Chapter L: Agassiz (10)

Generally speaking, the carnivorous mammalia respect one another: lion does not war with tiger, nor the leopard contend with the hyena. But the carnivorous reptiles manifest no such respect for the carnivorous mammals. There are fierce contests in their native jungles, on the banks of the Ganges, between the gavial and the tiger; and in the steaming forests of South America, the boa-constrictor casts his terrible coil scarce less readily round the puma than the antelope. A world which, after it had become a home of the higher herbivorous and more powerful carnivorous mammals, continued to retain the gigantic reptiles of its earlier ages, would be a world of horrid, exterminating war, and altogether rather a place of torment than a scene of intermediate character, in which, though it sometimes reëchoes the groans of suffering nature, life is, in the main, enjoyment. And so,—save in a few exceptional cases, that, while they establish the rule as a fact, serve also as a key to unlock that principle of the Divine government on which it appears to rest,—no sooner was the reptile removed from his place in the fore-front of creation, and creatures of a higher order introduced into it the consolidating and fast-ripening planet of which he had been so long the monarch, than his bulk shrank and his strength lessened, and he assumed a humility of form and aspect at once in keeping with his reduced circumstances, and compatible with the general welfare. But though the _reason_ of the reduction appears obvious, I know not that it can be referred to any other _cause_ than simply the will of the All-Wise Creator.

There hangs a mystery greatly more profound over the fact of the _degradation_ than over that of the _reduction_ and _diminution_ of classes. We can assign what at least _seems_ to be a sufficient _reason_ why, when reptiles formed as a class the highest representatives of the vertebrata, they should be of imposing bulk and strength, and altogether worthy of that post of precedence which they then occupied among the animals. We can also assign a _reason_ for the strange reduction which took place among them in strength and bulk immediately on their removal from the first to the second place. But why not only _reduction_, but also _degradation_? Why, as division started up in advance of division,—first the reptiles in front of the fishes, then the quadrupedal mammals in front of the reptiles, and, last of all, man in front of the quadrupedal mammals,—should the supplanted classes,—two of them at least,—fishes and reptiles,—for there seem to have been no additions made to the mammals since man entered upon the scene,—why should they have become the receptacles of orders and families of a degraded character, which had no place among them in their monarchical state? The fishes removed beyond all analogy with the higher vertebrata, by their homocercal tails,—the fishes (_Acanthopterygii_ and _Sub-brachiati_) with their four limbs slung in a belt round their necks,—the flat fishes, (_Pleuronectidæ_,) that, in addition to this deformity, are so twisted to a side, that while the one eye occupies a single orbit in the middle of the skull, the other is thrust out to its edge,—the irregular fishes generally (sun-fishes, frog-fishes, hippocampi, &c.) were not introduced into the ichthyic division until after the full development of the reptile dynasty; nor did the hand that makes no slips in its working “form the crooked serpent,” footless, grovelling, venom-bearing, the authorized type of a fallen and degraded creature, until after the introduction of the mammals. What can this fact of degradation mean? Species and genera seem to be greatly more numerous in the present age of the world than in any of the geologic ages. Is it not possible that the extension of the chain of being which has thus taken place—not only, as we find, through the addition of the higher divisions of animals to its upper end, but also through the interpolations of _lower links_ into the previously existing divisions—may have borne reference to some predetermined scheme of well-proportioned gradation, or, according to the poet,

“Of general ORDER since the whole began?”

May not, in short, what we term degradation be merely one of the modes resorted to for filling up the voids in creation, and thereby perfecting a scale which must have been originally not merely a scale of narrow compass, but also of innumerable breaks and blanks, hiatuses and chasms? Such, certainly, would be the reading of the enigma which a Soame Jenyns or a Bolingbroke would suggest; but the geologist has learned from his science, that the completion of a chain of at least contemporary being, perfect in its gradations, cannot possibly have formed the design of Providence. Almost ever since God united vitality to matter, the links in this chain of animated nature, as if composed of a material too brittle to bear their own weight when stretched across the geologic ages, have been dropping one after out, from his hand, and sinking, fractured and broken, into the rocks below. It is urged by Pope, that were “we to press on superior powers,” and rise from our own assigned place to the place immediately above all, we would, in consequence of the transposition,

“In the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed.
From nature’s chain whatever link we strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.”

The poet could scarce have anticipated that there was a science then sleeping in its cradle, and dreaming the dreams of Whiston, Leibnitz, and Burnet, which was one day to rise and demonstrate that both the tenth and the ten thousandth link in the chain had been already broken and laid by, with all the thousands of links between; and that man might laudably “press on superior powers,” and attain to a “new nature,” without in the least affecting the symmetry of creation by the void which his elevation would necessarily create; that, in fine, voids and blanks in the scale are exceedingly common things; and that, if men could, by rising into angels, make one blank more, they might do so with perfect impunity. Further, even were the graduated chain of Bolingbroke a reality, and not what Johnson well designates it, an “absurd hypothesis,” and were what I have termed the interpolation of links necessary to its completion, the mere filling up of the original blanks and chasms would not necessarily involve the fact of degradation, seeing that each blank could be filled up, if I may go express myself, from its lower end. Each could be as certainly occupied to the full by an elevation of lower forms, as by a humiliation of the higher. We might receive the hypothesis of Bolingbroke, and yet find the mysterious fact of degradation remain an unsolved riddle in our hands.

