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London, Published by John Murray, Albemarle Street dprid 1834

PRINCIPLES

OF

GEOLOGY:

BEING AN INQUIRY HOW FAR THE FORMER CHANGES OF

THE EARTH’S SURFACE

ARE REFERABLE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION.

BY CHARLES LYELL, Esa. F.R.S.

PRESIDENT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON,

ee

“ Amid all the revolutions of the globe, the economy of Nature has been uniform, and her laws are the only things that have resisted the general movement. The rivers and the rocks, the seas and the continents, haye been changed in all their parts; but the laws which direct those changes, and the rules to which they are subject, have remained invariably the same.”

Prayrair, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, § 374.

IN FOUR VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

THE FIFTH EDITION.

LONDON: | JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1837.

Lonpon:

Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODE, New-Street.Square.

PREFACE.

Tur original MS. of the Principles of Geology

was delivered to the publisher in 1827; but the greater portion of it was then in an unfinished state, the chapters on the early history of Geology, and those on “the Inorganic Causes of Change,” being the only ones then nearly ready for the press. The work was at that time intended to form two octavo volumes, which were to appear in the course of the year following. Their publication, however, was delayed by various geological tours which I made in the years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831, in France, Italy, Sicily, and Germany. The follow- ing were the dates when the successive volumes and editions finally appeared : —

Ist Vol. in octavo - - Jan. 1830. 2d Vol. do. - - Jan. 1832. Ist Vol. 2d edition in octavo 1832. 2d Vol. 2d edition do. Jan. 1833. 3d Vol. ist edition do. May 1833. New edition (called the 3d) of the

whole work in 4 vols. 12mo. May 1834. 4th edition, 4 vols. 12mo. - June 1835,

Ae

PREFACE.

I have acknowledged on former occasions the valuable assistance afforded me by several of my friends in the execution of this work, and have especially returned my thanks to Mr. Murchison, Mr. Broderip, Dr. Fitton, Mr. Lonsdale, and Capt. Basil Hall, for their zealous co-operation, and for the corrections and improvements which were adopted at their suggestion. |

In the Prefaces to the Third and Fourth Editions, I gave lists of the places where new matter had been introduced, or where opinions expressed in former Editions had been modified or renounced. I shall now again subjoin a similar list for the sake of those readers who have already studied this work, but who may wish to refer at once to the

additions and corrections now made for the first

time.

List of the principal Alterations and Additions in the Fifth Edition as compared to the Fourth.

Vol. I. Deluge of the Chinese - = i ie p. 10 Legend of the Seven Sleepers - = £ 119 Humboldt on preservation of animals in frozen mud 154 Stranding of icebergs on west coast òf Iceland - 173 Raised beaches in Carlingford. Bay, Ireland i 215 Omission of remarks on the origin of the valleys of the Moselle and Meuse - n 5 3 a Account of Edmonstone Island corrected £ = 360

PREFACE. yY

Vol. I. Arago on causes of currents, and on relative level of the Red Sea and Mediterranean - - - - p. 387

On the formation of Shingle beaches z = SOs

Voi. II. Dr. Daubeny on a volcanic band across the Italian

peninsula - - - a x A 57 Theory of elevation-craters recast, with many additions and new illustrations - 2

= ~

Account of the earthquake in Chili, February 1835, added ; with Map of Chili and plan of the Harbour of Concep- tion 5 4 = 3 ;

Dr. Meyen on proofs of elevation of land in Chili, 1822 - On the effects of earthquakes in the excavation of valleys, recast - = = z - 3

Von Buch on the elevation of Scandinavia = Account of the subsidence of Greenland enlarged

Vol. III. Sir John Herschel on the vegetation of seeds after exposure

to great heat - - - - = 14 ‘Dr. Beck on the great range of some species of testacea - 56 Erman on the level of the Caspian - - - 126 Account of Submarine Forests, transferred to this place

from Chapter xvi. - - - = - 226

Vol. IV. Loess of the Valley of the Rhine, the whole recast with additions - - - z = - 29 Slope of recent strata in the modern delta of the Kander in Lake of Thun - - - - - 69 Crag of Norfolk and Suffolk, and overlying deposit. The whole of this chapter recast ~ - - - 71 M. Dufrénoy on the tertiary strata of the basin of the Gironde 5 > s 121, 124 Note on the latest opinions respecting an alleged difference of level between the Caspian and Black Seas - - 202 Professor Sedgwick and Sir J. Herschel on the causes of the cleavage of rocks a z - 357 to 359

A-S

PREFACE.

New Wood Cuts in the Fifth Edition.

Vol: I. p. 143 149

1 Pleurotoma rotata 2 Map of Siberia - = 3 Iceberg seen off Cape of Good Hope -= 178

4 Shakspeare’s Cliff - 419 Vol. II.

5 Section of Jorullo - 134 6 Diagrams to illustrate the elevation-crater theory - -

7 Plan of the Isle of

Palma = á

154

155 2- Diagrams to illustrate -171 of the trtion-crer| ib. 107 theory - - C176 11 Map of Chili - - 184 12 Map of Harbour of Conception - - Map of Calabria - Map of Sweden and the Baltic - - 290 Vol. TIT. Meandrina labyrinthica 276 Astrea dipsacea - ib Madrepora muricata 277 Caryophyllia fastigiata ib. Porites clavaria - 1b. Oculina hirtella

186

13 211

Vol. IV.

View of worn lime-

stone columns

Niapisca island Succinea elongata Pupa muscorum Helix plebeium Catillus Cuvieri

in

26 AT 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38

Vol.

Crania Parisiensis p.

Plagiostoma Hoperi P. spinosum - - Terebratula Defrancii Ostrea carinata - æ Terebratula octoplicata T. pumilus - r T. carnea = 2 Ostrea vesicularis ~ Belemnites mucrona-

tus - - wa =

Baculites Faujasii - B. anceps 2 = Ammonites rhotoma- gensis - - - Beloptera belemnitoi- dea s = x Hippurites . bioculata and H. radiosa - Terebratula lyra - Pecten 5-costatus - Turrilites costatus p. Cypris spinigera - C. Valdensis - C. tuberculata - Gryphæa virgula - Ostrea deltoidea = Section of Nerinca hieroglyphica - Cast of Diceras arie- tina - - - Terebratula spinosa - Pholadomya fidicula Belemnites hastatus Gryphæa incurva - Nautilus truncatus -

PREFACE, vil

Vol. IV. Vol. IV. 56 Hybodus reticulatus p. 292 | 60 O. giganteum - p. 295 57 Acrodus nobilis - ib | 61 Calymene Blumenba- 58 Avicula socialis Jean ies Chit = = -2 299

59 Orthoceras laterale - 295 | 69 Asaphus Buchii - 16,

Glossary. — Being informed by several readers of my Third Edition, that they only discovered the Glossary when they arrived at the last vo- lume, I have in this, as in the Fourth Edition, appended it to the end of the first volume, in order that it may be conveniently referred to by those

who are beginning the work; and that it might

not be confounded with the Index at the end of the fourth volume.

A general view or summary of the contents of this work cannot fail to be useful in pointing out more clearly the course of reasoning adopted, and the order in which the different subjects are treated. I therefore hope that the student, by referring from time to time to the subjoined sum- mary, will more easily understand the plan of the whole, and the bearing on geology of several digressions which I have introduced on collateral topics, especially on certain departments of na- tural history.

PREFACE.

GENERAL VIEW OR SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY.

After some observations on the nature and objects of Geology (Chap. I. Vol. I.), a sketch is given of the progress of opinion in this. science, from the times of the earliest known writers to our own days (Chaps. II. HI. IV.). From this historical sketch it appears that the first cultivators

of geology indulged in many visionary theories, the errors of which are referred chiefly to one common source, — a prevailing persuasion that the ancient causes of change were different, both as regards their nature and energy, to those now in ‘action. In other words, it was supposed that the causes by which the crust of the earth, and its habitable surface, were modified at remote pe- riods, were almost entirely distinct from the oper- ations by which the surface and crust of the planet are now undergoing a gradual change. The prejudices which led to this assumed dis- cordance of ancient and modern causes are next considered: (Chap. V. to p. 125. Vol. I.), and it is contended that neither the imagined universality of certain sedimentary formations (Chap. V.), nor the different climates which appear to have formerly pervaded the northern hemisphere (Chaps. VI.

i PREFACE. ix VII. VIIL), nor the alleged progressive develop- ment of organic life as inferred from the study of fossil remains (Chap. IX.), lend any solid support to the assumption.

The numerous topics of general interest brought under review in discussing this fandamental ques- tion are freely enlarged upon, in the hope of stimulating curiosity; and the author is aware that in endeavouring to attain this object, he has occasionally carried the beginner beyond his depth. It is presumed, however, that the reader will un- derstand enough to be convinced that the forces formerly employed to remodel the crust of the earth were the same in kind and energy as those now acting: or, at least, he will perceive that the opposite hypothesis is very questionable; and if so, he will enter upon the study of the two treatises which follow on the Changes now in progress in the Organic and Inorganic World (Books II; and IIL) with a just sense of the im- portance of their subject matter, and their direct

bearing on Geology.

The first of these treatises, or that relating to

the changes known to have taken place in the

inorganic creation within the historical era, s

divided into two parts. In the first, an account is

given of the observed effects of aqueous causes, A5

ee

x PREFACE.

such as rivers, springs, tides, and currents (Book II. Chaps. I. to VIIL); in the second, the igneous causes, such as the volcano and earthquake, and all subterranean movements, are considered (Book II. Chaps. IX. to XIX.).

The other treatise, or that on the changes of the organic world, is also divided into two parts; the first of which comprehends all questions relating to the real existence and variability of species, and the limits assigned to their duration (Chaps. I. to XI. Book"III.) The second explains the pro- cesses by which the remains of animals and plants existing at any particular period may be preserved, or become fossil (Chaps. XII. to XVIL.).

The object of the first of the divisions just men- tioned may be stated more fully thus, —the author begins by defining the term species, and combats the notion that one species may be gradually con- verted into another by insensible modifications in the course of ages (Chaps. I. II. III. and IV.). He then enters into a full examination of the

evidence regarded by him as conclusive in favour

of the limited durability of species; in proof of which, he argues that the geographical distribu- tion of species being partial, the changes inces- santly going on in the animate and inanimate

world must constantly tend to their extinction

PREFACE. xi

(Chaps. V. to X.). Whether new species are substituted from time to time for those which die out, is a point on which no decided opinion is offered; the data hitherto obtained being consi- dered insufficient to determine the question. But it is contended that if new species had been intro- duced from time to time as often as others have been lost, we should have no reason to expect to be able to establish the fact during the limited period of our observation (Chap. XI.).

The fourth and last book is occupied with the description of geological monuments strictly so

called, the formations termed tertiary being first

more fully examined and classified, the secondary

and primary rocks being afterwards more briefly alluded to. It appears that the materials which compose the crust of the earth have acquired their present form and arrangement in part from the action of igneous, in part of aqueous causes; or from the combined influence of both these agents, the igneous having operated both upon and far beneath the surface. It seems, also, that almost all rocks have since the era of their formation been moved, bent, and dislocated; and in some cases upraised far above, and in others made to

sink down far below, the level at which they originated.

l j | Fi

SE eT es Att TT ELLIE LIE E

xii PREFACE.

Now the principal source from whence we are enabled to draw such conclusions respecting the nature of the solid materials of the earth, and the changes which they have undergone, is a com- parison of geological phenomena with the effects previously known to have been produced in mo- dern times by running water and subterranean heat. Hence the utility of one of the preceding treatises (Book II.) on aqueous and igneous causes, in which it was shewn that strata are at present in the course of formation by rivers, and marine cur- rents, both in seas and lakes ; and that in several parts of the world rocks have been rent, tilted, and broken by modern earthquakes; or have been heaved up above, or let down below, their former level; also that volcanic eruptions have given rise to mountain masses made up of scoriæ, and of stone both porous and solid. It is also shewn in the Fourth Book, that the class of rocks which are of aqueous origin are not only characterized by being divided into strata, but also by containing within them very generally the remains of shells, and of various animals and plants, which must have been imbedded at the period of the deposi- tion of the strata. In order to comprehend in what manner such remains were buried in the

earth, we must have recourse to the processes now

PREFACE. XII

going on, by which certain individuals of existing species become fossil, and this information has been given in the Third Book. It also appears in the Fourth Book that the fossil remains just alluded to, have belonged for the most part to species which have ceased to exist upon the earth; and after studying the fossils of different strata, we find proofs that many distinct assem- blages of animals and plants have flourished in succession on the globe. In every attempt to reason on the causes of such remarkable changes, we find it necessary to know how far the state of ` the organic world in our own times is fixed or fluctuating; whether there is any reason to believe that in the present course of nature the same spe- cies last for indefinite periods, or whether some are gradually giving place to others, which in their turn are multiplying and extending their geogra- phical range. These questions have also been discussed in the first part of the Third Book; after reading which, the student comes in a great degree prepared to follow the views and specula-

tions of the author on the laws by which the ex-

tinction and successive disappearance of species may be governed.

From these remarks it will be seen that a

study of systematic treatises on the recent changes

XIV PREFACE.

of the organic and inorganic world afford a good

preliminary exercise for those who desire to in- terpret geological monuments. They are thus enabled to proceed from the known to the un- known, or from the observed effects of causes now in action to the analogous effects of the same or similar causes which have acted at remote periods. It was necessary to dwell thus fully on the con- nection of the Second and Third Books with the Fourth, because the relation of these parts of the work to each other is the least obvious. In order to comprehend the plan of other parts, it will be sufficient to peruse the following abridged Table

of Contents.

London, October, 1836.

ABRIDGED TABLE OF THE CONTENTS

OF THE WHOLE WORK.

Vol. I.

Boox T. Cmar. I. Objects and Nature of Geology - pi II. III. IV. Historical Sketch of the Progress of Geology - à = V. Theoretical Errors which have retarded

the Progress of Geology -

VI. VII. VIII. One of these, the assumed Discordance of the ancient and existing Causes of

Change, controverted—Climate -

- The same Question considered in refer-

ence to the Theory of the Progressive

Development of Organic Life -

Boox II. Cuar. I. Changes of the Inorganic World now in

Progress — Aqueous Causes — Ac-

tion of running Water - -

© Rivers — Floods - - -

- Phenomena of Springs - -

- Deposits in Deltas of Lakes and inland

Seas = B P a

- Oceanic Deltas - - =

VI. VII. Tides and Currents — Destroying Effects Vol.

VIII. Tides and Currents — Reproductive

Effects -~ - - =

IX. Igneous Causes — Volcanic Regions -

X. XI. Volcanic District of Naples - %

XII. Etna— Its modern Lavas -

xvi

Boox II. Cuar. XIII.

XIV. XV. XVI. XVII.

XVIII. XIX.

Boox III. Cu. I.

doks

EVE

V. VI. VII. VIIE IX.

X. XI.

XII.

CONTENTS.

Vok: LE

Lancerote — Submarine Volcanos —

Theory of Elevation Craters Earthquakes of the last Fifty Years - Earthquake of Calabria in 1783 - Earthquakes, continued — Temple of

Serapis - - - - Elevation and Subsidence of Land with-

out Earthquakes - - - Causes of Volcanic Heat ~ - Causes of Earthquakes ~ =

Changes of the Organic World now in Progress — Reality of Species - Theory of Transmutation of Species untenable - - - Limits of the Variability of Species - Hybrids - - = -

Geographical Distribution of Species - Changes in the Animate World, which tend to the Extinction of Species -

Changes in the Inorganic World, tend- ing to the Extinction of Species - Whether the Extinction and Creation

of Species can now be in Progress - Modifications in Physical Geography caused by Plants, the inferior Ani- mals, and Man - £ = How Plants and Animals become Fossil in Peat, Blown Sand, and Volcanic Matter - - £

. Burying of Fossils in Alluvial Deposits

XV.

XVI.

and Caves - - 3 Imbedding of Organic Remains in the Deposits of Seas and Lakes 3 How the Remains of Man and his Works are becoming Fossil beneath the Waters - È =

- p.

138 181 210

248

286

307 331

- Boox III.

Cuar. XVII.

XVIII.

- Boox IV. Cu, I.

II.

CONTENTS. XVII

Vol. III. How Freshwater and Marine Plants and Animals are becoming Fossil in Subaqueous Strata - - - p. 258 Formation of Coral Reefs 2 ao Oe

On the Connexion of the Second and Third Books with the Fourth EOS General Arrangement of Materials in the Earth’s: Crust, and Rules for determining the relative Ages of Rocks - = cS resi

- Discovery of Tertiary Groups of succes-

sive Periods - - - $32

- Different Circumstances under which

Vs

VI.

VII. VIII. IDS.

the Secondary and Tertiary Form. .

ations may have originated way egak Subdivision of Tertiary Formations con-

sidered chronologically = SIN

Newer Pliocene Formations — Sicily 382

Rocks of the same Age in Etna - 397 Changes since the Formation of the Newer Pliocene Strata in Sicily - 433

Vol. IV.

. Marine and Volcanic Newer Pliocene

Formations =

. Freshwater and Alluvial of the same

Period = =

- Older Pliocene Formations - -

Crag of Norfolk and Suffolk - -

- Volcanic Rocks of the Older Pliocene

Period > = a s

- Miocene Formations — Marine

Alluvial — Freshwater — Volcanic Eocene Formations — Freshwater

— Paris Basin Volcanic Rocks - Formations of different Coun-

tries and of England = *

xviii

Boox IV.

CONTENTS.

Vol. IV.

Cu. XXI. XXII. Origin of the English Eocene Form-

XXITI. XXIV.

XXV. XXVI.

XXVII.

ations and Denudation of the Weald p. 220 Secondary Formations Š - 268 Analogy of the older Fossiliferous to

the Tertiary Strata a = Relative Antiquity of Mountain’ Chains On the Rocks commonly called Pri-

mary — Unstratified - -

On the same — Stratified = >

DIRECTIONS TO THE BINDER.

Frontispiece to face Title-page, Vol. I.

<P #09 S08'0'00:9'66'6 S A LLA T 800.0 060

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

Geology defined — Compared to History — Its relation to other Physical Sciences — Not to be confounded with Cosmogony.

Grotocy is the science which investigates the suc- cessive changes that have taken place in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature : it inquires into the Causes of these changes, and the influence which they have exerted in modifying the surface and external Structure of our planet.

By these researches into the state of the earth and its inhabitants at former periods, we acquire a more perfect knowledge of its present condition, and more Comprehensive views concerning the laws now govern- ing its animate and inanimate productions. When:we study history, we obtain a more profound insight into human nature, by instituting a comparisonbetween the present and former states of society. We trace the long series of events which have gradually led to the actual posture of affairs; and by connecting effects with their causes, we are enabled to classify and retain in the memory a multitude of complicated relations—the various peculiarities of national character — the dif-

VOL. I. B

Q GEOLOGY COMPARED TO HISTORY, [Book I,

ferent degrees of moral and intellectual refinement, and numerous other circumstances, which, without historical associations, would be uninteresting or im- perfectly understood. As the present condition of nations is the result of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote and others recent, some gradual, others sudden and violent, so the state of the natural world is the result of a long succession of events ; and if we would enlarge our experience of the present economy of nature, we must investigate the effects of her operations in former epochs. We often discover with surprise, on looking back into the chronicles of nations, how the fortune of some battle has influenced the fate of millions of our contemporaries, when it has long been forgotten by the mass of the population. With this remote event we may find inseparably connected the geographical boundaries of a great state, the language now spoken by the inhabitants, their peculiar manners, laws, and religious opinions. But far more astonishing and un- expected are the connections brought to light, when we carry back our researches into the history of nature. The form of a coast, the configuration of the interior of a country, the existence and extent of lakes, valleys, and mountains, can often be traced to the former pre- valence of earthquakes and volcanos in regions which have long been undisturbed. To these remote con- vulsions the present fertility of some districts, the sterile character of others, the elevation of land above the sea, the climate, and various peculiaritie distinctly referred. On the other hand, many distin- guishing features of the surface may often be ascribed to the operation, at a remote era, of slow and tranquil causes—to the gradual deposition of sediment in a

S, may be

Ch. L] ITS RELATION TO OTHER PHYSICAL SCIENCES. 3

lake or in the ocean, or to the prolific increase of testacea and corals.

