ of years.
For extent of space in this matter is exactly correspondent with duration
of time. No man, in this late period of the world’s history, attains to
the age of five hundred years; and as some of our larger English oaks
have been known to increase in bulk of trunk and extent of bough for five
centuries together, no man can possibly have seen the same huge oak pass,
according to Cowper, through its various stages of “treeship,”—

    “First a seedling hid in grass;
    Then twig; then sapling; and, as century rolls
    Slow after century, a giant bulk,
    Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root
    Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed
    With prominent wens globose.”

But though no man lives throughout five hundred years of time, he can
trace, by passing in some of the English forests through five hundred
yards of space, the history of the oak in all its stages of growth, as
correctly as if he _did_ live throughout the five hundred years. Oaks, in
the space of a few hundred yards, may be seen in every stage of growth,
from the newly burst acorn, that presents to the light its two fleshy
lobes, with the first tender rudiments of a leaflet between, up to the
giant of the forest, in the hollow of whose trunk the red deer may
shelter, and find ample room for the broad spread of his antlers. The
fact of the development of the oak, from the minute two-lobed seedling of
a week’s growth up to the gigantic tree of five centuries, is as capable
of being demonstrated by observation spread over five hundred yards of
space, as by observation spread over five hundred years of time. And
be it remembered, that the sea-coasts of the world are several hundred
thousand miles in extent. Europe is by far the smallest of the earth’s
four large divisions, and it is bounded, in proportion to its size, by a
greater extent of land than any of the others. And yet the sea-coasts of
Europe alone, including those of its islands, exceed twenty-five thousand
miles. We have results before us, in this extent of space, identical
with those of many hundred thousand years of time; and if terrestrial
plants were as certainly developments of the low plants of the sea as
the huge oak is a development of the immature seedling, just sprung from
the acorn, so vast a stretch of sea-coast could not fail to present us
with the intermediate vegetation in all its stages. But the sea-coasts
fail to exhibit even a vestige of the intermediate vegetation. Experience
spread over an extent of space analogous to millions of years of time,
does not furnish, in this department, a single fact corroborative of the
development theory, but, on the contrary, many hundreds of facts that
bear directly against it.

The author of the “Vestiges” is evidently a practised and tasteful
writer, and his work abounds in ingenious combinations of thought; but
those powers of abstract reflection on whose vigorous exercise the
origination of argument depends, nature seems to have denied him. There
are two things in especial which his work wants,—_original observation_
and _abstract thought_,—the power of _seeing_ for himself and of
_reasoning_ for himself; and what we find instead is simply a vivid
appreciation of the _images_ of things, as these images exist in other
minds, and a vigorous perception of the various shades of resemblance
which obtain among them. There is a large amount of analogical power
exhibited; but that basis of truth which correct observation can alone
furnish, and that ability of nicely distinguishing differences by
which the faculty of discerning similarity must be forever regulated
and governed, are wanting, in what, in a mind of fine general texture
and quality, must be regarded as an extraordinary degree. And hence an
ingenious but very unsolid work,—full of images transferred, not from the
scientific field, but from the field of _scientific mind_, and charged
with glittering but vague resemblances, stamped in the mint of fancy;
which, were they to be used as mere counters in some light literary game
of story-telling or character-sketching, would be in no respect out of
place, but which, when passed current as the proper coin of philosophic
argument, are really frauds on the popular understanding. There are,
however, not a few instances in the “Vestiges” and its “Sequel,” in which
that defect of reflective power to which I refer rather enhances than
diminishes the difficulty of reply, by presenting to the controversialist
mere intangible clouds with which to grapple; that yet, through the
existence of a certain superstition in the popular mind, as predisposed
to accept as true whatever takes the form of science, as its predecessor
the old superstition was inclined a century ago to reject science itself,
are at least suited to blind and bewilder. Of this kind of difficulty,
the following passage, in which the author of the work cashiers the
Creator as such, and substitutes, instead, a mere animal-manufacturing
piece of clock-work, which bears the name of natural law,[38] furnishes
us with a remarkable instance.

“Admitting,” he remarks, “that we see not now any such fact as the
production of new species, we at least know, that while such facts were
occurring upon earth, there were associated phenomena in progress of
a character perfectly ordinary. For example, when the earth received
its first fishes, sandstone and limestone were forming in the manner
exemplified a few years ago in the ingenious experiments of Sir James
Hall; basaltic columns rose for the future wonder of man, according to
the principle which Dr. Gregory Watt showed in operation before the
eyes of our fathers; and hollows in the igneous rocks were filled with
crystals, precisely as they could now be by virtue of electric action,
as shown within the last few years by Crosse and Becquerel. The seas
obeyed the impulse of gentle breezes, and rippled their sandy bottoms,
as seas of the present day are doing; the trees grew as now, by favor
of sun and wind, thriving in good seasons and pining in bad: this
while the animals above fishes were yet to be created. The movements
of the sea, the meteorological agencies, the disposition which we see
in the generality of plants to thrive when heat and moisture were most
abundant, were kept up in silent serenity, as matters of simply natural
order, throughout the whole of the ages which saw reptiles enter in
their various forms upon the sea and land. It was about the time of the
first mammals that the forest of the Dirt-Bed was sinking in natural
ruin amidst the sea sludge, as forests of the Plantagenets have been
doing for several centuries upon the coast of England. In short _all the
common operations of the physical world were going on in their usual
simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them_; while
the supposed extraordinary causes were in requisition for the development
of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. There surely hence arises a strong
presumption against any such causes. It becomes much more likely that
the latter phenomena were evolved in the manner of law also, and that we
only dream of extraordinary causes here, as men once dreamt of a special
action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of each season,
merely because they did not know the laws by which the events in question
were evolved.”

How, let us suppose, would David Hume—the greatest thinker of which
infidelity can boast—have greeted the auxiliary who could have brought
him such an _argument_ as a contribution to the cause? “Your objection,
so far as you have stated it,” the philosopher might have said, “amounts
simply to this:—Creation by direct act is a miracle; whereas all that
exists is _propagated_ and _maintained_ by natural law. Natural laws—to
vary the illustration—were in full operation at the period when the
Author of the Christian religion was, it is said, engaged in working
his miracles. When, according to our opponents, he walked upon the
surface of the sea, Peter, through the operation of the natural law of
gravitation, was sinking into it; when he withered, by a word, the barren
fig-tree, there were other trees on the Mount thriving in conformity
with the vegetative laws, under the influence of sun and shower; when
he raised the dead Lazarus, there were corpses in the neighboring tombs
passing, through the natural putrefactive fermentation, into a state
of utter decomposition. In fine, at the time when he was engaged, as
Reid and Campbell believe, in working miracles in violation of law, the
laws of which these were a violation actually existed, and were every
where actively operative; or, to employ your own words, when the New
Testament miracles were, it is alleged, in the act of being wrought,
‘all the common operations of the physical world were going on in their
usual simplicity, obeying that order which we still see governing them.’
Such is the portion of your statement already made; what next?” “It is
surely very unlikely,” replies the auxiliary, “that in such a complex
mass of phenomena there should have been two totally distinct modes
of the exercise of the Divine power,—the mode by miracle and the mode
by law.” “Unlikely!” rejoins the philosopher; “on what grounds?” “O,
just _unlikely_,” says the auxiliary;—“unlikely that God should be at
once operating on matter through the agency of natural laws, of which
_man knows much_, and through the agency of miraculous acts, of the
nature of which _man knows nothing_. But I have not thought out the
subject any further: you have, in the statement already made, my entire
_argument_.” “Ay, I see,” the author of the “Essay on Miracles” would
probably have remarked; “you deem it unlikely that Deity should not only
work in part, as he has always done, by means of which _men_,—clever
fellows like you and me—think they know a great deal but that he should
also work in part, _as he has always done_, by means of which they know
nothing at all. Admirably reasoned out! You are, I make no doubt, a
sound, zealous unbeliever in your private capacity, and your argument
may have great weight with your own mind, and be, in consequence, worthy
of encouragement in a small way; but allow me to suggest that, for
the sake of the general cause, it should be kept out of reach of the
enemy. There are in the Churches Militant on both sides of the Tweed
shrewd combatants, who have nearly as much wit as ourselves.” I think I
understand the reference of the author of the “Vestiges” to the _dream_
“of a special action of Deity in every change of wind and the results of
each season.” Taken with what immediately goes before, it means something
considerably different from those fancies of the “untutored Indian,” who,
according to the poet,

    “Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.”

There is a school of infidelity, tolerably well known in the capital
of Scotland as by far the most superficial which our country has yet
seen, that measures mind with a tape-line and the callipers, and, albeit
not Christian, laudably exemplifies, in a loudly expressed regard for
science, the Christian grace of loving its enemy. And the belief in a
special Providence, who watches over and orders all things, and without
whose permission there falleth not even a “sparrow to the ground,” the
apostles of this school set wholly aside, substituting, instead, a belief
in the indiscriminating operation of natural laws; as if, with the broad
fact before them that even man can work out his will merely by knowing
and directing these laws, the God by whom they were instituted should
lack either the power or the wisdom to make them the pliant ministers
of _his_. It is, I fear, to the distinctive tenet in the creed of this
hapless school that the author of the “Vestiges” refers. Nor is it in the
least surprising, that a writer who labors through two carefully written
volumes,[39] to destroy the existing belief in “God’s works of Creation,”
should affect to hold that the belief in his “works of Providence” had
been destroyed already. But faith in a special superintendence of Deity
is not yet dead: nay, more, He who created the human mind took especial
care, in its construction, that, save in a few defective specimens of the
race, the belief should never die.

The author of the “Vestiges” complains of the illiberality with which
he has been treated. “It has appeared to various critics,” we find
him saying, “that very sacred principles are threatened by a doctrine
of universal law. A natural origin of life, and a natural basis in
organization for the operations of the human mind, speak to them of
fatalism and materialism. And, strange to say, those who every day give
views of _physical cosmogony_ altogether discrepant in appearance with
that of Moses, apply hard names to my book for suggesting an _organic
cosmogony_ in the same way, liable to inconsiderate odium. I must firmly
protest against this mode of meeting speculations regarding nature.
The object of my book, whatever may be said of the manner in which
it is treated, is purely scientific. The views which I give of the
history of organization stand exactly on the same ground upon which the
geological doctrines stood fifty years ago. I am merely endeavoring to
read aright another chapter of the mystic book which God has placed
under the attention of his creatures.... The absence of all liberality
in my reviewers is striking, and especially so in those whose geological
doctrines have exposed them to similar misconstruction. If the men newly
emerged from the odium which was thrown upon Newton’s theory of the
planetary motions had rushed forward to turn that odium upon the patrons
of the dawning science of Geology, they would have been prefiguring the
conduct of several of my critics, themselves hardly escaped from the
rude hands of the narrow-minded, yet eager to join that rabble against
a new and equally unfriended stranger, as if such were the best means
of purchasing impunity for themselves. _I trust that a little time will
enable the public to penetrate this policy._”

Now, there is one very important point to which the author of this
complaint does not seem to have adverted. The astronomer founded his
belief in the mobility of the earth and the immobility of the sun, not on
a mere dream-like hypothesis, founded on nothing, but on a wide and solid
base of pure induction. Galileo was no mere dreamer;—he was a discoverer
of great truths, and a profound reasoner regarding them: and on his
discoveries and his reasonings, compelled by the inexorable laws of his
mental constitution, did he build up certain deductive beliefs, which had
no previous existence in his mind. His convictions were consequents, not
antecedents. Such, also, is the character of geological discovery and
inference, and of the existing belief,—their joint production,—regarding
the great antiquity of the globe. No geologist worthy of the name _began_
with the belief, and then set himself to square geological phenomena
with its requirements. It is a deduction,—a result;—not the starting
assumption, or given sum, in a process of calculation, but its ultimate
finding or answer. Clergymen of the orthodox Churches, such as the
Sumners, Sedgwicks, Bucklands, Conybeares, and Pye Smiths of England,
or the Chalmerses, Duncans, and Flemings of our own country, must have
come to the study of this question of the world’s age with at least no
bias in favor of the geological estimate. The old, and, as it has proven,
erroneous reading of the Mosaic account, was by much too general a one
early in the present century, not to have exerted upon them, in their
character as ministers of religion, a sensible influence of a directly
opposite nature. And the fact of the complete reversal of their original
bias, and of the broad unhesitating finding on the subject which they
ultimately substituted instead, serves to intimate to the uninitiated the
strength of the evidence to which they submitted. There can be nothing
more certain than that it is minds of the same calibre and class, engaged
in the same inductive track, that yielded in the first instance to the
astronomical evidence regarding the earth’s motion, and, in the second,
to the geological evidence regarding the earth’s age.[40]

