CHAPTER VII.THE MAMMOTH PERIOD.
The tertiary deposits are referable to three great divisions, containing subdivisions, some of marine, some of fresh water origin, and severally characterized by their fossil remains. The terms Eocene, Miocene, and Pleiocene, are applied to them in their respective order of superposition, as the lower, middle, and upper groups. The London basin belongs to the first of these divisions. When these congeries of beds were completed, and the bottom of the sea was elevated, a fresh water occupation of the district appears to have prevailed. And during the supremacy of this reign of the Naïads it was, that England was tenanted by herds of large quadrupeds, tigers, hyenas, and the companions of the untamable class, whose haunts are now in the Indian jungle, or the forests and prairies of America.
This has been denominated the Mammoth Epoch, when the elephant race literally swarmed over northern Europe, from Italy to the Arctic regions. Great Britain at this era formed part of the continent, or rather of the great series of lakes and marshy swamps which then prevailed. Hence only can geologists account for the identity of fossils scattered over this area. The organisms are all of a type, all of the remarkable orders now confined to warmer climes. And when we find these fossils cast up in every field from the same series of deposits—in Switzerland, on the banks of the Danube, through the plains of Siberia, and northern Russia—in the basins of the Rhine, and the whole of lower Germany—in the Netherlands, over central and northern France, the entire south and east coasts of England—we decipher in all this, not only the organic characters of the same period oftime, but the connecting links of one and the same superficial portion of the globe.
This is a very remarkable chapter in the history of our island, whether we consider the mineral or animal arrangements that prevailed, and their relations to continental Europe. Here we contemplate the relics of herds of the larger mammals which then ranged over a quarter of the earth’s surface, all now extinct; while, toward the close of the epoch, everything conspires to favor the notion, that our insular position was then, for the first time, established.
The type of the period is the Mammoth, or the Elephas Primogenius. There are only two existing species, namely, the Asiatic, which is limited to within 31° north latitude, and the African, whose range extends to the shores of the Pacific, as far south as the Cape of Good Hope. America, through all its forests and boundless wastes, possesses not a single individual of the modern family, while the remains of the extinct race are to be found in every prairie, along the banks of the Missouri, and abundantly in the great salt marshes, whither they had resorted in vast herds in quest of the salt, and been mired, as heavy animals are frequently at the present day. The intertropical plains of the new world, and the polar regions of the old, were equally congenial to their habits. Nay, so adaptive were they in their nature and tastes—these gigantic pachyderms of the middle tertiary period—that in every intermediate country, they have left in their huge skeletons unequivocal traces of their sojourn or migration.
From the British strata alone, no less than three thousand and upward of fossil teeth have been dug up belonging to this colossal animal. These are found chiefly in the drift along the east coast of England, from Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, to Holderness. In a period of little more than thirteen years, the fishermen of the village of Happisburgh have dragged up more than two thousand grinders of the mammoth. In the valley of the Thames the relics have been discovered very numerously, at Sheppey, Woolwich, the Isle of Dogs, Lewisham,—in the gravel beneath the streets of London,—at Kensington, Kew, Wallingford, Oxford,—and all around the south-east coast from Brighton to Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire. The central counties of Stafford,Northampton, Warwick, and York, are everywhere strewed a few feet under ground with these remains. At Stroud, a railway section laid open a tusk, measuring nine feet in length; and everywhere in the British Channel the fishery of the extinct quadruped is as ardently pursued, and often is as remunerative, as the fishery of the finny tribes themselves now existing on our shores.
These animals, once filling the plains of England with herds equaled only by those of the buffalo race which now darken the prairies of America, have fulfilled their destiny, and have perished from the earth. “The difference,” says Professor Owen, “between the extinct and existing species of elephant in regard to the structure of the teeth, has been more or less manifested by every specimen of fossil elephant’s tooth that I have hitherto seen from the British strata; and those now amount to upward of three thousand. Very few of them could be mistaken, by a comparative anatomist, for the tooth of an Asiatic elephant, and they are all obviously distinct from the peculiar molars of the African elephant.” Cuvier ascertained like distinctions between the extinct and the existing Indian elephants; and concluded, from the reconstruction of the complete framework, that the mammoth type is no longer in being.