To select another example, we find in certain localities subterranean deposits of coal, consisting of vegetable matter, formerly drifted into seas and lakes. These seas and lakes have since been filled up, the lands whereon the forests grew have disappeared or changed their form, the rivers and currents which floated the vegetable masses can no longer be traced, and the plants belonged to species which for ages have Passed away from the surface of our planet. Yet the Commercial prosperity, and numerical strength of a Nation, may now be mainly dependent on the local distribution of fuel determined by that ancient state of things.

Geology is intimately related to almost all the physical sciences, as history is to the moral. An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. It would be no less desirable that a geolo- gist should be well versed in chemistry, natural phi- losophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany ; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. With these accomplishments, the historian and geologist would rarely fail to draw correct and philosophical conclusions from the various monuments transmitted to them of former occurrences. They would know to what combination of causes ana- logous effects were referable, and they would often be enabled to supply, by inference, information con- cerning many events unrecorded in the defective

B 2

4 ' GEOLOGY COMPARED TO HISTORY. [Book F.

archives of former ages. But as such extensive ac- quisitions are scarcely within the. reach of any indi- vidual, it is necessary that men who. have devoted their lives to .different departments should unite their efforts; and as the historian receives assistance from the antiquary, and from those who have cultivated dif- ferent branches of moral and political science, so the geologist should avail himself of the aid of many na- turalists, and particularly of those who have studied the fossil remains of lost species of animals and plants. The analogy, however, of the monuments consulted in geology, and those available in history, extends no farther than to one class of historical monuments, — those which may be said to be wndesignedly com- memorative of former events. The canoes, for ex- ample, and stone hatchets found in- our peat bogs, afford an insight into the rude arts and manners of the earliest inhabitants of our island; the buried coin fixes the date of the reign of some Roman emperor ; the ancient encampment indicates the districts once occu- pied by invading armies, and the former method of constructing military defences: the Egyptian mummies throw light on the art of embalming, the rites of sepulture, or the average stature of the human race in ancient Egypt. This class of memorials yields to no other in authenticity, but it constitutes a small part only of the resources on which the historian relies, whereas in geology it forms the only kind of evidence which is at our command. For this reason we must not expect to obtain a full and connected account of any series of events beyond the reach of history. But the testimony of geological monuments, if frequently imperfect, possesses at least the advantage of þeing free from all suspicion of misrepresentation. We may be deceived in the inferences which we draw, in the

Ch. 1.) GEOLOGY DISTINCT FROM COSMOGONY.* — §

same manner as we often mistake the nature and import of phenomena observed in the daily course of nature ; but our liability to err is confined to the inter- pretation, and, if this be correct, our information is certain.

It was long before the distinct nature and legitimate objects of geology were fully recognized, and it was at first confounded with many other branches of inquiry, Just as the limits of history, poetry, and. mythology were ill-defined in the infancy of civilization. Even in Werner’s time, or at the close of the eighteenth century, geology appears to have been regarded as little other than a subordinate department of mineralogy; and Desmarest included it under the head of Physical Geography. But the most common and serious source of confusion arose from the notion that it was the

business of geology to discover the mode in which the earth originated, or, as some imagined, to study the effects of those cosmological causes which were em- ployed by the Author of Nature to bring this planet out of a nascent. and chaotic state into a more perfect and habitable condition. Hutton was the first who endeavoured to draw a strong line of demarcation between his favourite:science and cosmogony, for he declared that geology was in nowise concerned “ with questions as to the origin of things.”

An attempt will be made in the sequel of this work to demonstrate that geology differs as widely from cosmogony, as: speculations concerning the mode of the first creation of man differ from history. But, before entering more at large on this controverted question, it will be desirable to trace the progress of opinion on this: topic, from the earliest ages to the commencement of the present century.

B 3

CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY.

Oriental Cosmogony — Doctrine of the successive destruction and renovation of the world— Origin of this doctrine — Common to the Egyptians (p. 12.) —- Adopted by the Greeks — System of Pythagoras—of Aristotle (p. 20.) — Dogmas concerning the extinction and reproduction of genera and species

~ — Strabo’s theory of elevation by earthquakes (p. 24.) — Pliny — Concluding Remarks on the knowledge of the Ancients,

Oriental Cosmogony.— Tue earliest doctrines of the Indian and Egyptian schools of philosophy agreed in ascribing the first creation of the world to an omni- potent and infinite Being. They concurred also in representing this Being, who had existed from all eternity, as having repeatedly destroyed and repro- duced the world and all its inhabitants. In the “Institutes of Meni,” the sacred volume of the Hin- doos, to which, in its present form, Sir William Jones ascribes an antiquity of at least eight hundred and eighty years before Christ, we find this system of the alternate destruction and renovation of the world proposed in the following remarkable verses : —

“The Being, whose powers are incomprehensible, having created me (Menu) and this universe, again became absorbed in the supreme spirit, changing the time of energy for the hour of repose.

« When that power awakes, then has this world its full expansion ; but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away. .... For

Ch. IL] INSTITUTES OF MENU. 7

while he reposes as it were, embodied spirits endowed with principles of action depart from their several acts, and the mind itself becomes inert.”

Menù then describes the absorption of all beings into the Supreme essence, and the Divine soul itself is said to slumber, and to remain for a time immersed in “the first idea, or in darkness.” He then proceeds (verse fifty-seven), “ Thus that immutable power, by waking and reposing alternately, revivifies and de- stroys, in eternal succession, this whole assemblage of loccmotive and immoveable creatures.”

It is then declared that there has been a long succession of manwantaras, or periods, each of the duration of many thousand ages, and —

« There are creations also, and destructions of worlds innumerable: the Being, supremely exalted, performs all this with as much ease as if in sport, again and again, for the sake of conferring happiness.” *

The compilation of the ordinances of Ment was not all the work of one author nor of one period, and to this circumstance some of the remarkable inequalities of style and matter are probably attributable. There are many passages, however, wherein the attributes and acts of the “ Infinite and Incomprehensible Being” are spoken of with much grandeur of conception and sublimity of diction, as some of the passages above cited, though sufficiently mysterious, may serve to exemplify. There are at the same time such puerile conceits and monstrous absurdities in this cosmogony, that some may be disposed to impute to mere accident any slight approximation to truth, or apparent coin-

* Institutes of Hindoo Law, or the Ordinances of Menù, from the Sanscrit, translated by Sir William Jones, 1796. B 4

8 ' ORIENTAL COSMOGONY., [Book I.

cidence between the oricntal dogmas and observed facts. This pretended revelation, however, was not purely an effort of the unassisted imagination, nor in- vented without regard to the opinions and observations of naturalists. There are introduced into it certain astronomical theories, evidently derived from observ- ation and reasoning. Thus, for instance, it is declared that, at the North Pole, the year was divided into a long day and night, and that their long day was the northern, and their night the southern course of the sun; and to the inhabitants of the moon, it is said, one day is equal in length to one month of mortals.* If such statements cannot be resolved into mere conjec- tures, we have no right to refer to mere chance the prevailing notion, that the earth and its inhabitants had formerly undergone a succession of revolutions and catastrophes interrupted by long intervals of tran- quillity.

Now there are two sources in which such a theory may have originated. The marks of former convul- sions on every part of the surface of our planet are obvious and striking. The remains of marine animals imbedded in the solid strata are so abundant, that they may be expected to force themselves on the cbserv- ation of every people who have made some progress in refinement; and especially where one class of men are expressly set apart from the rest for study and contemplation.- If these appearances are once recog- nized, it seems natural that the mind should conclude in favour, not only of mighty changes in past ages, but of alternate periods of repose and disorder ; — of repose, when the fossil animals lived, grew, and

* Menu, Inst. c.i. 66, and 67.

a a aaan ac ee ee ON

Ch. 11] ORIENTAL COSMOGONY. 9

multiplied — of disorder, when the strata in which they were buried became transferred from the sea to the interior of continents, and were uplifted so as to form Part of high mountain chains. , Those modern writers, who are disposed to disparage the former intellectual advancement and civilization of eastern nations, may Concede some foundation of observed facts for the Curious theories now under consideration, without in- dulging in exaggerated opinions of the. progress of science; especially as universal. catastrophes of the world, and exterminations of organic beings, in the Sense in which they were understood by the Brahmin, are untenable doctrines. We know that the Egyptian priests were aware, not only that the soil beneath the plains of the Nile, but that also the hills bounding the great valley, con- tained marine shells*; and it could hardly have escaped the observation of eastern philosophers, that some Soils were filled with fossil remains, since so many national works requiring extensive excavations were €xecuted by oriental monarchs in very remote eras. They formed canals and tanks on a magnificent scale, and we know that in more recent times (the four- teenth century of our era) the removal of soil neces- sary for such undertakings brought to light geological Phenomena, which attracted the attention of a people less civilized than were many of the older nations of

the East.+

* Herodot. Euterpe, 12.

+ This circumstance is mentioned in a Persian MS. copy of the historian Ferishta, in the library of the East India Company, relating to the rise and progress of the Mahomedan empire in India, procured by Colonel Briggs from the library of Tippoo

3 to] Sultan in 1799; and has been recently referred to at some length

BS

10 ORIENTAL COSMOGONY. [Book I.

But although the Brahmins, like the priests of Egypt, may have been acquainted with the existence of fossil remains in the strata, it is possible that the doctrine of successive destructions and renovations of the world merely received corroboration from such proofs; and that it may have been originally handed down, like the religious traditions of most nations, from a ruder state of society. The system may have had its source in exaggerated accounts of those partial, but often dreadful, catastrophes, which are sometimes occasioned by particular combinations of natural causes. Floods and volcanic eruptions, the agency of water and fire, are the chief instruments of devastation on our globe. We shall point out in the sequel the extent of many of these calamities, re- curring at distant intervals of time, in the present course ef nature; and shall only observe here, that they are so peculiarly calculated to inspire a lasting terror, and are so often fatal in their consequences to great multitudes of people, that it scarcely requires the passion for the marvellous, so characteristic of rude and half-civilized nations, still less the exuberant imagination of eastern writers, to augment them into general cataclysms and conflagrations,

The great flood of the Chinese, which their tra- ditions carry back to the period of Yaou, something

by Dr. Buckland. — (Geol. Trans. 2d Series, vol, ij, part iii. p. 389.) — It is stated that, in the year 762 (or 1360 of our era), the king employed fifty thousand labourers in cutting through a mound, so as to form a junction between the rivers Selima and Sutluj; and in this mound were found the bones of elephants and men, some of them petrified, and some of them resembling bone, The gigantic dimensions attributed to the human bones show them to have belonged to some of the larger pachydermata,

Ch, IL] ORIENTAL COSMOGONY. w

_ more than 2000 years before our eray has been iden- tified by some persons with the universal deluge described in the Old Testament ; but according to Mr. Davis, who accompanied two of our embassies to China, and who has carefully examined their written accounts, the Chinese cataclysm is therein described as interrupting the business of agriculture, rather than as involving a general destruction of the human race. The great Yu was celebrated for having “ opened nine channels to draw off the waters,” which “ covered the low hills and bathed the foot of the highest moun- tains.” Mr. Davis suggests that a great derangement of the waters of the Yellow River, one of the largest in the world, might even now cause the flood of Yaou to be repeated, and lay the most fertile and populous plains of China under water. In modern times the bursting of the banks of an artificial canal, itito which a portion of the Yellow River has been turned, has repeatedly given rise to the most dreadful accidents, and is a source of perpetual anxiety to the govern- ment. It is easy, therefore, to imagine how much greater may have been the inundation, if this valley was ever convulsed by a violent earthquake,* Humboldt relates the interesting fact that after the annihilation of a large part of the inhabitants of Cumana, by an earthquake in 1766, a season of ex- traordinary fertility ensued, in consequence of the great rains which accompanied the subterranean con- vulsions. ‘The Indians,” he says, “ celebrated, after the ideas of an antique superstition, by festivals and

> See Davis on « The Chinese,” published by the Soc. for the Diffus. of Use. Know. vol. i. p. 128.

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E2 EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY. [Book I.

dancing, the destruction of the world and the ap- proaching epoch of its regeneration.” *

The existence of such rites among the rude nations of South America is most important, for it shows what effects may be produced by great catastrophes of this nature, recurring at distant intervals of time, on the minds of a barbarous and uncultivated race. The superstitions of a savage tribe are transmitted through all the Progressive stages of society, till they exert a powerful influence on the mind of the philosopher. He may find, in the monuments of former changes on the earth’s surface, an apparent confirmation of tenets handed down through successive generations, from the rude hunter, whose terrified imagination drew a false picture of those awful visitations of floods and earth- quakes, whereby the whole earth as known to him was simultaneously devastated.

Egyptian Cosmogony. Respecting the cosmogony | of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and reno- vation of the world.+ We learn from Plutarch, that this was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by him from the banks of the Nile ; and we even find-in his verses, as in the Indian systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of each suc- cessive world.t The returns of great catas

trophes were determined by the period of the Annus

Magnus, * Humboldt et Bonpland, Voy. Relat. Hist. vol, i. p. 30. + Prichard’s Egypt. Mythol. p. 177. ł Plut, de Defectu Oraculorum, cap. 12. Censorinus de Die Natali. See also Prichard’s Egypt. Mythol. P. 182,

Ch. IL] EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY. 13

or great year,—a cycle composed of the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when these return together to the same sign whence they were supposed at some remote epoch to have set out. The duration of this great cycle was variously esti- mated. According to Orpheus, it was 120,000 years; according to others, 300,000; and by Cassander it was taken to be 360,000 years.*

We learn particularly from the Timzeus of Plato, that the Egyptians believed the world to be subject to Occasional conflagrations and deluges, whereby the gods arrested the career of human wickedness, and purified the earth from guilt. After each regeneration, mankind were in a state of virtue and happiness, from which they gradually degenerated again into vice and immorality. From this Egyptian doctrine, the poets derived the fable of the decline from the golden to the iron age. The sect of Stoics adopted most fully the System of catastrophes destined at certain intervals to destroy the world. These they taught were of two kinds ;—the Cataclysm, or destruction by deluge, which sweeps away the whole human race, and anni- hilates all the animal and vegetable productions of Nature; and the Ecpyrosis, or conflagration, which dis- solves the globe itself. From the Egyptians also they derived the doctrine of the gradual debasement of man from a state of innocence. Towards the termination of each era the gods could no longer bear with the wicked- ness of men, and a shock of the elements or a deluge overwhelmed them ; after which calamity, Astrea again descended on the earth, to renew the golden age.+

The connection between the doctrine of successive

* Prichard’s Egypt. Mythol. p. 182. ` + Ibid. p. 193.

14 EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY. [Book I.

catastrophes and repeated deteriorations in the moral character of the human race, is more intimate and na- tural than might at first be imagined. For, in a rude state of society, all great calamities are regarded by the people as judgments of God on the wickedness of man. Thus in our own time, the priests persuaded a large part of the population of Chili, and perhaps be- lieved themselves, that the fatal earthquake of 1822 was a sign of the wrath of Heaven for the great poli- tical revolution just then consummated in South America. In like manner, in the account given to Solon by the Egyptian priests, of the submersion of the island of Atlantis under the waters of the ocean, after repeated shocks of an earthquake, we find that the event happened when Jupiter had seen the moral de- pravity of the inhabitants.* Now, when the notion had once gained ground, whether from causes before suggested or not, that the earth had been destroyed by several general catastrophes, it would next be inferred that the human race had been as often destroyed and renovated. And since every extermination was as- sumed to be penal, it could only be reconciled with divine justice, by the supposition that man, at each successive creation, was regenerated in astate of purity and innocence. A very large portion of Asia, inhabited by the ear- liest nations whose traditions have come down to us, has been always subject to tremendous earthquakes. Of the geographical boundaries of these, and their effects, I shall speak in the proper place. Egypt has, for the most part, been exempt from this scourge, and

* Plato’s Timzus,

Ch. IL] EGYPTIAN COSMOGONY. 15

the tradition of catastrophes in that country was per- haps derived from the East. One extraordinary fiction of the Egyptian mythology was the supposed intervention of a masculo-feminine principle, to which was assigned the development of the embryo world, somewhat in the way of incubation. For the doctrine was, that when the first chaotic mass “had been produced, in the form of an egg, by a self- dependent and eternal Being, it required the mysterious functions of this masculo-feminine artificer to reduce ` the component elements into organized forms. Although it is scarcely possible to recall to mind this conceit without smiling, it does not seem to differ essentially in principle from some cosmological notions of men of great genius and science in modern Europe. The Egyptian philosophers ventured on the perilous task of seeking from among the processes now going on something analogous to the mode of operation em- ployed by the Author of Nature in the first creation of organized beings, and they compared it to that which governs the birth of new individuals by generation. To suppose that some general rules might be observed in the first origin of created beings, or the first intro- duction of new species into our system, was not absurd, nor inconsistent with any thing known to us in the economy of the universe. But the hypothesis, that there was any analogy between such laws and those employed in the continual reproduction of species, was purely gratuitous. In like manner, it is not unreason- able, nor derogatory to the attributes of Omnipotence, to imagine that some general laws may be observed in the creation of new worlds; and if man could witness the birth of such worlds, he might reason by induction upon the origin of his own. But in the ab-

EET IE ISNT OAT iT

16 PYTHAGOREAN SYSTEM. [Book I;

sence of such data, an attempt has been made to fancy some analogy between the agents now employed to destroy, renovate, and perpetually vary the earth’s sur- face, and those whereby the first chaotic mass was formed, and brought by supposed nascent energy from the embryo to the habitable state.

By how many shades the elaborate Systems, con- structed on these principles, may differ from the mys-- teries of the “Mundane Egg” of Egyptian fable, I shall not inquire. It would, perhaps, be dangerous ground ; and some of our contemporaries might not sit as patiently as the Athenian audience, when the fiction of the chaotic egg, engrafted by Orpheus upon their own mythology, was turned into ridicule by Aristo- phanes. That comedian introduced his birds singing, in a solemn hymn, « How sable-plumaged Night con- ceived in the boundless bosom of Erebus, and laid an egg, from which, in the revolution of ages, sprung Love, resplendent with golden pinions. Love fecun- dated the dark-winged chaos, and gave origin to the race of birds.” *

Pythagorean Doctrines. — Pythagoras, ‘who resided for more than twenty years in Egypt, and, according to Cicero, had visited the East, and conversed with the Persian philosophers, introduced into his own country, on his return, the doctrine of the gradual de- terioration of the human race from an original state of virtue and happiness: but if we are to judge of his theory concerning the destruction and renovation of the earth from the sketch given by Ovid, we must concede it to have been far more philosophical than any known ‘version of the cosmologies of Oriental or

Egyptian sects. | * Aristophanes, Birds, 694,

Ch, IL] ` PYTHAGOREAN SYSTEM. iz

Although Pythagoras is introduced by the poet as delivering his doctrine in person, some of the illustra- tions are derived from natural events which happened after the death of the philosopher. But nothwithstand- ing these anachronisms, we may regard the account as a true picture of the tenets of the Pythagorean school in the Augustan age; and although perhaps partially modified, it must have contained the substance of the original scheme. Thus considered, it is extremely curious and instructive; for we here find a compre- hensive and masterly summary of almost all the great causes of change now in activity on the globe, and these adduced in confirmation of a principle of per- petual and gradual revolution inherent in the nature of our terrestrial system. These doctrines, it is true, are not directly applied to the.explanation of geological phenomena ; or, in other words, no attempt is made to estimate what may have been in past ages, or what may hereafter be, the aggregate amount of change brought about by such never-ending fluctuations. Had this been the case, we might have been called upon to admire so extraordinary an anticipation with no less interest than astronomers, when they endeavour to divine by what means the Samian philosopher came to the knowledge of the Copernican system.

