A History of Science, vol 3 by Henry Smith Williams (sites to read books for free TXT) 📕

This base is a continuation of the horizontal strata of the mountain, and is even united with it visibly on its lower face, being cut perpendicularly upon the other sides, and is not larger than the stone which it supports.’ But seeing that the entire mountain is composed of the same limestone, De Saussure naturally concluded that it would be absurd to think that it was elevated precisely and only beneath the blocks of granite. But, on the other hand, since he did not know the manner in which these perched stones are deposited in our days by glacial action, he had recourse to another explanation: He supposes that the rock was worn away around its base by the continual erosion of water and air, while the portion of the rock which served as the base for the granite had been protected by it. This explanation, although very ingenious, could no longer be admitted after the researches of M. Elie de Beaumont had proved that the action of atmospheric agencies was not by a good deal so destructive as was theretofore supposed. De Saussure speaks also of a detached bowlder, situated upon the opposite side of the Tete-Noire, ‘which is,’ he says, ‘of so great a size that one is tempted to believe that it was formed in the place it occupies; and it is called Barme russe, because it is worn away beneath in the form of a cave which can afford accommodation for more than thirty persons at a time.”[4]

But the implications of the theory of glaciers extend, so Agassiz has come to believe, far beyond the Alps. If the Alps had been covered with an ice sheet, so had many other regions of the northern hemisphere.

Casting abroad for evidences of glacial action, Agassiz found them everywhere in the form of transported erratics, scratched and polished outcropping rocks, and moraine-like deposits. Finally, he became convinced that the ice sheet that covered the Alps had spread over the whole of the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere, forming an ice cap over the globe.

Thus the commonsense induction of the chamois-hunter blossomed in the mind of Agassiz into the conception of a universal ice age.

In 1837 Agassiz had introduced his theory to the world, in a paper read at Neuchatel, and three years later he published his famous Etudes sur les Glaciers, from which we have just quoted. Never did idea make a more profound disturbance in the scientific world.

Von Buch treated it with alternate ridicule, contempt, and rage; Murchison opposed it with customary vigor; even Lyell, whose most remarkable mental endowment was an unfailing receptiveness to new truths, could not at once discard his iceberg theory in favor of the new claimant. Dr. Buckland, however, after Agassiz had shown him evidence of former glacial action in his own Scotland, became a convert—the more readily, perhaps, as it seemed to him to oppose the uniformitarian idea. Gradually others fell in line, and after the usual imbittered controversy and the inevitable full generation of probation, the idea of an ice age took its place among the accepted tenets of geology. All manner of moot points still demanded attention—the cause of the ice age, the exact extent of the ice sheet, the precise manner in which it produced its effects, and the exact nature of these effects; and not all of these have even yet been determined. But, details aside, the ice age now has full recognition from geologists as an historical period. There may have been many ice ages, as Dr. Croll contends; there was surely one; and the conception of such a period is one of the very few ideas of our century that no previous century had even so much as faintly adumbrated.

But, for that matter, the entire subject of historical geology is one that had but the barest beginning before our century. Until the paleontologist found out the key to the earth’s chronology, no one—not even Hutton—

could have any definite idea as to the true story of the earth’s past. The only conspicuous attempt to classify the strata was that made by Werner, who divided the rocks into three systems, based on their supposed order of deposition, and called primary, transition, and secondary.

Though Werner’s observations were confined to the small province of Saxony, he did not hesitate to affirm that all over the world the succession of strata would be found the same as there, the concentric layers, according to this conception, being arranged about the earth with the regularity of layers on an onion. But in this Werner was as mistaken as in his theoretical explanation of the origin of the “primary” rocks. It required but little observation to show that the exact succession of strata is never precisely the same in any widely separated regions. Nevertheless, there was a germ of truth in Werner’s system. It contained the idea, however faultily interpreted, of a chronological succession of strata; and it furnished a working outline for the observers who were to make out the true story of geological development. But the correct interpretation of the observed facts could only be made after the Huttonian view as to the origin of strata had gained complete acceptance.

When William Smith, having found the true key to this story, attempted to apply it, the territory with which he had to deal chanced to be one where the surface rocks are of that later series which Werner termed secondary. He made numerous subdivisions within this system, based mainly on the fossils. Meantime it was found that, judged by the fossils, the strata that Brongniart and Cuvier studied near Paris were of a still more recent period (presumed at first to be due to the latest deluge), which came to be spoken of as tertiary.

It was in these beds, some of which seemed to have been formed in fresh-water lakes, that many of the strange mammals which Cuvier first described were found.