But how very different the nature and history of the development
hypothesis, and the character of the intellects with whom it originated,
or by whom it has been since adopted! In the first place, it existed
as a wild dream ere Geology had any being as a science. It was an
antecedent, not a consequent,—a starting assumption, not a result. No
one will contend that Maillet was a geologist. Geology has no place among
the sciences in the age in which he lived and even no name. And yet
there is a translation of his _Telliamed_ now lying before me, bearing
date 1750, in which I find very nearly the same account given of the
origin of animals and plants as that in the “Vestiges,” and in which
the sea is described as that great and fruitful womb of nature in which
organization and life first began. Lamarck, at the time when Maillet
wrote, was a boy in his sixth year. He became, comparatively early in
life, a skilful botanist and conchologist; but not until turned of fifty
did he set himself to study general zoology; and his greater work on
the invertebrate animals, on which his fame as a naturalist chiefly
rests, did not _begin_ to appear—for it was published serially—until
the year 1815. But his development hypothesis, identical with that
of the “Vestiges,” was given to the world long before,—in 1802; at
a time when it had not been ascertained that there existed placoids
during the Silurian period, or ganoids during the Old Red Sandstone
period, or enaliosaurs during the Oolitic period; and when, though
Smith had constructed his “Tabular View of the British Strata,” his map
had not yet appeared, and there was little more known regarding the
laws of superposition among the stratified rocks than was to be found
in the writings of Werner. And if the presumption be strong, in the
circumstances, that Lamarck originated his development hypothesis ere
he became in any very great degree skilful as a zoologist, it is no
mere presumption, but a demonstrable truth, that he originated it ere
he became a geologist; for a geologist he never became. In common with
Maillet and Buffon, he held by Leibnitz’s theory of a universal ocean;
and such, as we have already seen, was his ignorance of fossils, that
he erected dermal fragments of the Russian _Asterolepis_ into a new
genus of Polyparia,—an error into which the merest tyro in palæontology
could not now fall. Such, in relation to these sciences, was the man
who perfected the dream of development. Nor has the most distinguished
of its continental assertors now living,—Professor Oken,—any higher
claim to be regarded as a disciple of the inductive school of Geology
than Lamarck. In the preface to the recently published translation of
his “Physio-Philosophy,” we find the following curious confession:—“I
wrote the first edition of 1810 _in a kind of inspiration_, and on that
account it was not so well arranged as a systematic work ought to be.
Now, though this may appear to have been amended in the second and third
edition, yet still it was not possible for me to completely attain the
object held in view. The book has therefore remained essentially the
same as regards its fundamental principles. It is only the empirical
arrangement into series of plants and animals that has been modified
from time to time, _in accordance with the scientific elevation of their
several departments, or just as discoveries and anatomical investigations
have increased, and rendered some other position of the objects a matter
of necessity_.” An interesting piece of evidence this; but certainly
rather simple as a confession. It will be found that while whatever gives
value to the “Physio-Philosophy” of the German Professor (a work which,
if divested of all the inspired bits, would be really a good one) was
acquired either before or since its first appearance in the ordinary way,
its development hypothesis came direct from the god. Further, as I have
already had occasion to state, Oken holds, like Lamarck and Maillet, by
the universal ocean of Leibnitz; he holds, also, that the globe is a vast
crystal, just a little flawed in the facets: and that the three granitic
components—quartz, feldspar, and mica—are simply the hail-drops of heavy
stone showers that shot athwart the original ocean, and accumulated into
rock at the bottom, as snow or hail shoots athwart the upper atmosphere,
and accumulates, in the form of ice, on the summits of high hills, or
in the arctic or antarctic regions. Such, in the present day, are the
geological notions of Oken! They were doubtless all promulgated in what
is modestly enough termed “a _kind_ of inspiration;” and there are few
now so ignorant of Geology as not to know that the _possessing_ agent in
the case—for _inspiration_ is not quite the proper word—must have been
at least of kin to that ingenious personage who volunteered of old to
be a lying spirit in the mouths of the four hundred prophets. And the
well-known fact, that the most popular contemporary expounder of Oken’s
hypothesis—the author of the “Vestiges”—has in every edition of his work
been correcting, modifying, or altogether withdrawing his statements
regarding both geological and zoological phenomena, and that his gradual
development as a geologist and zoologist, from the sufficiently low type
of acquirement to which his first edition bore witness, may be traced, in
consequence, with a distinctness and certainty which we in vain seek in
the cases of presumed development which he would so fain establish,—has
in its bearing exactly the same effect. His development hypothesis was
complete at a time when his geology and zoology were rudimental and
imperfect. Give me your facts, said the Frenchman, that I may accommodate
them to my theory. And no one can look at the progress of the Lamarckian
hypothesis, with reference to the dates when, and the men by whom, it was
promulgated, without recognizing in it one of perhaps the most striking
embodiments of the Frenchman’s principle which the world ever saw. It is
not the illiberal religionist that rejects and casts it off,—it is the
inductive philosopher. Science addresses its assertors in the language of
the possessed to the sons of Sceva the Jew;—“The astronomer I know, and
the geologist I know; but who are ye?”

One of the strangest passages in the “Sequel to the Vestiges,” is that
in which its author carries his appeal from the tribunal of science to
“another tribunal,” indicated but not named, before which “this new
philosophy” [remarkable chiefly for being neither philosophy nor new] “is
to be truly and righteously judged.” The principle is obvious, on which,
were his opponents mere theologians, wholly unable, though they saw
the mischievous character and tendency of his conclusions, to disprove
them scientifically, he might appeal from theology to science: “it is
with scientific truth,” he might urge, “not with moral consequences,
that I have aught to do.” But on what allowable principle, professing,
as he does, to found his theory on scientific fact, can he appeal from
science to the want of it? “After discussing,” he says, “the whole
arguments on both sides in so ample a manner, it may be hardly necessary
to advert to the objection arising from the mere fact, that nearly all
the scientific men are opposed to the theory of the ‘Vestiges.’ As this
objection, however, is likely to be of some avail with many minds, it
ought not to be entirely passed over. If I did not think there were
reasons, independent of judgment, for the scientific class coming so
generally to this conclusion, I might feel the more embarrassed in
presenting myself in direct opposition to so many men possessing talents
and information. As the case really stands, the ability of this class to
give at the present a true response upon such a subject appears extremely
challengeable. It is no discredit to them that they are, almost without
exception, engaged each in his own little department of science, and
able to give little or no attention to other parts of that vast field.
From year to year, and from age to age, we see them at work, adding, no
doubt, much to the known, and advancing many important interests, but
at the same time doing little for the establishment of comprehensive
views of nature Experiments in however narrow a walk, facts of whatever
minuteness, make reputations in scientific societies; all beyond
is regarded with suspicion and distrust. The consequence is, that
philosophy, as it exists amongst us, does nothing to raise its votaries
above the common ideas of their time. There can therefore be nothing
more conclusive against our hypothesis in the disfavor of the scientific
class, than in that of any other section of educated men.”

This is surely a very strange statement. Waiving altogether the _general_
fact, that great original discoverers in any department of knowledge are
never men of one science or one faculty, but possess, on the contrary,
breadth of mind and multiplicity of acquirement;—waiving, too, the
_particular_ fact, that the more distinguished original discoverers of
the present day rank among at once its most philosophic, most elegant,
and most extensively informed writers;—granting, for the argument’s sake,
that our scientific men _are_ men of narrow acquirement, and “exclusively
engaged, each in his own little department of science;”—it is surely
rational to hold, notwithstanding, that in at least these little
departments they have a better right to be heard than any other class of
persons whatever. We must surely not refuse to the man of science what we
at once grant to the common mechanic. A cotton-weaver or calico-printer
may be a very narrow man, “exclusively engaged in his own little
department;” and yet certain it is that, in a question of cotton-weaving
or calico-printing, his evidence is justly deemed more conclusive in
courts of law than that of any other man, however much his superior in
general breadth and intelligence. And had the author of the “Vestiges”
founded his hypothesis on certain facts pertaining to the arts of
cotton-weaving and calico-printing, the cotton-weaver and calico-printer
would have an indisputable right to be heard on the question of their
general correctness. Are we to regard the case as different because
it is on facts pertaining to science, not to cotton-weaving or
calico-printing, that he professes to found? His hypothesis, unless
supported by scientific evidence, is a mere dream,—a fiction as baseless
and wild as any in the “Fairy Tales” or the “Arabian Nights.” And, fully
sensible of the fact, he calls in as witnesses the physical sciences, and
professes to take down their evidence. He calls into court Astronomy,
Geology, Phytology, and Zoology. “Hold!” exclaims the astronomer, as the
examination goes on; “you are taking the evidence of my special science
most unfairly; I challenge a right of cross-examining the witness.”
“Hold!” cries the geologist; “you are putting my science to the question,
and extorting from it, in its agony, a whole series of fictions: I
claim the right of examining it fairly and softly, and getting from
it just the sober truth, and nothing more.” And the phytologist and
zoologist urge exactly similar claims. “No, gentlemen,” replies the
author of the “Vestiges,” “you are narrow men, confined each of you to
his own little department, and so I will not permit you to cross-examine
the witnesses.” “What!” rejoin the men of science, “not permit us to
examine our own witnesses!—refuse to us what you would at once concede
to the cotton-weaver or the calico-printer, were the question one of
cotton-weaving or of calico-printing! We are surely not much narrower
men than the man of cotton or the man of calico. It is but in our own
little departments that we ask to be heard.” “But you shall not be heard,
gentlemen,” says the author of the “Vestiges;” “at all events, I shall
not care one farthing for anything you say. For observe, gentlemen, my
hypothesis is nothing without the evidence of your sciences; and you all
unite, I see, in taking that evidence from me; and so I confidently raise
my appeal in this matter to people who know nothing about either you or
your sciences. It must be before another tribunal that the new philosophy
is to be truly and righteously judged.” Alas! what can this mean? or
where are we to seek for that tribunal of last resort to which this
ingenious man refers with such confidence the consideration of his case?
Can it mean, that he appeals from the only class of persons qualified to
judge of his facts, to a class ignorant of these, but disposed by habits
of previous scepticism to acquiesce in his conclusions, and take his
premises for granted;—that he appeals from astronomers and geologists to
low-minded materialists and shallow phrenologers,—from phytologists and
zoologists to mesmerists and phreno-mesmerists?

I remember being much struck, several years ago, by a remark dropped in
conversation by the late Rev. Mr. Stewart of Cromarty, one of the most
original-minded men I ever knew. “In reading in my Greek New Testament
this morning,” he said, “I was curiously impressed by a thought which,
simple as it may seem, never occurred to me before. The portion which
I perused was in the First Epistle of Peter; and as I passed from the
thinking of the passage to the language in which it is expressed,—‘This
Greek of the untaught Galilean fisherman,’—I said, ‘so admired by
scholars and critics for its unaffected dignity and force, was not
acquired, as that of Paul may have been, in the ordinary way, but formed
a portion of the Pentecostal gift! Here, then, immediately under my eye,
on these pages, are there embodied, not, as in many other parts of the
Scriptures, the mere _details_ of a miracle, but the direct _results_ of
a miracle. How strange! Had the old tables of stone been placed before
me, with what an awe-struck feeling would I have looked on the characters
traced upon them by God’s own finger! How is it that I have failed to
remember that, in the language of these Epistles, miraculously impressed
by the Divine power upon the mind, I possessed as significant and
suggestive a relic as that which the inscription miraculously impressed
by the Divine power upon the stone could possibly have furnished?” It
was a striking thought; and in the course of our walk, which led us over
richly fossiliferous beds of the Old Red Sandstone, to a deposit of the
Eathie Lias, largely charged with the characteristic remains of that
formation, I ventured to connect it with another. “In either case,” I
remarked, as we seated ourselves beside a sea-cliff, sculptured over with
the impressions of extinct plants and shells, “your relics, whether of
the Pentecostal Greek or of the characters inscribed on the old tables of
stone, could address themselves to but previously existing belief. The
sceptic would see in the Sinaitic characters, were they placed before
him, merely the work of an ordinary tool; and in the Greek of Peter and
John, a well-known language, acquired, he would hold, in the common way.
But what say you to the relics that stand out in such bold relief from
the rocks beside us, in _their_ character as the results of miracle? The
perished tribes and races which they represent all _began_ to exist.
There is no truth which science can more conclusively demonstrate than
that they had all a beginning. The infidel who, in this late age of
the world, would attempt falling back on the fiction of an ‘infinite
series,’ would be laughed to scorn. They all began to be. But how? No
true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;—it has been resigned
to sciolists and smatterers;—and there is but one other alternative.
They began to be, _through the miracle of creation_. From the evidence
furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to the belief in
_miracle_, or to the belief in something else infinitely harder of
reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary
to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the
stony science. He was not, according to Job, ‘in league with the stones
of the field,’ and they have risen in irresistible warfare against him in
the Creator’s behalf.”




FINAL CAUSES.—THEIR BEARING ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY. CONCLUSION.


“Natural History has a principle on which to reason,” says Cuvier, “which
is peculiar to it, and which it employs advantageously on many occasions:
it is that of the _conditions of existence_, commonly termed _final
causes_.”

In Geology, which is Natural History extended over all ages,
this principle has a still wider scope,—embracing not merely the
characteristics and conditions of the beings which now exist, but of
all, so far as we can learn regarding them, which have ever existed,
and involving the consideration of not merely their peculiarities as
races placed before us without relation to time, but also of the history
of their rise, increase, decline, and extinction. In studying the
_biography_, if I may so express myself, of an individual animal, we
have to acquaint ourselves with the circumstances in which nature has
placed it,—its adaptation to these, both in structure and instinct,—the
points of resemblance which it presents to the individuals of other races
and families, and the laws which determine its terms of development,
vigorous existence, and decay. And all Natural History, when restricted
to the passing _now_ of the world’s annals, is simply a congeries of
biographies. It is when we extend our view into the geological field that
it passes from _biography_ into _history proper_, and that we have to
rise from the consideration of the birth and death of individuals, which,
in all mere biographies, form the great terminal events that constitute
beginning and end, to a survey of the birth and death of races, and the
elevation or degradation of dynasties and sub-kingdoms.