Let us now examine the celebrated passages to which we have been adverting * : —

“ Nothing perishes in this world; but things merely vary and change their form. To be born, means simply that a thing begins to be something different from what it was before; and dying, is ceasing to be the same thing. Yet, although nothing retains long the same

* Ovid’s Metamor. lib. 15,

-18 PYTHAGOREAN SYSTEM. [Book I,

image, the sum of the whole remains constant.” These general propositions are then confirmed by a series of examples, all derived from natura] appearances, except the first, which refers to the golden age giving place to the age of iron. The illustrations are thus conse- cutively adduced.

1. Solid land has been converted into sea.

2. Sea has been changed into land. Marine shells lie far distant from the deep, and the anchor has been found on the summit of hills.

3. Valleys have been excavated by running water, and floods have washed down hills into the sea. *

4. Marshes have become dry ground.

5. Dry lands have been changed into stagnant pools,

6. During earthquakes some springs have been closed up, and new ones have broken out. Rivers have deserted their channels, and have been re-born elsewhere ; as the Erasinus in Greece, and Mysus in Asia.

7. The waters of some rivers, formerly sweet, have become bitter, as those of the Anigris in Greece, &e.F

8. Islands have become connected with the main Jand, by the growth of deltas and new deposits, as in the case of Antissa joined to Lesbos, Pharos to Egypt, &c.

9. Peninsulas have been divided from the main land, and have become islands, as Leucadia; and according to tradition Sicily, the sea having carried away the isthmus,

* Eluvie mons est deductus in æquor, v. 267. The meaning of this last verse is somewhat obscure, but, taken with the context, may be supposed to allude to the abrading power of floods, tor- rents, and rivers.

+ The impregnation from new mineral Springs, caused by earthquakes in volcanic countries, is, perhaps, here alluded to.

Ch. IT] PYTHAGOREAN SYSTEM. 19

10. Land has been submerged by earthquakes: the Grecian cities of Helice and Buris, for example, are to be seen under the sea, with their walls inclined.

11. Plains have been upheaved into hills by the confined air seeking vent, as at sing cele in the Pelo- ponnesus.

12. The temperature of some springs varies at different periods. The waters of others are inflam- mable. *

13. There are streams which have a petrifying power, and convert the substances which they touch into marble.

14. Extraordinary medicinal and deleterious effects are produced by the water of different lakes and springs. F

15. Some rocks and islands, after floating and having been subject to violent movements, have at length become stationary and immoveable, as Delos, and the Cyanean Isles. $

16. Volcanic vents shift their position ; there was a time when Etna was not a burning mountain, and the

* This is probably an allusion to the escape of inflammable gas, like that in the district of Baku, west of the Caspian; at Pietra- mala, in the Tuscan Apennines; and several other places. '

+ Many of those described seem fanciful fictions, like the virtues still so commonly attributed to mineral waters.

f Raspe, in a learned and. judicious essay (De Novis Insulis, cap. 19.), has made it appear extremely probable that all the traditions of certain islands in the Mediterranean having at some former time frequently shifted their positions, and at length become - stationary, originated in the great change produced in their form by earthquakes and submarine eruptions, of which there have been modern examples in the new islands raised in the time of

history. When the series of convulsions ended, the island was ' said to become fixed.

90 ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM. [Book I.

time will come when it will cease to burn. Whether it be that some caverns become closed up by the move- ments of the earth, and others opened, or whether the fuel is finally exhausted, &c. &c. i

The various causes of change in the inanimate world having been thus enumerated, the doctrine of equivocal generation is next propounded, as illus- trating a corresponding perpetual flux in the animate creation.*

In the Egyptian and Eastern cosmogonies, and in the Greek version of them, no very definite meaning can, in general, be attached to the term “ destruction of the world ;” for sometimes it would seem almost to imply the annihilation of our planetary system, and at others a mere revolution of the surface of the earth.

Opinions of Aristotle. —From the works now extant of Aristotle, and from the system of Pythagoras, as above exposed, we might certainly infer that these philosophers: considered the agents of change now Operating in nature, as capable of bringing about in

* It is not inconsistent with the Hindoo mythology to suppose that Pythagoras might have found in the East not only the system of universal and violent catastrophes and periods of repose in end- less succession, but also that of periodical revolutions, effected by the continued agency of ordinary causes. For Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the first, second, and third persons of the Hindoo triad,

severally represented the Creative, the Preserving, and the De- stroying powers of the Deity. The co-existence of these three attributes, all in simultaneous operation, might well accord with the notion of perpetual but partial alterations finally bringing about a complete change. But the fiction expressed in the verses before quoted from Mend, of eternal vicissitudes in the vigils and slumbers of the Infinite Being, seems accommodated to the sys- tem of great general catastrophes followed by new creations and

periods of repose.

Ch. I1] ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM. 21

the lapse of ages. a complete revolution; and the Stagyrite even considers occasional catastrophes, hap- pening at distant intervals of time, as part of the regular and ordinary course of nature. The deluge of Deucalion, he says, affected Greece only, and prin- Cipally the part called Hellas, and it arose from great inundations of rivers during a rainy winter. But such extraordinary winters, he says, though after a certain period they return, do not always revisit the same places.*

Censorinus quotes it as Aristotle’s opinion, that there were general inundations of the globe, and that they alternated with conflagrations; and that the flood constituted the winter of the great year, or astro- nomical cycle, while’the conflagration, or destruction by fire, is the summer or period of greatest heat.+ If this passage, as Lipsius supposes, be an amplifi- cation, by Censorinus, of what is written in “the Meteorics,” it is a gross misrepresentation of the doctrine of the Stagyrite, for the general bearing of his reasoning in that treatise tends clearly in an oppo- Site direction. He refers to many examples of; changes „now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on. the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages.. He instances particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the Palus Mzotis within sixty years from his own time; and although, in the same chapter, he says nothing of earthquakes, yet in others of the same treatise he shows himself not

* Meteor. lib, i. cap. 12. + De Die Nat.

99 ARISTOTELIAN SYSTEM, [Book 1,

unacquainted with their effects.* He alludes, for example, to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands previous to a volcanic eruption. « The changes of the earth,” he says, “ are so slow in comparison to the du- ration of our lives, that they are overlooked (Aavbaver); and the migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event to be forgotten.” +

When we consider the acquaintance displayed by Aristotle, in his various works, with the destroying and renovating powers of Nature, the introductory and concluding passages of the twelfth chapter of his “ Meteorics” are certainly very remarkable. In the first sentence he says, “The distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it becomes land where it was sea; and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period.” The concluding observation is as follows: _— “As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their operations ; but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up, and they perish; and the sea also continually déserts some lands and invades others. The same tracts, therefore, of the earth are not, some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the course of time.”

It seems, then, that the Greeks had not only derived from preceding nations, but had also, in some slight

* Lib. il. cap. IEG 15 and 16. + Ibid. ;

Ch. IL] CREATION OF SPECIES, 23

degree, deduced from their own observations, the theory of periodical revolutions in the inorganic world: there is, however, no ground for imagining that they contemplated former changes in the races of animals and plants. Even the fact that marine re- mains were inclosed in solid tocks, although observed by Some, and even made the groundwork of geological Speculation, never stimulated the industry or guided the inquiries of naturalists. It is not impossible that the theory of equivocal generation might have en- gendered some indifference on this subject, and that a belief in the spontaneous production of living beings from the earth or corrupt matter might have caused the crganic world to appear so unstable and fluctuating, that phenomena indicative of former changes would not awaken intense curiosity. The Egyptians, it is true, had taught, and the Stoics had repeated, that the earth had once given birth to some monstrous animals, Which existed no longer ;,but the prevailing opinion Seems to have been, that after each great catastrophe the same species of animals were created over again, This tenet is implied in a passage of Seneca, where, Speaking of a future deluge, he says, “ Every animal Shall be generated anew, and man free from guilt shall be given to the earth.” *

An old Arabian version of the doctrine of the suc- cessive revolutions of the globe, translated by Abraham Ecchellensis t, seems to form a singular exception to

* ; t À ; , Omne ex integro animal generabitur, dabiturque terris homo

inscius scelerum, — Quest. Nat. iii. c. 29.

t This author was Regius Professor of Syriac and Arabic at Paris, where, in 1685, he published a Latin translation of many Arabian MSS. on different departments of philosophy. This work has always been considered of high authority.

94, THEORY OF STRABO. [Book I.

the general rule, for here we find the idea of different genera and species having been created. The Ger- banites, a sect of astronomers who flourished some centuries before the Christian era, taught as follows : —“ That after every period of thirty-six thousand four hundred and twenty-five years, there were produced a pair of every species of animal, both male and female, from whom animals might be propagated and inhabit this lower world. But when a circulation of the heavenly orbs was completed, which is finished in that space of years, other genera and species of animals are propagated, as also of plants and other things, and the first order is destroyed, and so it goes on for ever and ever.” *

Theory of Strabo. — As we learn much of the tenets of the Egyptian and oriental schools in the writings of the Greeks, so many speculations of the early Giek

* Gerbanitæ docebant singulos triginta sex mille annos qua- dringentos, viginti quinque bina ex singulis animalium speciebus produci, marem scilicet ac feminam, ex quibus animalia propa- gantur, huncque inferiorem incolunt orbem. Absoluta autem celestium orbium circulatione, que illo annorum conficitur spatio,

iterum alia producuntur animalium genera et species, quemad-

modum et plantarum aliarumque rerum, et primus destruitur ordo, sicque in infinitum producitur. — Histor. Orient. Suppl. per Abrahamum Ecchellensum, Syrum Maronitam, cap. 7. et 8. calcem Chronici Oriental. Parisiis, e Typ. regia, 1685, fol.

I have given the punctuation as in the Paris edition, there being no comma after quinque; but, at the suggestion of M. de Schlegel, I have referred the number twenty-five to the period of years, and not to the number of pairs of each species created at

one time, as I had done in the two first editions. Fortis inferred

that twenty-five new species only were created at a time; a con- struction which the passage will not admit. Mém. sur l’Hist. Nat. de l'Italie, vol. i. p. 202.

Ch. IL] THEORY OF STRABO. 25

authors are made known to us in the works of the Augustan and later ages. Strabo, in particular, enters largely, in the second book of his Geography, into the opinions of Eratosthenes and other Greeks on one of the most difficult problems in geology, viz. by what causes Marine shells came to be plentifully buried in the earth at such great elevations and distances from the sea. He notices, amongst others, the explanation of Xanthus the Lydian, who said that the seas had once been more extensive, and that they had afterwards been partially dried up, as in his own time many lakes, rivers, and wells in Asia had failed during a season of drought. Treating this conjecture with merited dis- regard, Strabo passes on to the hypothesis of Strato, the natural philosopher, who had observed that the quantity of mud brought down by rivers into the Euxine was so great, that its bed must be gradually raised, while the rivers still continue to pour in an undiminished quantity of water. He, therefore, conceived that, originally, when the Euxine was an inland sea, its level had by this means become so much elevated that it burst its barrier near Byzantium, and formed a communication With the Propontis; and this partial drainage, he sup- posed, had already converted the left side into marshy ground, and thus, at last, the whole would be choked Up with soil. So, it was argued, the Mediterranean had once opened a passage for itself by the Columns of Hercules into the Atlantic; and perhaps the abund- ance of sea-shells in Africa, near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, might also be the deposit of some former

inland Sea, which had at length forced a passage and escaped,

But Strabo rejects this theory, as insufficient to ac-

count for all the phenomena, and he proposes one of VOL. I. c

26 THEORY OF STRABO. [Book I.

his own, the profoundness of which modern geologists are only beginning to appreciate. « Itis not,” he says, “ because the lands covered by seas were originally at different altitudes, that the waters have risen, or sub- sided, or receded from some parts and inundated others. But the reason is, that the same land is some- times raised up and sometimes depressed, and the sea also is simultaneously raised and depressed, so that it either overflows or returns into its own place again.’ We must, therefore, ascribe the cause to the ground, either to that ground which is under the sea, or to that which becomes flooded by it, but rather to that which lies beneath the sea, for this is more moveable, and, on account of its humidity, can be altered with greater celerity.* Jt is proper,” he observes in continuation, “to derive our explanations from things which are obvious, and in some measure of daily occur- rence, such as deluges, earthquakes, and voleanie erup- tions +, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea; for the last raise up the sea also; and when the same lands subside again, they occasion the sea to be let down. And it.is not merely the small, but the large

* “ Quod enim hoe attollitur aut subsidit, et vel inundat

quædam loca, vel ab iis recedit, ejus rei causa non est, quod alia aliis sola humiliora sint aut altiora; sed quod idem solum modd attollitur modd deprimitur, simulque etiam mod6 attollitur modo deprimitur mare: itaque vel exundat vel in suum redit locum.” Posted, p. 88. “ Restat, ut causam adscribamus solo, sive quod mari subest sive quod inundatur ; potiùs tamen ei quod

mari subest. Hoc enim multò est mobilius, et quod ob humidita- tem celeriùs mutari possit.” — Strabo, Geog. Edit. Almelov. Amst. 1707. lib. i.

+ Volcanic eruptions, eruptiones flatuum, in the Latin transla- tion, and in the original Greek, avaguonuara, gaseous eruptions ? or inflations of land ?— ibid., p. 93.

Ch, IL] KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS, 27

islands also, and not merely the islands, but the con- tinents, which can be lifted up together with the sea; and both large and small tracts may subside, for habi- tations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many others, have been engulphed by earthquakes.”

In another place, this learned geographer, in allud- ing to the tradition that Sicily had been separated by a convulsion from Italy, remarks, that at present the land near the sea in those parts was rarely shaken by earthquakes, since there were now open orifices whereby fire and ignited matters, and waters escape ; but formerly, when the volcanos of Etna, the Lipari Islands, Ischia, and others, were closed up, the impri- soned fire and wind might have produced far more vehement movements.* The doctrine, therefore, that volcanos are safety valves, and that the subterranean convulsions are probably most violent when first the volcanic energy shifts itself to a new quarter, is not modern.

We learn from a passage in Strabo't, that it was a dogma of the Gaulish Druids that the universe was immortal, but destined to survive catastrophes both of fire and water. That this doctrine was communicated to them from the East, with much of their learning, cannot be doubted. Cæsar, it will be remembered, Says that they made use of Greek letters in arithme- tical computations. f

Pliny.—This philosopher had no theoretical opinions of his own concerning changes of the earth’s surface ; and in this department, as in others, he restricted him- self to the task of a compiler, without reasoning on the facts stated by him, or attempting to digest them into

* Strabo, lib. vi. P. 396. + Book iv. ł L. vi. ch. xiii,

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2 SS oT y

28 KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANCIENTS. [Book I.

`

regular order. But his enumeration of the new islands which had been formed in the Mediterranean, and of other convulsions, shews that the ancients had not been inattentive observers of the changes which had taken place within the memory of man.

Such, then, appear to have been the opinions enter- tained before the Christian era, concerning the past revolutions of our globe. Although no particular in- vestigations had been made for the express purpose of interpreting the monuments of ancient changes, they were too obvious to be entirely disregarded; and the observation of the present course of nature presented too many proofs of alterations continually in progress on the earth to allow philosophers to believe that na- ture was in a state of rest, or that the surface had remained, and would continue to remain, unaltered. But they had never compared. attentively the results of the destroying and reproductive operations of mo- dern times with those of remote eras, nor had they ever entertained so much as a conjecture concerning the comparative antiquity of the human race, or of living species of animals and plants, with those belong- ing to former conditions of the organic world. They had studied the movements and positions of the hea- venly bodies with laborious industry, and made some progress in investigating the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms; but the ancient history of the globe was to them a sealed book, and, although written in characters of the most striking and imposing kind, they were unconscious even of its existence.

CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY — continued.

Arabian writers of the tenth century — Avicenna — Omar — Cosmogony of the Koran — Kazwini— Early Italian writers (p. 34, )— Fracastoro — Controversy as to the real nature of fossils — Attributed to the Mosaic deluge — Palissy — Steno

| (p. 40.) — Scilla — Quirini — Boyle — Lister — Leibnitz — Hooke’s Theory of Elevation by Earthquakes (p. 47.) — Of

-lost species of animals — Ray — Physico-theological writers — Woodward’s Diluvial Theory (p. 54.) — Burnet— Whiston

. — Vallisneri — Lazzaro Moro (p. 60.) — Generelli — Buffon (p; 68.) — His theory condemned by the Sorbonne as unortho- dox— His declaration — Targioni — Arduino — Michell — Catcott — Raspe — Fuchsel (p. 76.) — Fortis — Testa — Whitehurst — Pallas — Saussure.

Arabian writers.— AFTER the decline of the Roman empire, the cultivation of physical science was first revived with some success by the Saracens, about the middle of the eighth century of our era. The works of the most eminent classic writers were purchased at great expense from the Christians, and translated into Arabic; and Al Mamin, son of the famous Harûn-al- Rashid, the contemporary of Charlemagne, received with marks of distinction, at his court at Bagdad, astronomers and men of learning from different coun- tries. This caliph, and some of his successors, en- countered much opposition and jealousy from the doctors of the Mahomedan law, who wished the Mos- lems to confine their studies to the Koran, dreading

the effects of the diffusion of a taste for the physical sciences, *

* Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. chap. iv. sectioniii.

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30 AVICENNA — OMAR — THE KORAN. [Book I,

Avicenna. — Almost `all the works of the early Arabian writers are lost. Amongst those of the tenth century, of which fragments are now extant, is a short treatise “ On the Formation and Classification of Mine- rals,” by Avicenna, a physician, in whose arrangement there is considerable merit. The second chapter, “On the Cause of Mountains,” is remarkable; for mountains, he says, are formed, some by essential, others by accidental causes. In illustration of the essential, he instances “a violent earthquake, by which land is elevated, and becomes a mountain ;” of the ac- cidental, the principal, he says, is excavation by water, whereby cavities are produced, and adjoining lands made to stand out and form eminences.*

Omar — Cosmogony of the Koran.—In the same century also, Omar, surnamed “ El Aalem,” or “ The Learned,” wrote a work on “ The Retreat of the Sea.” It appears that on comparing the charts of his own time with those made by the Indian and Persian astro- nomers two thousand years before, he had satisfied himself that important changes had taken place since the times of history in the form of the coasts of Asia, and that the extension of the sea had been greater at some former periods. He was confirmed in this opi- nion by the numerous salt springs and marshes in the interior of Asia,— a phenomenon from which Pallas, in more recent times, has drawn the same inference,

Von Hoff has suggested, with great probability, that the changes in the level of the Caspian (some of which there is reason to believe have happened within the

* Montes quandoque fiunt ex causa essentiali, quandéque ex causa accidentali. Ex essentiali causa, ut ex vehementi motu terre elevatur terra, et fit mons. Accidentali, &c. — De Con- gelatione Lapidum, ed. Gedani, 1682.

