FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[50]For example, while Cuvier’s chair was in the field of vertebrate zoölogy, owing to the kindness of Lamarck (“par gracieuseté de la part de M. de Lamarck”) he had retained that of Mollusca, and yet it was in the special classification of the molluscs that Lamarck did his best work (Blainville,l. c., p. 116).[51]De Blainville states that “the Academy did not even allow it to be printed in the form in which it was pronounced” (p. 324); and again he speaks of the lack of judgment in Cuvier’s estimate of Lamarck, “the naturalist who had the greatest force in the general conception of beings and of phenomena, although he might often be far from the path” (p. 323).[52]Fragments Biographiques, pp. 209–219.[53]L. c.p. 81.[54]Histoire Naturelle Drolatique et Philosophique des Professeurs du Jardin des Plantes,etc.Par Isid. S. de Gosse. Avec des Annotations de M. Frédéric Gerard.Paris, 1847.[55]Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck, Jena, 1882.[56]Geschichte der Zoologie bis auf Joh. Müller und Charles Darwin, 1872.[57]We have been unable to find these statements in any of Lamarck’s writings.

[50]For example, while Cuvier’s chair was in the field of vertebrate zoölogy, owing to the kindness of Lamarck (“par gracieuseté de la part de M. de Lamarck”) he had retained that of Mollusca, and yet it was in the special classification of the molluscs that Lamarck did his best work (Blainville,l. c., p. 116).

[51]De Blainville states that “the Academy did not even allow it to be printed in the form in which it was pronounced” (p. 324); and again he speaks of the lack of judgment in Cuvier’s estimate of Lamarck, “the naturalist who had the greatest force in the general conception of beings and of phenomena, although he might often be far from the path” (p. 323).

[52]Fragments Biographiques, pp. 209–219.

[53]L. c.p. 81.

[54]Histoire Naturelle Drolatique et Philosophique des Professeurs du Jardin des Plantes,etc.Par Isid. S. de Gosse. Avec des Annotations de M. Frédéric Gerard.Paris, 1847.

[55]Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck, Jena, 1882.

[56]Geschichte der Zoologie bis auf Joh. Müller und Charles Darwin, 1872.

[57]We have been unable to find these statements in any of Lamarck’s writings.

Whena medical student in Paris, Lamarck, from day to day watching the clouds from his attic windows, became much interested in meteorology, and, indeed, at first this subject had nearly as much attraction for him as botany. For a long period he pursued these studies, and he was the first one to foretell the probabilities of the weather, thus anticipating by over half a century the modern idea of making the science of meteorology of practical use to mankind.

His article, “De l’influence de la lune sur l’atmosphère terrestre,” appeared in theJournal de Physiquefor 1798, and was translated in two English journals. The titles of several other essays will be found in the Bibliography at the close of this volume.

From 1799 to 1810 he regularly published an annual meteorological report containing the statement of probabilities acquired by a long series of observations on the state of the weather and the variations of the atmosphere at different times of the year, giving indications of the periods when to expect pleasant weather, or rain, storms, tempests, frosts, thaws, etc.; finally the citations of these probabilities of times favorable to fêtes, journeys, voyages,harvesting crops, and other enterprises dependent on good weather.

Lamarck thus explained the principles on which he based his probabilities: Two kinds of causes, he says, displace the fluids which compose the atmosphere, some being variable and irregular, others constant, whose action is subject to progressive and fixed laws.

Between the tropics constant causes exercise an action so considerable that the irregular effects of variable causes are there in some degree lost; hence result the prevailing winds which in these climates become established and change at determinate epochs.

Beyond the tropics, and especially toward the middle of the temperate zones, variable causes predominate. We can, however, still discover there the effects of the action of constant causes, though much weakened; we can assign them the principal epochs, and in a great number of cases make this knowledge turn to our profit. It is in the elevation and depression (abaissement) of the moon above and below the celestial equator that we should seek for the most constant of these causes.

With his usual facility in such matters, he was not long in advancing a theory, according to which the atmosphere is regarded as resembling the sea, having a surface, waves, and storms; it ought likewise to have a flux and reflux, for the moon ought to exercise the same influence upon it that it does on the ocean. In the temperate and frigid zones, therefore, the wind, which is only the tide of the atmosphere, must depend greatly on the declination of the moon;it ought to blow toward the pole that is nearest to it, and advancing in that direction only, in order to reach every place, traversing dry countries or extensive seas, it ought then to render the sky serene or stormy. If the influence of the moon on the weather is denied, it is only that it may be referred to its phases, but its position in the ecliptic is regarded as affording probabilities much nearer the truth.[58]

In each of these annuals Lamarck took great care to avoid making any positive predictions. “No one,” he says, “could make these predictions without deceiving himself and abusing the confidence of persons who might place reliance on them.” He only intended to propose simple probabilities.

After the publication of the first of these annuals, at the request of Lamarck, who had made it the subject of a memoir read to the Institute in 1800 (9ventôse, l’an IX.), Chaptal, Minister of the Interior, thought it well to establish in France a regular correspondence of meteorological observations made daily at different points remote from each other, and he conferred the direction of it on Lamarck. This system of meteorological reports lasted but a short time, and was not maintained by Chaptal’s successor. After three of these annual reports had appeared, Lamarck rather suddenly stopped publishing them, and an incident occurred in connection with their cessation which led to the story that he had suffered ill treatment and neglect from NapoleonI.

It has been supposed that Lamarck, who was frank and at times brusque in character, had made some enemies, and that he had been represented to the Emperor as a maker of almanacs and of weather predictions, and that Napoleon, during a reception, showing to Lamarck his great dissatisfaction with the annuals, had ordered him to stop their publication.

But according to Bourguin’s statement this is not the correct version. He tells us:

“According to traditions preserved in the family of Lamarck things did not happen so at all. During a reception given to the Institute at the Tuileries, Napoleon, who really liked Lamarck, spoke to him in a jocular way about his weather probabilities, and Lamarck, very much provoked (très contrarié) at being thus chaffed in the presence of his colleagues, resolved to stop the publication of his observations on the weather. What proves that this version is the true one is that Lamarck published another annual which he had in preparation for the year 1810. In the preface he announced that his age, ill health, and his circumstances placed him in the unfortunate necessity of ceasing to busy himself with this periodical work. He ended by inviting those who had the taste for meteorological observations, and the means of devoting their time to it, to take up with confidence an enterprise good in itself, based on a genuine foundation, and from which the public would derive advantageous results.”

These opuscles, such as they were, in which Lamarck treated different subjects bearing on the winds, great droughts, rainy seasons, tides, etc.,became the precursors of theAnnuaires du Bureau des Longitudes.

An observation of Lamarck’s on a rare and curious form of cloud has quite recently been referred to by a French meteorologist. It is probable, says M. E. Durand-Greville inLa Nature, November 24, 1900, that Lamarck was the first to observe the so-called pocky or festoon cloud, or mammato-cirrus cloud, which at rare intervals has been observed since his time.[59]

Full of over confidence in the correctness of his views formed without reference to experiments, although Lavoisier, by his discovery of oxygen in the years 1772–85, and other researches, had laid the foundations of the antiphlogistic or modern chemistry, Lamarck quixotically attempted to substitute his own speculative views for those of the discoverers of oxygen—Priestley (1774) and the great French chemist Lavoisier. Lamarck, in hisHydrogéologie(1802), went so far as to declare:

“It is not true, and it seems to me even absurd to believe that pure air, which has been justly calledvital air, and which chemists now calloxygen gas, can be the radical of saline matters—namely, can be the principle of acidity, of causticity, or any salinity whatever. There are a thousand ways of refuting this error without the possibility of a reply.... This hypothesis, the best of all those which had been imagined when Lavoisier conceived it, cannot now be longer held, since I have discovered what is reallycaloric” (p. 161).

