Life-history of our planet ... Illustrated by M. Gunning

Front matter

LIFE HISTORY OF OUR PLANET. WYOMING IN THE LATER EOCENE. (See page 249.: LIFE-HISTORY OF OUR PLANET. By WILLIAM D. GUNNING. XXjX/CTST'-ES.A.'T'E-'D -B-a" *IZ^Œ&-Za-TT-ITlTIITa-. 11 They say The solid earth whereon we tread, In tracts of fluent heat began, And grew to seeming random forms, The seeming prey of cyclic storms, Till at the last arose the man ; Who throve and branched from clime to clime. The herald of a higher race, And of himself in higher place, If so he type this work of time Within himself." CHICAGO : W. B. KEEN, COOKE & CO. 1876. COPYRIGHT, BY W. B. KEEN, COOKE & CO., A. D. 1876.

Preface

. With much of that which is called "Popular Science " the writer of these pages has no sympathy. To read from pages addressed to the memory only, that the sun is so many miles from the earth, is so many miles in diameter, and is enveloped in "whirlwinds of tempestuous fire " so fierce that if they could blow upon the earth they would reduce it in a few seconds to a mist of atoms, may help the mind to astronomi cal facts and set it aglow with wonder, but it does not teach it astronomy. To read in similar manner that rocks were formed so, or so; that oceans came to be in this wise or that wise; that continents rose through the play of these forces, or those; that life began in one form or in another, and to read how it unfolded and branched from order to order, may be entertain ing, but it may have little to do with geology.

Facts do not enlarge the mind unless they are fertilized by principles. Our aim in the preparation of this volume has been to conduct the reader through methods to results. The leading types of life which have possessed the (5; PKEFACE. earth from age to age he will find described and delineated. He will find the more significant types reconstructed, part by part, with so little of the phraseology of comparative anatomy, that his mind, it is hoped, will traverse the methods and make them its own. To all who have labored in the quarry, the museum, the laboratory, or the library, and who are known to him by their works, the writer acknowledges his indebtedness. W. D. Gunning, Waltham, Mass., Oct, 1876, Ok tee Wat to a Bird. — 1, A Dinosaur of the Jurassic Period — a Bird except in teeth, fore limbs and tail. 2, A Bird which lived in Kansas during the Cretaceous Period — a Bird in all except teeth, which lingered aa vestiges of the Reptile.

ILLUSTRATIONS. Wyoming in the later Eocene, Frontispiece. On the way to a Bird 0 Crystals, 14 Symbolical History of Iron, 20 of Lead, 24 of Copper, 26 of Silver, 29 Doris lacina, 25 Spiridea, 28 Mountain-making 32 Canon and Valley, 50 Globigerina and Diatom 51 Coryne, 55 Tubularia 56 Doris, • • • 57 Articulate Types, 58 The Lancelet and the Fish 60 Zeuglodon, 65 Uintahtherium, 67 Hadrosaurus, 71 Connecticut Valley in Triassic Times, 74 Port Jackson Shark, 75 First and Last, 76 Paradoxides, 79 Graptolite and Lingulella, 80 Section of the Earth's Crust, 81 Eozoon, 84 Graptolithus Logani, Lingulella prima, 87 Platycrinus Safordi, 89 Paradoxides Harlani, 90 Cephalaspis Lyelli, 93 Coccosteus decipiens 94 Carboniferous landscape, . . . . ' 103 Labyrinthodon, 106 Section of Nova Scotia, Carboniferous, 109 Section of Nesquehoning, Ill Octopus, 119 <") ILLUSTRATIONS.

Series of Nautili, 1-® Series of Ammonites "123 Evolution of the limb of the Bird, 761 Megalosaurus 140 Jaw of Pythonomorph 143 Kansas during the Cretaceous Period, 146 Ideal Section of Drift, 156 Bowlder as dropped by an Iceberg, 174 Time Scale of Glacial Epochs, 181 Contours of Crania 201 Section of a River Valley, 208 Beehive Houses, 212 Section of Caves, Ravine and Valley, 216 Brixham Cave : 217 Kent's Cave, 221 Mammoth 223 Victoria Cave 225 Gnawed jaw of a Hyena, 228 Gnawed thigh bone of Rhinoceros 229 Embryos 234 Embryos less advanced, 235 Mud Fish 236 Evolution of the Foot of a Horse, 244 Sacculina 270 Megatherium, 275 Glyptodon, 276 Embryos, 282 Embryos more advanced, 283 Evolution of the Brain, 284 Skull of Gorilla 291 Hands 292 Hands and Feet of two Man-like Apes 296 Loris, 308 Old and New World Monkeys, 309 Chimpanzee and Gorilla 310 Orang and Gibbon, 311 Stages in growth of Orang, 314 Scheme of the Races 328 Race Types, 334 The Holy Monkey, 339 The Jaw, 341 The forthcoming American,