Ch, 111] OMAR — THE KORAN. 31

historical era), and the geological appearances in that district, indicating the desertion by that sea of its an- cient bed, had probably led Omar to his theory of a general' subsidence. But whatever may have been the proofs relied on, his system was declared contradictory to certain passages in the Koran, and he was called Upon publicly to recant his errors; to avoid which persecution he went into voluntary banishment from Samarkand.*

The cosmological opinions expressed in the Koran are few, and merely introduced incidentally: so that it is not easy to understand how they could have in- terfered so seriously with free discussion on the former changes of the globe. The Prophet declares that the earth was created in two days, and the mountains were then placed on it; and during these, and two addi- tional days, the inhabitants of the earth were formed ; and in two more the seven heavens.+ There is no

* Von Hoff, Geschichte der Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche, vol. i. p. 406., who cites Delisle, bey Hismann Welt-und Völker- geschichte. Alte Gesch. .1"°" Theil. s. 234. — The Arabian persecutions for heretical dogmas in theology were often very sanguinary. In the same ages wherein learning was most in esteem, the Mahometans were divided into two sects, one of whom Maintained that the Koran was increate, and had subsisted in the very essence of God from all eternity ; and the other, the Motaza- lites, who, admitting that the Koran was instituted by God, con- ceived it to have been first made when revealed to the Prophet at

Mecca, and accused their opponents of believing in two eternal beings,

The opinions of each of these sects were taken up by different caliphs in succession, and the followers of each some- times submitted to be beheaded, or flogged till at the point of

death, rather than renounce their creed. — Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. ch. iv.

t Koran, chap. xli. c4

39 OMAR — THE KORAN. | [Book I.

more detail of circumstances; and the deluge, which is also mentioned, is discussed with equal brevity. The waters are represented to have poured out of an oven; a strange fable, said to be borrowed from the Persian Magi, who represented them as issuing from the oven of an old woman.* All men were drowned, save Noah and his family ; and then God said, “O earth, swallow up thy waters; and thou, O heaven, withhold thy rain ;” and immediately the waters abated.+

We may suppose Omar to have represented the desertion of the land by the sea to have been gradual, and that his hypothesis required a greater lapse of ages than was consistent with Moslem orthodoxy ; for ‘ it is to be inferred from the Koran, that man and this planet were created at the same time; and although Mahomet did not limit expressly the antiquity of the human race, yet he gave an implied sanction to the Mosaic chronology, by the veneration expressed by him for the Hebrew Patriarchs. +

A manuscript work, entitled the “ Wonders of Nature,” is preserved in the Royal Library at Paris, by an Arabian writer, Mohammed Kazwini, who flou- rished in the seventh century of the Hegira, or at the close of the thirteenth century of our era.§ Besides several curious remarks on aerolites, earthquakes, and the successive changes of position which the land and

* Sales Koran, chap. xi. see note, + Ibid.

ł Kossa, appointed master to the Caliph Al Mamûd, was au- thor of a book, entitled «* The History of the Patriarchs and Pro- phets, from the Creation of the World.” — Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. chap. iv.

§ Translated by MM. Chezy and De Sacy, and cited by M. Elie de Beaumont, Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1832.

0) MOHAMMED KAZWINI. 33

: sea have undergone, we meet with the following beautiful passage, which is given as the narrative of Khidhz, an allegorical personage: — “ I passed one day by a very ancient and wonderfully populous city, and asked one of its inhabitants how long it had been ‘founded. <Itis indeed a mighty city,’ replied he, ‘we know not how long it has existed, and our ancestors Were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves.’ Five centuries afterwards, as I passed by the same place, I could not perceive the slightest vestige of the city. I demanded of a peasant who was gathering herbs, upon its former site, how long it had been destroyed. ‘In sooth, a strange question !’ replied he. ‘ The ground here has never been different from what you now behold it’ —‘ Was there not of old,’ said I, ‘a splendid city here ?’— < Never,’ answered he, ‘so far as we have seen, and never did our fathers speak to us of any such.’ On my return there, 500 years afterwards, I found the sea in the same place, and on its shores were a party of fishermen, of whom I inquired how long the land had been covered by the waters? ‘Is this a question,’ said they, ‘for a man like you? this spot has always been what it is now. ` I again returned, 500 years after- wards, and the sea had disappeared ; I inquired of a man who stood alone upon the spot, how long ago this change had taken place, and he gave me the same answer as I had received before. Lastly, on coming back again after an equal lapse of time, I found there a flourishing city, more populous and more rich in beautiful buildings than the city I had seen the first time, and when I would fain have informed myself concerning its origin, the inhabitants answered me, ‘Its rise is lost. in remote antiquity: we are ignorant

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3A, = FRACASTORO. [Book 1,

how long it has existed, and our fathers were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves.’ ”

Early Italian writers — Fracastoro, 151'7.— It was not till the earlier part of the sixteenth century that geological phenomena began to attract the attention of the Christian nations. At that period a very animated controversy sprang up in Italy, concerning the true nature and origin of marine shells, and other organized fossils, found abundantly in the strata of the peninsula.* The excavations made in 1517, for re- pairing the city of Verona, brought to light a multitude of curious petrifactions, and furnished matter for speculation to different authors, and among the rest to Fracastoro +, who declared his opinion, that fossil shells had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly lived and multiplied where their exuviæ are now found. He exposed the absurdity of having recourse to a certain “ plastic force,” which it way said had power to fashion stones into organic forms; and, with no less cogent arguments, demonstrated the futility of attributing the situation of the shells in question to the Mosaic deluge, a theory obstinately defended by some. That inundation, he observed, was too transient, it consisted principally of fluviatile waters; and if it had transported shells to great dis- tances, must have strewed them over the surface, not buried them at vast depths in the interior of mountains. His clear exposition of the evidence would have ter- minated the discussion for ever, if the passions of - mankind had not been enlisted in the dispute; and

* See Brocchi’s Discourse on the Progress of the Study of Fossil Conchology in Italy, where some of the following notices on Italian writers will be found more at large,

+ Museum Calceol.

Ch, 1L] _ ' EARLY ITALIAN WRITERS. 35

even though doubts should for a time have remained in some minds, they would speedily have been removed _ by the fresh information obtained almost immediately afterwards, respecting the structure of fossil remains, and of their living analogues.

But the clear and philosophical views of Fracastoro 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 Noachian deluge. It had been the general belief of the Christian world down to the period now under consideration, that the origin of this planet was not more remote than a few thou- Sand years ; and that since the creation the deluge was the only great catastrophe by which considerable Change had been wrought on the earth’s surface. On the other hand, the opinion was scarcely less general, that the final dissolution of our system was an event to be looked for at no distant period. The era, it is true, of the expected millennium had passed away ; and for five hundred years after the fatal hour, when the annihilation of the planet had been looked for, the monks remained in undisturbed enjoyment of rich stants of land bequeathed to them by pious donors, Who, in the preamble of deeds beginning “ appropin- quante mundi termino ” “ appropinquante magno

judicii die,” left lasting monuments of the popular delusion.*

* In Sicily, in particular, the title-deeds of many valuable grants of land to the monasteries are headed by such preambles,

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36 ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH, - [Book f.

But although in the sixteenth century it had become necessary to interpret the prophecies more liberally, and to assign a more distant date to the future con- flagration of the world, we find, in the speculations of the early geologists, perpetual allusion to such an ap- proaching catastrophe ; while in all that regarded the antiquity of the earth, no modification whatever of the opinions of the dark ages had been effected. Consider- able alarm was at first excited when the attempt was made to invalidate, by physical proofs, an article of faith so generally received; but there was sufficient spirit of toleration and candour amongst the Italian ecclesiastics, to allow the subject to be canvassed with much freedom. They even entered warmly into the controversy themselves, often favouring different sides of the question; and however much we may deplore the loss of time and labour devoted to the defence of untenable positions, it must be conceded, that they displayed far less polemic bitterness than certain writers who followed them “beyond the Alps,” two centuries and a half later.

CONTROVERSY AS TO THE REAL NATURE OF FOSSIL ORGANIC REMAINS,

Mattioli — Falloppio. — The system of scholastic disputations encouraged in the universities of the middle ages had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation ; and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater skill was required to maintain them: the end and

composed by the testators about the period when the good King Roger was expelling the Saracens from that island.

Ch. 1L] EARLY ITALIAN WRITERS. Ot

object of these intellectual combats being victory, and not truth. No theory could be so far-fetched or fan- tastical as not to attract some followers, provided it fell in with popular notions; and as cosmogonists were not at all restricted, in building their systems, to the agency of known causes, the opponents of Fracastoro met his arguments by feighing imaginary causes, which differed from each other rather in name than in sub- Stance. Andrea Mattioli, for instance, an eminent botanist, the illustrator of Dioscorides, embraced the notion of Agricola, a skilful German miner, that a cer- tain “materia pinguis,’ or “ fatty matter,” set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes. Yet Mattioli had come to the conclusion, from his own observations, that porous bodies, such as bones and Shells, might be converted into stone, as being per- Meable to what he termed the “ lapidifying juice.” In like manner, Falloppio of Padua conceived that petrified shells were generated by fermentation in the Spots where they are found, or that they had in some Cases acquired their form from “ the tumultuous move- ments of terrestrial exhalations.” Although celebrated as a professor of anatomy, he taught that certain tusks of elephants dug up in his time at Puglia were mere earthy concretions; and, consistently with these prin- ciples, he even went so far as to consider it probable, - that the vases of Monte Testaceo at Rome were natural impressions stamped in the soil.* In the same spirit, Mercati, who published, in 1574, faithful figures of the fossil shells preserved by Pope Sixtus V. in the Museum of the Vatican, expressed an opinion that they were mere stones, which had assumed their

* De Fossilib. pp. 109. and 176.

TE Eu

38 NATURE OF ORGANIZED FOSSILS. [Book I,

peculiar configuration from the influence of the hea- venly bodies ; and Olivi of Cremona, who described the fossil remains of a rich Museum at Verona, was satisfied with considering them as mere “ sports of nature.”

Some of the fanciful notions of those times were deemed less unreasonable, as being somewhat in har- mony with the Aristotelian theory of spontaneous generation, then taught in all the schools. For men who had been taught in early youth, that a large pro- portion of living animals and plants were formed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms, or had sprung from the corruption of organic matter, might easily per- suade themselves, that organic shapes, often imper- fectly preserved in the interior of solid rocks, owed their existence to causes equally obscure and mys- terious.

Cardano, 1552:— But there were not wanting some who, during the progress of this century, expressed more sound and sober opinions. The title of a work of Cardano’s, published in 1552, “De Subtilitate” (corresponding to what would now be called Trans- cendental Philosophy), would lead us to expect, in the chapter on minerals, many far-fetched theories cha- racteristic of that age; but, when treating of petrified shells, he decided that they clearly indicated the former sojourn of the sea upon the mountains.*

Cesalpino — Majoli, 1597.— Cesalpino, a celebrated botanist, conceived that fossil shells had been left on the land by the retiring sea, and had concreted into stone during the consolidation of the soil} ; and in the following year (1597), Simeone Majoli} went still

# Brocchi, Con. Foss, Subap. Disc. sui Progressi. vol. i. p.57.

+ De Metallicis. -$ Dies Caniculares.

Ch, UL] _ PALISSY*~ COLONNA. 39

farther ; and, coinciding for the most part with the views of Cesalpino, suggested that the shells and sub- Marine matter of the Veronese, and other districts, might have been cast up upon the land by volcanic explosions, like those which gave rise, in 1538, to onte Nuovo, near Puzzuoli. This hint seems to have been the first imperfect attempt to connect the Position of fossil shells with the agency of volcanos, a System afterwards more fully developed by Hooke, azzaro Moro, Hutton, and other writers.

Two years afterwards, Imperati advocated the ani- mal origin of fossilized shells, yet admitted that stones Could vegetate by force of “an internal principle ;” and, as evidence of this, he referred to the teeth of

sh, and spines of echini found petrified.*

Palissy, 1580. — Palissy, a French writer on “ The

tigin of Springs from Rain-water,” and of other SCientific works, undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, that Petrified shells had all been deposited by the universal deluge, «He was the first,” said Fontenelle, when, in the French Academy, he pronounced his eulogy, Nearly a century and a half later, “ who dared assert,” m Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had nce belonged to marine animals.

Lano Colonna. To enumerates the multitude of talian Writers, who advanced various hypotheses, all equally fantastical, in the early part of the seventeenth century, would be unprofitably tedious; but Fabio Colonna deserves to be distinguished ; for, although he gave way to the dogma, that all fossil remains were to be referred to the Noachian deluge, he resisted the absurd theory of Stelluti, who taught that fossil wood

* Storia Naturale.

Ne ee eae © $ RE a = =

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40 STENO. [Book I.

and ammonites were mere clay, altered into such forms by sulpbureous waters and subterranean heat; and he pointed out the different states of shells buried in the strata, distinguishing between, first, the mere mould or impression ; secondly, the cast or nucleus ; and, thirdly, the remains of the shell itself. He had also the merit of being the first to point out, that some of the fossils had belonged to marine, and some to terrestrial, tes- tacea.*

Steno, 1669. — But the most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno, a Dane, once professor of anatomy at Padua, and who afterwards resided many years at the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. His treatise bears the quaint title of “ De Solido intra Solidum naturaliter contento (1669),” by which the author intended to express, “On Gems, Crystals, and organic petrifactions inclosed within solid Rocks.” This work attests the priority of the Italian school in geological research; exemplifying at the same time the powerful obstacles opposed, in that age, to the general reception of enlarged views in the science. It was still a favourite dogma, that the fossil remains of shells and marine creatures were not of animal origin; an opinion adhered to by many from their extreme reluctance to believe, that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings before a great part of the existing mountains were formed. In reference to this controversy, Steno had dissected a shark recently taken from the Mediterranean, and had demonstrated that its teeth and bones were identical with many fossils found in Tuscany. He had also compared the shells discovered in the Italian strata

* QOsserv. sugli Animali aquat. e terrest, 1626.

Ch. IJ. STENO. Ad

with living species, pointed out their resemblance, and traced the various gradations from shells merely cal- cined, or which had only lost their animal gluten, to those petrifactions in which there was a perfect substi- tution of stony matter. In his division of mineral masses, he insisted on the secondary origin of those deposits in which the spoils of animals, or fragments of older rocks were inclosed. He distinguished between Marine formations and those of a fluviatile character, the last containing reeds, grasses, or the trunks and branches of trees. He argued in favour of the original horizontality of sedimentary deposits, attributing their Present inclined and vertical position sometimes to the €scape of subterranean vapours, heaving the crust of the earth from below upwards, and sometimes to the falling in of masses over-lying subterranean cavities. He declared that he had obtained proof that Tuscany must successively have acquired six distinct configura- tions, having been twice covered by water, twice laid dry with a level, and twice with an irregular and uneven surface.* He displayed great anxiety to reconcile his new views with Scripture, for which purpose he pointed io certain rocks as having been formed before the ex- tstence of animals and plants ; selecting unfortunately as examples certain formations of limestone and sand- Stone in his own country, now known to contain, though sparingly, the remains of animals and plants, — strata which do not even rank as the oldest part of our secondary series, Steno suggested that Moses, when Speaking of the loftiest mountains as having been covered by the deluge, meant merely the loftiest of the hills then existing, which may not have been very high.

* i ha hd . . a i “a Sex itaque distinctas Etrurie facies agnoscimus, dum bis ul i . . i da, bis plana, et sicca, bis aspera fuerit, &c.

42 i SCILLA. [Book I.

The diluvian waters, he supposed, may have issued from the interior of the earth into which they had retired, when in the beginning the land was separated from the sea. These, and other hypotheses on the same subject, are not calculated to enhance the value of the treatise, and could scarely fail to detract from the authority of those opinions which were sound and legitimate deductions from fact and observation. They have served, nevertheless, as the germs of many popu- lar theories of later times, and in an expanded form have been put forth as original inventions by some of our contemporaries.

Scilla, 1670. — Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published, in 1670, a treatise, in Latin, on the fossils of Calabria, illustrated by good engravings. This work proves the continued ascendancy of dogmas often refuted; for we find the wit and eloquence of the author chiefly directed against the obstinate incredulity of naturalists as to the organic nature of fossil shells.* Like many eminent naturalists of his day, Scilla gave way to the popular persuasion, that all fossil shells were the effects and proofs of the Mosaic deluge. It may be doubted whether he was perfectly sincere, and some of his con- temporaries who took the same course were certainly not so. But so eager were they to root out what they justly considered an absurd prejudice respecting the nature of organized fossils, that they seem to have been ready to make any concessions, in order to

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* Scilla quotes the remark of Cicero on the story that a stone in Chios had been cleft open, and presented the head of Paniscus in relief : — “ I believe,” said the orator, “ that the figure bore some resemblance to Paniscus, but not such that you would have deemed it sculptured by Scopas; for chance never perfectly imitates the truth.”

ea

Ch. IL] DILUVIAL THEORY. 43 establish this preliminary point. Such a compfomising policy was short-sighted, since it was to little purpose that the nature of the documents should at length be correctly understood, if men were to be prevented from deducing fair conclusions from them.

Diluvial Theory. — The theologians who now en- tered the field in Italy, Germany, France, and England, were innumerable; and henceforward, they who refused to subscribe to the position, that all marine organic re- mains were proofs of the Mosaic deluge, were exposed to the imputation of disbelieving the whole of the Sacred writings. Scarcely any step had been made in aPproximating to sound theories since the time of racastoro, more than a hundred years having been lost, in writing down the dogma that organized fossils Were mere sports of nature. An additional period of à century and a half was now destined to be consumed

in exploding the hypothesis, that organized fossils had all been buried in the solid strata by the Noachian flood. Never did a theoretical fallacy, in any branch

of Science, interfere more seriously with accurate

Observation and the systematic classification of facts. n recent times, we may attribute our rapid progress chiefly to the careful determination of the order of Succession in mineral masses, by means of their different organic contents, and their regular super- Position. But the old diluvialists were induced by their system to confound all the groups of strata to- gether instead of discriminating, — to refer all appear- ances to one cause and to one brief period, not to a variety of causes acting throughout a long succession of epochs. They saw the phenomena only as they desired to see them, sometimes misrepresenting facts,

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4A. DILUVIAL THEORY — QUIRINI. [Book I.

and at other times deducing false conclusions from correct data. Under the influence of such prejudices, three centuries were of as little avail as a few years in our own times, when we are no longer required to propel the vessel against the force of an adverse current.

It may be well, therefore, to forewarn the reader, that in tracing the history of geology from the close of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth century, he must expect to be occupied with accounts of the retardation, as well as of the advance of the science. It will be necessary to point out the frequent revival of exploded errors, and the relapse from sound to the most absurd opinions; and to dwell on futile reasoning and visionary hypothesis, because some of the most extravagant systems were invented or controverted by men of acknowledged talent. In short, a sketch of the progress of geology is the history of a constant and violent struggle between new opinions and ancient doctrines, sanctioned by the implicit faith of many ge- nerations, and supposed to rest on scriptural authority. The inquiry, therefore, although highly interesting to one who studies the philosophy of the human mind, is too often barren of instruction to him who searches for truths in physical science.

Quirini, 1676. — Quirini, in 1676*, contended, in opposition to Scilla, that the diluvian waters could not have conveyed heavy bodies to the summit of moun- tains, since the agitation of the sea never (as Boyle had demonstrated) extended to great depths +; and

has os: Testaceis fossilibus Mus. Septaliani.

+ The opinions of Boyle, alluded to by Quirini, were published a few years before, in a short article entitled « On the Bottom of the Sea.” From observations collected from the divers of the pearl

Ch. TIL] ' PLOT — LISTER. 45

x

still less could the testacea, as some pretended, have lived in these diluvian waters; for “ the duration of the flood was brief, and the heavy rains must have destroyed the saltness of the sea!” He was the first writer who ventured to maintain that the universality of the Noachian cataclysm ought not to be insisted upon. As to the nature of petrified shells, he conceived that as earthy particles united in the sea to form the shells of mollusca, the same crystallizing process might be ef- fected on the land; and that, in the latter case, the Setms of the animals might have been disseminated through the substance of the rocks, and afterwards developed by virtue of humidity. Visionary as was this doctrine, it gained many proselytes even amongst the more sober reasoners of Italy and Germany; for it conceded that the position of fossil bodies could not © accounted for by the diluvial theory.

Plot — Lister, 1678.— In the mean time, the doc- trine that fossil shells had never belonged to real animals maintained its ground in England, where the agitation of the question began at a much later Period. Dr. Plot, in his “ Natural History of Oxford- shire” (1677), attributed to a “ plastic virtue latent in the earth” the origin of fossil shells and fishes; and

ister, to his accurate account of British shells, in 1678, added the fossil species, under the appellation of

fishery, Boyle inferred that, when the waves were six or seven feet

high above the surface of the water, there were no signs of agit- ation at the depth of fifteen fathoms ; and that even during heavy pals OMe ste okon of tie water waa exceedingly diminished

at the depth of twelve or fifteen feet. He had also learnt from some of his informants

Site directions at diffe ‘London, 1744,

» that there were currents running in oppo- rent depths. — Boyle’s Works, vol. iii. p.110.