After paying his respects to Priestley, he asks: “What, then, can be the reason why the views of chemists and mine are so opposed?” and complains that the former have avoided all written discussion on this subject. And this after his three physico-chemical works, theRéfutation, theRecherches, and theMémoireshad appeared, and seemed to chemists to be unworthy of a reply.

It must be admitted that Lamarck was on this occasion unduly self-opinionated and stubborn in adhering to such views at a time when the physical sciences were being placed on a firm and lasting basis by experimental philosophers. The two great lessons of science—to suspend one’s judgment and to wait for more light in theoretical matters on which scientific men were so divided—and the necessity of adhering to his own line of biological study, where he had facts of his own observing on which to rest his opinions, Lamarck did not seem ever to have learned.

The excuse for his rash and quixotic course in respect to his physico-chemical vagaries is that he had great mental activity. Lamarck was a synthetic philosopher. He had been brought up in the encyclopædic period of learning. He had from his early manhood been deeply interested in physical subjects. In middle age he probably lived a very retired life, did not mingle with his compeers or discuss his views with them. So that when he came to publish them, he found not a single supporter. His speculations were received in silence and not deemed worthy of discussion.

A very just and discriminating judge of Lamarck’s work, Professor Cleland, thus refers to his writings on physics and chemistry:

“The most prominent defect in Lamarck must be admitted, quite apart from all consideration of the famous hypothesis which bears his name, to have been want of control in speculation. Doubtless the speculative tendency furnished a powerful incentive to work, but it outran the legitimate deductions from observation, and led him into the production of volumes of worthless chemistry without experimental basis, as well as into spending much time in fruitless meteorological predictions.” (Encyc. Brit., Art.Lamarck.)

How a modern physicist regards Lamarck’s views on physics may be seen by the following statement kindly written for this book by Professor Carl Barus of Brown University, Providence:

“Lamarck’s physical and chemical speculations, made throughout on the basis of the alchemistic philosophy of the time, will have little further interest to-day than as evidence showing the broadly philosophic tendencies of Lamarck’s mind. Made without experiment and without mathematics, the contents of the three volumes will hardly repay perusal, except by the historian interested in certain aspects of pre-Lavoisierian science. The temerity with which physical phenomena are referred to occult static molecules, permeated by subtle fluids, the whole mechanism left without dynamic quality, since the mass of the molecule is to be non-essential, is markedly in contrast with the discredit into which such hypotheses have now fallen. It is true that an explanation of natural phenomena in terms “le feu éthéré, le feu calorique, et le feu fixé” might beinterpreted with reference to the modern doctrine of energy; but it is certain that Lamarck, antedating Fresnel, Carnot, Ampère, not to mention their great followers, had not the faintest inkling of the possibility of such an interpretation. Indeed, one may readily account for the resemblance to modern views, seeing that all speculative systems of science must to some extent run in parallel, inasmuch as they begin with the facts of common experience. Nor were his speculations in any degree stimulating to theoretical science. Many of his mechanisms in which the ether operates on a plane of equality with the air can only be regarded with amusement. The whole of his elaborate schemes of color classification may be instanced as forerunners of the methods commercially in vogue to-day; they are not the harbingers of methods scientifically in vogue. One looks in vain for research adequate to carry the load of so much speculative text.“Even if we realize that the beginnings of science could but be made amid such groping in the dark, it is a pity that a man of Lamarck’s genius, which seems to have been destitute of the instincts of an experimentalist, should have lavished so much serious thought in evolving a system of chemical physics out of himself.”

“Even if we realize that the beginnings of science could but be made amid such groping in the dark, it is a pity that a man of Lamarck’s genius, which seems to have been destitute of the instincts of an experimentalist, should have lavished so much serious thought in evolving a system of chemical physics out of himself.”

The chemical status of Lamarck’s writings is thus stated by Professor H. Carrington Bolton in a letter dated Washington, D. C., February 9, 1900:

“Excuse delay in replying to your inquiry as to the chemical status of the French naturalist, Lamarck. Not until this morning have I found it convenient to go to the Library of Congress. That Library has not theRecherchesnor theMémoires, but the position of Lamarck is well known. He had no influence on chemistry, and his name is notmentioned in the principal histories of chemistry. He made no experiments, but depended upon his imagination for his facts; he opposed the tenets of the new French school founded by Lavoisier, and proposed a fanciful scheme of abstract principles that remind one of alchemy.“Cuvier, in hisÉloge(Mémoires Acad. Royale des Sciences, 1832), estimates Lamarck correctly as respects his position in physical science.”

“Cuvier, in hisÉloge(Mémoires Acad. Royale des Sciences, 1832), estimates Lamarck correctly as respects his position in physical science.”

Lamarck boldly carried the principle of change and evolution into inorganic nature by the same law of change of circumstances producing change of species.

Under the head, “De l’espèce parmi les minéraux,” p. 149, the author states that he had for a long time supposed that there were no species among minerals. Here, also, he doubts, and boldly, if not rashly, in this case, opposes accepted views, and in this field, as elsewhere, shows, at least, his independence of thought.

“They teach in Paris,” he says, “that the integrant molecule of each kind of compound is invariable in nature, and consequently that it is as old as nature, hence, mineral species are constant.“For myself, I declare that I am persuaded, and even feel convinced, that the integrant molecule of every compound substance whatever, may change its nature, namely, may undergo changes in the number and in the proportions of the principles which compose it.”

“They teach in Paris,” he says, “that the integrant molecule of each kind of compound is invariable in nature, and consequently that it is as old as nature, hence, mineral species are constant.

“For myself, I declare that I am persuaded, and even feel convinced, that the integrant molecule of every compound substance whatever, may change its nature, namely, may undergo changes in the number and in the proportions of the principles which compose it.”

He enlarges on this subject through eight pages. He was evidently led to take this view from his assumption that everything, every natural object, organic or inorganic, undergoes a change. But it maybe objected that this view will not apply to minerals, because those of the archæan rocks do not differ, and have undergone no change since then to the present time, unless we except such minerals as are alteration products due to metamorphism. The primary laws of nature, of physics, and of chemistry are unchangeable, while change, progression from the generalized to the specialized, is distinctly characteristic of the organic as opposed to the inorganic world.

FOOTNOTES:[58]“On the Influence of the Moon on the Earth’s Atmosphere,”Journal de Physique, prairial, l’an VI. (1798).[59]Nature, Dec. 6, 1900.

[58]“On the Influence of the Moon on the Earth’s Atmosphere,”Journal de Physique, prairial, l’an VI. (1798).

[59]Nature, Dec. 6, 1900.

Whatevermay be said of his chemical and physical lucubrations, Lamarck in his geological and palæontological writings is, despite their errors, always suggestive, and in some most important respects in advance of his time. And this largely for the reason that he had once travelled, and to some extent observed geological phenomena, in the central regions of France, in Germany, and Hungary; visiting mines and collecting ores and minerals, besides being in a degree familiar with the French cretaceous fossils, but more especially those of the tertiary strata of Paris and its vicinity. He had, therefore, from his own experience, slight as it was, some solid grounds of facts and observations on which to meditate and from which to reason.

He did not attempt to touch upon cosmological theories—chaos and creation—but, rather, confined himself to the earth, and more particularly to the action of the ocean, and to the changes which he believed to be due to organic agencies. The most impressive truth in geology is the conception of the immensity of past time, and this truth Lamarck fully realized. His views are to be found in a little book of 268 pages, entitledHydrogéologie. It appeared in 1802(an X.), or ten years before the first publication of Cuvier’s famousDiscours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe(1812). Written in his popular and attractive style, and thoroughly in accord with the cosmological and theological prepossessions of the age, the Discours was widely read, and passed through many editions. On the other hand, theHydrogéologiedied stillborn, with scarcely a friend or a reader, never reaching a second edition, and is now, like most of his works, a bibliographical rarity.