The proof that the elephant race actually inhabited this country is as satisfactory, and as well established, as that the species were different from any now existing. Little, indeed, can it be wondered at, upon the first discovery of their remains, that the accounts given by geologists and others were received with the greatest distrust. Their appearance, in these high latitudes, was attributed to the inroad of armies rather than to any indigenous connection with the soil that covers them. Cæsar, it was remembered, brought many elephants with him into Gaul. According to Polinæus, one at least was transported across the channel into Britain: hence an easy and ready explanation of the fossils, as Voltaire, in his time, fancied the shells found on mountain tops to be the stray specimens dropped by pious pilgrims or superstitious monks on their journeyings. But as their numbers increased—some from Ireland where the soldiers of Rome never set foot, along with the bones of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus whichcould be instructed in no military tactics, and all over the length and breadth of the land bones and entire skeletons began to be exhumed—all grounds for skepticism against their aboriginal national descent were forever swept away. And Britain, it was admitted, literally and truly, had once been stocked, among its most recently extinct families, with these monster tenants of the wilderness.
An entire carcass, it is well known, covered with long woolly hair, was found at the mouth of the river Lena, as far north as the 74th degree of latitude, imbedded in ice. This discovery opened up more enlarged and correct views as to the history and habits of these animals. Subsequent years increased prodigiously the stock of fossils, entire and perfect in hide and fleshy muscle; and now, so abundant are the remains of the fossil mammalia in the arctic regions, that they have not only become an article of commercial traffic to man, but serve as an unfailing repository of food to the present denizens of those countries, the hordes of marauding wolves, foxes, and bears, which prey amid the polar regions and sterility. It has farther been ascertained that, where the lichen and the scanty moss now only grow, a rich arboreal vegetation once flourished in these latitudes; birch trees, of large dimensions, are everywhere imbedded in the sandy cliffs; and it is conjectured, with the greatest probability, that herds of elephants migrated from the warm interior, during the summer months, to the embouchures of the rivers and borders of the arctic sea, covered as they were with sheltering forests, or shrubby brushwood steppes. “As we advance,” says Murchison, “into the plains of Siberia, or descend into the valleys of Tobol and the Obe, the bones are in greater quantities, and in a better state of preservation; and the farther the Siberian rivers are followed to their mouths, the more do the mammalian remains increase, until at length whole skeletons, and even carcasses, are found. The single fact of the very wide diffusion of the mammoth bones, over enormous regions, in itself indicates that those creatures had long been inhabitants of such countries, living and dying there for ages; while their final destruction may have resulted from aqueous débacles dependent on oscillations of the land, the elevation of mountain-chains, and the formation of much local detritus.”
The same causes will account for their destruction in this country—causes, whose effects are still traceable over the whole of continental Europe. Doubtless, these causes extended across the channel, and may have been cotemporaneous with the movements which resulted in separating us from France, occasioning débacles by the alternate upheaval and depression of the sea-bottom, which even the largest animals would be unable to contend against. In the midst of these movements, multitudes would resort to the higher protected grounds, in quest of food, or retire for shelter to caves and other concealments that were elevated above the waters. Remains, accordingly, of nearly all the quadrupeds of the period, the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, lion, tiger, hyena, bear, elk, are to be found in such places, associated with bones of the elephant family, and mixed, for the most part, with the alluvia and detrital gravel of the district. These animals appear not to have perished simultaneously or suddenly; but from the condition of the celebrated Kirkdale caves, when first discovered, it would rather seem that they had long haunted these places, the caverns being generally at a considerable elevation, with an entrance on the side of the valley. The floors were entirely covered with mud, teeth, bones, and stalagmitic incrustations, several feet deep—a den of monsters that were devouring each other, while the common enemy of destruction was approaching to seal the fate of all! The “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ” of Buckland, which first introduced the notice of these caves to the public, assumed the Mosaic deluge as the cause of the catastrophe: other hypotheses have been resorted to, as that certainly would not apply to all the circumstances of the case. Bones of a species of hare or rabbit, the water-rat, mouse, weasel, with fragments of the skeletons of ravens, pigeons, larks, and ducks, are also included among the relics of the fiercer tribes; and many have supposed that these were drifted in by subaqueous currents, or dropped through the fissures, which are both numerous and large in the limestone in which the caverns, for the most part, are situated.