46 i LEIBNITZ. [Book I.

turbinated and bivalve stones. “ Either,’ said he, «these were terriginous, or, if otherwise, the animals they so exactly represent have become extinct.” This writer appears to have been the first who was aware of the continuity over large districts of the principal groups of strata in the British series, and who proposed the construction of regular geological maps.*

Leibnitz, 1680.—The great mathematician Leibnitz published his “ Protogcea” in 1680. He imagined this planet to have been originally a burning luminous mass, which ever since its creation has been un- dergoing refrigeration. When the outer crust had cooled down sufficiently to allow the vapours to be condensed, they fell, and formed a universal ocean, covering the loftiest mountains, and investing the whole globe. The crust, as it consolidated from a state of fusion, assumed a vesicular and cavernous structure; and being rent in some places, allowed the water to rush into the subterranean hollows, whereby the level of the primeval ocean was lowered. The breaking in of these vast caverns is supposed to have given rise to the dislocated and deranged position of the strata “which Steno had described,” and the same disruptions communicated violent movements to the incumbent waters, whence great inundations en- sued. The waters, after they had been thus agitated, deposited their sedimentary matter during intervals of quiescence, and hence the various stony and earthy strata. “ We may recognize, therefore,” says Leibnitz, a double origin of primitive masses, the one by refri- geration from igneous fusion, the other by concretion

* See Mr. Conybeare’s excellent Introduction to the “ Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales,” p. 12.

Ch. IIL] HOOKE. . 47

from aqueous solution,” * By the repetition of similar causes (the disruption of the crust and consequent floods), alternations of new strata were produced, until at length these causes were reduced to a condition of quiescent equilibrium, and a more permanent state of things was established.t ooke, 1688.— The “ Posthumous Works of Robert ooke, M.D.,” well known as a great mathematician and natural philosopher, appeared in 1705, containing “A Discourse of Earthquakes,” which, we are in- °rmed by his editor, was written in 1668, but revised at subsequent periods.{ Hooke frequently refers to the best Italian and English authors who wrote before is time on geological subjects; but there are no pas- Sages in his works implying that he participated in the enlarged views of Steno and Lister, or of his contem- Porary, Woodward, in regard to the geographical ex-

tent of certain groups of strata. His treatise, however, 8 the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature.

Owever trivial a thing,” he says, “ a rotten shell May appear to some, yet these monuments of nature

* S ih = x Unde Jam duplex origo intelligitur primorum corporum, una, cum ab ignis fusione refrigescerent, altera, cum reconcrescerent S solutione aquarum.

t Redeunte mox simili causa strata subinde alia aliis impone- Tentan et facies teneri adhuc orbis sepius novata est. Donec quiescentibus Causis, atque æquilibratis, consistentior emergeret verum status. — For an able analysis of the views of Leibnitz, in a Protogæa, see Mr. Conybeare’s Report to the Brit. Assoc. on the Progress of Geological Science, 1832.

ł Between the year 1688 and his death, in 1703, he read several | memoirs to the Royal Society, and delivered lectures on various

Subjects, relating to fossil remains and the effects of earthquakes.

a

Fe EE aE aE ee

48 HOOKE ON EXTINCT SPECIES. [Book I.

are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, manu- scripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised,” &c.; “and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them (the records of nature) and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such cata- strophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.”*

Respecting the extinction of species, Hooke was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known ; but he doubted whether the species had become extinct, observing that the knowledge of naturalists of all the marine species, especially those inhabiting the deep sea, was very deficient. In some parts of his writings, however, he leans to the opinion that species had been lost ; and in speculating on this subject, he even suggests that there might be some connection between the disap- pearance of certain kinds of animals and plants, and the changes wrought by earthquakes in former ages. Some species, he observes with great sagacity, are « peculiar to certain places, and not to be found else- where. If, then, such a place had been swallowed up, it is not improbable but that those animate beings may have been destroyed with it ; and this may be true both of aérial and aquatic animals: for those animated bodies, whether vegetables or animals, which were naturally nourished or refreshed by the air, would be

* Posth. Works, Lecture, Feb. 29. 1688.

Ch. 11] HOOKE ON EXTINCT SPECIES. 49

destroyed by the water,” &c.* Turtles, he adds, and such large ammonites as are found in Portland, seem to have been the productions of hotter countries; and it is necessary to suppose that England once lay under the sea within the torrid zone! To explain this and Similar phenomena, he indulges in a variety of specula- tions concerning changes in the position of the axis of the €arth’s rotation, “a shifting of the earth’s centre of gravity, analogous to the revolutions of the magnetic Pole,” &c. None of these conjectures, however, are Proposed dogmatically, but rather in the hope of pro- Moting fresh inquiries and experiments.

In Opposition to the prejudices of his age, we find him arguing against the idea that nature had formed fossil bodies “for no other end than to play the mimic in the mineral kingdom ; ” — maintaining that figured Stones were “really the several bodies they represent, or the mouldings of them petrified,” and “ not as some have imagined, ‘a lusus nature,’ sporting herself in

the needless formation of useless beings.”}

* Posth. Works, p. 327.

t Posth. Works, Lecture, Feb. 15. 1688, Hooke explained, With considerable clearness, the different modes wherein organic substances may become lapidified ; and, among other illustrations, he mentions some silicified palm-wood brought from Africa, on Which M. de la Hire had read a memoir to the Royal Academy of France (June, 1692), wherein he had pointed out, not only the tubes running the length of the trunk, but the roots at one ex- tremity. De la Hire, says Hooke, also treated of certain trees found petrified in « the river that passes by Bakan, in the king- dom of 4va, and which has for the space of ten leagues the virtue of petrifying wood,” It is an interesting fact, that the silicified wood of the Irawadi should have attracted attention more than one

hundred years ago. - Remarkable discoveries have been recently VOL. I. 5

50 HOOKE ON EARTHQUAKES. [Book I.

It was objected. to Hooke, that his doctrine of the extinction of species derogated from the wisdom and power of the Omnipotent Creator ; but he answered, that, as individuals die, there may be some termination to the duration of a species; and his opinions, he declared, were not repugnant to Holy Writ: for the Scriptures taught that our system was degenerating, and tending to its final dissolution ; “ and as, when that shall happen, all the species will be lost, why not some at one time and some at another ?” *

But his principal object was to account ie the manner in which shells had been conveyed into the higher parts of “the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenean hills, and the interior of continents in general.” These and other appearances, he said, might have been brought about by earthquakes, “ which have turned plains into mountains, and mountains into plains, seas into land, and land into seas, made rivers where there were none before, and swallowed up others that for- merly were, &c. &c.; and which, since the creation of the world, have wrought many great changes on the superficial parts of the earth, and have been the in- struments of placing shells, bones, plants, fishes, and the like, in those places where, with much astonish- ment, we find them.”+ This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer,

made there of fossil animals and vegetables, by Mr. Crawfurd and Dr. Wallich. — See Geol, Trans. vol. ii. part iii. p. 377. second series. De la Hire cites Father Duchatz, in the second volume of “ Observations made in the Indies by the Jesuits.”

* Posth. Works, Lecture May 29. 1689. + Posth. Works, p. 312.

Ch, III] HOOKE’S DILUVIAL THEORY. 51

and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently re- fers; but the revival and development of the system was an important step in the progress of modern Science,

Hooke enumerated all the examples known to him of Subterranean disturbance, from “the sad catastrophe of Sodom and Gomorrah” down to the Chilian earth- quake of 1646. The elevating of the bottom of the Sea, the sinking and submersion of the land, and most of the inequalities of the earth’s surface, might, he said, be accounted for by the agency of these sub- terranean cause: Hie: mentions that the coast near

aples was raised during the eruption of Monte Nuovo ; and that, in 1591, land rose in the island of St. Michael,

uring an eruption ; and although it would be more difficult, he says, to prove, he does not doubt but that there had been as many earthquakes in the parts of the earth under the ocean, as in the parts of the dry and; in confirmation of which, he mentions the im- Measurable depth of the sea near some volcanos. To attest the extent of simultaneous subterranean move- ments, he refers to an earthquake in the West Indies, In the year 1690, where the space of earth raised, or “struck upwards,” by the shock, exceeded, he affirms, the length of the Alps and the Pyrenees.

Hookes: diluvial theory. — As Hooke declared the favorite hypothesis: of the day, “ that marine fossi]

bod

odies were to be referred to Noah’s flood,” to be

wholly untenable, he appears to have felt himself

called upon to subs

titute a diluvial theory of his own, and thus he becani

e involved in countless difficulties and Contradictions, « During the great catastrophe,” he said, “there might have been a changing of that Part which was before dry land into sea by sinking, D2

52 HOOKE — RAY. [Book I.

and of that which was sea into dry land by raising, and marine bodies might have been buried in sediment beneath the ocean, in the interval between the creation and the deluge.”* Then follows a disquisition on the separation of the land from the waters, mentioned in Genesis: during which operation some places of the shell of the earth were forced outwards, and others pressed downwards or inwards, &c. His diluvial hy- pothesis very much resembled that of Steno, and was entirely opposed to the fundamental principles pro- fessed by him, thathe would explain the former changes of the earth in a more natural manner than others had done. When, in despite of this declaration, he required a former “crisis of nature,” and taught that earth- quakes had become debilitated, and that the Alps, Andes, and other chains, had been lifted up in a few months, he was compelled to assume so rapid a rate of

change, that his machinery appeared scarcely less ex-

travagant than that of his most fanciful predecessors. For this reason, perhaps, his whole theory of earth- quakes met with undeserved neglect.

Ray, 1692.— One of his contemporaries, the cele- brated naturalist, Ray, participated in the same desire to explain geological phenomena, by reference to causes less hypothetical than those usually resarted te.t In his essay on “ Chaos and Creation,” he proposed a system, agreeing in its outline, and in many of its details, with that of Hooke; but his knowledge of

* Posth. Works, p. 410.

+ Ray’s Physico-theological Discourses were of somewhat later date than Hooke’s great work on earthquakes. He speaks of Hooke as one “ whom for his learning and deep insight into the mysteries of nature he deservedly honoured.” — On the Deluge,

chap. iv.

Ch. IIL] RAY. 53

natural history enabled him to elucidate the subject

with various original observations. Earthquakes, he

suggested, might have been the second causes em-

ployed at the creation, in separating the land from the

waters, and in gathering the waters together into one

Place. He mentions, like Hooke, the earthquake of 1646; which had violently shaken the Andes for some

hundreds of leagues, and made many alterations therein.

Tn assigning a cause for the general deluge, he pre-

ferred a change in the earth’s centre of gravity to the ' introduction of earthquakes. Some unknown cause, he said, might have forced the subterranean waters

outwards, as was, perhaps, indicated by “ the breaking

Up of the fountains of the great deep.”

Ray was one of the first of our writers who enlarged Upon the effects of running water upon the land, and of the encroachment of the sea upon the shores. So important did he consider the agency of these causes, that he saw in them an indication of the tendency of our system to its final dissolution; and he wondered why the earth did not proceed more rapidly towards a Seneral submersion beneath the sea, when so much Matter was carried down by rivers, or undermined in the sea-cliffs. We perceive clearly from his writings, that the gradual decline of our system, and its future Consummation by fire, was held to be as necessary an article of faith by the orthodox, as was the recent origin of our planet. His discourses, like those of Hooke, are highly interesting, as attesting the familiar association in the minds of philosophers, in the age of Newton, of questions in physics and divinity. Ray Save an unequivocal proof of the sincerity of his mind, by sacrificing his preferment in the church, rather than take an oath against the Covenanters, which he could

D 3

54 WOODWARD. [Book 1.

not reconcile with his conscience. His reputation, moreover, in the scientific world placed him high above the temptation of courting popularity, by pandering to the physico-theological taste of his age. It is, there- fore, curious to meet with so many citations from the Christian fathers and prophets in his essays on physical science — to find him in one page proceeding, by the strict rules of induction, to explain the former changes of the globe, and in the next gravely entertaining the question, whether the sun and stars, and the whole heavens shall be annihilated, together with the earth, at the era of the grand conflagration.

Woodward, 1695. — Among the contemporaries of Hooke and Ray, Woodward, a professor of medicine, had acquired the most extensive information respecting the geological structure of the crust of the earth. He had examined many parts of the British strata with minute attention; and his systematic collection of spe- cimens, bequeathed to the University of Cambridge, and still preserved there as arranged by him, shows how far he had advanced in ascertaining the order of superposition. From the great number of facts col- lected by him, we might have expected his theoretical views to be more sound and enlarged than those of his contemporaries; but in his anxiety to accommodate all observed phenomena to the scriptural account of the Creation and Deluge, he arrived at most erroneous results. He conceived “the whole terrestrial globe to have been taken to pieces and dissolved at the flood, and the strata to have settled down from this promis- cuous mass as any earthy sediment from a fluid.”* In corroboration of these views, he insisted upon the fact, that “marine bodies are lodged in the strata according

* Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth, 1695. Preface.

Ch. 111] BURNET. _ 55

to the order of their gravity, the heavier shells in stone, the lighter in chalk, and so of the rest.”* Ray im- mediately exposed the unfounded nature of this asser- tion, remarking truly, that fossil bodies “are often mingled, heavy with light, in the same stratum ;” and e even went so far as to say, that Woodward “must have invented the phenomena for the sake of confirm- ing his bold and strange hypothesis +” — a strong €xpression from the pen of a contemporary. Burnet, 1690. — At the same time Burnet published his « Theory of the Earth.” { The title is most cha- Tacteristic of the age, — “ The Sacred Theory of the Earth ; containing an Account of the Original of the Earth, and of all the general Changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the Consum- mation of all Things.” Even Milton had scarcely ventured in his poem to indulge his imagination s0 freely in painting scenes of the Creation and Deluge, Paradise and Chaos. He explained why the primeval earth enjoyed a perpetual spring before the flood ! showed how the crust of the globe was fissured by “the sun’s rays,” so that it burst, and thus the diluvial Waters were let loose from a supposed central abyss. Not satisfied with these themes, he derived from the books of the inspired writers, and even from heathen authorities, prophetic views of the future revolutions of the globe, gave a most terrific description of the _ Seneral conflagration, and proved that a new heaven and a new earth will rise out of a second chaos — after which will follow the blessed millennium.

* Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth, 1695. Preface. si Consequences of the Deluge, p. 165. ł First published in Latin between the years 1680 and 1690.

D 4

56 BURNET — WHISTON. [Book I.

The reader should be informed, that, according to the opinion of many respectable writers of that age, there was good scriptural ground for presuming that the garden bestowed upon our first parents was not on the earth itself, but above the clouds, in the middle region between our planet and the moon. Burnet approaches with becoming gravity the discussion of so important a topic. He was willing to concede that the geographical position of Paradise was not in Meso- potamia, yet he maintained that it was upon the earth, and in the southern hemisphere, near the equinoctial line. Butler selected this conceit as a fair mark for his satire, when, amongst the numerous accomplish- ments of Hudibras, he says, —

He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies ;

And, as he was disposed, could prove it Below the moon, or else above it.

Yet the same monarch, who is said never to have slept without Butler’s poem under his pillow, was so great an admirer and patron of Burnet’s book, that he ordered it to be translated from the Latin into English. The style of the “Sacred Theory” was eloquent, and the

book displayed powers of invention of no ordin stamp. It was, in fact, a fine historical romance, as Buffon afterwards declared: but it was treated asa work of profound science in the time of its author, and was panegyrized by Addison in a Latin ode, while Steele praised it in the “ Spectator.” Towards the end of the last century, Warton, in his « Essay on Pope,” discovered that Burnet united the faculty of judgment with powers of imagination,

Whiston, 1696. — Another production of the same school, and equally characteristic of the time, was that

ary

Ch. 111] WHISTON. 57

of Whiston, entitled, « A New Theory of the Earth ; wherein the Creation of the World in Six Days, the Universal Deluge, and the General Conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scriptures, are shewn to be perfectly agreeable to Reason and Philosophy.” + He Was at first a follower of Burnet; but his faith in the infallibility of that writer was shaken by the declared Opinion of Newton, that there was every presumption in astronomy against any former change in the inclin- ation of the earth’s axis. This was a leading dogma in Burnet’s system, though not original, for it was bor- Towed from an Italian, Alessandro degli Alessandri, who had suggested it in the beginning of the fifteenth century, to account for the former occupation of the Present continents by the sea. La Place has since Strengthened the arguments of Newton, against the Probability of any former revolution of this kind.

The remarkable comet of 1680 was fresh in the memory of every one when Whiston first began his Cosmological studies, and the principal novelty of his Speculations consisted in attributing the deluge to the near approach to the earth of one of these erratic

dies, Having ascribed an increase of the waters to this Source, he adopted Woodward’s theory, supposing all Stratified deposits to have resulted from the “chaotic sediment of the flood.” Whiston was one of the first who ventured to propose that the text of Ge- nesis should be interpreted differently from its ordinary acceptation, so that the doctrine of the earth having existed long previous to the creation of man might no longer be regarded as unorthodox. He had the art to throw an air of plausibility over the most improbable Parts of his theory, and seemed to be proceeding in the Most sober manner, and by the aid of mathematical

DS

58 HUTCHINSON — CELSIUS — SCHEUCHZER. [Book I.

demonstration, to the establishment of his various propositions. Locke pronounced a panegyric on his theory, commending him for having explained so many wonderful and before inexplicable things. His book, as well as Burnet’s, was attacked and refuted by Keill.* Like all who introduced purely hypothetical causes to account for natural phenomena, Whiston retarded the progress of truth, diverting men from the investigation of the laws of sublunary nature, and in- ducing them to waste time in speculations on the power of comets to drag the waters of the ocean over the land—on the condensation of the vapours of their tails into water, and other matters equally edifying.

` Hutchinson, 1724.—John Hutchinson, who had been employed by Woodward in making his collection of fossils, published afterwards, in 1724, the first part of his “ Moses’s Principia,” wherein he ridiculed Woodward’s hypothesis. He and his numerous fol- lowers were accustomed to declaim loudly against human learning ; and they maintained that the Hebrew scriptures, when rightly translated, comprised a perfect system of natural philosophy, for which reason they objected to the Newtonian theory of gravitation.

Celsius. — Andrea Celsius, the Swedish astronomer, published about this time his remarks on the gradual diminution and sinking of the waters in the Baltic, to which I shall have occasion to advert more particularly in the second volume (ch. 17. book 2.).

Scheuchzer, 1708.—In Germany, in the mean time, Scheuchzer laboured to prove, in a work entitled “ The Complaint of the Fishes” (1708), that the earth had been remodelled at the deluge. Pluche, also, in 1732, wrote to the same effect ; while Holbach, in 1753, after

+ An Examination of Dr. Burnet’s Theory, &c. 2d ed. 1734.

Ch. IIL] ITALIAN GEOLOGISTS — VALLISNERI. 59

considering the various attempts to refer all the ancient formations to the Noachian flood, exposed the in- adequacy of this cause.

Ttalian Geologists — Vallisneri.—1 return with pleasure to the geologists of Italy, who preceded, as has been already shown, the naturalists of other coun- tries in their investigations into the ancient history of the earth, and who still maintained a decided pre- eminence. They refuted and ridiculed the physico- theological systems of Burnet, Whiston, and Wood- ward*; while Vallisneri+, in his comments on the Woodwardian theory, remarked how much the interests of religion, as well as those of sound philosophy, had suffered by perpetually mixing up the sacred writings With questions in physical science. The works of this author were rich in original observations. He at- tempted the first general sketch of the marine deposits of Italy, their geographical extent, and most charac- teristic organic remains. In his treatise “On the origin of Springs,” he explained their dependence on the order, and often on the dislocations, of the strata, and reasoned philosophically against the opinions of those who regarded the disordered state of the earth’s crust as exhibiting signs of the wrath of God for the sins of man. He found himself under the necessity of contending, in his preliminary chapter, against St. Jerome, and four other principal interpreters of Scripture, besides several professors of divinity, “that

* Ramazzinieven asserted, that the ideas of Burnet were mainly borrowed from a dialogue of one Patrizio; but Brocchi, after reading that dialogue, assures us, that there was scarcely any other Correspondence between these systems, except that both were equally whimsical.

t Dei Corpi Marini, Lettere critiche, &c. 1721.

D 6

60 ITALIAN GEOLOGISTS — MORO. [Book I.

‘springs did not flow by subterranean siphons and cavities from the sea upwards, losing their saltness in the passage,” for this theory had been made to rest on the infallible testimony of Holy Writ.