The only writer who has said a word in its favor, or contrasted it with the work of Cuvier, is the judicious and candid Huxley, who, though by no means favorable to Lamarck’s factors of evolution, frankly said:

“The vast authority of Cuvier was employed in support of the traditionally respectable hypotheses of special creation and of catastrophism; and the wild speculations of theDiscours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globewere held to be models of sound scientific thinking, while the really much more sober and philosophic hypotheses of theHydrogéologiewere scouted.”[60]

Before summarizing the contents of this book, let us glance at the geological atmosphere—thin and tenuous as it was then—in which Lamarck lived. The credit of being the first observer, before Steno (1669), to state that fossils are the remains of animals which were once alive, is due to an Italian, Frascatero, of Verona, who wrote in 1517.

“But,” says Lyell,[61]“the clear and philosophical views of Frascatero were disregarded, and the talent and argumentative powers of the learned were doomed for three centuries to be wasted in the discussion of these two simple and preliminary questions: First, whether fossil remains had ever belonged to living creatures; and, secondly, whether, if this be admitted, all the phenomena could not be explained by the deluge of Noah.”

Previous to this the great artist, architect, engineer, and musician, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who, among other great works, planned and executed some navigable canals in Northern Italy, and who was an observer of rare penetration and judgment, saw how fossil shells were formed, saying that the mud of rivers had covered and penetrated into the interior of fossil shells at a time when these were still at the bottom of the sea near the coast.[62]

That versatile and observing genius, Bernard Palissy, as early as 1580, in a book entitledThe Origin of Springs from Rain-water, and in other writings, criticized the notions of the time, especially of Italian writers, that petrified shells had all been left by the universal deluge.

“It has happened,” said Fontenelle, in his eulogy on Palissy, delivered before the French Academy a century and a half later, “that a potter who knew neither Latin nor Greek dared, toward the end of the sixteenth century, to say in Paris, and in the presence of all the doctors, that fossil shells were veritable shells deposited at some time by the sea in the placeswhere they were then found; that the animals had given to the figured stones all their different shapes, and that he boldly defied all the school of Aristotle to attack his proofs.”[63]

Then succeeded, at the end of the seventeenth century, the forerunners of modern geology: Steno (1669), Leibnitz (1683), Ray (1692), Woodward (1695), Vallisneri (1721), while Moro published his views in 1745. In the eighteenth century Réaumur[64](1720) presented a paper on the fossil shells of Touraine.

Cuvier[65]thus pays his respects, in at least an unsympathetic way, to the geological essayists and compilers of the seventeenth century:

“The end of the seventeenth century lived to see the birth of a new science, which took, in its infancy, the high-sounding name of ‘Theory of the Earth.’ Starting from a small number of facts, badly observed, connecting them by fantastic suppositions, it pretended to go back to the origin of worlds, to, as it were, play with them, and to create their history. Its arbitrary methods, its pompous language, altogether seemed to render it foreign to the other sciences, and, indeed, the professional savants for a long time cast it out of the circle of their studies.”

Their views, often premature, composed of half-truths, were mingled with glaring errors and fantastic misconceptions, but were none the less germinal. Leibnitz was the first to propose the nebular hypothesis, which was more fully elaborated by Kant and Laplace. Buffon, influenced by the writing ofLeibnitz, in hisThéorie de la Terre, published in 1749, adopted his notion of an original volcanic nucleus and a universal ocean, the latter as he thought leaving the land dry by draining into subterranean caverns. He also dimly saw, or gathered from his reading, that the mountains and valleys were due to secondary causes; that fossiliferous strata had been deposited by ocean currents, and that rivers had transported materials from the highlands to the lowlands. He also states that many of the fossil shells which occur in Europe do not live in the adjacent seas, and that there are remains of fishes and of plants not now living in Europe, and which are either extinct or live in more southern climates, and others in tropical seas. Also that the bones and teeth of elephants and of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus found in Siberia and elsewhere in northern Europe and Asia indicate that these animals must have lived there, though at present restricted to the tropics. In his last essay,Époques de la Nature(1778), he claims that the earth’s history may be divided into epochs, from the earliest to the present time. The first epoch was that of fluidity, of incandescence, when the earth and the planets assumed their form; the second, of cooling; the third, when the waters covered the earth, and volcanoes began to be active; the fourth, that of the retreat of the seas, and the fifth the age when the elephants, the hippopotamus, and other southern animals lived in the regions of the north; the sixth, when the two continents, America and the old world, became separate; the seventh and last being the age of man.Above all, by his attractive style and bold suggestions he popularized the subjects and created an interest in these matters and a spirit of inquiry which spread throughout France and the rest of Europe.

But notwithstanding the crude and uncritical nature of the writings of the second half of the eighteenth century, resulting from the lack of that more careful and detailed observation which characterizes our day, there was during this period a widespread interest in physical and natural science, and it led up to that more exact study of nature which signalizes the nineteenth century. “More new truths concerning the external world,” says Buckle, “were discovered in France during the latter half of the eighteenth century than during all preceding periods put together.”[66]As Perkins[67]says: “Interest in scientific study, as in political investigation, seemed to rise suddenly from almost complete inactivity to extraordinary development. In both departments English thinkers had led the way, but if the impulse to such investigations came from without, the work done in France in every branch of scientific research during the eighteenth century was excelled by no other nation, and England alone could assert any claim to results of equal importance. The researches of Coulomb in electricity, of Buffon in geology, of Lavoisier in chemistry, of Daubenton in comparative anatomy, carried still farther by their illustrious successors towards the close of the century, did much to establish conceptions of the universe and its lawsupon a scientific basis.” And not only did Rousseau make botany fashionable, but Goldsmith wrote from Paris in 1755: “I have seen as bright a circle of beauty at the chemical lectures of Rouelle as gracing the court of Versailles.” Petit lectured on astronomy to crowded houses, and among his listeners were gentlemen and ladies of fashion, as well as professional students.[68]The popularizers of science during this period were Voltaire, Montesquieu, Alembert, Diderot, and other encyclopædists.

Here should be mentioned one of Buffon’s contemporaries and countrymen; one who was the first true field geologist, an observer rather than a compiler or theorist. This was Jean E. Guettard (1715–1786). He published, says Sir Archibald Geikie, in his valuable work,The Founders of Geology, about two hundred papers on a wide range of scientific subjects, besides half a dozen quarto volumes of his observations, together with many excellent plates. Geikie also states that he is undoubtedly entitled to rank among the first great pioneers of modern geology. He was the first (1751) to make a geological map of northern France, and roughly traced the limits of his three bands or formations from France across the southeastern English counties. In his work on “The degradation of mountains effected in our time by heavy rains, rivers, and the sea,”[69]he states that thesea is the most potent destroyer of the land, and that the material thus removed is deposited either on the land or along the shores of the sea. He thought that the levels of the valleys are at present being raised, owing to the deposit of detritus in them. He points out that the deposits laid down by the ocean do not extend far out to sea, “that consequently the elevations of new mountains in the sea, by the deposition of sediment, is a process very difficult to conceive; that the transport of the sediment as far as the equator is not less improbable; and that still more difficult to accept is the suggestion that the sediment from our continent is carried into the seas of the New World. In short, we are still very little advanced towards the theory of the earth as it now exists.” Guettard was the first to discover the volcanoes of Auvergne, but he was “hopelessly wrong” in regard to the origin of basalt, forestalling Werner in his mistakes as to its aqueous origin. He was thus the first Neptunist, while, as Geikie states, his “observations in Auvergne practically started the Vulcanist camp.”