The Mastodon, that is, the mammillary-toothed elephant, was another of the extinct pachyderm class then inhabiting the island. Remains of this animal have been found in the Norwich Crag; there are several species, all of gigantic proportions, some ofwhich have been detected in North America only, and others in Europe. The tigers of the period were larger than the largest of the Bengal race, as is proved by the fossil teeth and bones of the extremities that have been discovered, both at Kirkdale and other places. And so, generally, of all the extinct carnivora, in the qualities of strength and size, superior to all existing types, and cast in the mold of, as they had to contend with, the mammoths and monster theria among which their destiny was cast.
And again, and again, will the questions recur to every curious reader of these details—when, and how, were these huge quadrupeds exterminated, or driven from this island, some of them now utterly extinct, and some of them only generically allied to existing tropical races? The epoch of their rule, according to the geological testimony, verges on the human age, if it does not actually run into it. Terror-stricken, shall we suppose, by the terrene and subaqueous movements which severed Great Britain from the continent—the rush of waters—the rending of the rocks—and the drying up of lakes, consequent on the change—they sought a refuge above the general wreck, where the weak were preyed upon by the strong, and a fierce carnival, for a season, was maintained? On the continent, while similar alterations were taking place over large superficial areas, and the tertiary deposits were being drifted up, many of the animals, and whole families, would escape into southern and warmer countries, and some of the species, in consequence, might long survive the destruction of others. But here, insulated and deprived of the means of performing their annual migrations, the races of every kind would all more speedily perish, preying more easily upon each other, and weakened by alteration of habits, and the great physical changes to which they were subjected. On the Ararat of Yorkshire, and other favored heights, they found a temporary resting-place! But, it was only temporary; for, as the island approximated to its present condition, it proved no longer a suitable dwelling to creatures of their mold—their course was run—and a new creation was to occupy their place.
In closing these sketches of the geology of Great Britain, one may well marvel at the vast changes over the face of this islandand of all its productions, as read in the varied and multiform disclosures which the interior structure, formation upon formation, makes known to us.
1. Mark the distinct character of the geological evidence of all the changes, organic and inorganic, to which the island and its inhabitants have been subjected. The evidence rests upon direct observation. The registers are graven as with a pen of iron, and in characters which to be understood have only to be read. The historical period, beyond two decades of centuries, is an utter blank. When Cæsar came into the island, painted savages peopled the land, Druids immolated in thousands their human victims, and, the brief occupation of the invaders past, we are again involved in the darkness of barbarous annals and exterminating wars of unknown tribes. Whence the migrations of its first inhabitants? who were the Cymri that spoke the language of Cwm Llewelyn, and of Cefn y Bêdd? who were the Silures, the Trinobantes, the Cantii, and the Atribates? and whither and what the ever-conflicting lines betwixt the territories of Picts, Celts, and Scots?—questions these that will ever puzzle and disturb the slumbers of the unhappy wight who deals in chronicle lore and archæological history. What now of the oldest civilized states of the old world who gave law, literature, science, art, language, and blood, to all the families of the earth, as the tide of population rolled westward, and the Quadrumana and the Bimana contended for mastery amid the dense aboriginal forests on the banks of the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Seine, the Thames, the mountains of Cambria and Caledonia? Rome sits in ruined majesty by the waters of the Tiber. Greece knows not, and mourns not, the buried ashes of her mighty dead. Carthagehasbeen blotted out. Tyre has fulfilled her destiny—“a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea.” The shepherd kings of the pyramids have not a name even among men; and Thebes, Luxor, and Carnac, lie as fossils in the desert. What of Babylon and her Tower on the plains of Shinar, that was to reach unto the heavens? and of Nineveh, “a city of three days’ journey” to be compassed? Mounds of earth and rubbish, over which the Arab has pitched his rude tent, and into which the prying antiquary, at the risk of his life, digs for fragments, while the Tigris andEuphrates pursue their heedless course through the waste slimy borders of Uz and Mesopotamia. Thus mark how many illustrious heroes, scholars, lawgivers, who once filled the world with their fame, have, with all their splendid or useful benefactions to their race, passed under the thick cloud of oblivion! The very names of the most noted of them is matter of dispute. And of the multitudes who panted after glory in these ancient days, not an incident in the life of millions has reached the present times.