Although reluctant to generalize on the rich mate- rials accumulated in his travels, Vallisneri had been so much struck with the remarkable continuity of the ‘more recent marine strata, from one end of Italy to the other, that he came to the conclusion that the ocean formerly extended over the whole earth, and after abiding there for a long time, had gradually sub- sided. This opinion, however untenable, was a great step beyond Woodward's diluvian hypothesis, against which Vallisneri, and after him all the Tuscan geolo- gists, uniformly contended, while it was warmly sup- ported by the members of the Institute of Bologna.*

Among others of that day, Spada, a priest of Grez- zana, in 1737, wrote to prove that the petrified marine bodies near Verona were not diluvian.+ Mattani drew a similar inference from the shells of Volterra and other places: while Costantini, on the other hand, whose observations on the valley of the Brenta and ‘other districts were not without value, undertook to vindicate the truth of the deluge, as also to prove that Italy had been peopled by the descendants of Japhet.

Moro, 1740.— Lazzaro Moro, in his work (published in 1740) “ On the Marine Bodies which are found in the Mountains §,” attempted to apply the theory of earthquakes, as expounded by Strabo, Pliny, and other ancient authors, with whom he was familiar, to the geological phenomena described by Vallisneri.|

* Brocchi, p. 28. t Ibid. p. 33, t Ibid, p. 37.

§ Sui Crostacei ed altri Corpi Marini che si trovano sui Monti. | Moro does not cite the works of Hooke and Ray; and

Ch. 11L] LAZZARO MORO. 61 His attention was awakened to the elevating power of Subterranean forces by a remarkable phenomenon which happened in his own time, and which had also been noticed by Vallisneri in his letters. A new island rose in 1707 from a deep part of the sea near Santorin in the Mediterranean, during continued Shocks of an earthquake, and, increasing rapidly in size, grew in less than a month to be half a mile in circumference, and about twenty-five feet above high- Water mark. It was soon afterwards covered by vol- Canic ejections, but, when first examined, it was found to be a white rock, bearing on its surface living oysters and crustacea. In order to ridicule the various theories then in vogue, Moro ingeniously supposes the arrival on this new island of a party of naturalists ignorant of its recent origin. One immediately points to the Marine shells, as proofs of the universal deluge ; another argues that they demonstrate the former residence of

le sea upon the mountains ; a third dismisses them as mere sports of nature; while a fourth affirms, that Eiey were born. and .nourished. within. the rock. in ancient caverns, into which salt water had been raised in the shape of vapour by the action of subterranean heat,

Moro pointed with great judgment to the faults and dislocations of the strata described by Vallisneri, in the Alps and other chains, in confirmation of his

d

Octrine, that the continents had been heaved up by

although so Many of his views were in accordance with theirs, he was probably ignorant of their writings, for they had not been ‘translated. As he always refers to the Latin edition of Burnet,

‘and a French translation of Woodward, we LES did not read English.

62 GENERELLI’S EXPOSITION OF [Book I.

subterranean movements. He objected, on solid grounds, to the hypotheses of Burnet and of Wood- ward; yet he ventured so far to disregard the protest of Vallisneri, as to undertake the adaptation of every part of his own system to the Mosaic account of the creation. On the third day, he said, the globe was every where covered to the same depth by fresh water; and when it pleased the Supreme Being that the dry land should appear, volcanic explosions broke up the smooth and regular surface of the earth composed of primary rocks. These rose in mountain masses above the waves, and allowed melted metals and salts to ascend through fissures. The sea gradually acquired its saltness from volcanic exhalations, and, while it became more circumscribed in area, increased in depth. Sand and ashes ejected by volcanos were regularly disposed along the bottom of the ocean, and formed the secondary strata, which in their turn were lifted up by earthquakes. We need not follow this author in tracing the progress of the creation of vege- tables and animals on the other days of creation ; but, upon the whole, it may be remarked, that few of the old cosmological theories had been conceived with so little violation of known analogies.

Generelli’s illustrations of Moro, 1749.—The style of Moro was extremely prolix, and, like Hutton, who, at a later period, advanced many of the same views, he stood in need of an illustrator. The Scotch geologist was hardly more fortunate in the advocacy of Playfair, than was Moro in numbering amongst his admirers Cirillo Generelli, who, nine years afterwards, delivered at a sitting of Academicians at Cremona a spirited ex- position of his theory. This learned Carmelitan friar does not pretend to have been an. original observer,

Ch. 111] `. LAZZARO MORO'’S THEORY. 63

but he had studied sufficiently to enable him to confirm the opinions of Moro by arguments from other writers; and his selection of the doctrines then best established is so judicious, that a brief abstract of them cannot fail to be acceptable, as illustrating the state of geology in Europe, and in Italy in particular, before the middle of the last century.

The bowels of the earth, says he, have carefully Preserved the memorials of past events, and this truth the marine productions so frequent in the hills attest. From the reflections of Lazzaro Moro, we may assure Ourselves that these are the effects of earthquakes in Past times, which have changed vast spaces of sea into terra firma, and inhabited lands into seas. In this, More than in any other department of physics, are observations and experiments indispensable, and we must diligently consider facts. The land is known, wherever we make excavations, to be composed of different strata or soils placed one above the other, Some of sand, some of rock, some of chalk, others of marl, coal, pumice, gypsum, lime, and the rest. These Msgredients are sometimes pure, and sometimes con- fusedly intermixed. Within are often imprisoned dif- ferent marine fishes, like dried mummies, and more frequently shells, crustacea, corals, plants, &c., not only in Italy, but in France, Germany, England, Africa, Asia, and America; — sometimes in the lowest, some- times in the loftiest beds of the earth, some upon the Mountains, some in deep mines, others near the sea, and others hundreds of miles distant from it. Wood- ward conjectured that these marine bodies might be found every where; but there are rocks in which none of them occur, as is sufficiently attested by Vallisneri and Marsilli. The remains of fossil ani-

64 GENERELLI’S EXPOSITION OF [Book I.

mals consist chiefly of their more solid parts, and the most rocky strata must have been soft when such exuvie were inclosed in them. Vegetable pro- „ductions are found in different states of maturity, in- dicating that they were imbedded in different seasons. Elephants, elks, and other terrestrial quadrupeds, have been found in England and elsewhere, in superficial strata, never covered by the sea. Alternations are rare, yet not without example, of marine strata, and those which contain marshy and terrestrial productions. Marine animals are arranged in the subterraneous beds with admirable order, in distinct groups, oysters here, dentalia or corals there, &c., as now, according to Marsilli*, on the shores of the Adriatic. We must abandon the doctrine, once so popular, which denies that organized fossils were derived from living beings, and we cannot account for their present position by the ancient theory of Strabo, nor by that of Leibnitz, nor by the universal deluge, as explained by Woodward and others: ‘nor is it reasonable to call the Deity capriciously upon the stage, and to make him work miracles for the sake of confirming our preconceived hypotheses.’ —“I hold in utter abomination, most learned Academicians! those systems which are built with their foundations in the air, and cannot be propped up without a miracle; and I undertake, with the as- sistance of Moro, to explain to you how these marine animals were transported into the mountains by natural causes.” t

i |i

* Saggio fisico intorno alla Storia del Mare, part i. p. 24: + “ Abbomino al sommo qualsivoglia sistema,

che sia di pianta fabbricato in aria; massime quando è tale, che non possa soste-

nersi senza un miracolo,” &c. — De’ Crostacei e di altre Produz. del Mare, &c. 1749:

ee Sass

a E i ELIE CEL EE

a

Ch, II] LAZZARO MORO’S THEORY. 65

A brief abstract then follows of Moro’s theory, by which, says Generelli, we may explain all the phe- nomena, as Vallisneri so ardently desired, “without violence, without fictions, without hypotheses, without miracles.’ * The Carmelitan then proceeds to struggle . against an obvious objection to Moro’s system, consi- dered as a method of explaining the revolutions of the earth, naturally. If earthquakes have been the agents of such mighty changes, how does it happen that their effects since the times of history have been so incon- siderable? This same difficulty had, as we have seen, Presented itself to Hooke, half a century before, and forced him to resort to a former “crisis of nature :” but Generelli defended his position by showing how numerous were the accounts of eruptions and earth- quakes, of new islands, and of elevations and sub- Sidences of land, and yet how much greater a number of like events must have been unattested and unre- Corded during the last six thousand years. He also appealed to Vallisneri as an authority to prove that the mineral masses containing shells bore, upon the Whole, but a small proportion to those rocks which Were destitute of organic remains ; and the latter, says the learned monk, might have been created as they NOW exist, in the beginning: |

Generelli then describes the continual waste of mountains and continents, by the action of rivers and torrents, and concludes with these eloquent and original observations : «Is it possible that this waste should have continued for six thousand, and perhaps a greater number of years, and that the mountains should re- main so great, unless their ruins have been’ repaired ?

* 6 ; ears . ira- : Senza Violenze, senza finzioni, senza supposti, senza mira coli,” 2 n K

De’ Crostacei e di altre Produz, del Mare, &c. 1749.

66 LAZZARO MORO’S THEORY. [Book 1.

Is it credible that the Author of Nature should have founded the world upon such laws, as that the dry land should for ever be growing smaller, and at last become wholly submerged beneath the waters? Is it credible that, amid so many created things, the moun- tains alone should daily diminish in number and bulk, without there being any repair of their losses? This would be contrary to that order of Providence which is seen to reign in all other things in the universe. Wherefore I deem it just to conclude, that the’same cause which, in the beginning of time, raised moun- tains from the abyss, has down to the present day con- tinued to produce others, in order to restore from time to time the losses of all such as sink down in different places, or are rent asunder, or in other way suffer dis- integration. If this be admitted, we can easily under- stand why there should now be found upon many mountains so great a number of crustacea and other marine animals.”

In the above extract I have not merely enumerated the opinions and facts which are confirmed by recent observation, suppressing all that has since proved to be erroneous, but have given a faithful abridgment of the entire treatise, with the omission only of Moro’s hypothesis, which Generelli adopted, with all its faults and excellencies. The reader will there- fore remark, that although this admirable essay em- braces so large a portion of the principal objects of geological research, it makes no allusion to the extinction of certain classes of animals; and it. is evident that no opinions on this head had, at that time, gained a firm footing in Italy. That Lister and other English naturalists should long before have de- clared in favour of the loss of Species, while Scilla and

Ch. 111.9 MARSILULL 67

most of his countrymen hesitated, was perhaps natural, since the Italian museums were filled with fossil shells belonging to species of which a great portion did actually exist in the Mediterranean; whereas the English collectors could obtain no recent species from Such of their own strata as were then explored.

The weakest point in Moro’s system consisted in deriving all the stratified rocks from volcanic ejections; an absurdity which his opponents took care to expose, Especially Vito Amici.* Moro seems to have been misled by his anxious desire to represent the formation of Secondary rocks as having occupied an extremely Short period, while at the same time he wished to employ known agents in nature. To imagine torrents, vers, currents, partial floods, and all the operations of Moving water, to have gone on exerting an energy Many thousand times greater than at present, would have appeared preposterous and. incredible, and would have required a hundred violent hypotheses ; but we are so unacquainted with the true sources of subter- ranean disturbances, that their former violence may in theory be multiplied indefinitely, without its being Possible to prove the same manifest contradiction or absurdity in the conjecture. For this reason, perhaps,

oro preferred to derive the materials of the strata from volcanic ejections, rather than from transportation by running water.

Marsili.—Marsilli, whose work is alluded to by Generelli, had been prompted to institute inquiries into the bed of the Adriatic, by discovering, in the ter- ritory of Parma, (what Spada had observed near Verona, and Schiavo in Sicily,) that fossil shells were not scat-

* Sui Testacei della Sicilia.

68 DONATI — BALDASSARI — BUFFON. [Book 1.

tered through the rocks at random, but disposed in regular order, according to certain genera and species.

Vitaliano Donati, 1750.— But witha view of throw- ing further light upon these questions, Donati, in 1750, undertook a more extensive investigation of the Adri- atic, and discovered, by numercus soundings, that deposits of sand, marl, and tufaceous incrustations, most strictly analogous to those of the Subapennine hills, were in the act of accumulating there. He ascertained that there were no shells in some of the submarine tracts, while in other places they lived together in families, particularly the genera Arca, Pecten, Venus, Murex, and some others. ` He also states that in divers localities he found a mass composed of corals, shells, and crustaceous bodies of different species, confusedly blended with earth, sand, and gravel. At the depth of a foot or more, the organic substances were entirely petrified and reduced to marble; at less than a foot from the surface, they approached nearer to their na- tural state; while at the surface they were alive, or if dead, in a good state of preservation.

Baldassari.— A contemporary naturalist, Baldassari, had shown that the organic remains in the tertiary marls of the Siennese territory were grouped in families, in a manner precisely similar to that above alluded to by Donati.

Buffon, 1749. — Buffon first made known his theo- retical views concerning the former changes of the earth, in his Natural History, published in 1749. He adopted the theory of an original volcanic nucleus, together with the universal ocean of Leibnitz. By this aqueous envelope the highest mountains were once covered. Marine currents then acted violently, and formed horizontal strata, by washing away solid matter

Ch, IIL] BUFFON. 69

in some parts, and depositing it in others; they also excavated deep submarine valleys. The level of the ocean was then depressed by the entrance of a part of its waters into subterranean caverns, and thus some land was left dry. Buffon seems not to have profited, like Leibnitz and Moro, by the observations of Steno, or he could not have imagined that the strata were Senerally horizontal, and that those which contain organic remains had never been disturbed since the era of their formation. He was conscious of the great Power annually exerted by rivers and marine currents m transporting earthy materials to lower levels, and he “ven contemplated the period when they would destroy . all the present continents. Although in geology he Was not an original observer, his genius enabled him to Tender his hypothesis attractive ; and by the eloquence of his style, and the boldness of his speculations, he awakened curiosity, and provoked a spirit of inquiry amongst his countrymen. Soon after the publication of his “ Natural History,” m which was included his “ Theory of the Earth,” he received an official letter (dated January, 1751) from the Sorbonne, or Faculty of Theology in Paris, inform- ‘ng him that fourteen propositions in his works “ were *eprehensible, and contrary to the creed of the church.” he first of these obnoxious passages, and the only one relating to geology, was as follows : — “ The waters of the sea have produced the mountains and valleys of the land — the waters of the heavens, reducing all to a level, wil] at last deliver the whole land over to the sea, and the sea, successively prevailing over the land, will leave dry new continents like those which we inhabit.”

Buffon was invited by the College, in very courteous terms, to send in an explanation, or rather a recantation,

70 TARGIONI. [Book I.

of his unorthodox opinions. To this he submitted; and a general assembly of the Faculty having approved of his “Declaration,” he was required to publish it in his next work. The document begins with these words; — “ I declare that I had no intention to contra- dict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact; and I abandon every thing in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and, generally, all which may be contrary to the narration of Moses.’ *

The grand principle which Buffon was called upon to renounce was simply this, —“ that the present moun- tains and valleys of the earth are due to secondary causes, and that the same causes will in time destroy all the continents, hills, and valleys, and reproduce others like them.” Now, whatever may be the defects of many of his views, it is no longer controverted that the present continents are of secondary origin. The doctrine is as firmly established as the earth’s rotation on its axis; and that the land now elevated above the level of the sea will not endure for ever, is an opinion, . which gains ground daily, in proportion as we enlarge * our experience of the changes now in progress.

Targioni, 1751. — Targioni, in his voluminous « Travels in Tuscany, 1751 and 1754,” laboured to fill up the sketch of the geology of that region left by Steno sixty years before. Notwithstanding a want of arrangement and condensation in his memoirs, they contained a rich store of faithful observations. He has _ not indulged in many general views, but in regard to the origin of valleys, he was opposed to the theory of Buffon, who attributed them principally to submarine

* Hist. Nat. tom. v. éd; del’ Imp. Royale, Paris, 1769.

oa

f a

ee el

se rc

Se

Ch mL] LEHMAN — GESNER. 71 The Tuscan naturalist laboured to show that both the larger and smaller valleys of the Apen- nines were excavated by rivers and floods, caused by the bursting of the barriers of lakes, after the retreat of the ocean. He also maintained that the elephants and other quadrupeds, so frequent in the lacustrine and alluvial deposits of Italy, had inhabited that Peninsula; and had not been transported thither, as Some had conceived, by Hannibal or the Romans, nor by what they were pleased to term “a catastrophe of Nature,” | Lehman, 1756.—In the year 1756 the treatise of ehman, a German mineralogist, and director of the ~'Ussian mines, appeared, who also divided mountains mto three classes: the first, those formed with the World, and prior to the creation of animals, and which Contained no fragments of other rocks; the second class, those which resulted from the partial destruc- tion of the primary rocks by a general revolution ; and ® third class, resulting from local revolutions, and in part. from the Noachian deluge.* A French translation of this work appeared in 1759, the preface of which the translator displays very enlightened views respecting the operations of earth- Wakes, as well as of the aqueous causes. Gesner, 1758, — In this year Gesner, the botanist, of Zurich, published an excellent treatise on petrifac- tions, and the changes of the earth which they testify.+ ter a detailed enumeration of the various classes of Ossils of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and re- marks on the different states in which they are found Petrified, he considers the geological phenomena con-

* Essai d’une Hist, Nat. des Couches de Ja Terre, 1759. T John Gesner published at Leyden, in Latin.

Currents.

in

"2 GESNER — ARDUINO. , [Book I.

nected with them; observing, that some, like those of Giningen, resembled the testacea, fish, and plants indigenous in the neighbouring region *; while some, such as ammonites, gryphites, belemnites, and other shells, are either of unknown species, or found only in the Indian and other distant seas. In order to elucidate the structure of the earth, he gives sections, from Verenius, Buffon, and others, obtained in digging wells ; distinguishes between horizontal and inclined strata; and, in speculating on the causes of these appearances, mentions Donati’s examination of the bed of-the Adriatic; the filling up of lakes and seas by sediment; the imbedding ofshells, now in progress; and many known effects of earthquakes, such as the sink- ing down of districts, or the heaving up of the bed of the sea, so as to form new islands and lay dry strata containing petrifactions. The ocean, he says, deserts its shores in many countries, as on the borders of the Baltic ; but the rate of recession has been so slow in the last 2000 years, that to allow the Apennines, whose summits are filled with marine shells, to emerge to their present height, would have required about 80,000 years, — a lapse of time ten times greater, or more, than the age of the universe. We must therefore refer the phenomenon to the command of the Deity, related by Moses, that “the waters should be gathered to- gether in one place, and the dry land appear.” Gesner adopted the views of Leibnitz, to account for the re- treat of the primeval ocean : his essay displays much erudition; and the opinions of preceding writers of Italy, Germany, and England are commented upon with fairness and discrimination.

Arduino, 1759.—In the year following, Arduino}, in

* Part ii. chap. 9. t Giornale del Griselini, 1759.

Ch. TIL] MICHELL. TA

his: memoirs on the mountains of Padua, Vicenza, and Verona,

deduced, from original observations, the dis- tinction of rocks into primary, secondary, and tertiary, and shewed that in those districts there had been a Succession of submarine volcanic eruptions.

Michell, 1760. — In the following year (1760) the Rey, John Michell, Woodwardian Professor of Miner- alogy at Cambridge, published, in the Philosophical

Fansactions, an Essay on the Cause and Phenomena of Earthquakes.* _ His attention had been drawn to this Subject by the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755.

e advanced many original and philosophical views respecting the propagation of subterranean movements,

and the caverns and fissures wherein steam might © generated. In order to point out the application of his theory to the structure of the globe, he was led to describe the arrangement and disturbance of the Strata, their usual horizontality in low countries, and their Contortions and fractured state in the neighbour- 100d of mountain chains. He also explained, with Surprising accuracy, the relations of the central ridges of older rocks to the “ Jong narrow slips of similar “arths, stones, and minerals,’ which are parallel to these ridges. In his generalizations, derived in great Part from his own observations on the geological : * See a Sketch of the History of English Geology, by Dr. Fitton, in Edinb. Rey. Feb. 1818, re-edited Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. vol. i. and ii. 1832-33. Some of Michell’s Observations antici- Pate in so remarkable a manner the theories established forty years afterwards, that his writings weuld probably have formed an era in the science, if his researches had been uninterrupted. He held,

however, his professorship only eight years, when he succeeded to

= benefice, and from that time he appears to have entirely discon- tinued his scientific pursuits.