We now come to Lamarck’s own time. He must have been familiar with the results of Pallas’s travels in Russia and Siberia (1793–94). The distinguished German zoölogist and geologist, besides working out the geology of the Ural Mountains, showed, in 1777, that there was a general law in the formation of all mountain chains composed chiefly of primary rocks;[70]the granitic axis being flanked by schists, and theseby fossiliferous strata. From his observations made on the Volga and about its mouth, he presented proofs of the former extension, in comparatively recent times, of the Caspian Sea. But still more pregnant and remarkable was his discovery of an entire rhinoceros, with its flesh and skin, in the frozen soil of Siberia. His memoir on this animal places him among the forerunners of, if not within the ranks of, the founders of palæontology.

Meanwhile Soldani, an Italian, had, in 1780, shown that the limestone strata of Italy had accumulated in a deep sea, at least far from land, and he was the first to observe the alternation of marine and fresh-water strata in the Paris basin.

Lamarck must have taken much interest in the famous controversy between the Vulcanists and Neptunists. He visited Freyburg in 1771; whether he met Werner is not known, as Werner began to lecture in 1775. He must have personally known Faujas of Paris, who, in 1779, published his description of the volcanoes of Vivarais and Velay; while Desmarest’s (1725–1815) elaborate work on the volcanoes of Auvergne, published in 1774, in which he proved the igneous origin of basalt, was the best piece of geological exploration which had yet been accomplished, and is still a classic.[71]

Werner (1750–1817), the propounder of the Neptunian theory, was one of the founders of modern geology and of palæontology. His work entitledUeber die aüssern Kennzeichen der Fossilienappeared in 1774; hisKurze Klassifikation und Beschreibung der Gebirgsartenin 1787. He discovered the law of the superposition of stratified rocks, though he wrongly considered volcanic rocks, such as basalt, to be of aqueous origin, being as he supposed formed of chemical precipitates from water. But he was the first to state that the age of different formations can be told by their fossils, certain species being confined to particular beds, while others ranged throughout whole formations, and others seemed to occur in several different formations; “the original species found in these formations appearing to have been so constituted as to live through a variety of changes which had destroyed hundreds of other species which we find confined to particular beds.”[72]His views as regards fossils, as Jameson states, were probably not known to Cuvier, and it is more than doubtful whether Lamarck knew of them. He observed that fossils appear first in “transition” or palæozoic strata, and were mainly corals and molluscs; that in the older carboniferous rocks the fossils are of higher types, such as fish and amphibious animals; while in the tertiary or alluvial strata occur the remains of birds and quadrupeds. He thought that marine plants were more ancient than land plants. His studies led him to infer that the fossils contained in the oldest rocks are very different from any of the species of the present time; that the newer the formation, the more do the remains approach in formto the organic beings of the present creation, and that in the very latest formations, fossil remains of species now existing occur. Such advanced views as these would seem to entitle Werner to rank as one of the founders of palæontology.[73]

Hutton’sTheory of the Earthappeared in 1785, and in a more developed state, as a separate work, in 1795.[74]“The ruins of an older world,” he said, “are visible in the present structure of our planet, and the strata which now compose our continents have been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of the waste of preëxisting continents. The same forces are still destroying, by chemical decomposition or mechanical violence, even the hardest rocks, and transporting the materials to the sea, where they are spread out and form strata analogous to those of more ancient date. Although loosely deposited along the bottom of the ocean, they became afterwards altered and consolidated by volcanic heat, and were then heaved up, fractured, and contorted.” Again he said: “In the economy of the world I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end.” As Lyell remarks: “Hutton imagined that the continents were first gradually destroyed by aqueous degradation, and when their ruins had furnished materials for newcontinents, they were upheaved by violent convulsions. He therefore required alternate periods of general disturbance and repose.”

To Hutton, therefore, we are indebted for the idea of the immensity of the duration of time. He was the forerunner of Lyell and of the uniformitarian school of geologists.

Hutton observed that fossils characterized certain strata, but the value of fossils as time-marks and the principle of the superposition of stratified fossiliferous rocks were still more clearly established by William Smith, an English surveyor, in 1790. Meanwhile the Abbé Haüy, the founder of crystallography, was in 1802 Professor of Mineralogy in the Jardin des Plantes.

Such were the amount and kind of knowledge regarding the origin and structure of our earth which existed at the close of the eighteenth century, while Lamarck was meditating hisHydrogéologie, and had begun to study the invertebrate fossils of the Paris tertiary basin.

His object, he says in his work, is to present certain considerations which he believed to be new and of the first order, which had escaped the notice of physicists, and which seemed to him should serve as the foundations for a good theory of the earth. His theses are:

1. What are the natural consequences of the influence and the movements of the waters on the surface of the globe?2. Why does the sea constantly occupy a basin within the limits which contain it, and there separate the dry parts of the surface of the globe always projecting above it?3. Has the ocean basin always existed where we actually see it, and if we find proofs of the sojourn of the sea in places where it no longer remains, by what cause was it found there, and why is it no longer there?4. What influence have living bodies exerted on the substances found on the surface of the earth and which compose the crust which invests it, and what are the general results of this influence?

1. What are the natural consequences of the influence and the movements of the waters on the surface of the globe?

2. Why does the sea constantly occupy a basin within the limits which contain it, and there separate the dry parts of the surface of the globe always projecting above it?

3. Has the ocean basin always existed where we actually see it, and if we find proofs of the sojourn of the sea in places where it no longer remains, by what cause was it found there, and why is it no longer there?

4. What influence have living bodies exerted on the substances found on the surface of the earth and which compose the crust which invests it, and what are the general results of this influence?

Lamarck then disclaims any intentions of framing brilliant hypotheses based on supposititious principles, but nevertheless, as we shall see, he falls into this same error, and like others of his period makes some preposterous hypotheses, though these are far less so than those of Cuvier’sDiscours. He distinguishes between the action of rivers or of fresh-water currents, torrents, storms, the melting of snow, and the work of the ocean. The rivers wear away and bear materials from the highlands to the lowlands, so that the plains are gradually elevated; ravines form and become immense valleys, and their sides form elevated crests and pass intomountainranges.

He brings out and emphasizes the fact, now so well known, that the erosive action of rain and rivers has formed mountains of a certain class.

“It is then evident to me, that every mountain which is not the result of avolcanic irruptionor of some local catastrophe, has been carved out from a plain, where its mass is gradually formed, and was apart of it; hence what in this case are the summits of the mountains are only the remains of the former level of the plain unless the process of washing away and other means of degradation have not since reduced its height.”

Now this will apply perfectly well to our table-lands, mesas, the mountains of our bad-lands, even to our Catskills and to many elevations of this nature in France and in northern Africa. But Lamarck unfortunately does not stop here, but with the zeal of an innovator, by no means confined to his time alone, claims that the mountain masses of the Alps and the Andes were carved out of plains which had been raised above the sea-level to the present heights of those mountains.

Two causes, he says, have concurred in forming these elevated plains.