But though I can assign neither _reason_ nor _cause_ for the fact, I cannot avoid the conclusion, that it is associated with certain other great facts in the moral government of the universe, by those threads of analogical connection which run through the entire tissue of Creation and Providence, and impart to it that character of unity which speaks of the single producing Mind. The first idea of every religion on earth which has arisen out of what may be termed the spiritual instincts of man’s nature, is that of a Future State; the second idea is, that in this state men shall exist in two separate classes,—the one in advance of their present condition, the other far in the rear of it. It is on these two great beliefs that conscience every where finds the fulcrum from which it acts upon the conduct; and it is, we find, wholly inoperative as a force without them. And in that one religion among men that, instead of retiring, like the pale ghosts of the others, before the light of civilization, brightens and expands in its beams, and in favor of whose claim as a revelation from God the highest philosophy has declared, we find these two master ideas occupying a still more prominent place than in any of those merely indigenous religions that spring up in the human mind of themselves. The special lesson which the Adorable Saviour, during his ministry on earth, oftenest enforced, and to which all the others bore reference, was the lesson of a final separation of mankind into two great divisions,—a division of God-like men, of whose high Standing and full-orbed happiness man, in the present scene of things, can form no adequate conception; and a division of men finally lost, and doomed to unutterable misery and hopeless degradation. There is not in all Revelation a single doctrine which we find oftener or more clearly enforced than that there shall continue to exist, throughout the endless cycles of the future, a race of degraded men and of degraded angels.

Now, it is truly wonderful how thoroughly, in its general scope, the revealed pieces on to the geologic record. We know, as geologists, that the dynasty of the fish was succeeded by that of the reptile,—that the dynasty of the reptile was succeeded by that of the mammiferous quadruped,—and that the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped was succeeded by that of man as man now exists,—a creature of mixed character, and subject, in all conditions, to wide alternations of enjoyment and suffering. We know, further—so far at least as we have yet succeeded in deciphering the record,—that the several dynasties were introduced, not in their lower, but in their higher forms;—that, in short, in the imposing programme of creation it was arranged, as a general rule, that in each of the great divisions of the procession the magnates should walk first. We recognize yet further the fact of degradation specially exemplified in the fish and the reptile. And then, passing on to the revealed record, we learn that the dynasty of man in the mixed state and character is not the final one, but that there is to be yet another creation, or, more properly, _re_-creation, known theologically as the Resurrection, which shall be connected in its physical components, by bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally by the chain of identity, conscious and actual; but which, in all that constitutes superiority, shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of responsible man is superior to even the lowest of the preliminary dynasties. We are further taught, that at the commencement of this last of the dynasties, there will be a re-creation of not only elevated, but also of degraded beings,—a re-creation of the _lost_. We are taught yet further, that though the present dynasty be that of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction were placed on higher ground than that on which they now stand, and sank by their own act, it was yet part of the original design, from the beginning of all things, that they should occupy the existing platform; and that Redemption is thus no after-thought, rendered necessary by the fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general scheme, for which provision had been made from the beginning; so that the Divine Man, through whom the work of restoration has been effected, was in reality, in reference to the purposes of the Eternal, what he is designated in the remarkable text, “_the Lamb slain from the foundations of the world_.” Slain from the foundations of the world! Could the assertors of the stony science ask for language more express? By piecing the two records together,—that revealed in Scripture and that revealed in the rocks,—records which, however widely geologists may mistake the one, or commentators misunderstand the other, have emanated from the same great Author—we learn that in slow and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, each in succession ushering in a higher end yet higher scene of existence,—that fish, reptiles, mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn,—that responsible man, “made in the image of God,” and with dominion over all creatures, ultimately entered into a world ripened for his reception; but, further, that this passing scene, in which he forms the prominent figure, is not the final one in the long series, but merely the last of the _preliminary_ scenes; and that that period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in amount, with all their well-proportioned gradations of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall have perfection for its occupant, and eternity for its duration. I know not how it may appear to others; but for my own part, I cannot avoid thinking that there would be a lack of proportion in the series of being, were the period of perfect and glorified humanity abruptly connected, without the introduction of an intermediate creation of _responsible_ imperfection, with that of the dying irresponsible brute. That scene of things in which God became Man, and suffered, _seems_, as it no doubt _is_, a necessary link in the chain.