We learn from human history that nations are as certainly mortal as men.
They enjoy a greatly longer term of existence, but they die at last:
Rollin’s History of Ancient Nations is a history of the dead. And we
are taught by geological history, in like manner, that _species_ are as
mortal as individuals and nations, and that even genera and families
become extinct. There is no _man_ upon earth at the present moment whose
age greatly exceeds an hundred years;—there is no _nation_ now upon
earth (if we perhaps except the long-lived Chinese) that also flourished
three thousand years ago;—there is no _species_ now living upon earth
that dates beyond the times of the Tertiary deposits. All bear the stamp
of death,—individuals,—nations,—species; and we may scarce less safely
predicate, looking upon the past, that it is appointed for nations and
species to die, than that it “is appointed for _man_ once to die.” Even
our own species, _as now constituted_,—with instincts that conform to the
original injunction, “increase and multiply,” and that, in consequence,
“marry and are given in marriage,”—shall one day cease to exist: a fact
not less in accordance with beliefs inseparable from the faith of the
Christian, than with the widely-founded experience of the geologist. Now,
it is scarce possible for the human mind to become acquainted with the
fact, that at certain periods species began to exist and then, after the
lapse of untold ages, ceased to be, without inquiring whether, from the
“conditions of existence, commonly termed final causes,” we cannot deduce
a reason for their rise or decline, or why their term of being should
have been included rather in one certain period of time than another.
The same faculty which finds employment in tracing to their causes the
rise and fall of nations, and which it is the merit of the philosophic
historian judiciously to exercise, will to a certainty seek employment
in this department of history also; and that there will be an appetency
for such speculations in the public mind, we may infer from the success,
as a literary undertaking, of the “Vestiges of Creation,”—a work that
bears the same sort of relation, in this special field to sober inquiry,
founded on the true conditions of things, that the legends of the old
chroniclers bore to authentic history. The progressive state of geologic
science has hitherto militated against the formation of theory of the
soberer character. Its facts—still merely in the forming—are necessarily
imperfect in their classification, and limited in their amount; and
thus the essential data continues incomplete. Besides, the men best
acquainted with the basis of fact which already exists, have quite enough
to engage them in adding to it. But there are limits to the field of
palæontological discovery, in its relation to what may be termed the
chronology of organized existence, which, judging from the progress of
the science in the past, may be well nigh reached in favored localities,
such as the British islands, in about a quarter of a century from the
present time; and then, I doubt not, geological history, in legitimate
conformity with the laws of mind, and from the existence of the pregnant
principle peculiar, according to Cuvier, to that science of which Geology
is simply an extension, will assume a very extraordinary form. We cannot
yet aspire “to the height of this great argument:” our foundations are
in parts still unconsolidated and incomplete, and unfitted to sustain the
perfect superstructure which shall one day assuredly rise upon them; but
from the little which we can now see, “as if in a glass darkly,” enough
appears from which to

            “Assert eternal Providence,
    And justify the ways of God to men.”

The history of the four great monarchies of the world was typified, in
the prophetic dream of the ancient Babylonish king, by a colossal image,
“terrible in its form and brightness,” of which the “head was pure gold,”
the “breast and arms of silver,” the “belly and thighs of brass,” and the
legs and feet “of iron, and of iron mingled with clay.” The vision in
which it formed the central object was appropriately that of a puissant
monarch; and the image itself typified the merely human monarchies of the
earth. It would require a widely different figure to symbolize the great
monarchies of creation. And yet Revelation does furnish such a figure.
It is that which was witnessed by the captive prophet beside “the river
Chebar,” when “the heavens were opened, and he saw visions of God.” In
that chariot of Deity, glowing in fire and amber, with its complex wheels
“so high that they were dreadful,” set round about with eyes, there were
living creatures, of whose four faces three were brute and one human; and
high over all sat the Son of Man. It would almost seem as if, in this
sublime vision,—in which, with features distinct enough to impress the
imagination, there mingle the elements of an awful incomprehensibility,
and which even the genius of Raffaelle has failed adequately to
portray,—the history of all the past and of all the future had been
symbolized. In the order of Providence intimated in the geologic record,
the brute faces, as in the vision, outnumber the human;—the human
dynasty is one, and the dynasties of the inferior animals are three; and
yet who can doubt that they all equally compose parts of a well-ordered
and perfect whole, as the four faces formed but one cherubim; that
they have been moving onward to a definite goal, in the unity of one
grand harmonious design,—now “lifted up high” over the comprehension of
earth,—now let down to its humble level; and that the Creator of all has
been ever seated over them on the throne of his providence,—a “likeness
in the appearance of a man,”—embodying the perfection of his nature in
his workings, and determining the end from the beginning?

There is geologic evidence, as has been shown, that in the course of
creation the higher orders succeeded the lower. We have no good reason to
believe that the mollusc and crustacean preceded the fish, seeing that
discovery, in its slow course, has already traced the vertebrata in the
ichthyic form, down to deposits which only a few years ago were regarded
as representatives of the first beginnings of organized existence on our
planet, and that it has at the same time failed to add a lower system
to that in which their remains occur. But the fish seems most certainly
to have preceded the reptile and the bird; the reptile and the bird to
have preceded the mammiferous quadruped; and the mammiferous quadruped
to have preceded man,—rational, accountable man, whom God created in
his own image,—the much-loved Benjamin of the family,—last-born of all
creatures. It is of itself an extraordinary fact, without reference to
other considerations, that the order adopted by Cuvier, in his animal
kingdom, as that in which the four great classes of vertebrate animals,
when marshalled according to their rank and standing, naturally range
should be also that in which they occur in order of time. The brain
which bears an average proportion to the spinal cord of not more than
two to one, came first,—it is the brain of the fish; that which bears to
the spinal cord an average proportion of two and a half to one succeeded
it,—it is the brain of the reptile; then came the brain averaging as
three to one,—it is that of the bird; next in succession came the brain
that averages as four to one,—it is that of the mammal; and last of all
there appeared a brain that averages as _twenty-three_ to one,—reasoning,
calculating man had come upon the scene. All the facts of geological
science are hostile to the Lamarckian conclusion, that the lower brains
were developed into the higher. As if with the express intention of
preventing so gross a mis-reading of the record, we find, in at least two
classes of animals,—fishes and reptiles,—the higher races placed at the
beginning: the slope of the inclined plane is laid, if one may so speak,
in the reverse way, and, instead of rising towards the level of the
succeeding class, inclines downwards, with at least the effect, if not
the design, of making the break where they meet exceedingly well marked
and conspicuous. And yet the record does seem to speak of _development
and progression_;—not, however, in the province of organized existence,
but in that of insensate matter, subject to the purely chemical laws.
It is in the style and character of _the dwelling-place_ that gradual
improvement seems to have taken place;—not in the functions or the rank
of any class of its inhabitants; and it is with special reference to this
gradual improvement in our common mansion-house the earth, in its bearing
on the “conditions of existence,” that not a few of our reasonings
regarding the introduction and extinction of species and genera must
proceed.

That definite period at which man was introduced upon the scene seems
to have been specially determined by the conditions of correspondence
which the phenomena of his habitation had at length come to assume with
the predestined constitution of his mind. The large reasoning brain would
have been wholly out of place in the earlier ages. It is indubitably the
nature of man to base the conclusions which regulate all his actions
on fixed phenomena,—he reasons from cause to effect, or from effect to
cause; and when placed in circumstances in which, from some lack of the
necessary basis, he cannot so reason, he becomes a wretched, timid,
superstitious creature, greatly more helpless and abject than even the
inferior animals. This unhappy state is strikingly exemplified by that
deep and peculiar impression made on the mind by a severe earthquake,
which Humboldt, from his own experience, so powerfully describes.
“This impression,” he says, “is not, in my opinion, the result of a
recollection of those fearful pictures of devastation presented to our
imagination by the historical narratives of the past, but is rather due
to the sudden revelation of the delusive nature of the inherent faith
by which we had clung to a belief in the immobility of the solid parts
of the earth. We are accustomed from early childhood to draw a contrast
between the mobility of water and the immobility of the soil on which we
tread; and this feeling is confirmed by the evidence of our senses. When,
therefore, we suddenly feel the ground move beneath us, a mysterious
force, with which we were previously unacquainted, is revealed to us as
an active disturber of stability. A moment destroys the illusion of a
whole life; our deceptive faith in the repose of nature vanishes; and
we feel transported into a realm of unknown destructive forces. Every
sound—the faintest motion of the air—arrests our attention, and we no
longer trust the ground on which we stand. There is an idea conveyed
to the mind, of some universal and unlimited danger. We may flee from
the crater of a volcano in active eruption, or from the dwelling whose
destruction is threatened by the approach of the lava stream; but in an
earthquake, direct our flight whithersoever we will, we still feel as
if we trod upon the very focus of destruction.” Not less striking is
the testimony of Dr. Tschudi, in his “Travels in Peru,” regarding this
singular effect of earthquakes on the human mind. “No familiarity with
the phenomenon can,” he remarks, “blunt the feeling. The inhabitant of
Lima, who from childhood has frequently witnessed these convulsions
of nature, is roused from his sleep by the shock, and rushes from his
apartment with the cry of ‘_Misericordia_!’ The foreigner from the
north of Europe, who knows nothing of earthquakes but by description,
waits with impatience to feel the movements of the earth, and longs to
hear with his own ear the subterranean sounds, which he has hitherto
considered fabulous. With levity he treats the apprehension of a coming
convulsion, and laughs at the fears of the natives; but as soon as his
wish is gratified, he is terror-stricken, and is involuntarily prompted
to seek safety in flight.”

Now, a partially consolidated planet, tempested by frequent earthquakes
of such terrible potency, that those of the historic ages would be but
mere ripples of the earth’s surface in comparison, could be no proper
home for a creature so constituted. The fish or reptile,—animals of a
limited range of instinct, exceedingly tenacious of life in most of their
varieties, oviparous, prolific, and whose young immediately on their
escape from the egg can provide for themselves, might enjoy existence in
such circumstances, to the full extent of their narrow capacities; and
when sudden death fell upon them,—though their remains, scattered over
wide areas, continue to exhibit that distortion of posture incident to
violent dissolution, which seems to speak of terror and suffering,—we may
safely conclude there was but little real suffering on the case: they
were happy up to a certain point, and unconscious forever after. Fishes
and reptiles were the proper inhabitants of our planet during the ages of
the earth-tempests; and when, under the operation of the chemical laws,
these had become less frequent and terrible, the higher mammals were
introduced. That prolonged ages of these tempests did exist, and that
they gradually settled down, until the state of things became at length
comparatively fixed and stable, few geologists will be disposed to deny.
The evidence which supports _this_ special theory of the development
of our planet in its capabilities as a scene of organized and sentient
being, seems palpable at every step. Look first at these Grauwacke rocks;
and, after marking how in one place the strata have been upturned on
their edges for miles together, and how in another the Plutonic rock has
risen molten from below, pass on to the Old Red Sandstone, and examine
its significant platforms of violent death,—its faults, displacements,
and dislocations; see, next, in the Coal Measures, those evidences of
sinking and ever-sinking strata, for thousands of feet together; mark in
the Oolite those vast overlying masses of trap, stretching athwart the
landscape, far as the eye can reach; observe carefully how the signs of
convulsion and catastrophe gradually lessen as we descend to the times of
the Tertiary, though even in these ages of the mammiferous quadruped the
earth must have had its oft-recurring ague fits of frightful intensity;
and then, on closing the survey, consider how exceedingly partial and
unfrequent these earth-tempests have become in the recent periods. Yes;
we find every where marks of at once progression and identity,—of
progress made, and yet identity maintained; but it is in the habitation
that we find them,—not in the inhabitants. There is a tract of country in
Hindustan that contains nearly as many square miles as all Great Britain,
covered to the depth of hundreds of feet by one vast overflow of trap;
a track similarly overflown, which exceeds in area all England, occurs
in Southern Africa. The earth’s surface is roughened with such,—mottled
as thickly by the Plutonic masses as the skin of the leopard by its
spots. The trap district which surrounds our Scottish metropolis, and
imparts so imposing a character to its scenery, is too inconsiderable to
be marked on geological maps of the world, that we yet see streaked and
speckled with similar memorials, though on an immensely vaster scale,
of the eruption and overflow which took place in the earthquake ages.
What could man have done on the globe at a time when such outbursts
were comparatively common occurrences? What could he have done where
Edinburgh now stands during that overflow of trap porphyry of which the
Pentland range forms but a fragment, or that outburst of greenstone of
which but a portion remains in the dark ponderous coping of Salisbury
Craigs, or when the thick floor of rock on which the city stands was
broken up, like the ice of an arctic sea during a tempest in spring, and
laid on edge from where it leans against the Castle Hill to beyond the
quarries at Joppa? The reasoning brain would have been wholly at fault
in a scene of things in which it could neither foresee the exterminating
calamity while yet distant, nor control it when it had come; and so the
reasoning brain was not produced until the scene had undergone a slow
but thorough process of change, during which, at each progressive stage,
it had furnished a platform for higher and still higher life. When the
coniferæ could flourish on the land, and fishes subsist in the seas,
fishes and cone-bearing plants were created; when the earth became a
fit habitat for reptiles and birds, reptiles and birds were produced;
with the dawn of a more stable and mature state of things the sagacious
quadruped was ushered in; and, last of all, when man’s house was fully
prepared for him,—when the data on which it is his nature to reason
and calculate had become fixed and certain,—the reasoning, calculating
brain was moulded by the creative finger, and man became a living soul.
Such seems to be the true reading of the wondrous inscription chiselled
deep in the rocks. It furnishes us with no clue by which to unravel the
unapproachable mysteries of creation;—these mysteries belong to the
wondrous Creator, and to Him only. We attempt to theorize upon them,
and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our
presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone-bearing wood,—a fish’s
skull or tooth,—the vertebra of a reptile,—the humerus of a bird,—the jaw
of a quadruped,—all, any of these things, weak and insignificant as they
may seem, become in such a quarrel too strong for us and our theory: the
puny fragment, in the grasp of truth, forms as irresistible a weapon as
the dry bone did in that of Samson of old; and our slaughtered sophisms
lie piled up, “heaps upon heaps,” before it.