“One consists in the continual accumulation of material filling the portion of the ocean-basin from which the same seas slowly retreat; for it does not abandon those parts of the ocean-basin which are situated nearer and nearer to the shores that it tends to leave, until after having filled its bottom and having gradually raised it. It follows that the coasts which the sea is abandoning are never made by a very deep-lying formation, however often it appears to be such, for they are continually elevated as the result of the perpetual balancing of the sea, which casts off from its shores all the sediments brought down by the rivers; in such a way that the great depths of the ocean are not near the shore from which the sea retreats, but out in the middle of the ocean and near the opposite shores which the sea tends to invade.“The other cause, as we shall see, is found in thedetritus of organic bodies successively accumulated, which perpetually elevates, although with extreme slowness, the soil of the dry portions of the globe, and which does it all the more rapidly, as the situation of these parts gives less play to the degradation of the surface caused by the rivers.“Doubtless a plain which is destined some day to furnish the mountains which the rivers will carve out from its mass would have, when still but a little way from the sea, but a moderate elevation above its river channels; but gradually as the ocean basin removed from this plain, this basin constantly sinking down into the interior (épaisseur) of the external crust of the globe, and the soil of the plain perpetually rising higher from the deposition of the detritus of organic bodies, it results that, after ages of elevation of the plain in question, it would be in the end sufficiently thick for high mountains to be shaped and carved out of its mass.“Although the ephemeral length of life of man prevents his appreciation of this fact, it is certain that the soil of a plain unceasingly acquires a real increase in its elevation in proportion as it is covered with different plants and animals. Indeed the débris successively heaped up for numerous generations of all these beings which have by turns perished, and which, as the result of the action of their organs, have, during the course of this life, given rise to combinations which would never have existed without this means, most of the principles which have formed them not being borrowed from the soil; this débris, I say, wasting successively on the soil of the plain in question, gradually increases the thickness of its external bed, multiplies there the mineral matters of all kinds and gradually elevates the formation.”

“The other cause, as we shall see, is found in thedetritus of organic bodies successively accumulated, which perpetually elevates, although with extreme slowness, the soil of the dry portions of the globe, and which does it all the more rapidly, as the situation of these parts gives less play to the degradation of the surface caused by the rivers.

“Doubtless a plain which is destined some day to furnish the mountains which the rivers will carve out from its mass would have, when still but a little way from the sea, but a moderate elevation above its river channels; but gradually as the ocean basin removed from this plain, this basin constantly sinking down into the interior (épaisseur) of the external crust of the globe, and the soil of the plain perpetually rising higher from the deposition of the detritus of organic bodies, it results that, after ages of elevation of the plain in question, it would be in the end sufficiently thick for high mountains to be shaped and carved out of its mass.

“Although the ephemeral length of life of man prevents his appreciation of this fact, it is certain that the soil of a plain unceasingly acquires a real increase in its elevation in proportion as it is covered with different plants and animals. Indeed the débris successively heaped up for numerous generations of all these beings which have by turns perished, and which, as the result of the action of their organs, have, during the course of this life, given rise to combinations which would never have existed without this means, most of the principles which have formed them not being borrowed from the soil; this débris, I say, wasting successively on the soil of the plain in question, gradually increases the thickness of its external bed, multiplies there the mineral matters of all kinds and gradually elevates the formation.”

Our author, as is evident, had no conception, nor had any one else at the time he wrote, of the slowsecular elevation of a continental plateau by crust-movements, and Lamarck’s idea of the formation of elevated plains on land by the accumulation of débris of organisms is manifestly inadequate, our aërial or eolian rocks and loess being wind-deposits of sand and silt rather than matters of organic origin. Thus he cites as an example of his theory the vast elevated plains of Tartary, which he thought had been dry land from time immemorable, though we now know that the rise took place in the quaternary or present period. On the other hand, given these vast elevated plains, he was correct in affirming that rivers flowing through them wore out enormous valleys and carved out high mountains, left standing by atmospheric erosion, for examples of such are to be seen in the valley of the Nile, the Colorado, the Upper Missouri, etc.

He then distinguishes between granitic or crystalline mountains, and those composed of stratified rocks and volcanic mountains.

The erosive action of rivers is thus discussed; they tend first, he says, to fill up the ocean basins, and second, to make the surface of the land broken and mountainous, by excavating and furrowing the plains.

Our author did not at all understand the causes of the inclination or tilting up of strata. Little close observation or field work had yet been done, and the rocks about Paris are but slightly if at all disturbed. He attributes the dipping down of strata to the inclination of the shores of the sea, though he adds that nevertheless it is often due to local subsidences. And then he remarks that “indeed in manymountains, and especially in the Pyrenees, in the very centre of these mountains, we observe that the strata are for the most part either vertical or so inclined that they more or less approach this direction.”

“But,” he asks, “should we conclude from this that there has necessarily occurred a universal catastrophe, a general overturning? This assumption, so convenient for those naturalists who would explain all the facts of this kind without taking the trouble to observe and study the course which nature follows, is not at all necessary here; for it is easy to conceive that the inclined direction of the beds in the mountains may have been produced by other causes, and especially by causes more natural and less hypothetical than a general overturning of strata.”

While streams of fresh water tend to fill up and destroy the ocean basins, he also insists that the movements of the sea, such as the tides, currents, storms, submarine volcanoes, etc., on the contrary, tend to unceasingly excavate and reëstablish these basins. Of course we now know that tides and currents have no effect in the ocean depths, though their scouring effects near shore in shallow waters have locally had a marked effect in changing the relations of land and sea. Lamarck went so far as to insist that the ocean basin owes its existence and its preservation to the scouring action of the tides and currents.

The earth’s interior was, in Lamarck’s opinion, solid, formed of quartzose and silicious rocks, and its centre of gravity did not coincide with its geographical centre, or what he calls thecentre de forme. He imagined also that the ocean revolved around the globe from east to west, and that this movement, byits continuity, displaced the ocean basin and made it pass successively over all the surface of the earth.

Then, in the third chapter, he asks if the basin of the sea has always been where we now actually see it, and whether we find proofs of the sojourn of the sea in the place where it is now absent; if so, what are the causes of these changes. He reiterates his strange idea of a general movement of the ocean from east to west, at the rate of at least three leagues in twenty-four hours and due to the moon’s influence. And here Lamarck, in spite of his uniformitarian principles, is strongly cataclysmic. What he seems to have in mind is the great equatorial current between Africa and the West Indies. To this perpetual movement of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean he ventures to attribute the excavation of the Gulf of Mexico, and presumes that at the end of ages it will break through the Isthmus of Panama, and transform America into two great islands or two small continents. Not understanding that the islands are either the result of upheaval, or outliers of continents, due to subsidence, Lamarck supposed that his westward flow of the ocean, due to the moon’s attraction, eroded the eastern shores of America, and the currents thus formed “in their efforts to move westward, arrested by America and by the eastern coasts of China, were in great part diverted towards the South Pole, and seeking to break through a passage across the ancient continent have, a long time since, reduced the portion of this continent which united New Holland to Asia into an archipelago which comprises the Molucca, Philippine, and Mariana Islands.” The West Indies and Windward Islandswere formed by the same means, and the sea not breaking through the Isthmus of Panama was turned southward, and the action of its currents resulted in detaching the island of Tierra del Fuego from South America. In like manner New Zealand was separated from New Holland, Madagascar from Africa, and Ceylon from India.

He then refers to other “displacements of the ocean basin,” to the shallowing of the Straits of Sunda, of the Baltic Sea, the ancient subsidence of the coast of Holland and Zealand, and states that Sweden offers all the appearance of having recently emerged from the sea, while the Caspian Sea, formerly much larger than at present, was once in communication with the Black Sea, and that some day the Straits of Sunda and the Straits of Dover will be dry land, so that the union of England and France will be formed anew.

Strangely enough, with these facts known to him, Lamarck did not see that such changes were due to changes of level of the land rather than to their being abandoned or invaded by the sea, but explained these by his bizarre hypothesis of westward-flowing currents due to the moon’s action; though it should be in all fairness stated that down to recent times there have been those who believed that it is the sea and not the land which has changed its level.

This idea, that the sea and not the land has changed its level, was generally held at the time Lamarck wrote, though Strabo had made the shrewd observation that it was the land which moved. The Greek geographer threw aside the notion of some of his contemporaries,and with wonderful prevision, considering the time he wrote and the limited observations he could make, claimed that it is not the sea which has risen or fallen, but the land itself which is sometimes raised up and sometimes depressed, while the sea-bottom may also be elevated or sunk down. He refers to such facts as deluges, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea.