But the “transition” rocks, underlying the “secondary”

system that Smith studied, were still practically unexplored when, along in the thirties, they were taken in hand by Roderick Impey Murchison, the reformed fox-hunter and ex-captain, who had turned geologist to such notable advantage, and Adam Sedgwick, the brilliant Woodwardian professor at Cambridge.

Working together, these two friends classified the transition rocks into chronological groups, since familiar to every one in the larger outlines as the Silurian system (age of invertebrates) and the Devonian system (age of fishes)—names derived respectively from the country of the ancient Silures, in Wales and Devonshire, England. It was subsequently discovered that these systems of strata, which crop out from beneath newer rocks in restricted areas in Britain, are spread out into broad, undisturbed sheets over thousands of miles in continental Europe and in America. Later on Murchison studied them in Russia, and described them, conjointly with Verneuil and Von Kerserling, in a ponderous and classical work. In America they were studied by Hall, Newberry, Whitney, Dana, Whitfield, and other pioneer geologists, who all but anticipated their English contemporaries.

The rocks that are of still older formation than those studied by Murchison and Sedgwick (corresponding in location to the “primary” rocks of Werner’s conception) are the surface feature of vast areas in Canada, and were first prominently studied there by William I.

Logan, of the Canadian Government Survey, as early as 1846, and later on by Sir William Dawson. These rocks —comprising the Laurentian system—were formerly supposed to represent parts of the original crust of the earth, formed on first cooling from a molten state; but they are now more generally regarded as once-stratified deposits metamorphosed by the action of heat.

Whether “primitive” or metamorphic, however, these Canadian rocks, and analogous ones beneath the fossiliferous strata of other countries, are the oldest portions of the earth’s crust of which geology has any present knowledge. Mountains of this formation, as the Adirondacks and the Storm King range, overlooking the Hudson near West Point, are the patriarchs of their kind, beside which Alleghanies and Sierra Nevadas are recent upstarts, and Rockies, Alps, and Andes are mere parvenus of yesterday.

The Laurentian rocks were at first spoken of as representing “Azoic” time; but in 1846 Dawson found a formation deep in their midst which was believed to b e the fossil relic of a very low form of life, and after that it became customary to speak of the system as “Eozoic.”

Still more recently the title of Dawson’s supposed fossil to rank as such has been questioned, and Dana’s suggestion that the early rocks be termed merely Archman has met with general favor. Murchison and Sedgwick’s Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous groups (the ages of invertebrates, of fishes, and of coal plants, respectively) are together spoken of as representing Paleozoic time. William Smith’s system of strata, next above these, once called “secondary,” represents Mesozoic time, or the age of reptiles. Still higher, or more recent, are Cuvier and Brongniart’s tertiary rocks, representing the age of mammals. Lastly, the most recent formations, dating back, however, to a period far enough from recent in any but a geological sense, are classed as quaternary, representing the age of man.

It must not be supposed, however, that the successive “ages” of the geologist are shut off from one another in any such arbitrary way as this verbal classification might seem to suggest. In point of fact, these “ages”

have no better warrant for existence than have the “centuries” and the “weeks” of every-day computation.

They are convenient, and they may even stand for local divisions in the strata, but they are bounded by no actual gaps in the sweep of terrestrial events.

Moreover, it must be understood that the “ages” of different continents, though described under the same name, are not necessarily of exact contemporaneity.

There is no sure test available by which it could be shown that the Devonian age, for instance, as outlined in the strata of Europe, did not begin millions of years earlier or later than the period whose records are said to represent the Devonian age in America. In attempting to decide such details as this, mineralogical data fail us utterly. Even in rocks of adjoining regions identity of structure is no proof of contemporaneous origin; for the veritable substance of the rock of one age is ground up to build the rocks of subsequent ages.

Furthermore, in seas where conditions change but little the same form of rock may be made age after age. It is believed that chalk-beds still forming in some of our present seas may form one continuous mass dating back to earliest geologic ages. On the other hand, rocks different in character maybe formed at the same time in regions not far apart—say a sandstone along shore, a coral limestone farther seaward, and a chalk-bed beyond.

This continuous stratum, broken in the process of upheaval, might seem the record of three different epochs.

Paleontology, of course, supplies far better chronological tests, but even these have their limitations.

There has been no time since rocks now in existence were formed, if ever, when the earth had a uniform climate and a single undiversified fauna over its entire land surface, as the early paleontologists supposed.

Speaking broadly, the same general stages have attended the evolution of organic forms everywhere, but there is nothing to show that equal periods of time witnessed corresponding changes in diverse regions, but quite the contrary. To cite but a single illustration, the marsupial order, which is the dominant mammalian type of the living fauna of Australia to-day, existed in Europe and died out there in the tertiary age. Hence a future geologist might think the Australia of to-day