Chapter IV: Introduction

"The earth hath gathered to her breast again
And yet again, the millions that were born
Of her unnumbered, unremembered tribes."

Let us see if we can get some glimpses of the primæval inhabitants of the world, that lived and died while as yet there were no men and women having authority over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air.

We shall, perhaps, find this antique world quite as strange as the fairy-land of Grimm or Lewis Carroll. True, it was not inhabited by "slithy toves" or "jabber-wocks," but by real beasts, of whose shapes, sizes, and habits much is already known--a good deal more than might at first be supposed. And yet, real as it all is, this antique world--this panorama of scenes that have for ever passed away--is a veritable fairy-land. In those days of which geologists tell us, the principal parts were played, not by kings and queens, but by creatures many of which were very unlike those we see around us now. And yet it is no fairy-land after all, where impossible things happen, and where impossible dragons figure largely; but only the same old world in which you and I were born. Everything you will see here is quite true. All these monsters once lived. Truth is stranger than fiction; and perhaps we shall enjoy our visit to this fairy-land all the more for that reason. For not even the dragons supposed to have been slain by armed knights in old times, when people gave ear to any tale, however extravagant, could equal in size or strength the real dragons we shall presently meet with, whose actual bones may be seen in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington.

Many people who visit this great museum and find their way to the geological galleries on the right, pass hastily by the cases of bones, teeth, and skeletons. These things, it seems, fail to interest them. They do not know how to interpret them. They cannot picture to themselves the kinds of creatures to which the relics once belonged; and so they pass them by and presently go to the more attractive collection of stuffed birds on the other side. There they see the feathered tribes of the air all beautifully arranged; some poised in the air by almost invisible wires; some perched on branches: but all surrounded by grass, flowers, and natural objects, imitated with marvellous reality, so that they see the birds as they really are in nature, and can almost fancy they hear them singing.

Now, it has often occurred to the present writer that something more might be done for the long-neglected "lost creations" of the world, to bring them out of their obscurity, that they may be made to tell to the passer-by their wondrous story. We can, however, well imagine some of our readers asking, "Can these dry bones live?" "Yes," we would say, "they can be made to live; reason and imagination will, if we give them proper play, provide us eyes wherewith to see the world's lost creations." To such men as Cuvier, Owen, Huxley, and others, these dry bones _do_ live. It will be our object to describe to the reader some of the wonderful results that have rewarded the lifelong labours of such great men. We shall take some of the largest and strangest forms of life that once lived, and try to picture them as they really were when alive, whether walking on land, swimming in the sea, or flying in the air; to understand the meanings of their more obvious structures; and to form some conclusions with regard to their habits, as well as to find out, if possible, their relations,--as far as such questions have been answered by those most qualified to settle these difficult matters.

All technical details, such as the general reader is unfamiliar with, will be as far as possible suppressed. Let us fancy a long procession of extinct monsters passing in single file before us, and ourselves endeavouring to pick out their "points" as they present themselves to the eye of imagination. It is not, be it remembered, mere imagination that guides the man of science in such matters, for all his conclusions are carefully based on reason; and when conclusions are given, we shall endeavour to show how they have been arrived at.

For millions of years countless multitudes of living animals have played their little parts on the earth and passed away, to be buried up in the oozy beds of the seas of old time, or entombed with the leaves that sank in the waters of primæval lakes. The majority of these perished beyond all recovery, leaving not a trace behind; yet a vast number of fossilised remains have been, in various ways, preserved; sometimes almost as completely as if Dame Nature had thoughtfully embalmed them for our instruction and delight.

Down in those old seas and lakes she kept her great museum, in order to preserve for us a selection of her treasures. In course of time she slowly raised up sea-beds and lake-bottoms to make them into dry land. This museum is everywhere around us. We have but to enter quarries and railway cuttings, or to search in coal-mines, or under cliffs at the sea-side, and we can consult her records. As the ancient Egyptians built tombs, pyramids, and temples, from which we may learn their manner of life and partly read their history, so Nature has entombed, not one race only, but many races of the children of life. Her records are written in strange hieroglyphs, yet it is not difficult to interpret their meaning; and thus many an old story, many an old scene, may be pictured in the mind of man.

Shall we call this earth-drama a tragedy or a comedy? Doubtless tragic scenes occurred at times; as, for instance, when fierce creatures engaged in deadly combat: and probably amusing, if not comic, incidents took place occasionally, such as might have provoked us to laughter, had we been there to see them. But let us simply call it a drama. Backgrounds of scenery were not wanting. Then, as now, the surface of the earth was clothed with vegetation, and strange cattle pastured on grassy plains. Vegetation was at times very luxuriant. The forests of the coal period, with their giant reeds and club-moss trees, must have made a strange picture. Then, as now, there rose up from the plains lofty ranges of mountains, reaching to the clouds, their summits clothed with the eternal snows. These, too, played their part, feeding the streams and the rivers that meandered over the plains, bringing life and fertility with them, as they do now. The sun shone and the wind blew: sometimes gently, so that the leaves just whispered in an evening breeze; at other times so violently that the giants of the forest swayed to and fro, and the seas lashed themselves furiously against rocky coasts. Nor were the underground forces of the earth less active than they are now: volcanic eruptions often took place on a magnificent scale; volcanoes poured out fiery lava streams for leagues beneath their feet; great showers of ashes and fine dust were ejected in the air, so that the sun was darkened for a time, and the surface of the sea was covered for many miles with floating pumice and volcanic dust, which in time sank to the bottom, and was made into hard rock, such as we now find on the top of Snowdon.