I am aware that I stand on the confines of a mystery which man, since the first introduction of sin into the world till now, has “vainly aspired to comprehend.” But I have no new reading of the enigma to offer. I know not why it is that moral evil exists in the universe of the All-Wise and the All-Powerful; nor through what occult law of Deity it is that “perfection should come through suffering.” The question, like that satellite, ever attendant upon our planet, which presents both its sides to the sun, but invariably the same side to the earth, hides one of its faces from man, and turns it to but the Eye from which all light emanates. And it is in that God-ward phase of the question that the mystery dwells. We can map and measure every protuberance and hollow which roughens the nether disk of the moon, as, during the shades of night, it looks down upon our path to cheer and enlighten; but what can we know of the other? It would, however, seem, that even in this field of mystery the extent of the inexplicable and the unknown is capable of reduction, and that the human understanding is vested in an ability of progressing towards the central point of that dark field throughout all time, mayhap all eternity, as the asymptote progresses upon its curve. Even though the essence of the question should forever remain a mystery, it may yet in its reduced and defined state, serve as a key for the laying of other mysteries open. The philosophers are still as ignorant as ever respecting the intrinsic nature of gravitation; but regarded simply as a force, how many enigmas has it not served to unlock! And that moral gravitation towards evil, manifested by the only two classes of responsible beings of which there is aught known to man, and of which a degradation linked by mysterious analogy with a class of facts singularly prominent in geologic history is the result, occupies apparently a similar place, as a force, in the moral dynamics of the universe, and seems suited to perform a similar part. Inexplicable itself, it is yet a key to the solution of all the minor inexplicabilities in the scheme of Providence.

In a matter of such extreme niceness and difficulty, shall I dare venture on an illustrative example?

So far as both the geologic and the Scriptural evidence extends, no species or family of existences seems to have been introduced by creation into the present scene of being since the appearance of man. In Scripture the formation of the human race is described as the terminal act of a series, “good” in all its previous stages, but which became “very good” then; and geologists, judging from the modicum of evidence which they have hitherto succeeded in collecting on the subject,—evidence still meagre, but, so far as it goes, independent and distinct,—pronounce “post-Adamic creations” at least “improbable.” The naturalist finds certain animal and vegetable species restricted to certain circles, and that in certain foci in these circles they attain to their fullest development and their maximum number. And these foci he regards as the original centres of creation, whence, in each instance in the process of increase and multiplication, the plant or creature propagated itself outwards in circular wavelets of life, that sank at each stage as they widened till at length, at the circumference of the area, they wholly ceased. Now we find it argued by Professor Edward Forbes that “since man’s appearance, certain geological areas, both of land and water, have been formed, presenting such physical conditions as to entitle us to expect within their bounds one, or in some instances more than one, centre of creation, or _point of maximum of a zoological or botanical province_. But a critical examination renders evident,” the Professor adds, “that instead of showing distinct foci of creation, they have been in all instances peopled by colonization, _i. e._ by migration of species from pre-existing, and in every case pre-Adamic, provinces. Among the terrestrial areas the British isles may serve as an example; among marine, the Baltic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas. The British islands have been colonized from various centres of creation in (now) continental Europe; the Baltic Sea from the Celtic region, although it runs itself into the conditions of the Boreal one; and the Mediterranean, as it now appears, from the fauna and flora of the more ancient Lusitanian province.” Professor Forbes, it is stated further, in the report of his paper to which I owe these details,—a paper read at the Royal Institution in March last,—“exhibited, in support of the same view, a map, showing the relation which the centres of creation of the air-breathing molluscs in Europe bear to the geological history of the respective areas, and proving that the whole snail population of its northern and central extent (the portion of the Continent of newest and probably post-Adamic origin) had been derived from foci of creation seated in pre-Adamic lands. And these remarkable facts have induced the Professor,” it was added, “to maintain the improbability of post-Adamic creations.”

With the introduction of man into the scene of existence, creation, I repeat, seems to have ceased. What is it that now takes its place, and performs its work? During the previous dynasties, all elevation in the scale was an effect simply of creation. Nature lay dead in a waste theatre of rock, vapor, and sea, in which the insensate laws, chemical; mechanical, and electric, carried on their blind, unintelligent processes: the _creative fiat_ went forth; and, amid waters that straightway teemed with life in its lower forms, vegetable and animal, the dynasty of the fish was introduced. Many ages passed, during which there took place no further elevation: on the contrary, in not a few of the newly introduced species of the reigning class there occurred for the first time examples of an asymmetrical misplacement of parts, and, in at least one family of fishes, instances of defect of parts: there was the manifestation of a downward tendency towards the degradation of monstrosity, when the elevatory fiat again went forth, and, _through an act of creation_, the dynasty of the reptile began. Again many ages passed by, marked, apparently, by the introduction of a warm-blooded oviparous animal, the bird, and of a few marsupial quadrupeds, but in which the prevailing class reigned undeposed, though at least unelevated. Yet again, however, the elevatory fiat went forth, and _through an act of creation_ the dynasty of the mammiferous quadruped began. And after the further lapse of ages, the elevatory fiat went forth yet once more _in an act of creation_; and with the human, heaven-aspiring dynasty, the moral government of God, in its connection with at least the world which we inhabit, “took beginning.” And then creation ceased. Why? Simply because God’s moral government _had_ begun,—because in necessary conformity with the institution of that government, there was to be a thorough identity maintained between the glorified and immortal beings of the terminal dynasty, and the dying magnates of the dynasty which now is; and because, in consequence of the maintenance of this identity as an essential condition of this moral government, mere _acts of creation_ could no longer carry on the elevatory process. The work analogous in its end and object to those _acts of creation_ which gave to our planet its successive dynasties of higher and yet higher existences, is the work of REDEMPTION. It is the elevatory process of the present time,—the only possible provision for that final act of _re_-creation “to everlasting life,” which shall usher in the terminal dynasty.