VOL. I, E

74. CATCOTT —FORTIS — ODOARDI. [Book I.’

structure of Yorkshire, he anticipated many of the views more fully developed by later naturalists.

Catcott, 1761. — Michell’s papers were entirely free from all physico-theological disquisitions, but some of his contemporaries were still earnestly engaged in defending or impugning the Woodwardian hypothesis. We find many of these writings referred to by Catcott, an Hutchinsonian, who published a “Treatise on the Deluge” in 1761. He laboured particularly to refute an explanation offered by his contemporary, Bishop Clayton, of the Mosaic writings. That prelate had declared that the deluge “could not be literally true, save in respect to that part where Noah lived before the flood.” Catcott insisted on the universality of the deluge, and referred to traditions of inundations men- tioned by ancient writers, or by travellers, in the East Indies, China, South America, and other countries. This part of his book is valuable, although it is not easy to see what bearing the traditions have, if admit- ted to be authentic, on the Bishop’s argument, since no evidence is adduced to prove that the catastrophes were contemporaneous events, while some of them are expressly represented by ancient authors to have oc- curred in succession.

Fortis — Odoardi, 1761.— The doctrines of Arduino, above adverted to, were afterwards confirmed by Fortis and Desmarest, in their travels in the same country; and they, as well as Baldassari, laboured to complete the history of the Subapennine strata. In the work of Odoardi *, there was also a clear argument in favour of the distinct ages of the older Apennine strata, and the Subapennine formations of more recent

* Sui Corpi Marini del Feltrino, 1761.

Ch; 11 THEORY OF RASPE. 75

origin. He pointed out that the strata of these two Sroups were unconformable, and must have been the deposits of different seas at distant periods of time. Raspe, 1763. — A history of the new islands by aspe, an Hanoverian, appeared in 1763, in Latin,.* In this work, all the authentic accounts of earthquakes Which had produced permanent changes on the solid Parts of the earth were collected together and ex- amined with judicious criticism. The best systems Which had been proposed concerning the ancient listory of the globe, both by ancient and modern Writers, are reviewed; and the merits and defects of the doctrines of Hooke, Ray, Moro, Buffon, and Others, fairly estimated. Great admiration is expressed for the hypothesis of Hooke, and his explanation of the origin of the strata is shown to have been More correct than Moro’s, while their theory of the

effects of earthquakes was the same. Raspe had not Seen Michell’s memoir, and his views concerning the 8eological structure of the earth were perhaps less enlarged ; yet he was able to add many additional arguments in favour of Hooke’s theory, and to render

it, as he said, a nearer approach to what Hooke would

ve written had he lived in later times. As to the Periods wherein all the earthquakes happened, to which We owe the elevation of various parts of our continents and islands, Raspe says he pretends not to assign their duration, still less to defend Hooke’s suggestion, that the Convulsions almost all took place during the deluge of Noah. He adverts to the apparent indications of.

* De Novis e Mari Natis Insulis. Raspe was also the editor Of the « Philosophical Works of Leibnitz. Amst. et Leipzig, ASS? also author of « Tassie’s Gems,” and “ Baron Mun- Chausen’s Travels,”

E2

l "6 ~ FUCHSEL. > [Book D

the former tropical heat of the climate of Europe; and the changes in the species of animals and plants; as among the most obscure and difficult problems in geo- logy. In regard to the islands raised from the sea, within the times of history or tradition, he declares that some of them were composed of strata containing organic remains, and that they were not, as Buffon had asserted, made of mere volcanic matter. His work concludes with -Łan eloquent exhortation to na- turalists te examine the isles which rose, in 1707, in the Grecian Archipelago, and, in 1720, in the Azores, and not to neglect such splendid opportunities of stu- dying nature “ in the act of parturition.” That Hooke’s writings should have been neglected for more than half a century, was matter of astonishment to Raspe; But it is still more wonderful that his own luminous exposition of that theory should, for more than an- other half century, have excited so little interest. Fuchsel, 1762 and 1773.—Fuchsel, a German phy- sician, published, in 1762, a geological description of the country between the Thuringerwald and the Hartz, and a memoir on the environs of Rudelstadt*; and afterwards, in 1773, a theoretical work on the ancient history of the earth and of man.+ He had evidently advanced considerably beyond his predecessor Lehman, and was aware of the distinctness, both as to position and fossil contents, of several groups of strata of dif- ferent ages, corresponding to the secondary formations now recognized by geologists in various parts of Ger- many. He supposed the European continents to have remained covered by the sea until the formation

* Acta Academiz Electoralis Maguntine, vol. ii. Erfurt.

+ This.account of Fuchsel is derived from an excellent analysis of his memoirs by M. Keferstein. Journ. de Géologie, tom. ii. Oct. F830.

Ch. 111.) * FUCHSEL — BRANDER. Ty

of the marine strata called in Germany “ muschel- kalk,” at the same time that the terrestrial plants of many European deposits attested the existence of dry land which bordered the ancient sea; land which, therefore, must have occupied the place of the present ocean. This pre-existing continent had been gra- dually swallowed up by the sea, different parts having subsided in succession into subterranean caverns. AH the sedimentary strata were originally horizontal, and their present state of derangement must be referred to Subsequent oscillations of the ground.

As there were plants and animals in the ancient Periods, so also there must have been men, but they did not all descend from one pair, but were created at Various points on the earth’s surface; and the number of these distinct birth-places was as great as are the original languages of nations.

In the writings of Fuchsel we see a strong desire Manifested to explain geological phenomena as far as Possible by reference to the agency of known causes ; and although some of his speculations were fanciful,

is views coincide much more nearly with those now Senerally adopted, than the theories afterwards pro- Mulgated by Werner and his followers.

Brander, 1766.—Gustavus Brander published, in

1766, his « Fossilia Hantoniensia,” containing excellent

Sures of fossil shells from the more modern marine Strata of our island. “ Various opinions,” he says in the preface, “had been entertained concerning the time when and how these bodies became deposited. Some there are who conceive that it might have been effected in a wonderful length of time by a gradual changing and shifting of the sea,” &c. But the most Common cause assigned is that of “the deluge.” This

E 3

78 SOLDANI — FORTIS — TESTA. [Book I

conjecture, he says, even if the universality of the flood be not called in question, is purely hypothetical. In his opinion, fossil animals and testacea were, for the most part, of unknown species; and of such as were known, the living analogues now belonged to southern latitudes.

Soldani, 17780.— Soldani applied successfully his knowledge of zoology to illustrate the history of stra- tified masses. He explained that microscopic testacea and zoophytes inhabited the depths of the Mediter- ranean ; and that the fossil species were, in like manner, found in those deposits wherein the fineness of their particles, and the absence of pebbles, implied that they were accumulated in a deep sea, or far from shore. This author first remarked the alternation of marine and fresh-water strata in the Paris basin.*

Fortis — Testa, 1793.— A lively controversy arose between Fortis and another Italian naturalist, Testa, concerning the fish of Monte Bolca, in 1793. Their letters+, written with great spirit and elegance, show that they were aware that a large proportion of the Subapennine shells were identical with living species, and some of them with species now living in the torrid zone. Fortis proposed a somewhat fanciful con- jecture, that when the volcanos of the Vicentin were burning, the waters of the Adriatic had a higher temperature ; and in this manner, he said, the shells of warmer regions may once have peopled their own seas. But Testa was disposed to think that these species of testacea were still common to their own and to equinoctial seas: for many, he said, once supposed to be confined to hotter regions, had been afterwards discovered in the Mediterranean. +

* Saggio orittografico, &c. 1780, and other Works. + Lett. sui Pesci Fossili di Bolca. Milan, 1793. } This argument of Testa has been strengthened of late years

€h. WL] WHITEHURST — PALLAS — SAUSSURE. 79

. Cortesi — Spallanzani— Wallerius — Whitehurst. — ; While these Italian naturalists, together with Cortesi and Spallanzani, were busily engaged in pointing out the analogy between the deposits of modern and ancient seas, and the habits and arrangement of their Organic inhabitants, and while some progress was Making, in the same country, in investigating the ancient and modern volcanic rocks, some of the most original observers among the English and German Writers, Whitehurst * and Wallerius, were wasting their strength in contending,. according to the old Woodwardian hypothesis, that all the strata were formed by the Noachian deluge. But Whitehurst’s description of the rocks of Derbyshire was most faith- ful; and he atoned for false theoretical views, by pro- viding data for their refutation.

Pallas — Saussure. — Towards the close of the eighteenth century, the idea of distinguishing the Mineral masses on our globe into separate groups, and Studying their relations, began to be generally diffused. Pallas and Saussure were among the most celebrated Whose labours contributed to this end. After an at- tentive examination of the two great mountain chains

by the discovery, that dealers in shells had long been in the habit a Selling Mediterranean species as shells of more southern and distant latitudes, for the sake of enhancing their price. It ap- pears, moreover, from several hundred experiments made by that distinguished hydrographer, Captain Smyth, on the water witbin eight fathoms of the surface, that the temperature of the Medi- terranean is on an average 34° of Fahrenheit higher than the Western part of the Atlantic ocean; an important fact, which in Some degree may help to explain why many species are common to tropical latitudes and to the Mediterranean. ;

if Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth.

8.

E 4

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ji W Mo pi w g | i n JA i Ro A ] Wi E fy Ni | iM i i ] LH we HI i } i W Hi f li Ai fi hi Aka I i 1 ni i j i it Vy j j Î H T} | $ tt | li A | j i} f i] Ki IE C R a ze lit ey l, iy Ff f iF | a A ‘l w i i ; i Å- Wi if ti

i a a a |

80 PALLAS — SAUSSURE. - [Book f.

of Siberia, Pallas announced the result, that the gra- nitic rocks were in the middle, the schistose at their sides, and the limestones again on the outside of these; and this he conceived would prove a general law in the formation of all chains composed chiefly of primary rocks.*

In his “Travels in Russia,” in 1793 and 1794, he made many geological observations on the recent strata near the Wolga and the Caspian, and adduced proofs of the greater extent of the latter sea at no distant era in the earth’s history. His memoir on the fossil bones of Siberia attracted attention to some of the most remarkable phenomena in geology. He

stated that he had found a rhinoceros entire in the

frozen soil, with its skin and flesh: an elephant, found afterwards in a mass of ice on the shore of the North sea, removed all doubt as to the accuracy of so won- derful a discovery.+ ‘ The subjects relating to natural history which en- gaged the attention of Pallas, were too multifarious to admit of his devoting a large share of his labours ex- clusively to geology. Saussure, on the other hand, employed the chief portion of his time in studying the structure of the Alps and Jura, and he provided valuable data for those who followed him. He did not pretend to deduce any general system from his nu- merous and interesting observations ; and the few theo- retical opinions which escaped from him, seem, like those of Pallas, to have been chiefly derived from the cosmological speculations of preceding writers.

* Observ. on the Formation of Mountains,

1778, parti. + Nov. comm. Petr. XVII. Cuvier, Eloge de Pallas.

Act. Petrop. ann.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORY OF ‘THE PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY — continued.

Werner's Application of Geology to the Art of Mining — Excur- sive Character of his Lectures — Enthusiasm of his Pupils ~ His Authority — His theoretical Errors—Desmarest’s Map and. Description of Auvergne (p. 86.) — Controversy between the Vulcanists and Neptunists — Intemperance of the rival Sects — Hutton’s Theory of the Earth — His Discovery of Granite Veins (p. 91.) — Originality of his Views — Why opposed — Playfair’s Illustrations — Influence of Voltaire’s Writings on Geology (p. 96.) — Imputations cast on the Huttonians by Williams, Kirwan, and De Luc — Smith’s Map of England (p. 102.) — ‘Geological Society of London — Progress of the Science in France — Growing Importance of the Study of Organic Remains.

Werner. — Tur art of mining has long been taught in France, Germany, and Hungary, in scientific institu- tions established for that purpose, where mineralogy has always been a principal branch of instruction.*

Werner was named, in 1775, professor of that science in the “ School of Mines,” at Freyberg, in Saxony. He directed his attention not merely to the composition and external characters of minerals, but also to what he termed « geognosy,” or the natural position of

* Our miners have been left to themselves, almost without the assistance of scientific works in the English language, and without _ any “ school of mines,” to blunder their own way into a certain degree of practical skill. The inconvenience of this want of sys- tem in a country where so much capital is expended, and often wasted, in mining adventures, has been well exposed by an emi- nent practical miner. — See “ Prospectus of a School of Mines in Cornwall, by J. Taylor, 1825.”

ES.

Sse

ee eee r REE FE RTE

=

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-kindled enthusiasm in the minds of his pupils ;

82 WERNER. [Book I.

minerals in particular rocks, together with the group- ing of those rocks, their geographical distribution, and various relations. The phenomena observed in the structure of the globe had hitherto served for little else than to furnish interesting topics for philosophical discussion: but when Werner pointed out their appli- cation to the practical purposes of mining, they were instantly regarded by a large class of men as an essen- tial part of their professional education, and from that time the science was cultivated in Europe more ar- dently and systematically.. Werner’s mind was at once imaginative and richly stored with miscellaneous know- ledge. He associated every thing with his favourite science, and in his excursive lectures he pointed out all the economical uses of minerals, and their appli- cation to medicine: the influence of the mineral com-

. position of rocks upon the soil, and of the soil upon

the resources, wealth, and civilization of man. The vast sandy plains of Tartary and Africa, he would say, retained their inhabitants in the shape of wandering shepherds ; the granitic mountains and the low cal- careous and alluvial plains gave rise to different manners, degrees of wealth, and intelligence. The history even of languages, and the migrations of tribes, had been determined by the direction of particular strata. The qualities of certain stones used in building would lead him to descant on the architecture of dif- ferent ages and nations; and the physical geography of a country frequently invited him to treat of mil

itary tactics. The charm of his manners and his eloq

uence

and many, who had intended at first only to acquire a

slight knowledge of mineralogy, when they had once’ heard him, devoted themselves to it as the business of their lives. In a few years, a small school of mines,

Ch. IV.] WERNER. 83

before unheard of in Europe, was raised to the rank of a great university ; and men already. distinguished m science studied the German language, and came from the most distant countries to hear the great oracle of geology.*

Werner had a great antipathy to the mechanical labour of writing, and, with the exception of a valuable treatise on metaliferous veins, he could never be per- Suaded to pen more than a few brief memoirs, and those containing no development of his general views. Although the natural modesty of his disposition was excessive, approaching even to timidity, he indulged. in the most bold and sweeping generalizations, and he inspired all his scholars with a most implicit faith in his doctrines. Their admiration of his genius, and the feelings of gratitude and friendship which they all felt for him, were not undeserved; but the supreme au- thority usurped by him over the opinions of his con- temporaries was eventually prejudicial to the progress of the science; so much so, as greatly to counter- balance the advantages which it derived frem his exertions. If it be true that delivery be the first, Second, and third requisite in a popular orator, it is no less certain that to travel is of first, second, and third importance to those who desire to originate just and Comprehensive views concerning the structure of our globe. Now Werner had not travelled to distant Countries ; he had merely explored a small portion of Germany, and conceived, and persuaded others to believe, that the whole surface of our planet, and all the mountain chains in the world, were made after the model of his own province. It became a ruling object of ambition in the minds of his pupils to confirm the

* Cuvier, Eloge de Werner.

E 6

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=

Sa

84 WERNER. [Book I.

` generalizations of their great master, and to discover

in the most distant parts of the globe his “ universal formations,” which he supposed had been each in suc- cession simultaneously precipitated over the whole earth from a common menstruum, or “chaotic fluid.” It now appears that the Saxon professor had misinter- preted many of the most important appearances even in the immediate neighbourhood of Freyberg. Thus, for example, within a day’s journey of his school, the porphyry, called by him primitive, has been found not only to send forth veins or dikes through strata of the coal formation, but to overlie them in mass. The granite of the Hartz mountains, on the other hand, which he supposed to be the nucleus of the chain, is now well known to traverse and breach the other beds, penetrating even into the plain (as near Goslar); and still nearer Freyberg, in the Erzgebirge, the mica slate does not mantle round the granite, as was supposed, but abuts abruptly against it. Fragments, also, of the greywacké slate, containing organic remains, have re- cently been found entangled in the granite of the Hartz, by M. de Seckendorf.*

The principal merit of Werner’s system of in- struction consisted in steadily directing the attention of his scholars to the constant relations of super- position of certain mineral groups; but he had been anticipated, as has: been shown in the last chapter, in

_the discovery of this general law, by several geologists

in Italy and elsewhere; and his leading divisions of the secondary strata were, at the same time, and inde- pendently, made the basis of an arrangement of the

* J am indebted for this information partly to Messrs. Sedgwick and Murchison, who have investigated the country, and partly to Dr. Hartmann of Blankenburg, the translator of this work into German.

Ch. IV.) VULCANISTS AND ‘NEPTUNISTS. _ 85

British strata by our countryman, William Smith, to whose work I shall presently return.

Controversy between the Vulcanists and Neptunists. —In regard to basalt and other igneous rocks, Werner’s theory was original, but it was also extremely erro- neous. The basalts of Saxony and Hesse, to which

is observations were chiefly confined, consisted of tabular masses capping the hills, and not connected With the levels of existing valleys, like many in Au- vergne and the Vivarais. These basalts, and all other rocks of the same family in other countries, were, ac- Cording to him, chemical precipitates from water. He ‘denied that they were the products of submarine vol- Canos; and even taught that, in the primeval ages of the world, there were no volcanos. His theory was ©pposed, in a twofold sense, to the doctrine of the per- Manent agency of the same causes in nature; for not only did he introduce, without scruple, many imaginary Causes supposed to have once effected great revolutions in the earth, and then to have become extinct, but New ones also were feigned to have come into play in Modern times; and, above all, that most violent instru-. Ment of change, the agency of ‘subterranean fire. So early as 1768, before Werner had commenced is mineralogical studies, Raspe had truly charac- terized the basalts of Hesse as of igneous origin. Arduino, as we have already seen, had pointed out nu- merous varieties of trap-rock in the Vicentin as ana- logous to volcanic products, and as distinctly referable to ancient submarine eruptions. Desmarest, as before Stated, had, in company with Fortis, examined the Vicentin in 1766, and confirmed Arduino’s views. In 1772, Banks, Solander, and Troil, compared the co- lumnar basalt of Hecla with that of the Hebrides,

R6 DESMAREST’S MAP OF AUVERGNE. [Book I.

Collini, in 1774, recognized the true nature of the igneous rocks on the Rhine, between Andernach and Bonn. In 1775, Guettard visited the Vivarais, and established the relation of basaltic currents to lavas. Lastly, in 1779, Faujas published his description of the volcanos of the Vivarais and Velay, and showed how the streams of basalt had poured out from craters which still remain in a perfect state.*

Desmarest.— When sound opinions had thus for twenty years prevailed in Europe concerning the true nature of the ancient trap-rocks, Werner by his simple dictum caused a retrograde movement, and not only overturned the true theory, but substituted for it one of the most unphilosophical that can well be imagined. The continued ascendancy of his dogmas on this sub- ject was the more astonishing, because a variety of new and striking facts were daily accumulated in favour of the correct opinions previously entertained. Desmarest, after a careful examination of Auvergne, pointed out, first, the most recent volcanos which had their craters still entire, and their streams of lava con- forming to the level of the present river-courses. He then showed that there were others of an intermediate epoch, whose craters were nearly effaced, and whose lavas were less intimately connected with the present valleys; and, lastly, that there were volcanic rocks, still more ancient, without any discernible craters or scorie, and bearing the closest analogy to rocks in cther parts of Europe, the igneous origin of which was denied by the school of Freyberg. +

* Cuvier, Eloge de Desmarest.