But geology, ashistory, is truthful in the oldest as in the most recent of its narrations. How generally accurate in its family genealogies: their relations, kindreds, alliances, and individual peculiarities; the length and strength of body, contour of face, size, structure, and capacity of head, eye, and stomach—all as precisely determined and described in regard to the “habitans” of the most ancient fossiliferous rocks, as the living possessors of earth, sea, or air. Look into our museums, cabinets, monographs, and palæontological lists, and types of organic life are there, from which not only to number the tribes, but to tell of their own varying states and conditions. Wonders there are in geology. But its most seeming fables are realities. The placoids and ganoids of the silurian and devonian age, the exuberant flora of the carboniferous, the giant birds of the triassic, the matchless reptilian forms of the oolite, the microscopic organisms of the chalk, the colossal mammoths and mammalia of the tertiaries, were all as veritable productions of the island as the most familiar grains, grasses, and domesticated breeds which minister to our daily wants. How obscure, uncertain, and limited the range of human history! How extensive, and boundless, and minute the pursuits of geology, which touches on the history of all creatures that ever lived through all their species, genera, orders, and classes, and even remounts to the primeval condition of the planet itself during all the periods, phases, and revolutions of its existence! But of man there is no trace. No voice from the past, issuing out of the solid framework of the globe, intimates the existence of the human family anterior to the last of those great physical changes which we have been contemplating, and over the wreck of whose organic tribes the epoch of the tertiary sections of its crust closes.
2. The teachings of this science in physical geography are noless definite than the astounding disclosures which it makes in history—shadowing out, where mountain chains now rise, the seats of ancient sea bottoms—creeks and bays by lines of mudstones and conglomerates—continents that have been formed from islands, and islands disrupted from continents—lakes, estuaries, and rivers displaced and silted up, and now become the richest depositories of our mineral treasures. The connection of Great Britain with France is a matter almost of demonstration. A zone of primary crystalline rocks encompasses the western coast of both countries, whence geology follows them from Wales and Cornwall into Brittany and Normandy. The silurian, devonian, and carboniferous systems are arranged in the same order on both sides of the channel. Their chalk coasts are identical. A succession of elevating movements, depressions, and dislocations, is traceable everywhere along the southern counties of England, where the line of disturbance, from east to west, has separated the chalk on the north and south, and elevated the Wealden into an anticlinal axis on the Sussex coast. The Isle of Wight has been so shaken by the convulsion, as to have been literally tumbled over, the whole cretaceous formation, and every inferior deposit subjacent to the tertiaries, being in an inverted position. The existence, too, of a vast connecting stretch of land in the Atlantic is far from being improbable, whence the rivers of the Wealden may have issued, as well as much of the detrital matter been transported which now constitutes, with their remarkable and varied organic exuviæ, the basins of London, Hampshire, and Paris.