Chapter I

Activities through which Nature came to Rest in the Rocks — History of Rocks and Metals in Molecules — History of Rocks in Masses — A Molten Globe — A Globe Cooling and Shrinking — A solid Core and a solid Crust — Reactions between the Molten Zone and the Crust — Mountains, Earthquakes, Volcanoes — Volcanoes Incident to a Globe Advancing in Age — Earthquakes Incident to a Globe in its Youth, and Decline as the Globe advances in Age — Solid Nucleus meets Solid Crust and Nature comes to Rest in Rock-masses — A World in its Old Age and Death 13

Chapter II

Under the Seas — Rock-Making about the Poles, along the Shores, in the Great Deeps — Petrifactions — Fossils "the Parents of Rocks " — Types of Life — The Present an Outgrowth of the Past — Bird's Flight View of the History of Life as read from the Rocks of North America. 49

Chapter III

The Rotting of Rocks — Time-scale applied to the Archæan Rocks — The Dawn of Life — Evolution of the Cœlanterate Animal, of the Molluscan, of the Articulate, of tlie Vertebrate — Pedigree of the Fish — History of Petroleum — (£•) The Dawn of Plant-life — Evolution of the Lichen, the Scale-moss, and the Fern — The Primeval Forest— The Coal-making Age — Chemistries of the Sunbeam 85

Chapter IV

The Cephalopod — Evolution of the Nautilus — Evolution of the Ammonite — Ontogeny and Phylogeny — The Individual and the Race — A Species in its Rise and Culmination — A Species in its Decline and Death — Evolution of the Saurian — Ichthyosaurus — Plesiosaurus — Ceteosaurus — Megalosaurus — Hints of the forthcoming Mammal — Evolution of the Bird — The Series which led from Reptile to Bird — The Pythonomorphs — Elasmosaurus — Protostega — Portheus — Pterodactyle — Pteranodon — Europe in the Cretaceous Epoch — America in the Cretaceous Epoch — Hesperornis — Bird of the Evening of Mesozoic Time 118

Chapter V

The Ice-age — Bowlders, Gravel, Clay, Sand, Planed, and Scratched Ledges — Ice from Water and Ice from Snow — Glaciers of the Alps — Glaciers of Greenland — Motion of Glaciers — Glaciers Made and Moved by the Sun — Europe in the Glacial Epoch — America in the Glacial Epoch — Warm Periods Intercalated between Glacial Periods — Cause of Glacial Periods — Times of their Occurrence... 149

Chapter VI

Man's Antiquity — His Migrations — His Development from Savagery to Civilization — The Historian Baffled — Science can See where History cannot — The Prehistoric Chinaman — Pre-historic Indian — Pre-historic Dravida — Pre-historic Irishman — Man in Asia, Africa, Europe, America, and the Pacific Islands on the confines of Brutedom, with no Laws, no Institutions, and no Memory of a Past — Shell-heaps — How long since the Indian Possessed America — Mounds and the Mound-builders — Man was in California before the Mound-builder was in the Mississippi Valley — Palæolithic Age —Neolithic Age — Bronze Age —Iron Age — The Palæolithic Man Restored— His Tools— His Abodes — His Destruction — Emergence of Neolithic Man 186

Chapter VII

Origin of Animals — Magnitude of the Problem — Embryotic History of a Bird and Reptile — The Mud-fish, a Link between the Gill-breather and the Lung-breather — Transition from Mesozoic to Neozoic Times — Remoteness of the Eocene Age — Eocene Mammals — History of Teeth, and Origin of the Insectivorous Orders, of Herbivorous Orders, of Carnivorous Orders — History of the Feet and Origin of the Plantigrades, of the Digitigrades, of the Solipeds — Ontogeny and Phylogeny of the Deer — Creation by Hunger and by Love — The World is Poor — In Creation by Hunger, two Factors, Variation and Inheritance — Instability in Inorganic Nature implies Instability in Organic Nature — Advance and Recession — Degraded Types — Retrogression through Parasitism — Checks, Counterpoise, Stimulants — How They were Adjusted in Asia, in Australia, in South America — The Results 232

Chapter VIII

Origin of Man — Bearings of the Problem — Evolution of the Individual — Evolution of the Race — History of the Brain — History of the Eye — History of the Ear — History of the Mouth — History of the Foot — History of the Hand — The Body of Man a Historic Record — The Animal in him has been Receding — The Man in him has been Advancing — Whence from? — Whither Tending?

Chapter IX

Origin of the Races — Branches of our Family Tree — Early Branches from which they Sprang — The Aryan, the Semitic, the Mongolian, the Negritto, Straight-haired Races, Curly-haired Races, Tuft-haired Races, Fleece-haired Races, Hypothetical Race, which would Generalize all these — The Primeval Race — Humanity emerging from Brutedom — Survival of Primitive Features in the Negro and in the Mongolian — Process by which these Features were eliminated * in the Aryan Trunk and its Branches — Man throwing off the Animal Mind as well as the Animal Body — Evolution of Civilized Races —Barriers — Poverty of Man — Poverty of Nature in Australia, in South Africa, in the Pacific Islands, in America — Man's Development arrested everywhere except in two Centers — Aborted Growths — For Savage Races no Hope — Races which have the Promise of the Future — The Race of the Future OUK PLANET: ITS LIFE HISTORY.