There is no geological fact nor revealed doctrine with which this special
scheme of development does not agree. To every truth, too, really such,
from which the antagonist scheme derives its shadowy analogies, it leaves
its full value. It has no quarrel with the facts of even the “Vestiges,”
in their character as realities. There is certainly something very
extraordinary in that fœtal progress of the human brain on which the
assertors of the development hypothesis have founded so much. Nature, in
constructing this curious organ, first lays down a grooved cord, as the
carpenter lays down the keel of his vessel; and on this narrow base the
perfect brain, as month after month passes by, is gradually built up,
like the vessel from the keel. First it grows up into a brain closely
resembling that of a fish; a few additions more convert it into a brain
undistinguishable from that of a reptile; a few additions more impart
to it the perfect appearance of the brain of a bird; it then developes
into a brain exceedingly like that of a mammiferous quadruped; and,
finally, expanding atop, and spreading out its deeply corrugated lobes,
till they project widely over the base, it assumes its unique character
as a human brain. Radically such from the first, it passes towards its
full development, through all the inferior forms, from that of the fish
upwards,—thus comprising, during its fœtal progress, an epitome of
geologic history, as if each man were in himself, not the _microcosm_ of
the old fanciful philosopher, but something greatly more wonderful,—a
compendium of all animated nature, and of kin to every creature that
lives. Hence the remark, that man is the sum total of all animals,—“the
animal equivalent,” says Oken, “to the whole animal kingdom.” We are
perhaps too much in the habit of setting aside real facts, when they
have been first seized upon by the infidel, and appropriated to the
purposes of unbelief, as if they had suffered contamination in his
hands. We forget, like the brother “weak in the faith,” instanced by
the Apostle, that they are in themselves “creatures of God;” and too
readily reject the lesson which they teach, simply because they have been
offered in sacrifice to an idol. And this strange fact of the progress
of the human brain is assuredly a fact none the less worth looking at
from the circumstance that infidelity has looked at it first. On no
principle recognizable in right reason can it be urged in support of the
development hypothesis;—it is a fact of _fœtal_ development, and of that
only. But it would be well should it lead our metaphysicians to inquire
whether they have not been rendering their science too insulated and
exclusive; and whether the mind that works by a brain thus “fearfully and
wonderfully made,” ought not to be viewed rather in connection with all
animated nature, especially as we find nature exemplified in the various
vertebral forms, than as a thing fundamentally abstract and distinct.
The brain built up of all the types of _brain_, may be the organ of a
mind compounded, if I may so express myself, of all the varieties of
_mind_. It would be perhaps over fanciful to urge that it is the creature
who has made himself free of all the elements, whose brain has been
thus in succession that of all their proper denizens; and that there
is no animal instinct, the function of which cannot be illustrated by
some art mastered by man: but there can be nothing over fanciful in the
suggestion, founded on this fact of fœtal development, that possibly some
of the more obscure signs impressed upon the human character may be best
read through the spectacles of physical science. The successive phases of
the fœtal brain give at least fair warning that, in tracing to its first
principles the moral and intellectual nature of man, what is properly
his “natural history” should not be overlooked. Oken, after describing
the human creature in one passage as “equivalent to the whole animal
kingdom,” designates him in another as “God wholly manifested,” and as
“God become man;”—a style of expression at which the English reader
may start, as that of the “big mouth speaking blasphemy,” but which
has become exceedingly common among the nationalists of the Continent.
The irreverent naturalist ought surely to have remembered, that the
sum total of all the animals cannot be different in its nature from the
various sums of which it is an aggregate,—seeing that _no_ summation ever
differs in _quality_ from the items summed up, which compose it,—and
that, though it may amount in this case to man _the animal_,—to man,
as he may be weighed, and measured, and subjected to the dissecting
knife,—it cannot possibly amount to God. Is God merely a sum total of
birds and beasts, reptiles and fishes;—a mere Egyptian deity, composed
of fantastic hieroglyphics derived from the forms of the brute creation?
The impieties of the transcendentalist may, however, serve to illustrate
that mode of seizing on terms which, as the most sacred in the message
of revelation, have been long coupled in the popular mind with saving
truths, and forcibly compelling them to bear some visionary and illusive
meaning, wholly foreign to that with which they were originally invested,
which has become so remarkable a part of the policy of modern infidelity.
Rationalism has learned to sacrifice to Deity with a certain measure of
conformity to the required pattern; but it is a conformity in appearance
only, not in reality: the sacrifice always resembles that of Prometheus
of old, who presented to Jupiter what, though it seemed to be an ox
without blemish, was merely an ox-skin stuffed full of bones and garbage.

There is another very remarkable class of facts in geological history,
which appear to fall as legitimately within the scope of argument founded
on final causes, as those which bear on the appearance of man at his
proper era. The period of the mammiferous quadrupeds seems, like the
succeeding human period, to have been determined, as I have said, by the
earth’s fitness at the time as a place of habitation for creatures so
formed. And the bulk to which, in the more extreme cases, they attained,
appears to have been regulated, as in the higher mammals now, with
reference to the force of gravity at the earth’s surface. The Megatherium
and the Mastodon, the Dinotherium and the extinct elephant, increased
in bulk, in obedience to the laws of the specific constitution imparted
to them at their creation; and these laws bore reference, in turn, to
another law,—that law of gravity which determines that no creature which
moves in air and treads the surface of the earth should exceed a certain
weight or size. To very near the limits assigned by this law some of the
ancient quadrupeds arose. It is even doubtful whether the Dinotherium,
the most gigantic of mammals, may not have been, like the existing
sea-lions and morses, mainly an aquatic quadruped;—an inference grounded
on the circumstance that, in at least portions of its framework, it seems
to have risen beyond these limits. Now, it does not seem wonderful that,
with apparent reference to the point at which the gravity of bodies
at the earth’s surface _bisects_ the conditions of texture and matter
necessary to existence among the sub-aerial vertebrata, the _reptiles_
of the Secondary periods should have grown up in some of their species
and genera to the extreme size. A world of frogs, newts, and lizards
would have borne stamped upon it the impress of a tame and miserable
mediocrity, that would have harmonized ill with the extent of the
earth’s capabilities for supporting life on a large scale. There would
be no principle of adaptation or rule of proportion maintained between
an animal kingdom composed of so contemptible a group of beings, and
either the dynamic laws under which matter exists on our planet, or the
luxuriant vegetation which it bore during the Secondary ages. And such
was not the character of the group which composed the reptile dynasty.
The Iguanodon must have been quite as tall as the elephant,—greatly
longer, and, it would seem, at least as bulky. The Megalosaurus must have
at least equalled the rhinoceros; the Hylæosaurus would have outweighed
the hippopotamus. And when reptiles that rivalled in size our hugest
mammals inhabited the land, other reptiles,—Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs,
and Cetiosaurs,—scarce less bulky than the cetacea themselves, possessed
the sea. Not only was the platform of being occupied in all its
_breadth_, but also in all its _height_; and it is according to our
simpler and more obvious ideas of adaptation—simple and obvious because
gleaned from the very surface of the universe of life—that such should
have been the case. But it does appear strange, because under the
regulation, it would seem, of a principle of adaptation more occult,
and, if I may so speak, more _Providential_, that no sooner are the huge
mammals introduced _as a group_, than, with but a few exceptions, the
reptiles appear in greatly diminished proportions. They no longer occupy
the platform to its full extent of _height_. Even in tropical countries,
in which certain families of mammals still attain to the maximum size,
the reptiles, if we except the crocodilean family, a few harmless
turtles, and the degraded boas and pythons, are a small and comparatively
unimportant race. Nay, the existing giants of the class—the crocodiles
and boas—hardly equal in bulk the third-rate reptiles of the ages of
the Oolite and the Wealden. So far as can be seen, there is no reason
deduceable from the nature of things, why the country that sustains a
mammal bulky as the elephant, should not also support a reptile huge
as the Iguanodon; or why the Megalosaurus, Hylæosaurus, and Dicynodon,
might not have been contemporary with the lion, tiger, and rhinoceros.
The change which took place in the reptile group immediately on their
dethronement at the close of the Secondary period, seems scarce less
strange than that sung by Milton:—

    “Behold a wonder! They but now who seemed
    In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons,
    Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
    Thronged numberless; like that pygmean race
    Beyond the Indian mount; or fairy elves,
    Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
    Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
    Or dreams he sees, while, overhead, the moon
    Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
    Wheels her pale course.”

But though we cannot assign a _cause_ for this general reduction of the
reptile class, save simply the will of the all-wise Creator, the _reason_
why it should have taken place seems easily assignable. It was a bold
saying of the old philosophic heathen, that “God is the soul of brutes;”
but writers on instinct in even our own times have said less warrantable
things. God _does_ seem to do for many of the inferior animals of the
lower divisions, which, though devoid of brain and vertebral column, are
yet skilful chemists and accomplished architects and mathematicians,
what he enables man, through the exercise of the reasoning faculty,
to do for himself; and the ancient philosopher meant no more. And in
clearing away the giants of the reptile dynasty, when their kingdom had
passed away, and then re-introducing the class as much shrunken in their
proportions as restricted in their domains, the Creator seems to have
been doing for the mammals what man, in the character of a “mighty hunter
before the Lord,” does for himself. There is in nature very little of
what can be called war. The cities of this country cannot be said to be
in a state of war, though their cattle-markets are thronged every week
with animals for slaughter and the butcher and fishmonger find their
places of business thronged with customers. And such, in the main, is the
condition of the animal world;—it consists of its two classes,—animals
of prey, and the animals upon which they prey: its wars are simply those
of the butcher and fisher, lightened by a dash of the enjoyments of the
sportsman.

    “The creatures see of flood and field,
      And those that travel on the wind,
    With them no strife can last; they live
      In peace and peace of mind.”

Generally speaking, the carnivorous mammalia respect one another: lion
does not war with tiger, nor the leopard contend with the hyena. But
the carnivorous reptiles manifest no such respect for the carnivorous
mammals. There are fierce contests in their native jungles, on the banks
of the Ganges, between the gavial and the tiger; and in the steaming
forests of South America, the boa-constrictor casts his terrible coil
scarce less readily round the puma than the antelope. A world which,
after it had become a home of the higher herbivorous and more powerful
carnivorous mammals, continued to retain the gigantic reptiles of
its earlier ages, would be a world of horrid, exterminating war, and
altogether rather a place of torment than a scene of intermediate
character, in which, though it sometimes reëchoes the groans of
suffering nature, life is, in the main, enjoyment. And so,—save in a few
exceptional cases, that, while they establish the rule as a fact, serve
also as a key to unlock that principle of the Divine government on which
it appears to rest,—no sooner was the reptile removed from his place in
the fore-front of creation, and creatures of a higher order introduced
into it the consolidating and fast-ripening planet of which he had been
so long the monarch, than his bulk shrank and his strength lessened,
and he assumed a humility of form and aspect at once in keeping with
his reduced circumstances, and compatible with the general welfare. But
though the _reason_ of the reduction appears obvious, I know not that it
can be referred to any other _cause_ than simply the will of the All-Wise
Creator.

There hangs a mystery greatly more profound over the fact of the
_degradation_ than over that of the _reduction_ and _diminution_ of
classes. We can assign what at least _seems_ to be a sufficient _reason_
why, when reptiles formed as a class the highest representatives of the
vertebrata, they should be of imposing bulk and strength, and altogether
worthy of that post of precedence which they then occupied among the
animals. We can also assign a _reason_ for the strange reduction which
took place among them in strength and bulk immediately on their removal
from the first to the second place. But why not only _reduction_,
but also _degradation_? Why, as division started up in advance of
division,—first the reptiles in front of the fishes, then the quadrupedal
mammals in front of the reptiles, and, last of all, man in front of
the quadrupedal mammals,—should the supplanted classes,—two of them at
least,—fishes and reptiles,—for there seem to have been no additions
made to the mammals since man entered upon the scene,—why should they
have become the receptacles of orders and families of a degraded
character, which had no place among them in their monarchical state? The
fishes removed beyond all analogy with the higher vertebrata, by their
homocercal tails,—the fishes (_Acanthopterygii_ and _Sub-brachiati_) with
their four limbs slung in a belt round their necks,—the flat fishes,
(_Pleuronectidæ_,) that, in addition to this deformity, are so twisted
to a side, that while the one eye occupies a single orbit in the
middle of the skull, the other is thrust out to its edge,—the irregular
fishes generally (sun-fishes, frog-fishes, hippocampi, &c.) were not
introduced into the ichthyic division until after the full development
of the reptile dynasty; nor did the hand that makes no slips in its
working “form the crooked serpent,” footless, grovelling, venom-bearing,
the authorized type of a fallen and degraded creature, until after the
introduction of the mammals. What can this fact of degradation mean?
Species and genera seem to be greatly more numerous in the present age
of the world than in any of the geologic ages. Is it not possible that
the extension of the chain of being which has thus taken place—not only,
as we find, through the addition of the higher divisions of animals to
its upper end, but also through the interpolations of _lower links_
into the previously existing divisions—may have borne reference to some
predetermined scheme of well-proportioned gradation, or, according to the
poet,

    “Of general ORDER since the whole began?”