“And it is not merely the small, but the large islands also, not merely the islands, but the continents which can be lifted up together with the sea; and, too, the large and small tracts may subside, for habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many others, have been engulfed by earthquakes.”[75]

But it was not until eighteen centuries later that this doctrine, under the teachings of Playfair, Leopold von Buch, and Élie de Beaumont (1829–30) became generally accepted. In 1845 Humboldt remarked, “It is a fact to-day recognized by all geologists, that the rise of continents is due to an actual upheaval, and not to an apparent subsidence occasioned by a general depression of the level of the sea” (Cosmos, i). Yet as late as 1869 we have an essay by H. Trautschold[76]in which is a statement of the arguments which can be brought forward in favor of the doctrine that the increase of the land above sea level is due to the retirement of the sea.[77]

As authentic and unimpeachable proofs of the former existence of the sea where now it is absent, Lamarck cites the occurrence of fossils in rocks inland. Lamarck’s first paper on fossils was read to the Institute in 1799, or about three years previous to the publication of theHydrogéologie. He restricts the term “fossils” to vegetable and animal remains, since the word in his time was by some loosely applied to minerals as well as fossils; to anything dug out of the earth. “We find fossils,” he says, “on dry land, even in the middle of continents and large islands; and not only in places far removed from the sea, but even on mountains and in their bowels, at considerable heights, each part of the earth’s surface having at some time been a veritable ocean bottom.” He then quotes at length accounts of such instances from Buffon, and notices their prodigious number, and that while the greater number are marine, others are fresh-water and terrestrial shells, and the marine shells may be divided into littoral and pelagic.

“This distinction is very important to make, because the consideration of fossils is, as we have already said, one of the principal means of knowing well the revolutions which have taken place on the surface of our globe. This subject is of great importance, and under this point of view it should lead naturalists to study fossil shells, in order to compare them with their analogues which we can discover in the sea; finally, to carefully seek the places where each specieslives, the banks which are formed of them, the different beds which these banks may present, etc., etc., so that we do not believe it out of place to insert here the principal considerations which have already resulted from that which is known in this respect.

“The fossils which are found in the dry parts of the surface of the globe are evident indications of a long sojourn of the sea in the very places where we observe them.” Under this heading, after repeating the statement previously made that fossils occur in all parts of the dry land, in the midst of the continents and on high mountains, he inquiresby what causeso many marine shells could be found in the explored parts of the world. Discarding the old idea that they are monuments of the deluge, transformed into fossils, he denies that there was such a general catastrophe as a universal deluge, and goes on to say in his assured, but calm and philosophic way:

“On the globe which we inhabit, everything is submitted to continual and inevitable changes, which result from the essential order of things: they take place, in truth, with more or less promptitude or slowness, according to the nature, the condition, or the situation of the objects; nevertheless they are wrought in some time or other.“To nature, time is nothing, and it never presents a difficulty; she always has it at her disposal, and it is for her a means without limit, with which she has made the greatest as well as the least things.“The changes to which everything in this world is subjected are changes not only of form and of nature, but they are changes also of bulk, and even of situation.“All the considerations stated in the preceding chapters should convince us that nothing on thesurface of the terrestrial globe is immutable. They teach us that the vast ocean which occupies so great a part of the surface of our globe cannot have its bed constantly fixed in the same place; that the dry or exposed parts of this surface themselves undergo perpetual changes in their condition, and that they are in turn successively invaded and abandoned by the sea.“There is, indeed, every evidence that these enormous masses of water continually displace themselves, both their bed and their limits.“In truth these displacements, which are never interrupted, are in general only made with extreme and almost inappreciable slowness, but they are in ceaseless operation, and with such constancy that the ocean bottom, which necessarily loses on one side while it gains on another, has already, without doubt, spread over not only once, but even several times, every point of the surface of the globe.“If it is thus, if each point of the surface of the terrestrial globe has been in turn dominated by the seas—that is to say, has contributed to form the bed of those immense masses of water which constitute the ocean—it should result (1) that the insensible but uninterrupted transfer of the bed of the ocean over the whole surface of the globe has given place to deposits of the remains of marine animals which we should find in a fossil state; (2) that this translation of the ocean basin should be the reason why the dry portions of the earth are always more elevated than the level of the sea; so that the old ocean bed should become exposed without being elevated above the sea, and without consequently giving rise to the formation of mountains which we observe in so many different regions of the naked parts of our globe.”

“To nature, time is nothing, and it never presents a difficulty; she always has it at her disposal, and it is for her a means without limit, with which she has made the greatest as well as the least things.

“The changes to which everything in this world is subjected are changes not only of form and of nature, but they are changes also of bulk, and even of situation.

“All the considerations stated in the preceding chapters should convince us that nothing on thesurface of the terrestrial globe is immutable. They teach us that the vast ocean which occupies so great a part of the surface of our globe cannot have its bed constantly fixed in the same place; that the dry or exposed parts of this surface themselves undergo perpetual changes in their condition, and that they are in turn successively invaded and abandoned by the sea.

“There is, indeed, every evidence that these enormous masses of water continually displace themselves, both their bed and their limits.

“In truth these displacements, which are never interrupted, are in general only made with extreme and almost inappreciable slowness, but they are in ceaseless operation, and with such constancy that the ocean bottom, which necessarily loses on one side while it gains on another, has already, without doubt, spread over not only once, but even several times, every point of the surface of the globe.

“If it is thus, if each point of the surface of the terrestrial globe has been in turn dominated by the seas—that is to say, has contributed to form the bed of those immense masses of water which constitute the ocean—it should result (1) that the insensible but uninterrupted transfer of the bed of the ocean over the whole surface of the globe has given place to deposits of the remains of marine animals which we should find in a fossil state; (2) that this translation of the ocean basin should be the reason why the dry portions of the earth are always more elevated than the level of the sea; so that the old ocean bed should become exposed without being elevated above the sea, and without consequently giving rise to the formation of mountains which we observe in so many different regions of the naked parts of our globe.”

Thus littoral shells of many genera, such as Pectens, Tellinæ, cockle shells, turban shells (sabots), etc.,madrepores and other littoral polyps, the bones of marine or of amphibious animals which have lived near the sea, and which occur as fossils, are then unimpeachable monuments of the sojourn of the sea on the points of the dry parts of the globe where we observe their deposits, and besides these occur deep-water forms. “Thus the encrinites, the belemnites, the orthoceratites, the ostracites, the terebratules, etc., all animals which habitually live at the bottom, found for the most part among the fossils deposited on the point of the globe in question, are unimpeachable witnesses which attest that this same place was once part of the bottom or great depths of the sea.” He then attempts to prove, and does so satisfactorily, that the shells he refers to are what he calls deep-water (pélagiennes). He proves the truth of his thesis by the following facts:

1. We are already familiar with a marine Gryphæa, and different Terebratulæ, also marine shell-fish, which do not, however, live near shore. 2. Also the greatest depth which has been reached with the rake or the dredge is not destitute of molluscs, since we find there a great number which only live at this depth, and without instruments to reach and bring them up we should know nothing of thecones,olives, Mitra, many species of Murex, Strombus, etc. 3. Finally, since the discovery of a living Encrinus, drawn up on a sounding line from a great depth, and where lives the animal or polyp in question, it is not only possible to assure ourselves that at this depth there are other living animals, but on the contrary we are strongly bound to think that other species of the same genus, and probably other animals of different genera, also live at the same depths. All this leadsone to admit, with Bruguière,[78]the existence of deep-water shell-fish and polyps, which, like him, I distinguish from littoral shells and polyps.“The two sorts of monuments of which I have above spoken, namely, littoral and deep-sea fossils, may be, and often should be, found separated by different beds in the same bank or in the samemountains, since they have been deposited there at very different epochs. But they may often be found mixed together, because the movements of the water, the currents, submarine volcanoes, etc., have overturned the beds, yet some regular deposits in water always tranquil would be left in quite distant beds.... Every dry part of the earth’s surface, when the presence or the abundance of marine fossils prove that formerly the sea has remained in that place, has necessarily twice received, for a single incursion of the sea, littoral shells, and once deep-sea shells, in three different deposits—this will not be disputed. But as such an incursion of the sea can only be accomplished by a period of immense duration, it follows that the littoral shells deposited at the first sojourn of the edge of the sea, and constituting the first deposit, have been destroyed—that is to say, have not been preserved to the present time; while the deep-water shells form the second deposit, and there the littoral shells of the third deposit are, in fact, the only ones which now exist, and which constitute the fossils that we see.”