+ Journ. de Phys. vol. xiii. p.115.; and Mém. de1’Inst., " Sciences Mathémat, et Phys. vol. vi. p, 219,

Ch. Iv] DOLOMIEU — MONTLOSIER, 87

Desmarest’s map of Auvergne was a work of uncom- mon merit. He first made a trigonometrical survey of the district, and delineated its physical geography with minute accuracy and admirable graphic power. He contrived, at the same time, to express, without the aid of colours, a vast quantity of geological detail, the different ages, and sometimes even the structure, of the volcanic rocks, distinguishing them from the fresh-water and the granitic. They alone who have Carefully studied Auvergne, and traced the different lava-streams from their craters to their termination, —the various isolated basaltic cappings, — the rela- tion of some lavas to the present valleys, — the ab- ‘ence of such relations in others, — can appreciate the extraordinary fidelity of this elaborate work. No other district, of equal dimensions in Europe exhibits, per-

aps, so beautiful and varied a series of phenomena ; and, fortunately, Desmarest possessed at once the Mathematical knowledge required for the construction Of a map, skill in mineralogy, and a power of original 8€neralization. s

Dolomieu—Montlosier.— Dolomieu, another of Wer- ner’s contemporaries, had found prismatic basalt among the ancient lavas of Etna; and, in 1784, had observed -`e alternations of submarine lavas and calcareous strata 'n the Val di Noto, in Sicily.* In 1790, also, he de- Scribed similar phenomena in the Vicentin and in the Tyrol. t Montlosier published, in 1788, an essay on

th

e theory of the volcanos of Auvergne, combining ac- Curate local observations with comprehensive views. otwithstanding this mass of evidence, the scholars of

* Journ. de Phys, tom. xxv. p- 191. t Ib. tom, xxxvii, partii. p. 200.”

88 HUTTON, [Book 1.

Werner were prepared to support his opinions to their utmost extent; maintaining, in the fulness of their faith, that even obsidian was an aqueous precipitate. As they were blinded by their veneration for the great teacher, they were impatient of opposition, and soon imbibed the spirit of a faction; and their opponents, the Vulcanists, were not long in becoming contami- nated with the same intemperate zeal. Ridicule and irony were weapons more frequently employed than argument by the rival sects, till at last the controversy was carried on with a degree of bitterness almost un- precedented in questions of physical science. Des- marest alone, who had long before provided ample materials for refuting such a theory, kept aloof from the strife; and whenever a zealous Neptunist wished to draw the old man into an argument, he was satisfied with replying, “ Go and see.” *

Hutton, 1788.— It would be contrary to all analogy, in matters of graver import, that a war should rage with such fury on the Continent, and that the inha- bitants of our island should not mingle in the affray. Although in England the personal influence of Werner was wanting to stimulate men to the defence of the weaker side of the question, they contrived to find good reason for espousing the Wernerian errors with great enthusiasm. In order to explain the peculiar motives which led many to enter, even with party feel- ing, into this contest, it will be necessary to present the reader with a sketch of the views unfolded by Hutton, a contemporary of the Saxon geologist. The former naturalist had been educated as a physician, but, declining the practice of medicine, he resolved,

* Cuvier, Eloge de Desmarest.

Ch. IV.] HUTTONIAN THEORY. 89

when young, to remain content with the small inde- pendence inherited from his father, and thenceforth. to give his undivided attention to scientific pursuits. He resided at Edinburgh, where he enjoyed the society of many men of high attainments, who loved him for the simplicity of his manners and the sincerity of his ‘character. His application was unwearied ; and he made frequent tours through different parts of England and Scotland, acquiring considerable -skill as ʻa mine- ralogist, and constantly arriving at grand and com- Prehensive views in geology. He communicated the results of his observations unreservedly, and with the fearless spirit of one who was conscious that love of truth was the sole stimulus of his exertions. When at length he had matured his views, he published, in 1788, his « Theory of the Earth*,” and the same, afterwards more fully developed in a separate work, in 1795. This treatise was the first in which geology was declared to be in no way concerned about “ questions as to the origin of things;” the first in which an attempt was made to dispense entirely with all hypo- thetical causes, and to explain the former changes of the earth’s crust by reference exclusively to natural agents. Hutton laboured to give fixed principles to 8eclogy, as Newton had succeeded in doing to astro- nomy: but, in the former science, too little progress had been made towards furnishing the necessary data, to enable any philosopher, however great his genius, to realize so noble a project.

Huttonian theory. — “ The ruins of an older world,” Said Hutton, \“ are visible in the present structure of our planet; and the strata which now compose our

es Ed. Phil. ‘Trans. :1788.

00 HUTTONIAN THEORY. = [Book I.

continents have been once beneath the sea, and were formed out of the waste of pre-existing continents. The same forces are still destroying, by chemical de- composition 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 become after- wards altered and consolidated by volcanic heat, and then heaved up, fractured, and contorted.”

Although Hutton had never explored any region of active volcanos, he had convinced himself that basalt and many other trap-rocks were of igneous origin, and that many of them had been injected in a melted state through fissures in the older strata. The compactness of these rocks, and their different aspect from that of ordinary lava, he attributed to their having cooled down under the pressure of the sea; and in order to remove the objections started against this theory, his friend, Sir James Hall, instituted a most curious and instructive series of chemical experiments, illustrating the crystalline arrangement and texture assumed by melted matter cooled under high pressure.

The absence of stratification in granite, and its ana- logy, in mineral character, to rocks which he deemed of igneous origin, led Hutton to conclude that granite also must have been formed from matter in fusion ; and this inference he felt could not be fully confirmed, unless he discovered at the contact of granite and other strata a repetition of the phenomena exhibited so constantly by the trap-rocks. Resolved to try his theory by this test, he went to the Grampians, and surveyed the line of junction of the granite and super- incumbent stratified masses, until he found in Glen Tilt,

Ch. TV.) HUTTONIAN THEORY. 91 in 1785, the most clear and unequivocal proofs in sup Port of his views. Veins of red granite are there seen branching out from the principal mass, and traversing the black micaceous schist and primary limestone. The intersected stratified rocks are so distinct in colour and appearance as to render the example in that locality most striking, and the alteration of the limestone in contact was very analogous to that pro- duced by trap veins on calcareous strata. This verifi- Cation of his system filled him with delight, and called forth such marks of joy and exultation, that the guides who accompanied him, says his biographer, were con- vinced that he must have discovered a vein of silver or gold.* He was aware that the same theory would not explain the origin of the primary schists, but these he called primary, rejecting the term primitive, and was disposed to consider them as sedimentary rocks altered by heat, and that they originated in Some other form from the waste of previously existing rocks,

By this important discovery of granite veins, to Which he had been led by fair induction from an inde- Pendent class of facts, Hutton prepared the way for

e greatest innovation on the systems of his prede- Cessors. Vallisneri had pointed out the general fact . that there were certain fundamental rocks which con- tained no organic remains, and which he supposed to have been formed before the creation of living beings.

oro, Generelli, and other Italian writers, embraced the same doctrine; and Lehman regarded the moun- tains called by him primitive, as parts of the original nucleus of the globe. The same tenet was an article

* Playfair's Works, vol. iv. p. 75.

92 ‘“HUTTONIAN THEORY. [Book T.

of faith in the school of Freyberg; and if any one ventured to doubt the possibility of our being enabled to carry back our researches to the creation of the present order of things, the granitic rocks were tri- umphantly appealed to. On them seemed written, in legible characters, the memorable inscription —

Dinanzi a me non fur cose create Se non eterne;

and no small sensation was excited when Hutton seemed, with unhallowed hand, desirous to erase cha- racters already regarded by many as sacred. “In the economy of the world,” said the Scotch geologist, “I can find no traces of a beginning, no prospect of an end ;” a declaration the more startling when coupled with the doctrine, that all past changes on the globe had been brought about by the slow agency of existing causes. The imagination was first fatigued and overpowered by endeavouring to conceive the im- mensity of time required for the annihilation of whole continents by so insensible a process; and when the thoughts had wandered through these interminable periods, no resting place was assigned in the remotest distance. The oldest rocks were represented to be of a derivative nature, the last of an antecedent series, and that, perhaps, one of many pre-existing worlds. Such views of the immensity of past time, like those unfolded by the Newtonian philosophy in regard to space, were too vast to awaken ideas of sublimity un- mixed with a painful sense of our incapacity to con- ceive a plan of such infinite extent. ‘Worlds are seen beyond worlds immeasurably distant from each other, and, beyond them all, innumerable other systems are faintly traced on the confines of the visible universe.

Ch. IV.] HUTTONIAN THEORY. 93

The characteristic feature of the Huttonian theory was; as before hinted, the exclusion of all causes not Supposed to belong to the present order of nature.

ut Hutton had made no step beyond Hooke, Moro, and Raspe, in pointing out in what manner the laws NOW governing subterranean movements might bring about geological changes, if sufficient time be allowed: On the contrary, he seems to have fallen far short of Some of their views, especially when he refused to attribute any part of the external configuration of the farth’s crust to subsidence. He imagined that the Continents were first gradually destroyed by aqueous

€gradation; and when their ruins had furnished ma- terials for new continents, they were upheaved by violent convulsions. He therefore required alternate Periods of general disturbance and repose; and such he believed had been, and would for ever be, the Course of nature.

Generelli, in his exposition of Moro’s system, had Made a far nearer approximation towards reconciling 8eological appearances with the state of nature as

nown to us; for while he agreed with Hutton, that the decay and reproduction of rocks were always in Progress, proceeding with the utmost uniformity, the “arned Carmelite represented the repairs of moun- tains by elevation from below to be effected by an equally constant and synchronous operation. Neither of these theories, considered singly, satisfies all the Conditions of the great problem, which a geologist, who rejects- cosmological causes, is called upon to Solve; but they probably contain together the germs of a perfect system. There can be no doubt, that Periods of disturbance and repose have followed each Other in succession in every region of the globe ; but it

Cor EE 5 Poe i I rt

as

94 PLAYFAIR’S ILLUSTRATIONS OF HUTTON. [Book I.

may be equally true, that the energy of the subter- ranean movements has been always uniform as regards the whole earth. The force of earthquakes may for a cycle of years have been invariably confined, as it is now, to large but determinate spaces, and may then have gradually shifted its position, so that another region, which had for ages been at rest, became in its turn the grand theatre of action.

Playfair’s illustrations of Hutton.—The explanation proposed by Hutton and by Playfair, the illustrator of his theory, respecting the origin of valleys, and of alluvial accumulations, was also very imperfect. They ascribed none of the inequalities of the earth’s surface to movements which accompanied the upheaving of the land, imagining that valleys in general were formed in the course of ages, by the rivers now flowing in them; while they seem not to have reflected on the

excavating and transporting power which the waves of

the ocean might exert on land during its emergence. Although Hutton’s knowledge of mineralogy and chemistry was considerable, he possessed but little information concerning organic remains ; they merely served him, as they did Werner, to characterize certain strata, and to prove their marine origin. The theory of former revolutions in organic life was not yet fully recognized ; and without this class of proofs in support of the antiquity of the globe, the indefinite periods demanded by the Huttonian hypothesis appeared visionary to many ; and some, who deemed the doctrine inconsistent with. revealed truths, indulged very un- charitable suspicions of the motives of its author. They accused him of a deliberate design of reviving the heathen dogma of an “eternal succession,” and of denying that this world ever had a beginning. Play-

Ch IV] PLAYFAIR'S ILLUSTRATIONS OF HUTTON. 95

fair, in the biography of his friend, has the following

comment on this part of their theory :—“ In the pla- hetary motions, where geometry has carried the eye So far, both into the future and the past, we discover no mark either of the commencement or termination of the present order. It is unreasonable, indeed, to Suppose that such marks should any where exist. The Ghar af .Natarouhasawt given laws to the universe, Which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not Permitted in His works any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as he no doubt gave a beginning, to the present System, at some determinate period of time; but we May rest assured that this great catastrophe will not be

fought about by the laws now existing, and that it is Not indicated by any thing which we perceive.” *

The party feeling excited against the Huttonian doctrines, and the open disregard of candour and temper in the controversy, will hardly be credited by the reader, unless he recalls to his recollection that the mind of the English public was at that time in a State of feverish excitement. A class of writers in ‘rance had been labouring industriously, for many Years, to diminish the influence of the clergy, by Sapping the foundations of the Christian faith; and their success, and the consequences of the Revolution, ad alarmed the most resolute minds, while the ima- Sination of the more timid was continually haunted by

"ead of innovation, as by the phantom of some fearful dream.

* Playfair’s Works, vol. iv. p. 55.

96 VOLTAIRE, [Book 1I:

Voltaire. — Voltaire had used the modern discoveries in physics as one of the numerous weapons of attack and ridicule directed by him against the Scriptures. He found that the most popular systems of geology were accommodated to the sacred writings, and that much ingenuity had been employed to make every fact coincide exactly with the Mosaic account of the creation and deluge. It was, therefore, with no friendly feelings that he contemplated the cultivators of geology in general, regarding the science as one which had been successfully enlisted by theologians as an ally in their cause.* He knew that the majority of those who were aware of the abundance of fossil shells in the interior of continents, were still persuaded that they were proofs of the universal deluge ; and as the readiest way of shaking this article of faith, he en- _deavoured to inculcate scepticism as to the real nature

of such shells, and to recall from contempt the ex- ploded dogma of the sixteenth century, that they were sports of nature. He also pretended that vege- table impressions were not those of real plants.+ Yet he was perfectly convinced that the shells had really belonged to living testacea, as may be seen in his

* In allusion to the theories of Burnet, Woodw zard, and other

pliysico-theological writers, he declared that they were as fond of

changes of scene on the face of the globe, as were the populace at

a play. ‘ Every one of them destroys and renovates the earth

after his own fashion, as Descartes framed it: for philosophers

put themselves without ceremony in the place of God, and think to create a universe with a word.” — Dissertation envoyée a |’ Aca- démie de Boulogne, sur les Changemens arrivés dans notre Globe- - Unfortunately, this and similar ridicule directed against the cos- mogonists was too well deserved. + See the chapter on “ Des Pierres figurés,”

)

Ch. IV] VOLTAIRE. 97

essay “On the formation of Mountains.” * He would Sometimes, in defiance of all consistency, shift his round when addressing the vulgar ; and, admitting the true nature of the shells collected in the Alps and other places, pretend that they were Eastern Species, which had fallen from the hats of pilgrims Coming from Syria. The numerous essays written by

im on geological subjects were all calculated to Strengthen prejudices, partly because he was ignorant of the real state of the science, and partly from his bad faith.+ On the other hand, they who knew that

is attacks were directed by adesire to invalidate Scripture, and who were unacquainted with the true Merits of the question, might well deem the old di- luvian hypothesis incontrovertible, if Voltaire could adduce no-better argument against it than to deny the true nature of organic remains.

It is only by careful attention to impediments originating in extrinsic causes, that we can explain the © Slow and reluctant adoption of the simplest truths in Seology. First, we find many able naturalists ad- ducing the fossil remains of marine animals as proofs of an event related in Scripture. The evidence is

* In that essay he lays it down, “ that all naturalists are now agreed that deposits of shells in the midst of the continents are Monuments of the continued occupation of these districts by the Ocean,” In another place also, when speaking of the fossil shells of Touraine, he admits'their true origin.

t As an instance of his desire to throw doubt indiscriminately on

all geological data, we may recall the passage where he says, that

ni the bones of a rein-deer and hippopotamus discovered near

Etampes did not prove, as some would have it, that Lapland and

the Nile were once on a tour from Paris to Orleans, but merely

that a lover of curiosities once preserved them in his cabinet.” VOL. I. F

98 SPIRIT OF INTOLERANCE. 3 [Book 1.

deemed conclusive by the multitude for a century or more ; for it favours opinions which they entertained ‘before, and they are gratified by supposing them con- firmed by fresh and unexpected proofs. Many, who see through the fallacy, have no wish to undeceive those who are influenced by it, approving the effect of the delusion, and conniving at it as a pious fraud; until, finally, an opposite party, who are hostile to the sacred writings, labour to explode the erroneous opi- nion, by substituting for it another dogma which they know to be equally unsound.

The heretical Vulcanists were soon after openly as- sailed in England, by imputations of the most illiberal kind. We cannot estimate the malevolence of such a persecution, by the pain which similar insinuations might now inflict: for although charges of infidelity and atheism must always be odious, they were injurious in the extreme at that moment of political excitement ; and it was better, perhaps, for a man’s good reception in society, that his moral character should have been traduced, than that he should become a mark for these poisoned weapons.

I shall pass over the works of numerous divines, who may be excused for sensitiveness on points which then excited so much uneasiness in the public mind; and shall say nothing of the amiable poet Cowper*, who could hardly be expected to have inquired into the merit of doctrines in physics. But in the foremost ranks of the intolerant, are found several laymen who had high claims to scientific reputation. Among these appears Williams, a mineral surveyor of Edinburgh, who published a “Natural History of the Mineral

* The Task, book iii. “ The Garden.”

a ane a EE R a

th Iv] - FERN Aone ETT: 99

Kingdom,” in 1789; a work of great merit for that day, and of practical utility, as containing the best account of the coal strata. In his preface he misre- Presents Hutton’s theory altogether, and charges him with considering all rocks to be lavas of different Colours and structure; and also with « warping every thing to support the eternity of the world.”* He €scants on the pernicious influence of such sceptical Notions, as leading to downright infidelity and atheism, “and as being nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the universe from his office.” +

Kirwan — De Luc.— Kirwan, president of the Royal Academy of Dublin, a chemist and mineralogist of Some merit, but who possessed much greater authority in the scientific world than he was entitled by his talents to enjoy, said, in the introduction to his “ Geo- logical Essays, 1799,” “that sound geology graduated into religion, and was required to dispel certain Systems of atheism or infidelity, of which they had had recent experience.” { He was an uncompromising defender of the aqueous theory of all rocks, and was Scarcely surpassed by Burnet and Whiston, in his desire to adduce the Mosaic writings in confirmation of his opinions.

De Luc, in the preliminary discourse to his Treatise on Geology §, says, “the weapons have been changed by which revealed religion is attacked; it is now assailed by geology, and the knowledge of this science has become essential to theologians.” He imputes the failure of former geological systems to their having been anti-Mosaical, and directed against a “ sublime tradition.” These and similar imputations, reiterated

* P. 577. + P. 59. ¢ Introd. p. 2. § London, 1809. ` F 2

100 SPIRIT OF INTOLERANCE. [Book I.

in the works of De Luc, seem to have been taken for granted by some modern writers: it is therefore necessary to state, in justice to the numerous geo- logists of different nations, whose works have been considered, that none of them were guilty of endea- vouring, by arguments drawn from physics, to in- validate scriptural tenets. On the contrary, the majority of them who were fortunate enough “ to discover the true causes of things,” rarely deserved another part of the poet’s panegyric, “Atque metus omnes subjecit pedibus.” ‘The caution, and even timid reserve, of many eminent Italian authors of the earlier period is very apparent: and there can hardly be a doubt, that they subscribed to certain dogmas, and particularly to the first diluvian theory, out of de- ference to popular prejudices, rather than from conviction. If they were guilty of dissimulation, we may feel regret, but must not blame their want of moral courage, reserving rather our condemnation for the intolerance of the times, and that inquisitorial power which forced Galileo to abjure, and the two Jesuits to disclaim the theory of Newton.*

* Ina most able article, by Mr. Drinkwater, on the “ Life of Galileo,” published in the “ Library of Useful Knowledge,” it is stated that both Galileo’s work, and the book of Copernicus “ Nisi corrigatur” (for, with the omission of certain passages, it was sanc- tioned), were still to be seen on the forbidden list of the Index at Rome in 1828. I was however assured in the same year, by Professor Scarpellini, at Rome, that Pius VIL., a Pontiff distin- guished for his love of science, had procured a repeal of the edicts against Galileo and the Copernican system. He had assembled the Congregation ; and the late Cardinal Toriozzi, assessor of the Sacred Office, proposed “ that they should wipe off this scandal from the church. The repeal was carried, with the dissentient voice of one Dominican only. Long