I cannot avoid thinking that many of our theologians attach a too narrow meaning to the remarkable reason “annexed to the Fourth Commandment” by the Divine Lawgiver. “God rested on the seventh day,” says the text, “from all his work which He had created and made; and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.” And such is the reason given in the Decalogue why man should also rest on the seventh day. God rested on the Sabbath, and sanctified it; and therefore man ought also to rest on the Sabbath, and keep it holy. But I know not where we shall find grounds for the belief that that Sabbath-day during which God rested was merely commensurate in its duration with one of the Sabbaths of short-lived man,—a brief period, measured by a single revolution of the earth on its axis. We have not, as has been shown, a shadow of evidence that He resumed his work of creation on the morrow: the geologist finds no trace of post-Adamic creation,—the theologian can tell us of none. God’s Sabbath of rest may still exist;—_the work of REDEMPTION may be the work of his Sabbath day_. That elevatory process through successive acts of creation which engaged Him during myriads of ages, was of an ordinary week-day character; but in when the term of his moral government began, the elevatory process proper to it assumed the Divine character of the Sabbath. This special view appears to lend peculiar emphasis to the reason embodied in the commandment. The collation of the passage with the geologic record seems, as if by a species of re-translation, to make it enunciate as its injunction, “Keep this day, not merely as a day of memorial related to a past fact, but also as a day of coöperation with God in the work of elevation in relation both to a present fact and a future purpose. God keeps his Sabbath,” it says, “in order that He may save; keep yours also, in order that ye may be saved.” It serves, besides, to throw light on the prominence of the Sabbatical command, in a digest of law of which no part or tittle can pass away until the fulfilment of all things. During the present dynasty of probation and trial, that special work of both God and man on which the character of the future dynasty depends, is the Sabbath-day work of saving and being saved.[41]

It is in this dynasty of the future that man’s moral and intellectual faculties will receive their full development The expectation of any very great advance in the present scene of things—great, at least, when measured by man’s large capacity of conceiving of the good and fair—seems to be, like all human hope when restricted to time, an expectation doomed to disappointment. There are certain limits within which the race improves;—civilization is better than the want of it, and the taught superior to the untaught man. There is a change, too, effected in the moral nature, through that Spirit which, by working belief in the heart, brings its aspirations into harmony with the realities of the unseen world, that, in at least its relation to the future state, cannot be estimated too highly. But conception can travel very far beyond even its best effects in their merely secular bearing; nay, it is peculiarly its nature to show the men most truly the subjects of it, how miserably they fall short of the high standard of conduct and feeling which it erects, and to teach them, more emphatically than by words, that their degree of happiness must of necessity be as low as their moral attainments are humble. Further,—man, though he has been increasing in knowledge ever since his appearance on earth, has not been improving in faculty;—a shrewd fact, which they who expect most from the future of this world would do well to consider. The ancient masters of mind were in no respect inferior in calibre to their predecessors. We have not yet shot ahead of the old Greeks in either the perception of the beautiful, or in the ability of producing it; there has been no improvement in the inventive faculty since the Iliad was written, some three thousand years ago; nor has taste become more exquisite, or the perception of the harmony of numbers more nice, since the age of the Æneid. Science is cumulative in its character; and so its votaries in modern times stand on a higher pedestal than their predecessors. But though nature produced a Newton some two centuries ago, as she produced a Goliath of Gath at an earlier period, the modern philosophers, as a class, do not exceed in actual stature the worse informed ancients,—the Euclids, Archimedeses, and Aristotles. We would be without excuse if, with the Bacon, Milton, and Shakspeare of these latter ages of the world full before us, we recurred to the obsolete belief that the human race is deteriorating; but then, on the other hand, we have certain evidence, that since genius first began unconsciously to register in its works its own bulk and proportions, there has been no increase in the mass or improvement in the quality of individual mind. As for the dream that there is to be some extraordinary elevation of the general platform of the race achieved by means of education, it is simply the hallucination of the age,—the world’s present alchemical expedient for converting farthings into guineas, sheerly by dint of scouring. Not but that education is good; it exercises, and, in the ordinary mind, developes, faculty. But it will not anticipate the terminal dynasty. Yet further,— man’s average capacity of happiness seems to be as limited and as incapable of increase as his average reach of intellect: it is a mediocre capacity at best; nor is it greater by a shade now, in these days of power-looms and portable manures, than in the times of the old patriarchs. So long, too, as the law of increase continues, man must be subject to the law of death, with its stern attendants, suffering and sorrow; for the two laws go necessarily together; and so long as death reigns, human creatures, in even the best of times, will continue to quit this scene of being without professing much satisfaction at what they have found either in it or themselves. It will no doubt be a less miserable world than it is now, when the good come, as there is reason to hope they one day shall, to be a majority; but it will be felt to be an inferior sort of world even then, and be even fuller than now of wishes and longings for a better. Let it improve as it may, it will be a scene of probation and trial till the end. And so Faith, undeceived by the mirage of the midway desert, whatever form or name, political or religious, the phantasmagoria may bear, must continue to look beyond its unsolid and tremulous glitter,—its bare rocks exaggerated by the vapor into air-drawn castles, and its stunted bushes magnified into goodly trees,—and, fixing her gaze upon the re-creation yet future,—the terminal dynasty yet unbegun,—she must be content to enter upon her final rest—for she will not enter upon it earlier—“at return”

“Of Him, the Woman’s Seed,
Last in the clouds, from heaven to be revealed
In glory of the Father, to dissolve
Satan with his perverted world, then raise
From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,
New heavens, new earth, ages of endless date,
Founded in righteousness, and peace, and love,
To bring forth fruits,—joy and eternal bliss.”