May not, in short, what we term degradation be merely one of the modes
resorted to for filling up the voids in creation, and thereby perfecting
a scale which must have been originally not merely a scale of narrow
compass, but also of innumerable breaks and blanks, hiatuses and chasms?
Such, certainly, would be the reading of the enigma which a Soame Jenyns
or a Bolingbroke would suggest; but the geologist has learned from his
science, that the completion of a chain of at least contemporary being,
perfect in its gradations, cannot possibly have formed the design of
Providence. Almost ever since God united vitality to matter, the links in
this chain of animated nature, as if composed of a material too brittle
to bear their own weight when stretched across the geologic ages, have
been dropping one after out, from his hand, and sinking, fractured and
broken, into the rocks below. It is urged by Pope, that were “we to press
on superior powers,” and rise from our own assigned place to the place
immediately above all, we would, in consequence of the transposition,

            “In the full creation leave a void,
    Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed.
    From nature’s chain whatever link we strike,
    Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.”

The poet could scarce have anticipated that there was a science then
sleeping in its cradle, and dreaming the dreams of Whiston, Leibnitz, and
Burnet, which was one day to rise and demonstrate that both the tenth and
the ten thousandth link in the chain had been already broken and laid
by, with all the thousands of links between; and that man might laudably
“press on superior powers,” and attain to a “new nature,” without in the
least affecting the symmetry of creation by the void which his elevation
would necessarily create; that, in fine, voids and blanks in the scale
are exceedingly common things; and that, if men could, by rising into
angels, make one blank more, they might do so with perfect impunity.
Further, even were the graduated chain of Bolingbroke a reality, and not
what Johnson well designates it, an “absurd hypothesis,” and were what I
have termed the interpolation of links necessary to its completion, the
mere filling up of the original blanks and chasms would not necessarily
involve the fact of degradation, seeing that each blank could be
filled up, if I may go express myself, from its lower end. Each could
be as certainly occupied to the full by an elevation of lower forms,
as by a humiliation of the higher. We might receive the hypothesis of
Bolingbroke, and yet find the mysterious fact of degradation remain an
unsolved riddle in our hands.

But though I can assign neither _reason_ nor _cause_ for the fact, I
cannot avoid the conclusion, that it is associated with certain other
great facts in the moral government of the universe, by those threads of
analogical connection which run through the entire tissue of Creation and
Providence, and impart to it that character of unity which speaks of the
single producing Mind. The first idea of every religion on earth which
has arisen out of what may be termed the spiritual instincts of man’s
nature, is that of a Future State; the second idea is, that in this state
men shall exist in two separate classes,—the one in advance of their
present condition, the other far in the rear of it. It is on these two
great beliefs that conscience every where finds the fulcrum from which
it acts upon the conduct; and it is, we find, wholly inoperative as a
force without them. And in that one religion among men that, instead
of retiring, like the pale ghosts of the others, before the light of
civilization, brightens and expands in its beams, and in favor of whose
claim as a revelation from God the highest philosophy has declared,
we find these two master ideas occupying a still more prominent place
than in any of those merely indigenous religions that spring up in the
human mind of themselves. The special lesson which the Adorable Saviour,
during his ministry on earth, oftenest enforced, and to which all the
others bore reference, was the lesson of a final separation of mankind
into two great divisions,—a division of God-like men, of whose high
Standing and full-orbed happiness man, in the present scene of things,
can form no adequate conception; and a division of men finally lost, and
doomed to unutterable misery and hopeless degradation. There is not in
all Revelation a single doctrine which we find oftener or more clearly
enforced than that there shall continue to exist, throughout the endless
cycles of the future, a race of degraded men and of degraded angels.

Now, it is truly wonderful how thoroughly, in its general scope, the
revealed pieces on to the geologic record. We know, as geologists, that
the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile,—that
the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous
quadruped,—and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was
succeeded by that of man as man now exists,—a creature of mixed
character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of
enjoyment and suffering. We know, further—so far at least as we have
yet succeeded in deciphering the record,—that the several dynasties
were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms;—that,
in short, in the imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a
general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession
the magnates should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact of
degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile. And then,
passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in
the mixed state and character is not the final one, but that there is
to be yet another creation, or, more properly, _re_-creation, known
theologically as the Resurrection, which shall be connected in its
physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty
which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity,
conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority,
shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of responsible man is
superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further
taught, that at the commencement of this last of the dynasties, there
will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded
beings,—a re-creation of the _lost_. We are taught yet further, that
though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at their
first introduction were placed on higher ground than that on which they
now stand, and sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original
design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy
the existing platform; and that Redemption is thus no after-thought,
rendered necessary by the fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general
scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that
the Divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected,
was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is
designated in the remarkable text, “_the Lamb slain from the foundations
of the world_.” Slain from the foundations of the world! Could the
assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing
the two records together,—that revealed in Scripture and that revealed
in the rocks,—records which, however widely geologists may mistake the
one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the
same great Author—we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period
succeeded period, each in succession ushering in a higher end yet higher
scene of existence,—that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have
reigned in turn,—that responsible man, “made in the image of God,”
and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world
ripened for his reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in
which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long
series, but merely the last of the _preliminary_ scenes; and that that
period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their
well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall
have perfection for its occupant, and eternity for its duration. I know
not how it may appear to others; but for my own part, I cannot avoid
thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being,
were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected,
without the introduction of an intermediate creation of _responsible_
imperfection, with that of the dying irresponsible brute. That scene of
things in which God became Man, and suffered, _seems_, as it no doubt
_is_, a necessary link in the chain.

I am aware that I stand on the confines of a mystery which man, since the
first introduction of sin into the world till now, has “vainly aspired to
comprehend.” But I have no new reading of the enigma to offer. I know not
why it is that moral evil exists in the universe of the All-Wise and the
All-Powerful; nor through what occult law of Deity it is that “perfection
should come through suffering.” The question, like that satellite, ever
attendant upon our planet, which presents both its sides to the sun, but
invariably the same side to the earth, hides one of its faces from man,
and turns it to but the Eye from which all light emanates. And it is in
that God-ward phase of the question that the mystery dwells. We can map
and measure every protuberance and hollow which roughens the nether disk
of the moon, as, during the shades of night, it looks down upon our path
to cheer and enlighten; but what can we know of the other? It would,
however, seem, that even in this field of mystery the extent of the
inexplicable and the unknown is capable of reduction, and that the human
understanding is vested in an ability of progressing towards the central
point of that dark field throughout all time, mayhap all eternity, as
the asymptote progresses upon its curve. Even though the essence of the
question should forever remain a mystery, it may yet in its reduced and
defined state, serve as a key for the laying of other mysteries open.
The philosophers are still as ignorant as ever respecting the intrinsic
nature of gravitation; but regarded simply as a force, how many enigmas
has it not served to unlock! And that moral gravitation towards evil,
manifested by the only two classes of responsible beings of which there
is aught known to man, and of which a degradation linked by mysterious
analogy with a class of facts singularly prominent in geologic history is
the result, occupies apparently a similar place, as a force, in the moral
dynamics of the universe, and seems suited to perform a similar part.
Inexplicable itself, it is yet a key to the solution of all the minor
inexplicabilities in the scheme of Providence.

In a matter of such extreme niceness and difficulty, shall I dare venture
on an illustrative example?

So far as both the geologic and the Scriptural evidence extends, no
species or family of existences seems to have been introduced by creation
into the present scene of being since the appearance of man. In Scripture
the formation of the human race is described as the terminal act of a
series, “good” in all its previous stages, but which became “very good”
then; and geologists, judging from the modicum of evidence which they
have hitherto succeeded in collecting on the subject,—evidence still
meagre, but, so far as it goes, independent and distinct,—pronounce
“post-Adamic creations” at least “improbable.” The naturalist finds
certain animal and vegetable species restricted to certain circles,
and that in certain foci in these circles they attain to their fullest
development and their maximum number. And these foci he regards as the
original centres of creation, whence, in each instance in the process
of increase and multiplication, the plant or creature propagated itself
outwards in circular wavelets of life, that sank at each stage as they
widened till at length, at the circumference of the area, they wholly
ceased. Now we find it argued by Professor Edward Forbes that “since
man’s appearance, certain geological areas, both of land and water,
have been formed, presenting such physical conditions as to entitle us
to expect within their bounds one, or in some instances more than one,
centre of creation, or _point of maximum of a zoological or botanical
province_. But a critical examination renders evident,” the Professor
adds, “that instead of showing distinct foci of creation, they have
been in all instances peopled by colonization, _i. e._ by migration of
species from pre-existing, and in every case pre-Adamic, provinces. Among
the terrestrial areas the British isles may serve as an example; among
marine, the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas. The British islands
have been colonized from various centres of creation in (now) continental
Europe; the Baltic Sea from the Celtic region, although it runs itself
into the conditions of the Boreal one; and the Mediterranean, as it
now appears, from the fauna and flora of the more ancient Lusitanian
province.” Professor Forbes, it is stated further, in the report of his
paper to which I owe these details,—a paper read at the Royal Institution
in March last,—“exhibited, in support of the same view, a map, showing
the relation which the centres of creation of the air-breathing molluscs
in Europe bear to the geological history of the respective areas, and
proving that the whole snail population of its northern and central
extent (the portion of the Continent of newest and probably post-Adamic
origin) had been derived from foci of creation seated in pre-Adamic
lands. And these remarkable facts have induced the Professor,” it was
added, “to maintain the improbability of post-Adamic creations.”

With the introduction of man into the scene of existence, creation,
I repeat, seems to have ceased. What is it that now takes its place,
and performs its work? During the previous dynasties, all elevation
in the scale was an effect simply of creation. Nature lay dead in a
waste theatre of rock, vapor, and sea, in which the insensate laws,
chemical; mechanical, and electric, carried on their blind, unintelligent
processes: the _creative fiat_ went forth; and, amid waters that
straightway teemed with life in its lower forms, vegetable and animal,
the dynasty of the fish was introduced. Many ages passed, during which
there took place no further elevation: on the contrary, in not a few of
the newly introduced species of the reigning class there occurred for
the first time examples of an asymmetrical misplacement of parts, and,
in at least one family of fishes, instances of defect of parts: there
was the manifestation of a downward tendency towards the degradation of
monstrosity, when the elevatory fiat again went forth, and, _through
an act of creation_, the dynasty of the reptile began. Again many ages
passed by, marked, apparently, by the introduction of a warm-blooded
oviparous animal, the bird, and of a few marsupial quadrupeds, but in
which the prevailing class reigned undeposed, though at least unelevated.
Yet again, however, the elevatory fiat went forth, and _through an act
of creation_ the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped began. And after
the further lapse of ages, the elevatory fiat went forth yet once more
_in an act of creation_; and with the human, heaven-aspiring dynasty,
the moral government of God, in its connection with at least the world
which we inhabit, “took beginning.” And then creation ceased. Why?
Simply because God’s moral government _had_ begun,—because in necessary
conformity with the institution of that government, there was to be a
thorough identity maintained between the glorified and immortal beings
of the terminal dynasty, and the dying magnates of the dynasty which now
is; and because, in consequence of the maintenance of this identity as
an essential condition of this moral government, mere _acts of creation_
could no longer carry on the elevatory process. The work analogous in its
end and object to those _acts of creation_ which gave to our planet its
successive dynasties of higher and yet higher existences, is the work of
REDEMPTION. It is the elevatory process of the present time,—the only
possible provision for that final act of _re_-creation “to everlasting
life,” which shall usher in the terminal dynasty.

I cannot avoid thinking that many of our theologians attach a too narrow
meaning to the remarkable reason “annexed to the Fourth Commandment” by
the Divine Lawgiver. “God rested on the seventh day,” says the text,
“from all his work which He had created and made; and God blessed the
seventh day, and sanctified it.” And such is the reason given in the
Decalogue why man should also rest on the seventh day. God rested on the
Sabbath, and sanctified it; and therefore man ought also to rest on the
Sabbath, and keep it holy. But I know not where we shall find grounds
for the belief that that Sabbath-day during which God rested was merely
commensurate in its duration with one of the Sabbaths of short-lived
man,—a brief period, measured by a single revolution of the earth on
its axis. We have not, as has been shown, a shadow of evidence that
He resumed his work of creation on the morrow: the geologist finds no
trace of post-Adamic creation,—the theologian can tell us of none. God’s
Sabbath of rest may still exist;—_the work of REDEMPTION may be the work
of his Sabbath day_. That elevatory process through successive acts of
creation which engaged Him during myriads of ages, was of an ordinary
week-day character; but in when the term of his moral government began,
the elevatory process proper to it assumed the Divine character of the
Sabbath. This special view appears to lend peculiar emphasis to the
reason embodied in the commandment. The collation of the passage with
the geologic record seems, as if by a species of re-translation, to make
it enunciate as its injunction, “Keep this day, not merely as a day of
memorial related to a past fact, but also as a day of coöperation with
God in the work of elevation in relation both to a present fact and
a future purpose. God keeps his Sabbath,” it says, “in order that He
may save; keep yours also, in order that ye may be saved.” It serves,
besides, to throw light on the prominence of the Sabbatical command,
in a digest of law of which no part or tittle can pass away until the
fulfilment of all things. During the present dynasty of probation and
trial, that special work of both God and man on which the character of
the future dynasty depends, is the Sabbath-day work of saving and being
saved.[41]

