Part 27

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.

[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.