But it may be judged that I am trespassing on a field into which I have no right to enter. Save, however, for its close proximity with that in which the geologist expatiates as properly his own, this little volume would never have been written. It is the fact that man must believingly coöperate with God in the work of preparation for the final dynasty, or exist throughout its never-ending cycles as a lost and degraded creature, that alone renders the development hypothesis formidable. But inculcating that the elevatory process is one of the natural law, not of moral endeavor,—by teaching, inferentially at least, that in the better state of things which is coming there is to be an identity of race with that of the existing dynasty, but no identity of individual consciousness,—that, on the contrary, the life after death which we are to inherit is to be merely a horrid life of wriggling impurities, originated in the putrefactive mucus,—and that thus the men who now live possess no real stake in the kingdom of the future,—it is its direct tendency, so far as its influence extends, to render the required coöperation with God an impossibility. For that coöperation cannot exist without belief as its basis. The hypothesis involves a misreading of the geologic record, which not merely affects its meaning in relation to the mind, and thus, in a question of science, substitutes error for truth, but which also threatens to affect the record itself, in relation to the destiny of every individual perverted and led astray. It threatens to write down among the degraded and the lost, men who, under the influence of an unshaken faith, might have risen at the dawn of the terminal period, to enjoy the fulness of eternity among the glorified and the good.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Mr. Miller is the author also of _Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland_, one vol. 8vo.; _A Letter from one of the Scotch people to the Right Honorable Lord Brougham and Vaux, on the opinions expressed by his Lordship in the Auchterarder Case_; and _The Whiggism of the Old School, as exemplified in the Past History and Present Position of the Church of Scotland_. The second of these works is well characterized by Mr. Gladstone as “an able, elegant, and masculine production.”

[2] London, 1847, pp. 409

[3] Since the above sentence was written and set in type, I have learned that my ingenious friend, Mr. Charles Peach of the Customs, Fowey, so well known for his palæontological discoveries, has just found in the Devonian system of Cornwall, fragments of what seem to be dermal plates of _Asterolepis_. It is a somewhat curious circumstance, that the two farthest removed extremities of Great Britain—Cornwall and Caithness—should be tipped by fossiliferous deposits of the same ancient system, and that organisms which, when they lived, were contemporary, should be found embedded in the rocks which rise over the British Channel on the one extremity, and overhang the Pentland Frith on the other.

[4] Figured from a Thurso specimen, slightly different in its proportions from the Stromness specimen described.

[5] Dr. George Garson, Stromness, and Mr. William Watt, jun. Skaill.

[6] The Continental assertors of the development hypothesis are greatly more frank than those of our own country regarding the “life after death,” and what man has to expect from it. The individual, they tell us, perishes forever; but, then, out of his remains there spring up other vitalities. The immortality of the soul is, it would seem, an idle figment, for there really exists no such things as souls; but is there no comfort in being taught, instead, that we are to resolve into monads and maggots? Job solaced himself with the assurance that, even after worms had destroyed his body, he was in the flesh to see God. Had Professor Oken been one of his comforters, he would have sought to restrict his hopes to the prospect of living in the worms. “If the organic fundamental substance _consist_ of infusoria,” says the Professor, “so must the whole organic world _originate_ from infusoria. Plants and animals can only be metamorphoses of infusoria. This being granted, so also must all organizations _consist_ of infusoria, and, during their destruction, dissolve into the same. Every plant, every animal, is converted by maceration into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and the moisture is stocked with infusoria. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division of organisms into infusoria,—a reduction of the higher to the primary life.... Death is no annihilation, but only a change. One individual emerges out of another. Death is only a transition to another life,—not into death. This transition from one life to another takes place through the primary condition of the organic, or the mucus.”—_Physio-Philosophy_, pp. 187-189.

[7] I trust that at least by and by there may be an exception claimed, from the general, but, I am sure, well-meant, censure of this passage, in favor of the Free Church of Scotland. It has got as its Professor of Physical Science—thanks to the sagacity of Chalmers—Dr. John Fleming, a man of European reputation, and all that seems further necessary, in order to secure the benefits contemplated in the appointment, is, that attendance on his course should be rendered imperative on _all_ Free Church candidates for the ministry.

[8] Agassiz’s description of the _Pterichthys_, as quoted by Humboldt, in his _Cosmos_.

[9] From Murchison’s Silurian System.

[10] These scales, which occur in a detached state, in a stratified clay of the Old Red Sandstone, near Cromarty, present for their size a larger extent of _cover_ than the scales of any other Ganoid.

[11] A peculiarity which also occurs in the anterior dorsal of the _Dipterus_.

[12] From the head of _Raja clavata_.