“The two sorts of monuments of which I have above spoken, namely, littoral and deep-sea fossils, may be, and often should be, found separated by different beds in the same bank or in the samemountains, since they have been deposited there at very different epochs. But they may often be found mixed together, because the movements of the water, the currents, submarine volcanoes, etc., have overturned the beds, yet some regular deposits in water always tranquil would be left in quite distant beds.... Every dry part of the earth’s surface, when the presence or the abundance of marine fossils prove that formerly the sea has remained in that place, has necessarily twice received, for a single incursion of the sea, littoral shells, and once deep-sea shells, in three different deposits—this will not be disputed. But as such an incursion of the sea can only be accomplished by a period of immense duration, it follows that the littoral shells deposited at the first sojourn of the edge of the sea, and constituting the first deposit, have been destroyed—that is to say, have not been preserved to the present time; while the deep-water shells form the second deposit, and there the littoral shells of the third deposit are, in fact, the only ones which now exist, and which constitute the fossils that we see.”

He again asserts that these deposits could not be the result of any sudden catastrophe, because of the necessarily long sojourn of the sea to account for the extensive beds of fossil shells, the remains of “infinitely multiplied generations of shelled animals which have lived in this place, and have there successively deposited their débris.” He therefore supposes that these remains, “continually heaped up, have formed these shell banks, become fossilized after the lapse of considerable time, and in which it is often possible to distinguish different beds.” He then continues his line of anti-catastrophic reasoning, and we must remember that in his time facts in biology andgeology were feebly grasped, and scientific reasoning or induction was in its infancy.

“I would again inquire how, in the supposition of a universal catastrophe, there could have been preserved an infinity of delicate shells which the least shock would break, but of which we now find a great number uninjured among other fossils. How also could it happen that bivalve shells, with which calcareous rocks and even those changed into a silicious condition are interlarded, should be all still provided with their two valves, as I have stated, if the animals of these shells had not lived in these places?“There is no doubt but that the remains of so many molluscs, that so many shells deposited and consequently changed into fossils, and most of which were totally destroyed before their substance became silicified, furnished a great part of the calcareous matter which we observe on the surface and in the upper beds of the earth.“Nevertheless there is in the sea, for the formation of calcareous matter, a cause which is greater than shelled molluscs, which is consequently still more powerful, and to which must be referred ninety-nine hundredths, and indeed more, of the calcareous matter occurring in nature. This cause, so important to consider, is the existence ofcoralligenous polyps, which we might therefore calltestaceous polyps, because, like the testaceous molluscs, these polyps have the faculty of forming, by a transudation or a continual secretion of their bodies, the stony and calcareous polypidom on which they live.“In truth these polyps are animals so small that a single one only forms a minute quantity of calcareous matter. But in this case what nature does not obtain in any volume or in quantity from any one individual, she simply receives by the number of animals in question, through the enormous multiplicityof these animals, and their astonishing fecundity—namely, by the wonderful faculty they have of promptly regenerating, of multiplying in a short time their generations successively, and rapidly accumulating; finally, by the total amount of reunion of the products of these numerous little animals.“Moreover, it is a fact now well known and well established that the coralligenous polyps, namely, this great family of animals with coral stocks, such as the millepores, the madrepores, astrææ, meandrinæ, etc., prepare on a great scale at the bottom of the sea, by a continual secretion of their bodies, and as the result of their enormous multiplication and their accumulated generations, the greatest part of the calcareous matter which exists. The numerous coral stocks which these animals produce, and whose bulk and numbers perpetually increase, form in certain places islands of considerable extent, fill up extensive bays, gulfs, and roadsteads; in a word, close harbors, and entirely change the condition of coasts.“These enormous banks of madrepores and millepores, heaped upon each other, covered and intermingled with serpulæ, different kinds of oysters, patellæ, barnacles, and other shells fixed by their base, form irregular mountains of an almost limitless extent.“But when, after the lapse of considerable time, the sea has left the places where these immense deposits are laid down, then the slow but combined alteration that these great masses undergo, left uncovered and exposed to the incessant action of the air, light, and a variable humidity, changes them gradually into fossils and destroys their membranous or gelatinous part, which is the readiest to decompose. This alteration, which the enormous masses of the corals in question continued to undergo, caused their structure to gradually disappear, and their great porosity unceasingly diminished the parts of these stony massesby displacing and again bringing together the molecules composing them, so that, undergoing a new aggregation, these calcareous molecules obtained a number of points of contact, and constituted harder and more compact masses. It finally results that instead of the original masses of madrepores and millepores there occurs only masses of a compact calcareous rock, which modern mineralogists have improperly calledprimitive limestone, because, seeing in it no traces of shells or corals, they have mistaken these stony masses for deposits of a matter primitively existing in nature.”

“There is no doubt but that the remains of so many molluscs, that so many shells deposited and consequently changed into fossils, and most of which were totally destroyed before their substance became silicified, furnished a great part of the calcareous matter which we observe on the surface and in the upper beds of the earth.

“Nevertheless there is in the sea, for the formation of calcareous matter, a cause which is greater than shelled molluscs, which is consequently still more powerful, and to which must be referred ninety-nine hundredths, and indeed more, of the calcareous matter occurring in nature. This cause, so important to consider, is the existence ofcoralligenous polyps, which we might therefore calltestaceous polyps, because, like the testaceous molluscs, these polyps have the faculty of forming, by a transudation or a continual secretion of their bodies, the stony and calcareous polypidom on which they live.

“In truth these polyps are animals so small that a single one only forms a minute quantity of calcareous matter. But in this case what nature does not obtain in any volume or in quantity from any one individual, she simply receives by the number of animals in question, through the enormous multiplicityof these animals, and their astonishing fecundity—namely, by the wonderful faculty they have of promptly regenerating, of multiplying in a short time their generations successively, and rapidly accumulating; finally, by the total amount of reunion of the products of these numerous little animals.

“Moreover, it is a fact now well known and well established that the coralligenous polyps, namely, this great family of animals with coral stocks, such as the millepores, the madrepores, astrææ, meandrinæ, etc., prepare on a great scale at the bottom of the sea, by a continual secretion of their bodies, and as the result of their enormous multiplication and their accumulated generations, the greatest part of the calcareous matter which exists. The numerous coral stocks which these animals produce, and whose bulk and numbers perpetually increase, form in certain places islands of considerable extent, fill up extensive bays, gulfs, and roadsteads; in a word, close harbors, and entirely change the condition of coasts.

“These enormous banks of madrepores and millepores, heaped upon each other, covered and intermingled with serpulæ, different kinds of oysters, patellæ, barnacles, and other shells fixed by their base, form irregular mountains of an almost limitless extent.