It is in this dynasty of the future that man’s moral and intellectual
faculties will receive their full development The expectation of any
very great advance in the present scene of things—great, at least, when
measured by man’s large capacity of conceiving of the good and fair—seems
to be, like all human hope when restricted to time, an expectation
doomed to disappointment. There are certain limits within which the race
improves;—civilization is better than the want of it, and the taught
superior to the untaught man. There is a change, too, effected in the
moral nature, through that Spirit which, by working belief in the heart,
brings its aspirations into harmony with the realities of the unseen
world, that, in at least its relation to the future state, cannot be
estimated too highly. But conception can travel very far beyond even its
best effects in their merely secular bearing; nay, it is peculiarly its
nature to show the men most truly the subjects of it, how miserably they
fall short of the high standard of conduct and feeling which it erects,
and to teach them, more emphatically than by words, that their degree
of happiness must of necessity be as low as their moral attainments are
humble. Further,—man, though he has been increasing in knowledge ever
since his appearance on earth, has not been improving in faculty;—a
shrewd fact, which they who expect most from the future of this world
would do well to consider. The ancient masters of mind were in no respect
inferior in calibre to their predecessors. We have not yet shot ahead
of the old Greeks in either the perception of the beautiful, or in the
ability of producing it; there has been no improvement in the inventive
faculty since the Iliad was written, some three thousand years ago; nor
has taste become more exquisite, or the perception of the harmony of
numbers more nice, since the age of the Æneid. Science is cumulative in
its character; and so its votaries in modern times stand on a higher
pedestal than their predecessors. But though nature produced a Newton
some two centuries ago, as she produced a Goliath of Gath at an earlier
period, the modern philosophers, as a class, do not exceed in actual
stature the worse informed ancients,—the Euclids, Archimedeses, and
Aristotles. We would be without excuse if, with the Bacon, Milton, and
Shakspeare of these latter ages of the world full before us, we recurred
to the obsolete belief that the human race is deteriorating; but then, on
the other hand, we have certain evidence, that since genius first began
unconsciously to register in its works its own bulk and proportions,
there has been no increase in the mass or improvement in the quality of
individual mind. As for the dream that there is to be some extraordinary
elevation of the general platform of the race achieved by means of
education, it is simply the hallucination of the age,—the world’s present
alchemical expedient for converting farthings into guineas, sheerly by
dint of scouring. Not but that education is good; it exercises, and,
in the ordinary mind, developes, faculty. But it will not anticipate
the terminal dynasty. Yet further,— man’s average capacity of happiness
seems to be as limited and as incapable of increase as his average reach
of intellect: it is a mediocre capacity at best; nor is it greater
by a shade now, in these days of power-looms and portable manures,
than in the times of the old patriarchs. So long, too, as the law of
increase continues, man must be subject to the law of death, with its
stern attendants, suffering and sorrow; for the two laws go necessarily
together; and so long as death reigns, human creatures, in even the best
of times, will continue to quit this scene of being without professing
much satisfaction at what they have found either in it or themselves. It
will no doubt be a less miserable world than it is now, when the good
come, as there is reason to hope they one day shall, to be a majority;
but it will be felt to be an inferior sort of world even then, and be
even fuller than now of wishes and longings for a better. Let it improve
as it may, it will be a scene of probation and trial till the end. And
so Faith, undeceived by the mirage of the midway desert, whatever form
or name, political or religious, the phantasmagoria may bear, must
continue to look beyond its unsolid and tremulous glitter,—its bare rocks
exaggerated by the vapor into air-drawn castles, and its stunted bushes
magnified into goodly trees,—and, fixing her gaze upon the re-creation
yet future,—the terminal dynasty yet unbegun,—she must be content to
enter upon her final rest—for she will not enter upon it earlier—“at
return”

                      “Of Him, the Woman’s Seed,
    Last in the clouds, from heaven to be revealed
    In glory of the Father, to dissolve
    Satan with his perverted world, then raise
    From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,
    New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date,
    Founded in righteousness, and peace, and love,
    To bring forth fruits,—joy and eternal bliss.”

But it may be judged that I am trespassing on a field into which I have
no right to enter. Save, however, for its close proximity with that in
which the geologist expatiates as properly his own, this little volume
would never have been written. It is the fact that man must believingly
coöperate with God in the work of preparation for the final dynasty,
or exist throughout its never-ending cycles as a lost and degraded
creature, that alone renders the development hypothesis formidable.
But inculcating that the elevatory process is one of the natural law,
not of moral endeavor,—by teaching, inferentially at least, that in the
better state of things which is coming there is to be an identity of
race with that of the existing dynasty, but no identity of individual
consciousness,—that, on the contrary, the life after death which we
are to inherit is to be merely a horrid life of wriggling impurities,
originated in the putrefactive mucus,—and that thus the men who now
live possess no real stake in the kingdom of the future,—it is its
direct tendency, so far as its influence extends, to render the required
coöperation with God an impossibility. For that coöperation cannot exist
without belief as its basis. The hypothesis involves a misreading of the
geologic record, which not merely affects its meaning in relation to the
mind, and thus, in a question of science, substitutes error for truth,
but which also threatens to affect the record itself, in relation to the
destiny of every individual perverted and led astray. It threatens to
write down among the degraded and the lost, men who, under the influence
of an unshaken faith, might have risen at the dawn of the terminal
period, to enjoy the fulness of eternity among the glorified and the
good.




FOOTNOTES


[1] Mr. Miller is the author also of _Scenes and Legends of the North of
Scotland_, one vol. 8vo.; _A Letter from one of the Scotch people to the
Right Honorable Lord Brougham and Vaux, on the opinions expressed by his
Lordship in the Auchterarder Case_; and _The Whiggism of the Old School,
as exemplified in the Past History and Present Position of the Church
of Scotland_. The second of these works is well characterized by Mr.
Gladstone as “an able, elegant, and masculine production.”

[2] London, 1847, pp. 409

[3] Since the above sentence was written and set in type, I have learned
that my ingenious friend, Mr. Charles Peach of the Customs, Fowey,
so well known for his palæontological discoveries, has just found in
the Devonian system of Cornwall, fragments of what seem to be dermal
plates of _Asterolepis_. It is a somewhat curious circumstance, that
the two farthest removed extremities of Great Britain—Cornwall and
Caithness—should be tipped by fossiliferous deposits of the same ancient
system, and that organisms which, when they lived, were contemporary,
should be found embedded in the rocks which rise over the British Channel
on the one extremity, and overhang the Pentland Frith on the other.

[4] Figured from a Thurso specimen, slightly different in its proportions
from the Stromness specimen described.

[5] Dr. George Garson, Stromness, and Mr. William Watt, jun. Skaill.

[6] The Continental assertors of the development hypothesis are greatly
more frank than those of our own country regarding the “life after
death,” and what man has to expect from it. The individual, they tell
us, perishes forever; but, then, out of his remains there spring up
other vitalities. The immortality of the soul is, it would seem, an idle
figment, for there really exists no such things as souls; but is there no
comfort in being taught, instead, that we are to resolve into monads and
maggots? Job solaced himself with the assurance that, even after worms
had destroyed his body, he was in the flesh to see God. Had Professor
Oken been one of his comforters, he would have sought to restrict his
hopes to the prospect of living in the worms. “If the organic fundamental
substance _consist_ of infusoria,” says the Professor, “so must the
whole organic world _originate_ from infusoria. Plants and animals can
only be metamorphoses of infusoria. This being granted, so also must all
organizations _consist_ of infusoria, and, during their destruction,
dissolve into the same. Every plant, every animal, is converted by
maceration into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and the moisture is
stocked with infusoria. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division
of organisms into infusoria,—a reduction of the higher to the primary
life.... Death is no annihilation, but only a change. One individual
emerges out of another. Death is only a transition to another life,—not
into death. This transition from one life to another takes place through
the primary condition of the organic, or the mucus.”—_Physio-Philosophy_,
pp. 187-189.

[7] I trust that at least by and by there may be an exception claimed,
from the general, but, I am sure, well-meant, censure of this passage,
in favor of the Free Church of Scotland. It has got as its Professor of
Physical Science—thanks to the sagacity of Chalmers—Dr. John Fleming,
a man of European reputation, and all that seems further necessary, in
order to secure the benefits contemplated in the appointment, is, that
attendance on his course should be rendered imperative on _all_ Free
Church candidates for the ministry.

[8] Agassiz’s description of the _Pterichthys_, as quoted by Humboldt, in
his _Cosmos_.

[9] From Murchison’s Silurian System.

[10] These scales, which occur in a detached state, in a stratified clay
of the Old Red Sandstone, near Cromarty, present for their size a larger
extent of _cover_ than the scales of any other Ganoid.

[11] A peculiarity which also occurs in the anterior dorsal of the
_Dipterus_.

[12] From the head of _Raja clavata_.

[13] The darker, upper patch in this figure indicates a portion in which
the scales of the fins in the fossil still retain their enamel;—the
lighter, a portion from which the enamel has disappeared.

[14] The Acanths of the Coal Measures possess the cranial buckler.

[15] Professor Owen, in fixing the homologies of the ichthyic head,
differs considerably from Cuvier; but his view seems to be demonstrably
the correct one. It will, however, be seen, that in my attempted
comparison of the divisions of the ancient ganoid cranium with those of
the craniums of existing fishes, the points at issue between the two
great naturalists are not involved, otherwise than as mere questions of
words. The matter to be determined, for instance, is not whether plate A
in the skulls of the cod and _Coccosteus_ be the homologue of a part of
the occipital or that of a part of the parietal bones, but whether plate
A in the _Coccosteus_ be the homologue of plate A in the cod. The letters
employed I have borrowed from Agassiz’s restoration of the _Coccosteus_;
whereas the figures intimate divisions which the imperfect keeping of the
specimens on which the ichthyologist founded did not enable him to detect.

[16] The jaws (10, 10) which exhibit in the print their greatest breadth,
would have presented in the animal, seen from beneath, their narrow
under-edges, and have nearly fallen into the line of the sub-opercular
plates, (13, 13.)

[17] In all probability it is likewise the principle of the placoid
skull. The numerous osseous points by which the latter is encrusted,
each capable of increase at the edges, seem the minute bricks of an
ample dome. It is possible, however, that new points may be formed in
the interstices between the first formed ones, as what anatomists term
the _triquetra_ or _Wormiana_ form between the serrated edges of the
lambdoidal suture in the human skull; and that the osseous surface of the
cerebral dome may thus extend, as the dome itself increases in size, not
through the growth of the previously existing pieces,—the minute bricks
of my illustration,—but through the addition of new ones. Equally, in
either case, however, that essential difference between the placoid skull
and the placoid vertebra, to which I have referred, appears to hinge
on the circumstance, that while the osseous nucleus of each vertebral
centrum could form, in even its most complicated shape, from a _single_
point, the osseous walls of the cranium had to be formed from _hundreds_.
The accompanying diagram serves to show after what manner the vertebral
centrum in the Ray enlarges with the growth of the animal, by addition of
bony matter external to the point in the middle, at which ossification
first begins. The horizontal lines indicate the lines of increment in the
two internal cones which each centrum comprises, and the vertical ones
the lines of increment in the lateral pillars.

[Illustration: Fig. 23.

SECTION OF VERTEBRAL CENTRUM OF THORNBACK.]

[18] One of the Thurso coprolites in my possession is about one fourth
longer than the larger of the two specimens figured here, and nearly
thrice as broad.

[19] In two of these, in a collection of several score, I have failed to
detect the spiral markings, though their state of keeping is decidedly
good. There are other appearances which lead me to suspect that the
_Asterolepis_ was not the only large fish of the Lower Old Red Sandstone;
but my facts on the subject are too inconclusive to justify aught more
than sedulous inquiry.

[20] The shaded plate, (_a_,) accidentally presented in this specimen,
belongs to the upper part of the head. It is the posterior frontal
plate F, which half-encircled the eye orbit, (see fig. 29;) and I have
introduced it into the print here, as in none of the other prints, or of
any other specimens, is its upper surface shown.

[21] The late Mr. John Thurston.

[22] “Mr. Phillips proceeded to describe some remains of a small fish,
resembling the _Cheiracanthus_ of the Old Red Sandstone, scales and
spines of which he had found in a quarry at Hales End, on the western
side of the Malverns. The section presented beds of the Old Red Sandstone
inclined to the west; beneath these were arenaceous beds of a lighter
color, forming the junction with Silurian shales; these, again, passing
on to calcareous beds in the lower part of the quarry, containing the
corals and shells of the Aymestry Limestone, of their agreement with
which stronger evidence might be obtained elsewhere. He had found none
of these scales in the junction beds or in the Upper Ludlow Shales; but
about sixty or one hundred feet lower, just above the Aymestry Limestone,
his attention had been attracted to discolored spots on the _surface_ of
the beds, which, upon microscopic examination, proved to be the minute
scales and spines before mentioned. These remains were only apparent
on the surface, whilst the ‘fish-bed’ of the Upper Ludlow rock, as it
usually occurred, was an inch thick, consisting of innumerable small
teeth and spines.”—_Report, in “Athenæum” for 1842, of the Proceedings of
the Twelfth Meeting of British Association, (Manchester.)_

[23] “This is the lowest position” (that of the Onondago Limestone) “in
the State of New York in which any remains have been found higher in
the scale of organized beings than _Crustacea_, with the exception of
an imperfectly preserved fish-bone discovered by Hall in the Oriskany
Sandstone. That specimen, together with the defensive fish-bone found in
this part of the New York system, furnishes evidences of the existence of
animals belonging to the class _vertebrata_ during the deposition of the
middle part of the protozoic strata.”—_American Journal of Science and
Arts for 1846_, p. 63.

[24] “The shales _alternating_ with the Wenlock Limestone.” (_Edinburgh
Review._)

[25] The Silurian Placoids are most adequately represented by the
_Cestracion_ of the southern hemisphere; but I know not that of the
peculiar character and instincts of this interesting Placoid,—the last of
its race,—there is any thing known. For its form and general appearance
see fig. 49, page 177.