Earthquake shocks were quite as frequent, and no doubt the ground swayed to and fro, or was rent open as some unusually great earth-movement took place, and perhaps a mountain range was raised several feet or yards higher. All this we learn from the testimony of the rocks beneath our feet. It only requires the use of a little imagination to conjure up scenes of the past, and paint them as on a moving diorama.

We shall not, however, dwell at any length on the scenery, or the vegetation that clothed the landscape at different periods; for these features are sufficiently indicated in the beautiful drawings of extinct animals by our artist, Mr. J. Smit.

The researches of the illustrious Baron Cuvier, at Paris, as embodied in his great work, _Ossemens Fossiles_, gave a great impetus to the study of organic remains. It was he who laid the foundations of the science of Palæontology,[2] which, though much has already been accomplished, yet has a great future before it. Agassiz, Owen, Huxley, Marsh, Cope, and others, following in his footsteps, have greatly extended its boundaries; but he was the pioneer.

[2] Palæontology is the science which treats of the living beings, whether animal or vegetable, which have inhabited this globe at past periods in its history. (Greek--_palaios_, ancient; _onta_, beings; _logos_, discourse.)

Before his time fossil forms were very little known, and still less understood. His researches, especially among vertebrates, or backboned animals, revealed an altogether undreamed-of wealth of entombed remains. It is true the old and absurd notion that fossils were mere "sports of Nature," sometimes bearing more or less resemblance to living animals, but still only an accidental (!) resemblance, had been abandoned by Leibnitz, Buffon, and Pallas; and that Daubenton had actually compared the fossil bones of quadrupeds with those of living forms; while Camper declared his opinion that some of these remains belonged to extinct species of quadrupeds.

It is to Cuvier, however, that the world owes the first systematic application of the science of comparative anatomy, which he himself had done so much to place on a sound basis, to the study of the bones of fossil animals. He paid great attention to the relative shapes of animals, and the different developments of the same kind of bones in various animals, and especially to the nature of their teeth. So great did his experience and knowledge become, that he rarely failed in naming an animal from a part of its skeleton. He appreciated more clearly than others before him the mutual dependence of the various parts of an animal's organisation. "The organism," he said, "forms a connected unity, in which the single parts cannot change without modifications in the other parts."

It will hardly be necessary to give examples of this now well-known truth; but, just to take one case: the elephant has a long proboscis with which it can reach the ground, and consequently its neck is quite short; but take away the long proboscis, and you would seriously interfere with the relation of various parts of its structure to each other. How, then, could it reach or pick up anything lying on the ground? Other changes would have to follow: either its legs would require to be shortened, or its neck to be lengthened. In every animal, as in a complex machine, there is a mutual dependence of the different parts.

As he progressed in these studies, Cuvier was able with considerable success to restore extinct animals from their fossilised remains, to discover their habits and manner of life, and to point out their nearest living ally. To him we owe the first complete demonstration of the possibility of restoring an extinct animal. His "Law of Correlation" however, has been found to be not infallible; as Professor Huxley has shown, it has exceptions. It expresses our experience among living animals, but, when applied to the more ancient types of life, is liable to be misleading.

To take one out of many examples of this law: Carnivorous animals, such as cats, lions, and tigers, have claws in their feet, very different from the hoofs of an ox, which is herbivorous; while the teeth of the former group are very different to those of the latter. Thus the teeth and limbs have a certain definite relation to each other, or, in other words, are correlated. Again, horned quadrupeds are all herbivorous (or graminivorous), and have hoofs to their feet. The following amusing anecdote serves to illustrate Cuvier's law. One of his students thought he would try and frighten his master, and, having dressed up as a wild beast, entered Cuvier's bedroom by night, and, presenting himself by his bedside, said in hollow tones, "Cuvier, Cuvier, I've come to eat you!" The great naturalist, who on waking up was able to discern something with horns and hoofs, simply remarked, "What! horns, hoofs--graminivorous--you can't!" What better lesson could the master have given the pupil to help him to remember his "Law of Correlation"?

Cuvier's great work, entitled _Ossemens Fossiles_, will long remain an imperishable monument of the genius and industry of the greatest pioneer in this region of investigation. This work proved beyond a doubt to his astonished contemporaries the great antiquity of the tribes of animals now living on the surface of the earth. It proved more than that, however; for it showed the existence of a great philosophy in Nature which linked the past with the present in a scheme that pointed to a continuity of life during untold previous ages. All this was directly at variance with the prevalent ideas of his time, and consequently his views were regarded by many with alarm, and he received a good deal of abuse--a fate which many other original thinkers before him have shared.

It is somewhat difficult for people living now, and accustomed to modern teaching, to realise how novel were the conclusions announced by Cuvier. In his _Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe_, translated into most European languages under the title _Theory of the Earth_, he lays down, among others, the two following propositions:--

1. That all organised existences were not created at the same time; but at different times, probably very remote from each other--vegetables before animals, mollusca and fishes before reptiles, and the latter before mammals.

2. That fossil remains in the more recent strata are those which approach nearest to the present type of corresponding living species.

Teaching such as this gave a new impetus to the study of organic remains, and Palæontology, as a science, began with Cuvier.