Very recently botany has come to the assistance of geology, in a manner as remarkable as it was unsuspected. It appears that, along the coast line of Great Britain and Ireland, there are several distinct floras or groups of plants, and all geographically related to existing families on the opposite coasts of the Continent. The flora of the west of Ireland corresponds to that on the north-west of Spain—the south-west of England, and also of Ireland, presents groups allied to those on the north-west of France,—and, again, one is common to the north coast line of France, and south-east of England,—while the fourth and fifth have their types in the alpine flora developed in the Scottish and Welsh mountains, and the mixed and diversified tribes more generally distributedover Ireland, England, and Germany. The assumption implied in this botanic speculation is, that these are the remains of a state of things no longer enduring, proofs of the existence of hotter or colder climates than now prevail, and the indications of a configuration of land and sea when a great mountain barrier extended across the Atlantic from Ireland to Spain. The distribution of the second and third sets of vegetation depended on the connection of England with France and Germany, when a sea covered a large portion of the south of Europe, and the upheaval of whose bed, which constitutes the latest of the tertiary deposits, gave rise to a vast continent, comprising Spain, Ireland, the north of Africa, the Azores, and the Canaries. The alpine flora of Scotland and Wales was effected during the glacial period—to be afterward noticed—when the mountain summits of Britain were low islands or members of an archipelago extending over the Frozen Ocean, and clothed with an arctic vegetation which, in the gradual upheaval of those islands and consequent change of climate, became limited to the summits of the still existing mountains. Professor Edward Forbes, adopting in this curious speculation the views of Mr. Hewet Watson, finds a corroboration of them in the peculiar distribution ofendemicanimals, especially of the marine and terrestrial mollusca. And he justly concludes that all the changes required for the events which he would connect with the distribution of the British flora, are borne out by the geological phenomena that prevailed during the epoch of the several tertiary deposits.
3. Geology, moreover, in deciphering the evidences of those stupendous operations which resulted in the statical, mineral, and organic arrangements merging in the modern epoch, inculcates some important truths connected with the science of natural theology. The mind, indeed, can never escape, in these investigations, from theistic conclusions. Step by step, as we ascended through the component strata of the globe, witnessed the modifications to which they were subjected, and observed the successive introduction and extinction of so many types of animal and vegetable life, we were just furnished with so many incontestable proofs of the direct interposition of Almighty power. If, indeed,I can read anything more clearly than another in these constantly recurring geological phenomena, termed epochs and formations, it is that ofinterferencewith the established order of things. I am conscious that matter did not originate itself. I can see no power in what is termed a law of matter to constitute organic bodies. The originator of matter must be the disposer of all its forms. And when I see these forms so repeatedly changed, assuming new shapes, and giving new scope for varied and multiplied degrees of enjoyment, I have only the more evidences and illustrations before me, that creation and change are, in these instances, correlative terms. The quadrupeds of the tertiary age are like nothing that preceded them in any of the orders or sections of animal existence. Their size, structure, and abundance, equally rivet the attention. And, however long or short the period assigned them on earth, they constitute a group of organic statuary, too remarkable to have been slid in and out by the simple operations of material law. The geological fact, of formation after formation, and of life after life, lies at the foundation of the sublime truth, that God is potentially in, arranging and disposing anew, the entire series of his works: and when I see this mundane scene shifted in all its parts, one system subverted, and another so very different introduced; and, again, the organic and inorganic condition of things readjusted, and in keeping as before, I at once rise in the contemplation of the change “from nature up to nature’s God.”
Geology, I should thus conclude, admits us a step nearer than any of the other sciences, even than astronomy itself, to the actings of the divine Architect. The revolution of every season demonstrates a providence—the workings of a perpetual miracle—in its sustaining energies. But geology shows us, not the mere annual renovation of things already existing, but the circumstances under which theybeganto exist. The fiat of Omnipotence peals through the bounds of creation. The earth and the seas obey. We see new things starting into being. We are present, as it were, at the moment of their birth. We see the molds out of which they are fashioned, and the first provision made to sustain them. Geology, in a word, hangs up before usone of the brightest and most diversified pages in the book of nature, inducing habits of thinking, and constantly reminding us of the facts and relations, that bodily and vividly keep before the mind the ever-active impress of the Divinity at whose bidding—
“Awakening nature hearsThe new creating word, and starts to lifeIn every heighten’d form.”
“Awakening nature hearsThe new creating word, and starts to lifeIn every heighten’d form.”
“Awakening nature hearsThe new creating word, and starts to lifeIn every heighten’d form.”
“Awakening nature hears
The new creating word, and starts to life
In every heighten’d form.”