[26] Such as the dog-fishes, picked and spotted.

[27] The twelfth in _Spinax Acanthius_, and the fourteenth in _Scyllium
Stellare_.

[28] It will scarce be urged against the degradation theory, that those
races which, tried by the tests of defect or misplacement of parts, we
deem degraded, are not less fitted for carrying on what in their own
little spheres is the proper business of life, than the non-degraded
orders and families. The objection is, however, a possible one, and one
which a single remark may serve to obviate. It is certainly true that the
degraded families _are_ thoroughly fitted for the performance of all the
work given them to do. They greatly increase when placed in favorable
circumstances, and, when vigorous and thriving, enjoy existence. But then
the same may be said of all animals, without reference to their place in
the scale;—the mollusc is as thoroughly adapted to its circumstances and
as fitted to accomplish the end proper to its being, as the mammiferous
quadruped, and the mammiferous quadruped as man himself; but the fact of
perfect adaptation in no degree invalidates the other not less certain
fact of difference of rank, nor proves that the mollusc is equal to the
quadruped, or the quadruped to man. And, of course, the remark equally
bears on the _reduced_ as on the _unelevated_,—on lowness of place when
a result of degradation in races pertaining to a higher division of
animals, as on lowness of place when a result of the humble standing of
the division to which the races belong.

[29] The vertebral column in the genus _Diplopterus_ ran, as in the
placoid genus _Scyllium_, nearly through the middle of the caudal fin.

[30] In the following diagram a few simple lines serve to exhibit the
progress of degradation. Fig. _a_ represents the symmetrical Placoids of
the Silurian period, consisting of head, neck, body, tail, fore limbs and
hinder limbs; fig. _b_ represents those heterocercal Ganoids of the Old
Red Sandstone, Coal Measures, and Permian System, in which the neck is
extinguished, and the fore limbs stuck on to the occiput; fig. _c_, those
homocercal Ganoids of the Trias Lias, Oolite, and Wealden, whose tails
spread out into broad terminal processes, without homologue in the higher
animals; fig. _d_, those Acanthopterygii of the Chalk that, in addition
to the non-homological processes, have both fore limbs and hinder
limbs stuck round the head; while fig. _e_ represents the asymmetrical
Platessa, of the same period, with one of its eyes in the middle of its
head, and the other thrust out to the side.

[Illustration]

[31] I would, however, respectfully suggest, that that theory of cerebral
vertebræ, on which, in this question, the comparative anatomists proceed
as their principle, and which finds as little support in the geologic
record from the actual history of the fore limbs as from the actual
history of the bones of the cranium, may be more ingenious than sound. It
is a shrewd circumstance, that the rocks refuse to testify in its favor.
Agassiz, I find, decides against it on other than geological grounds;
and his conclusion is certainly rendered not the less worthy of careful
consideration by the fact that, yielding to the force of evidence, his
views on the subject underwent a thorough change. He had first held,
and then rejected it. “I have shared,” he says, “with a multitude of
other naturalists, the opinion which regards the cranium as composed of
vertebræ; and I am consequently in some degree called upon to point out
the motives which have induced me to reject it.”

“M. Oken,” he continues, “was the first to assign this signification to
the bones of the cranium. The new doctrine he expounded was received
in Germany with great enthusiasm by the school of the philosophers of
nature. The author conceived the cranium to consist of three vertebræ,
and the basal occipital, the sphenoid, and the ethmoid, were regarded
as the central parts of these cranial vertebræ. On these alleged bodies
of vertebræ, the arches enveloping the central parts of the nervous
system were raised, while on the opposite side were attached the inferior
pieces, which went to form the vegetative arch destined to embrace the
intestinal canal and the large vessels. It would be too tedious to
enumerate in this place the changes which each author introduced, in
order to modify this matter so as to make it suit his own views. Some
went the length of affirming that the vertebræ of the head were as
complete as those of the trunk; and, by means of various dismemberments,
separations, and combinations, all the forms of the cranium were referred
to the vertebræ, by admitting that the number of pieces was invariably
fixed in every head, and that all the vertebrata, whatever might be
their organization in other respects, had in their heads the same number
of points of ossification. At a later period, what was erroneous in
this manner of regarding the subject was detected; but the idea of the
vertebral composition of the head was still retained. It was admitted as
a general law, that the cranium was composed of three primitive vertebræ,
as the embryo is of three blastodermic leaflets; but that these vertebræ,
like the leaflets, existed only ideally, and that their presence,
although easily demonstrated in certain cases, could only be slightly
traced, and with the greatest difficulty, in other instances. The notion
thus laid down of the virtual existence of cranial vertebræ did not
encounter very great opposition; it could not be denied that there was a
certain general resemblance between the osseous case of the brain and the
rachidian canal; the occipital, in particular, had all the characteristic
features of a vertebra. But whenever an attempt was made to push the
analogy further, and to determine rigorously the anterior vertebræ of the
cranium, the observer found himself arrested by insurmountable obstacles,
and he was obliged always to revert to the virtual existence.

“In order to explain my idea clearly, let me have recourse to an
example. It is certain that organized bodies are sometimes endowed with
virtual qualities, which, at a certain period of the being’s life, elude
dissection, and all our means of investigation. It is thus that at the
moment of their origin, the eggs of all animals have such a resemblance
to each other, that it would be impossible to distinguish, even by the
aid of the most powerful microscope, the ovarial egg of a craw-fish,
for example, from that of true fish. And yet who would deny that beings
in every respect different from each other exist in these eggs? It is
precisely because the difference manifests itself at a later period,
in proportion as the embryo develops itself, that we are authorized
to conclude, that, even from the earliest period, the eggs were
different,—that each had virtual qualities proper to itself, although
they could not be discovered by our senses. If, on the contrary, any
one should find two eggs perfectly alike, and should observe two beings
perfectly identical issue from them, he would greatly err if he ascribed
to these eggs different virtual qualities. It is therefore necessary, in
order to be in a condition to suppose that virtual properties peculiar
to it are concealed in an animal, that these properties should manifest
themselves once, in some phase or other of its development. Now, applying
this principle to the theory of cranial vertebræ, we should say, that
if these vertebræ virtually exist in the adult, they must needs show
themselves in reality, at a certain period of development. If, on the
contrary, they are found neither in the embryo nor the adult, I am of
opinion that we are entitled likewise to dispute their virtual existence.

“Here, however, an objection may be made to me, drawn from the
physiological value of the vertebræ, the function of which, as is
well known, is, on the one hand, to furnish a solid support to the
muscular contractions which determine the movements of the trunk, and,
on the other, to protect the centres of the nervous system, by forming
a more or less solid case completely around them. The bodies of the
vertebræ are particularly destined to the first of these offices; the
neurapophyses to the second. What can be more natural than to admit, from
the consideration of this, that in the head, the bodies of the vertebræ
diminish in proportion as the moving function becomes lost, while the
neurapophyses are considerably developed for protecting the brain, the
volume of which is very considerable, when compared with that of the
spinal marrow? Have we not an example of this fact in the vertebræ of
the tail, where the neurapophyses become completely obliterated, and
a simple cylindrical body alone remains? Now, may it not be the case,
that in the head, the bodies of the vertebræ have disappeared; and that,
in consequence, there is a prolongation of the cord only as far as the
moving functions of the vertebræ extend? There is some truth in this
argument, and it would be difficult to refute it _a priori_. But it
loses all its force the moment that we enter upon a detailed examination
of the bones of the head. Thus, what would we call, according to this
hypothesis, the principal sphenoid, the great wings of the sphenoid, and
the ethmoid, which form the floor of the cerebral cavity? It may be said
they are apophyses. But the apophyses protect the nervous centres only
on the side and above. It may be said that they are the bodies of the
vertebræ. But they are formed without the concurrence of the dorsal cord;
they cannot, therefore, be the bodies of the vertebræ. It must therefore
be allowed, that these bones at least do not enter into the vertebral
type; that they are in some measure peculiar. And if this be the case
with them, why may not the other protective plates be equally independent
of the vertebral type; the more so, because the relations of the frontals
and parietals vary so much, that it would be almost impossible to assign
to them a constant place?”

[32] It is stated by Mr. Witham, that, “except in a few instances, he
had ineffectually tried, with the aid of the microscope, to obtain some
insight into the structure of coal. Owing,” he adds, “to its great
opacity, which is probably due to mechanical pressure, the action of
chemical affinity, and the percolation of acidulous waters, all traces
of organization appear to have been obliterated.” I have heard the late
Mr. Sanderson, who prepared for Mr. Witham most of the specimens figured
in his well-known work on the “Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables,”
and from whom the materials of his statement on this point seem to have
been derived, make a similar remark. It was rare, he said, to find a
bit of coal that exhibited the organic structure. The case, however, is
far otherwise; and the ingenious mechanic and his employer were misled,
simply by the circumstance, that it is rare to find pieces of coal which
exhibit the ligneous fibre, existing in a state of keeping solid enough
to stand the grinding of the lapidary’s wheel. The lignite usually
occurs in thin layers of a substance resembling soft charcoal, at which,
from the loose adhesion of the fibres, the coal splits at a stroke; and
as it cannot be prepared as a transparency, it is best examined by a
Stanhope lens. It will be found, tried in this manner, that so far is
vegetable fibre from being of rare occurrence in coal,—our Scotch coal
at least,—that almost every cubic inch contains its hundreds, nay, its
thousands, of cells.

[33] On a point of such importance I find it necessary to strengthen my
testimony by auxiliary evidence. The following is the judgment, on this
ancient petrifaction, of Mr. Nicol of Edinburgh,—confessedly one of our
highest living authorities in that division of fossil botany which takes
cognizance of the internal structure of lignites, and decides, from their
anatomy, their race and family:—

                                       “Edinburgh, 19th July, 1845.

    “DEAR SIR,—I have examined the structure of the fossil wood
    which you found in the Old Red Sandstone at Cromarty, and
    have no hesitation in stating, that the reticulated texture
    of the transverse sections, though somewhat compressed,
    clearly indicates a coniferous origin; but as there is not
    the slightest trace of a disc to be seen in the longitudinal
    sections parallel to the medullary rays, it is impossible to
    say whether it belongs to the Pine or Araucarian division. I
    am, &c.,

                                                   “WILLIAM NICOL.”

It will be seen that Mr. Nicol failed to detect what I now deem the discs
of this conifer,—those stippled markings to which I have referred, and
which the engraver has indicated in no exaggerated style, in one of the
longitudinal sections (_b_) of the wood-cut given above. But even were
this portion of the evidence wholly wanting, we would be left in doubt,
in consequence, not whether the Old Red lignite formed part of a true
gymnospermous tree, but whether that tree is now represented by the pines
of Europe and America, or by the araucarians of Chili and New Zealand.
Were I to risk an opinion in a department not particularly my province it
would be in favor of an araucarian relationship.

[34] The following digest from Professor Balfour’s very admirable
“Manual of Botany,” of what is held on this curious subject, may be
not unacceptable to the reader. “It is an interesting question to
determine the mode in which the various species and tribes of plants
were originally scattered over the globe. Various hypotheses have
been advanced on the subject. Linnæus entertained the opinion that
there was at first only one primitive centre of vegetation, from which
plants were distributed over the globe. Some, avoiding all discussions
and difficulties, suppose that plants were produced at first in the
localities where they are now seen vegetating. Others think that each
species of plant originated in, and was diffused from, a single primitive
centre; and that there were numerous such centres situated in different
parts of the world, each centre being the seat of a particular number
of species. They thus admit great vegetable migrations, similar to
those of the human races. Those who adopt the latter view recognize in
the distribution of plants some of the last revolutions of our planet,
and the action of numerous and varied forces, which impede or favor
the dissemination of vegetables in the present day. They endeavor to
ascertain the primitive flora of countries, and to trace the vegetable
migrations which have taken place. Daubeny says, that analogy favors
the supposition that each species of plant was originally formed in
some particular locality, whence it spread itself gradually over a
certain area, rather than that the earth was at once, by the fiat of the
Almighty, covered with vegetation in the manner we at present behold it.
The human race rose from a single pair; and the distribution of plants
and animals over a certain definite area would seem to imply that the
same was the general law. Analogy would lead us to believe that the
extension of species over the earth originally took place on the same
plan on which it is conducted at present, when a new island starts up in
the midst of the ocean, produced either by a coral reef or a volcano.
In these cases the whole surface is not at once overspread with plants,
but a gradual progress of vegetation is traced from the accidental
introduction of a single seed, perhaps, of each species, wafted by winds
or floated by currents. The remarkable limitation of certain species to
single spots on the globe seems to favor the supposition of specific
centres.”

[35] _Rhodomenia palmata_ and _Alaria esculenta_.

[36] _Porphyra laciniata_, _Chorda filum_, and _Enteromorpha compressa_.

[37] “Dr. Neill mentions,” says the Rev. Mr. Landsborough, in his
complete and very interesting “History of British Sea-Weeds,” “that on
our shores algæ generally occupy zones in the following order, beginning
from deep water:—_F. Filum_; _F. esculentus_ and _bulbosus_, _F.
digitatus_, _saccharinus_, and _loreus_; _F. serratus_ and _crispus_; _F.
nodosus_ and _vesiculosus_; _F. canaliculatus_; and, last of all, _F.
pygmæus_; which is satisfied if it be within reach of the spray.”