[13] The darker, upper patch in this figure indicates a portion in which the scales of the fins in the fossil still retain their enamel;—the lighter, a portion from which the enamel has disappeared.

[14] The Acanths of the Coal Measures possess the cranial buckler.

[15] Professor Owen, in fixing the homologies of the ichthyic head, differs considerably from Cuvier; but his view seems to be demonstrably the correct one. It will, however, be seen, that in my attempted comparison of the divisions of the ancient ganoid cranium with those of the craniums of existing fishes, the points at issue between the two great naturalists are not involved, otherwise than as mere questions of words. The matter to be determined, for instance, is not whether plate A in the skulls of the cod and _Coccosteus_ be the homologue of a part of the occipital or that of a part of the parietal bones, but whether plate A in the _Coccosteus_ be the homologue of plate A in the cod. The letters employed I have borrowed from Agassiz’s restoration of the _Coccosteus_; whereas the figures intimate divisions which the imperfect keeping of the specimens on which the ichthyologist founded did not enable him to detect.

[16] The jaws (10, 10) which exhibit in the print their greatest breadth, would have presented in the animal, seen from beneath, their narrow under-edges, and have nearly fallen into the line of the sub-opercular plates, (13, 13.)

[17] In all probability it is likewise the principle of the placoid skull. The numerous osseous points by which the latter is encrusted, each capable of increase at the edges, seem the minute bricks of an ample dome. It is possible, however, that new points may be formed in the interstices between the first formed ones, as what anatomists term the _triquetra_ or _Wormiana_ form between the serrated edges of the lambdoidal suture in the human skull; and that the osseous surface of the cerebral dome may thus extend, as the dome itself increases in size, not through the growth of the previously existing pieces,—the minute bricks of my illustration,—but through the addition of new ones. Equally, in either case, however, that essential difference between the placoid skull and the placoid vertebra, to which I have referred, appears to hinge on the circumstance, that while the osseous nucleus of each vertebral centrum could form, in even its most complicated shape, from a _single_ point, the osseous walls of the cranium had to be formed from _hundreds_. The accompanying diagram serves to show after what manner the vertebral centrum in the Ray enlarges with the growth of the animal, by addition of bony matter external to the point in the middle, at which ossification first begins. The horizontal lines indicate the lines of increment in the two internal cones which each centrum comprises, and the vertical ones the lines of increment in the lateral pillars.

SECTION OF VERTEBRAL CENTRUM OF THORNBACK.]

[18] One of the Thurso coprolites in my possession is about one fourth longer than the larger of the two specimens figured here, and nearly thrice as broad.

[19] In two of these, in a collection of several score, I have failed to detect the spiral markings, though their state of keeping is decidedly good. There are other appearances which lead me to suspect that the _Asterolepis_ was not the only large fish of the Lower Old Red Sandstone; but my facts on the subject are too inconclusive to justify aught more than sedulous inquiry.

[20] The shaded plate, (_a_,) accidentally presented in this specimen, belongs to the upper part of the head. It is the posterior frontal plate F, which half-encircled the eye orbit, (see fig. 29;) and I have introduced it into the print here, as in none of the other prints, or of any other specimens, is its upper surface shown.

[21] The late Mr. John Thurston.

[22] “Mr. Phillips proceeded to describe some remains of a small fish, resembling the _Cheiracanthus_ of the Old Red Sandstone, scales and spines of which he had found in a quarry at Hales End, on the western side of the Malverns. The section presented beds of the Old Red Sandstone inclined to the west; beneath these were arenaceous beds of a lighter color, forming the junction with Silurian shales; these, again, passing on to calcareous beds in the lower part of the quarry, containing the corals and shells of the Aymestry Limestone, of their agreement with which stronger evidence might be obtained elsewhere. He had found none of these scales in the junction beds or in the Upper Ludlow Shales; but about sixty or one hundred feet lower, just above the Aymestry Limestone, his attention had been attracted to discolored spots on the _surface_ of the beds, which, upon microscopic examination, proved to be the minute scales and spines before mentioned. These remains were only apparent on the surface, whilst the ‘fish-bed’ of the Upper Ludlow rock, as it usually occurred, was an inch thick, consisting of innumerable small teeth and spines.”—_Report, in “Athenæum” for 1842, of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Meeting of British Association, (Manchester.)_

[23] “This is the lowest position” (that of the Onondago Limestone) “in the State of New York in which any remains have been found higher in the scale of organized beings than _Crustacea_, with the exception of an imperfectly preserved fish-bone discovered by Hall in the Oriskany Sandstone. That specimen, together with the defensive fish-bone found in this part of the New York system, furnishes evidences of the existence of animals belonging to the class _vertebrata_ during the deposition of the middle part of the protozoic strata.”—_American Journal of Science and Arts for 1846_, p. 63.

[24] “The shales _alternating_ with the Wenlock Limestone.” (_Edinburgh Review._)

[25] The Silurian Placoids are most adequately represented by the _Cestracion_ of the southern hemisphere; but I know not that of the peculiar character and instincts of this interesting Placoid,—the last of its race,—there is any thing known. For its form and general appearance see fig. 49, page 177.

[26] Such as the dog-fishes, picked and spotted.

[27] The twelfth in _Spinax Acanthius_, and the fourteenth in _Scyllium Stellare_.