“But when, after the lapse of considerable time, the sea has left the places where these immense deposits are laid down, then the slow but combined alteration that these great masses undergo, left uncovered and exposed to the incessant action of the air, light, and a variable humidity, changes them gradually into fossils and destroys their membranous or gelatinous part, which is the readiest to decompose. This alteration, which the enormous masses of the corals in question continued to undergo, caused their structure to gradually disappear, and their great porosity unceasingly diminished the parts of these stony massesby displacing and again bringing together the molecules composing them, so that, undergoing a new aggregation, these calcareous molecules obtained a number of points of contact, and constituted harder and more compact masses. It finally results that instead of the original masses of madrepores and millepores there occurs only masses of a compact calcareous rock, which modern mineralogists have improperly calledprimitive limestone, because, seeing in it no traces of shells or corals, they have mistaken these stony masses for deposits of a matter primitively existing in nature.”

He then reiterates the view that these deposits of marble and limestones, often forming mountain ranges, could not have been the result of a universal catastrophe, and in a very modern way goes on to specify what the limits of catastrophism are. The only catastrophes which a naturalist can reasonably admit as having taken place are partial or local ones, those dependent on causes acting in isolated places, such as the disturbances which are caused by volcanic eruptions, by earthquakes, by local inundations, by violent storms, etc. These catastrophes are with reason admissible, because we observe their analogues, and because we know that they often happen. He then gives examples of localities along the coast of France, as at Manche, where there are ranges of high hills made up of limestones containing Gryphææ, ammonites, and other deep-water shells.

In the conclusion of the chapter, after stating that the ocean has repeatedly covered the greater part of the earth, he then claims that “the displacement of the sea, producing a constantly variable inequalityin the mass of the terrestrial radii, has necessarily caused the earth’s centre of gravity to vary, as also its two poles.[79]Moreover, since it appears that this variation, very irregular as it is, not being subjected to any limits, it is very probable that each point of the surface of the planet we inhabit is really in the case of successively finding itself subjected to different climates.” He then exclaims in eloquent, profound, and impassioned language:

“How curious it is to see that such suppositions receive their confirmation from the consideration of the state of the earth’s surface and of its external crust, from that of the nature of certain fossils found in abundance in the northern regions of the earth, and whose analogues now live in warm climates; finally, in that of the ancient astronomical observations of the Egyptians.“Oh, how great is the antiquity of the terrestrial globe, and how small are the ideas of those who attribute to the existence of this globe a duration of six thousand and some hundred years since its origin down to our time!“The physico-naturalist and the geologist in this respect see things very differently; for if they have given the matter the slightest consideration—the one, the nature of fossils spread in such great numbers in all the exposed parts of the globe, both in elevated situations and at considerable depths in the earth; the other, the number and disposition of the beds, as also the nature and order of the materials which compose the external crust of this globe studied throughouta great part of its thickness and in the mountain masses—have they not had opportunities to convince themselves that the antiquity of this same globe is so great that it is absolutely beyond the power of man to appreciate it in an adequate way!“Assuredly our chronologies do not extend back very far, and they could only have been made by propping them up by fables. Traditions, both oral and written, become necessarily lost, and it is in the nature of things that this should be so.“Even if the invention of printing had been more ancient than it is, what would have resulted at the end of ten thousand years? Everything changes, everything becomes modified, everything becomes lost or destroyed. Every living language insensibly changes its idiom; at the end of a thousand years the writings made in any language can only be read with difficulty; after two thousand years none of these writings will be understood. Besides wars, vandalism, the greediness of tyrants and of those who guide religious opinions, who always rely on the ignorance of the human race and are supported by it, how many are the causes, as proved by history and the sciences, of epochs after epochs of revolutions, which have more or less completely destroyed them.“How many are the causes by which man loses all trace of that which has existed, and cannot believe nor even conceive of the immense antiquity of the earth he inhabits!“How great will yet seem this antiquity of the terrestrial globe in the eyes of man when he shall form a just idea of the origin of living bodies, as also of the causes of the development and of the gradual process of perfection of the organization of these bodies, and especially when it will be conceived that, time and favorable circumstances having been necessary to give existence to all the living species such as we actually see, he is himself the last result and theactual maximum of this process of perfecting, the limit (terme) of which, if it exists, cannot be known.”

“Oh, how great is the antiquity of the terrestrial globe, and how small are the ideas of those who attribute to the existence of this globe a duration of six thousand and some hundred years since its origin down to our time!

“The physico-naturalist and the geologist in this respect see things very differently; for if they have given the matter the slightest consideration—the one, the nature of fossils spread in such great numbers in all the exposed parts of the globe, both in elevated situations and at considerable depths in the earth; the other, the number and disposition of the beds, as also the nature and order of the materials which compose the external crust of this globe studied throughouta great part of its thickness and in the mountain masses—have they not had opportunities to convince themselves that the antiquity of this same globe is so great that it is absolutely beyond the power of man to appreciate it in an adequate way!

“Assuredly our chronologies do not extend back very far, and they could only have been made by propping them up by fables. Traditions, both oral and written, become necessarily lost, and it is in the nature of things that this should be so.

“Even if the invention of printing had been more ancient than it is, what would have resulted at the end of ten thousand years? Everything changes, everything becomes modified, everything becomes lost or destroyed. Every living language insensibly changes its idiom; at the end of a thousand years the writings made in any language can only be read with difficulty; after two thousand years none of these writings will be understood. Besides wars, vandalism, the greediness of tyrants and of those who guide religious opinions, who always rely on the ignorance of the human race and are supported by it, how many are the causes, as proved by history and the sciences, of epochs after epochs of revolutions, which have more or less completely destroyed them.

“How many are the causes by which man loses all trace of that which has existed, and cannot believe nor even conceive of the immense antiquity of the earth he inhabits!

“How great will yet seem this antiquity of the terrestrial globe in the eyes of man when he shall form a just idea of the origin of living bodies, as also of the causes of the development and of the gradual process of perfection of the organization of these bodies, and especially when it will be conceived that, time and favorable circumstances having been necessary to give existence to all the living species such as we actually see, he is himself the last result and theactual maximum of this process of perfecting, the limit (terme) of which, if it exists, cannot be known.”

In the fourth chapter of the book there is less to interest the reader, since the author mainly devotes it to a reiteration of the ideas of his earlier works on physics and chemistry. He claims that the minerals and rocks composing the earth’s crust are all of organic origin, including even granite. The thickness of this crust he thinks, in the absence of positive knowledge, to be from three to four leagues, or from nine to twelve miles.

After describing the mode of formation of minerals, including agates, flint, geodes, etc., he discusses the process of fossilization by molecular changes, silicious particles replacing the vegetable or animal matter, as in the case of fossil wood.

While, then, the products of animals such as corals and molluscs are limestones, those of vegetables are humus and clay; and all of these deposits losing their less fixed principles pass into a silicious condition, and end by being reduced to quartz, which is the earthy element in its purest form. The salts, pyrites, and metals only differ from other minerals by the different circumstances under which they were accumulated, in their different proportions, and in their much greater amount of carbonic or acidific fire.

Regarding granite, which, he says, naturalists very erroneously consider asprimitive, he begins by observing that it is only by conjecture that we should designate as primitive any matter whatever. He recognizes the fact that granite forms the highestmountains, which are generally arranged in more or less regular chains. But he strangely assumes that the constituents of granite,i.e., felspar, quartz, and mica, did not exist before vegetables, and that these minerals and their aggregation into granite were the result of slow deposition in the ocean.[80]He goes so far as to assert that the porphyritic rocks were not thus formed in the sea, but that they are the result of deposits carried down by streams, especially torrents flowing down from mountains. Gneiss, he thinks, resulted from the detritus of granitic rocks, by means of an inappreciable cement, and formed in a way analogous to that of the porphyries.

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