[38] We are supplied with a curious example of that ever-returning
cycle of speculation in which the human mind operates, by not only the
introduction of the _principle_ of Epicurus into the “Vestiges,” but also
by the unconscious employment of even his very _arguments_, slightly
modified by the floating semi-scientific notions of the time. The
following passages, taken, the one from the modern work, the other from
Fénélon’s life of the old Greek philosopher, are not unworthy of being
studied, as curiously illustrative of the cycle of thought. Epicurus, I
must, however, first remind the reader, in the words of his biographer,
“supposed that men, and all other animals, were originally produced by
the ground. According to him, the primitive earth was fat and nitrous;
and the sun, gradually warming it, soon covered it with herbage and
shrubs: there also began to arise on the surface of the ground a great
number of small tumors like mushrooms, which having in a certain time
come to maturity, the skin burst, and there came forth little animals,
which, gradually retiring from the place where they were produced, began
to respire.” And there can be little doubt, that had the microscope been
a discovery of early Greece, the passage here would have told us, not of
mushroom-like tumors, but of monads. Save that the element of microscopic
fact is awanting in the one and present in the other, the following are
strictly parallel lines of argument:—

“To the natural objection that the earth does not now produce men,
lions, and dogs, Epicurus replies that the fecundity of the earth is
now exhausted. In advanced age a woman ceases to bear children; a piece
of land never before cultivated produces much more during the few first
years than it does afterwards; and when a forest is once cut down, the
soil never produces trees equal to those which have been rooted up.
Those which are afterwards planted become dwarfish, and are perpetually
degenerating. We are, however, he argues, by no means certain but there
may be at present rabbits, hares, foxes, bears, and other animals,
produced by the earth in their perfect state. The reason why we are
backward in admitting it is, that it happens in retired places, and
never falls under our view; and, never seeing rats but such as have
been produced by other rats, we adopt the opinion that the earth never
produced any.” (_Fénélon’s Lives of the Ancient Philosophers._)

“In the first place, there is no reason to suppose that, though life had
been imparted by natural means, after the first cooling of the surface
to a suitable temperament, it would continue thereafter to be capable of
being imparted in like manner. The great work of the peopling of this
globe with living species is mainly a fact accomplished: the highest
known species came as a crowning effort thousands of years ago. The work
being thus to all appearance finished, we are not necessarily to expect
that the origination of life and of species should be conspicuously
exemplified in the present day. We are rather to expect that the vital
phenomena presented to our eyes should mainly, if not entirely, be
limited to a regular and unvarying succession of races by the ordinary
means of generation. This, however, is no more an argument against a
time when phenomena of the first kind prevailed, than it would be a
proof against the fact of a mature man having once been a growing youth,
that he is now seen growing no longer..... Secondly, it is far from
being certain that the primitive imparting of life and form to inorganic
elements is not a fact of our times.” (_Vestiges of Creation._)

[39] “_Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation_,” and “_Explanations,
being a Sequel to the Vestiges_.”

[40] The chapter in which this passage occurs originally appeared,
with several of the others, in the _Witness_ newspaper, in a series of
articles, entitled “Rambles of a Geologist,” and drew forth the following
letter from a correspondent of the _Scottish Press_, the organ of a
powerful and thoroughly respectable section of the old Dissenters of
Scotland. I present it to the reader merely to show, that if, according
to the author of the “Vestiges,” geologists assailed the development
hypothesis in the fond hope of “purchasing impunity for themselves,” they
would succeed in securing only disappointment for their pains:—

                      “THE PRE-ADAMITE EARTH.

              “_To the Editor of the Scottish Press._

    “SIR,—I occasionally observe articles in your neighbor and
    contemporary the _Witness_, characteristically headed ‘Rambles
    of a Geologist,’ wherein the writer with great zeal once more
    ‘slays the slain’ heresies of the ‘Vestiges of Creation.’
    This writer (of the ‘Rambles,’ I mean) nevertheless, and at
    the same time, announces his own tenets to be much of the
    same sort, as applied to mere dead matter, that those of the
    ‘Vestiges’ are with regard to living organisms. He maintains
    that the world, during the last million of years, has been of
    itself rising or developing, without the interposition of a
    miracle, from chaos into its present state; and, of course,
    as it is still, as a world, confessedly far below the acme of
    physical perfection, that it must be just now on its passage,
    self-progressing, towards that point, which terminus it may
    reach in another million of years hence.[!!!] The author of
    the ‘Vestiges,’ as quoted by the author of the ‘Rambles,’ in
    the last number of the _Witness_, complains that the latter
    and his allies are not at all so liberal to him as, from their
    present circumstances and position, he had a right to expect.
    He (the author of the ‘Vestiges’) reminds his opponents that
    they have themselves only lately emerged from the antiquated
    scriptural notions that our world was the direct and almost
    immediate construction of its Creator,—as much so, in fact,
    as any of its organized tenants,—and that it was then created
    in a state of physical excellence, the highest possible, to
    render it a suitable habitation for these tenants, and all
    this only about six or seven thousand years ago,—to the new
    light of their present _physico-Lamarckian_ views; and he asks,
    and certainly not without reason, why should _these men_, so
    circumstanced, be so anxious to stop him in his attempt to move
    one step further forward in the very direction they themselves
    have made the last move?—that is, in his endeavor to extend
    their own principles of self-development from mere matter to
    living creatures. Now, Sir, I confess myself to be one of those
    (and possibly you may have more readers similarly constituted)
    who not only cannot see any great difference between merely
    _physical_ and _organic_ development,[!!] but who would be
    inclined to allow the latter, absurd as it is, the advantage in
    point of likelihood.[!!!] The author of the ‘Rambles,’ however,
    in the face of this, assures us that _his_ views of physical
    self-development and long chronology belong to the inductive
    sciences. Now, I could at this stage of his rambles have wished
    very much that, instead of merely _saying_ so, he had given
    his _demonstration_. He refers, indeed, to several great men,
    who, he says, are of his opinion. Most that these men have
    written on the question at issue I have seen, but it appeared
    far from demonstrative, and some of them, I know, had not fully
    made up their mind on the point.[!!!] Perhaps the author of
    the ‘Rambles’ could favor us with the inductive process that
    converted himself; and, as the attainment of truth, and not
    victory, is my object, I promise either to acquiesce in or
    rationally refute it.[?] Till then I hold by my antiquated
    tenets, that our world, nay, the whole material universe, was
    created about six or seven thousand years ago, and that in a
    state of physical excellence of which we have in our present
    fallen world only the ‘vestiges of creation.’ I conclude by
    mentioning that this view I have held now for nearly thirty
    years, and, amidst all the vicissitudes of the philosophical
    world during that period, I have never seen cause to change
    it. Of course, with this view I was, during the interval
    referred to, a constant opponent of the once famous, though now
    exploded, nebular hypothesis of La Place; and I yet expect to
    see _physical development_ and _long chronology_ wither also on
    this earth, now that THEIR ROOT (the said hypothesis) has been
    eradicated from the SKY.[!!!]—I am, Sir, your most obedient
    servant,

                                                     “PHILALETHES.”

I am afraid there is little hope of converting a man who has held so
stoutly by his notions “for nearly thirty years;” especially as, during
that period, he has been acquainting himself with what writers such as
Drs. Chalmers, Buckland, and Pye Smith have written on the other side.
But for the _demonstration_ which he asks, as _I_ have conducted it, I
beg leave to refer him to the seventeenth chapter of my little work,
“First Impressions of England and its People.” I am, however, inclined
to suspect that he is one of a class whose objections are destined to be
removed rather by the operation of the laws of matter than of those of
mind. For it is a comfortable consideration, that in this controversy the
geologists _have_ the laws of matter on their side;—“the stars in their
courses fight against Sisera.” Their opponents now, like the opponents
of the astronomer in the ages gone by, are, in most instances, men who
have been studying the matter “for nearly thirty years.” When they study
it for a few years longer they disappear; and the men of the same cast
and calibre who succeed them are exactly the men who throw themselves
most confidently into the arms of the enemy, and look down upon their
poor silent predecessors with the loftiest commiseration. It is, however,
not uninstructive to remark how thoroughly, in some instances, the
weaker friends and the wilier enemies of Revelation are at one in their
conclusions respecting natural phenomena. The correspondent of the
_Scottish Press_ merely regards the views of the author of the “Vestiges”
as possessing “the advantage, in point of likelihood,” over those of
the geologists his antagonists: his ally the Dean of York goes greatly
further, and stands up as stoutly for the transmutation of species as
Lamarck himself. Descanting, in his _New System of Geology_, on the
various forms of trilobites, ammonites, belemnites, &c. Dean Cockburn
says,—

“These creatures appear to have possessed the power of secreting from
the stone beneath them a limy covering for their backs, and perhaps,
fed partly on the same solid material. Supposing, now that the first
trilobites were destroyed by the Llandeilo Slates, some spawn of these
creatures would arise above these flags, and, after a time, would be
warmed into existence. These _molluscs_,[!!] then, having a better
material from which to extract their food and covering, would probably
expand in a slightly different form, and with a more extensive mantle
than what belonged to the parent species. The same would be still more
the case with a new generation, fed upon a new deposit from some deeper
volcano, such as the Caradoc or Wenlock Limestone, in which lime more
and more predominates. Now, if any one will examine the various prints
of trilobites in Sir R. Murchison’s valuable work, he will find but very
trifling differences in any of them,[!!] and those differences only
in the stony covering of their backs. I knew two brothers once much
alike: the one became a curate with a large family; the other a London
alderman. If the skins of these two pachydermata had been preserved in a
fossil state, there would have been less resemblance between them than
between an _Asaphus tyrannus_ and an _Asaphus caudatus_.... A careful
and laborious investigation has discovered, as in the trilobites, a
difference in the ammonites of different strata; but such differences,
as in the former case, exist only in the form of the external shell,
and may be explained in the same manner.[!!] ... As to the scaphites,
baculites, belemnites, and all the other _ites_ which learned ingenuity
has so named, you find them in various strata the same in all important
particulars, but also differing slightly in their outward coverings, as
might be expected from the different circumstances in which each variety
was placed.[!!] The sheep in the warm valleys of Andalusia have a fine
covering like to hair; but remove them to a northern climate, and in a
few generations the back is covered with shaggy wool. The animal is the
same,—the covering only is changed.... The learned have classed those
shells under the names of terebratula, orthis, atrypa, pecten, &c. They
are all much alike.[!!!] It requires an experienced eye to distinguish
them one from another: what little differences have been pointed out may
readily be ascribed, as before, to difference of situation.”[!!!]

The author of the “Vestiges,” with this, the fundamental portion of his
case, granted to him by the Dean, will have exceedingly little difficulty
in making out the rest for himself. The passage is, however, not without
its value, as illustrative of the darkness, in matters of physical
science, “even darkness which may be felt,” that is suffered to linger,
in this the most scientific of ages, in the Church of Buckland, Sedgwick,
and Conybeare.

[41] The common objection to that special view which regards the _days_
of creation as immensely protracted periods of time, furnishes a
specimen, if not of reasoning in a circle, at least of reasoning from a
mere assumption. It first takes for granted, that the Sabbath day during
which God rested was a day of but twenty-four hours; and then argues,
from the supposition, that in order to _keep up the proportion_ between
the six previous working days and the seventh day of rest, which the
reason annexed to the fourth commandment demands, these previous days
must also have been days of twenty-four hours each. It would, I have
begun to suspect, square better with the ascertained facts, and be at
least equally in accordance with Scripture, to reverse the process,
and argue that, _because_ God’s working days were immensely protracted
periods, _his_ Sabbath must _also_ be an immensely protracted period.
The reason attached to the law of the Sabbath seems to be simply _a
reason of proportion_;—the objection to which I refer is an objection
palpably founded on _considerations_ of proportion. And certainly, were
the reason to be divested of proportion, it would be divested also of its
distinctive character as a reason. Were it to run as follows, it could
not be at all understood:—“Six days shalt thou labor, &c., but on the
seventh day shalt thou do no labor, &c.; for in six immensely protracted
periods of many thousand years each did the Lord make the heavens and
earth, &c., and then rested during a brief day of twenty-four hours;
therefore the Lord blessed the brief day of twenty-four hours, and
hallowed it.” This, I repeat, would not be reason. All, however, that
seems necessary to the integrity of the reason, in its character as such,
is, that the proportion of six parts to seven should be maintained. God’s
periods may be periods expressed algebraically by letters symbolical of
unknown quantity, and man’s periods by letters symbolical of quantities
well known; but if God’s Sabbath be equal to one of his six working days,
and man’s Sabbath equal to one of _his_ six working days, the integrity
of proportion is maintained. When I see the palpable absurdity of such
a reading of the reason as the one given above, I can see no absurdity
whatever in the reading which I subjoin:—“Six _periods_ (_a=a=a=a=a=a_)
shalt thou labor, &c., but on the seventh _period_ (_b=a_) shalt thou do
no labor, &c.; for in six _periods_ (_x=x=x=x=x=x_) the Lord made heaven
and earth, &c., and rested the seventh _period_, (_y=x_;) therefore the
Lord blessed the seventh _period_, and hallowed it” The reason, in its
character as a reason of proportion, survives here in all its integrity.
Man, when in his unfallen estate, bore the image of God, but it must have
been a miniature image at best;—the proportion of man’s week to that of
his Maker may, for aught that appears, be mathematically just in its
proportions, and yet be a miniature image too,—the mere scale of a map,
on which inches represent geographical degrees. All those week days and
Sabbath days of man which have come and gone since man first entered
upon this scene of being, with all which shall yet come and go, until
the resurrection of the dead terminates the work of Redemption, may be
included, and probably _are_ included, in the one Sabbath day of God.




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