[28] It will scarce be urged against the degradation theory, that those races which, tried by the tests of defect or misplacement of parts, we deem degraded, are not less fitted for carrying on what in their own little spheres is the proper business of life, than the non-degraded orders and families. The objection is, however, a possible one, and one which a single remark may serve to obviate. It is certainly true that the degraded families _are_ thoroughly fitted for the performance of all the work given them to do. They greatly increase when placed in favorable circumstances, and, when vigorous and thriving, enjoy existence. But then the same may be said of all animals, without reference to their place in the scale;—the mollusc is as thoroughly adapted to its circumstances and as fitted to accomplish the end proper to its being, as the mammiferous quadruped, and the mammiferous quadruped as man himself; but the fact of perfect adaptation in no degree invalidates the other not less certain fact of difference of rank, nor proves that the mollusc is equal to the quadruped, or the quadruped to man. And, of course, the remark equally bears on the _reduced_ as on the _unelevated_,—on lowness of place when a result of degradation in races pertaining to a higher division of animals, as on lowness of place when a result of the humble standing of the division to which the races belong.

[29] The vertebral column in the genus _Diplopterus_ ran, as in the placoid genus _Scyllium_, nearly through the middle of the caudal fin.

[30] In the following diagram a few simple lines serve to exhibit the progress of degradation. Fig. _a_ represents the symmetrical Placoids of the Silurian period, consisting of head, neck, body, tail, fore limbs and hinder limbs; fig. _b_ represents those heterocercal Ganoids of the Old Red Sandstone, Coal Measures, and Permian System, in which the neck is extinguished, and the fore limbs stuck on to the occiput; fig. _c_, those homocercal Ganoids of the Trias Lias, Oolite, and Wealden, whose tails spread out into broad terminal processes, without homologue in the higher animals; fig. _d_, those Acanthopterygii of the Chalk that, in addition to the non-homological processes, have both fore limbs and hinder limbs stuck round the head; while fig. _e_ represents the asymmetrical Platessa, of the same period, with one of its eyes in the middle of its head, and the other thrust out to the side.

[31] I would, however, respectfully suggest, that that theory of cerebral vertebræ, on which, in this question, the comparative anatomists proceed as their principle, and which finds as little support in the geologic record from the actual history of the fore limbs as from the actual history of the bones of the cranium, may be more ingenious than sound. It is a shrewd circumstance, that the rocks refuse to testify in its favor. Agassiz, I find, decides against it on other than geological grounds; and his conclusion is certainly rendered not the less worthy of careful consideration by the fact that, yielding to the force of evidence, his views on the subject underwent a thorough change. He had first held, and then rejected it. “I have shared,” he says, “with a multitude of other naturalists, the opinion which regards the cranium as composed of vertebræ; and I am consequently in some degree called upon to point out the motives which have induced me to reject it.”

“M. Oken,” he continues, “was the first to assign this signification to the bones of the cranium. The new doctrine he expounded was received in Germany with great enthusiasm by the school of the philosophers of nature. The author conceived the cranium to consist of three vertebræ, and the basal occipital, the sphenoid, and the ethmoid, were regarded as the central parts of these cranial vertebræ. On these alleged bodies of vertebræ, the arches enveloping the central parts of the nervous system were raised, while on the opposite side were attached the inferior pieces, which went to form the vegetative arch destined to embrace the intestinal canal and the large vessels. It would be too tedious to enumerate in this place the changes which each author introduced, in order to modify this matter so as to make it suit his own views. Some went the length of affirming that the vertebræ of the head were as complete as those of the trunk; and, by means of various dismemberments, separations, and combinations, all the forms of the cranium were referred to the vertebræ, by admitting that the number of pieces was invariably fixed in every head, and that all the vertebrata, whatever might be their organization in other respects, had in their heads the same number of points of ossification. At a later period, what was erroneous in this manner of regarding the subject was detected; but the idea of the vertebral composition of the head was still retained. It was admitted as a general law, that the cranium was composed of three primitive vertebræ, as the embryo is of three blastodermic leaflets; but that these vertebræ, like the leaflets, existed only ideally, and that their presence, although easily demonstrated in certain cases, could only be slightly traced, and with the greatest difficulty, in other instances. The notion thus laid down of the virtual existence of cranial vertebræ did not encounter very great opposition; it could not be denied that there was a certain general resemblance between the osseous case of the brain and the rachidian canal; the occipital, in particular, had all the characteristic features of a vertebra. But whenever an attempt was made to push the analogy further, and to determine rigorously the anterior vertebræ of the cranium, the observer found himself arrested by insurmountable obstacles, and he was obliged always to revert to the virtual existence.

“In order to explain my idea clearly, let me have recourse to an example. It is certain that organized bodies are sometimes endowed with virtual qualities, which, at a certain period of the being’s life, elude dissection, and all our means of investigation. It is thus that at the moment of their origin, the eggs of all animals have such a resemblance to each other, that it would be impossible to distinguish, even by the aid of the most powerful microscope, the ovarial egg of a craw-fish, for example, from that of true fish. And yet who would deny that beings in every respect different from each other exist in these eggs? It is precisely because the difference manifests itself at a later period, in proportion as the embryo develops itself, that we are authorized to conclude, that, even from the earliest period, the eggs were different,—that each had virtual qualities proper to itself, although they could not be discovered by our senses. If, on the contrary, any one should find two eggs perfectly alike, and should observe two beings perfectly identical issue from them, he would greatly err if he ascribed to these eggs different virtual qualities. It is therefore necessary, in order to be in a condition to suppose that virtual properties peculiar to it are concealed in an animal, that these properties should manifest themselves once, in some phase or other of its development. Now, applying this principle to the theory of cranial vertebræ, we should say, that if these vertebræ virtually exist in the adult, they must needs show themselves in reality, at a certain period of development. If, on the contrary, they are found neither in the embryo nor the adult, I am of opinion that we are entitled likewise to dispute their virtual existence.

“Here, however, an objection may be made to me, drawn from the physiological value of the vertebræ, the function of which, as is well known, is, on the one hand, to furnish a solid support to the muscular contractions which determine the movements of the trunk, and, on the other, to protect the centres of the nervous system, by forming a more or less solid case completely around them. The bodies of the vertebræ are particularly destined to the first of these offices; the neurapophyses to the second. What can be more natural than to admit, from the consideration of this, that in the head, the bodies of the vertebræ diminish in proportion as the moving function becomes lost, while the neurapophyses are considerably developed for protecting the brain, the volume of which is very considerable, when compared with that of the spinal marrow? Have we not an example of this fact in the vertebræ of the tail, where the neurapophyses become completely obliterated, and a simple cylindrical body alone remains? Now, may it not be the case, that in the head, the bodies of the vertebræ have disappeared; and that, in consequence, there is a prolongation of the cord only as far as the moving functions of the vertebræ extend? There is some truth in this argument, and it would be difficult to refute it _a priori_. But it loses all its force the moment that we enter upon a detailed examination of the bones of the head. Thus, what would we call, according to this hypothesis, the principal sphenoid, the great wings of the sphenoid, and the ethmoid, which form the floor of the cerebral cavity? It may be said they are apophyses. But the apophyses protect the nervous centres only on the side and above. It may be said that they are the bodies of the vertebræ. But they are formed without the concurrence of the dorsal cord; they cannot, therefore, be the bodies of the vertebræ. It must therefore be allowed, that these bones at least do not enter into the vertebral type; that they are in some measure peculiar. And if this be the case with them, why may not the other protective plates be equally independent of the vertebral type; the more so, because the relations of the frontals and parietals vary so much, that it would be almost impossible to assign to them a constant place?”

[32] It is stated by Mr. Witham, that, “except in a few instances, he had ineffectually tried, with the aid of the microscope, to obtain some insight into the structure of coal. Owing,” he adds, “to its great opacity, which is probably due to mechanical pressure, the action of chemical affinity, and the percolation of acidulous waters, all traces of organization appear to have been obliterated.” I have heard the late Mr. Sanderson, who prepared for Mr. Witham most of the specimens figured in his well-known work on the “Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables,” and from whom the materials of his statement on this point seem to have been derived, make a similar remark. It was rare, he said, to find a bit of coal that exhibited the organic structure. The case, however, is far otherwise; and the ingenious mechanic and his employer were misled, simply by the circumstance, that it is rare to find pieces of coal which exhibit the ligneous fibre, existing in a state of keeping solid enough to stand the grinding of the lapidary’s wheel. The lignite usually occurs in thin layers of a substance resembling soft charcoal, at which, from the loose adhesion of the fibres, the coal splits at a stroke; and as it cannot be prepared as a transparency, it is best examined by a Stanhope lens. It will be found, tried in this manner, that so far is vegetable fibre from being of rare occurrence in coal,—our Scotch coal at least,—that almost every cubic inch contains its hundreds, nay, its thousands, of cells.

[33] On a point of such importance I find it necessary to strengthen my testimony by auxiliary evidence. The following is the judgment, on this ancient petrifaction, of Mr. Nicol of Edinburgh,—confessedly one of our highest living authorities in that division of fossil botany which takes cognizance of the internal structure of lignites, and decides, from their anatomy, their race and family:—

“Edinburgh, 19th July, 1845.

“DEAR SIR,—I have examined the structure of the fossil wood
which you found in the Old Red Sandstone at Cromarty, and
have no hesitation in stating, that the reticulated texture
of the transverse sections, though somewhat compressed,
clearly indicates a coniferous origin; but as there is not
the slightest trace of a disc to be seen in the longitudinal
sections parallel to the medullary rays, it is impossible to
say whether it belongs to the Pine or Araucarian division. I
am, &c.,

“WILLIAM NICOL.”

It will be seen that Mr. Nicol failed to detect what I now deem the discs of this conifer,—those stippled markings to which I have referred, and which the engraver has indicated in no exaggerated style, in one of the longitudinal sections (_b_) of the wood-cut given above. But even were this portion of the evidence wholly wanting, we would be left in doubt, in consequence, not whether the Old Red lignite formed part of a true gymnospermous tree, but whether that tree is now represented by the pines of Europe and America, or by the araucarians of Chili and New Zealand. Were I to risk an opinion in a department not particularly my province it would be in favor of an araucarian relationship.