Chapter I

Activities through which Nature came to Rest in the Rocks — History of Rocks and Metals in Molecules — History of Rocks in Masses — A Molten Globe — A Globe Cooling and Shrinking — A solid Core and a solid Crust — Reactions between the Molten Zone and the Crust — Mountains, Earthquakes, Volcanoes — Volcanoes Incident to a Globe Advancing in Age — Earthquakes Incident to a Globe in its Youth, and Decline as the Globe advances in Age — Solid Nucleus meets Solid Crust and Nature comes to Rest in Rock-masses — A World in its Old Age and Death. IN Rocks Nature is at Rest. Strip from the earth all animals, all plants, and whatever lives and is neither animal nor plant, and you will have a mineral world. Break from its crust, a fragment and make it an object of study; you will find no interdependence of parts.

You cannot see the whole animal in a limb, nor the whole plant in a leaf; but you can see all the iron of a mine in a bit of its ore, all the granite of a ledge in a detached fragment, all the ocean in a water drop. But while you find no interdependence of parts, you will find a union of ele ments. Oxygen is an element which turns like the point of a dagger toward everything that lives, and its incessant attack on leaf and blood occasions all movement in the organic world. But rocks, being already saturated with oxygen, are free from attack. In them the elements have satisfied their affinities, and are therefore at rest. But the rest to which nature has attained in the rocks implies antecedent activities. The cinders of a burned city tell you of oxygen whose likings have been gratified at the cost of a conflagration.

Rocks are the Cinders of a Burned World. These cinders tell you of oxygen (enough to form nearly half the earth's weight) whose affinities have been gratified at the cost of prodigious energies. Rocks are the Product of Spent Forces. Nature, as the name implies, is a continuous on-flow. She is not fixed but fluent. As fixed ice to the fluent see, so are rocks to nature. They are nature at rest. Fig. 1 Rocks are Historic Records. Each element of a rock mass has tried to realize an ideal of form. "When water passes into the rigidity of ice, its molecules compose themselves to rest in the form of beautiful six-rayed stars. When the molecules of silver are freed from nitric acid they Fig. 1. 1. A crystal of quartz. 2. A bundle of hornblende crystals. 3. A crystal of water. 4. Of actinolite. 5.

Of staurolite. 6. Of water. 7. Of feldspar. march in most wonderful order, each to its allotted place of rest in a silver tree. Latent in every molecule of water and in every fluent molecule of metal or mineral lies this marvelous building power. Ac tive once in every molecule of every crystal was this building power. Silicon is an element which does not exist alone, having everywhere satisfied its affinities for oxygen and become quartz, which, in some form, constitutes about one-fourth of the earth's crust. The molecules have built themselves into prisms, terminated by pyramids. The facets are always six, and however the form of the crystal may vary — and it does vary from almost perfect symmetry to sheets as thin as the blade of a knife — the angles are always the same and the number of facets always the same.

Silica, which is silicon combined with oxygen, has united with alumina and an alkali and formed feld spar, which, after quartz, is the most common of minerals. The molecules have marshaled themselves to rest, forming crystals, commonly, of ten facets. Silica has combined with alumina and potash or magnesia and formed mica, whose molecules have united to make thin, transparent, brilliant, crystalline leaves. Silica has combined with magnesia, oxide of iron, and lime, and the result is hornblende, a mineral whose molecules have formed dark, oblong prisms, or tufts of green needles, called actinolite; or white, called tremolite; or bundles of white fibers, called asbestus. These are the principal minerals which compose the earth's crust. Silica, alumina and potash or soda, magnesia, oxide of iron, and lime, when held in solu tion by water at temperatures above 700° F., crystallize — the silica into quartz; silica, alumina and potash or soda, into feldspar; silica, potash and magnesia, into mica; and silica, magnesia, lime and oxide of iron, into hornblende.

We infer that rocks which contain these crystals, or any of them, were formed through the agency of water, and at a temperature which may not have been higher than seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Rocks are either crystalline or fragmental. Quartz, feldspar, mica and hornblende, when crystallized sepa rately in grains fine or coarse, and united into a compact mass, form the crystalline series of which granite is the type. Pebbles of quartz, grains of quartz, and grains of feldspar and mica, when cemented, pebble to pebble, and grain to grain, form conglomerate, sandstone and slate — a series of fragmental rocks. Fragmental rocks cannot be the older as they are only cemented fragments torn from other rocks. Granite cannot be the oldest, as its constituents assume their crystal line form at low ranges of temperature, and as it often contains talc and chlorite which are hydrous minerals and show that water was present in the granitic paste.

The oldest rocks would tell us of intense heat, for all lines of search lead back toward a beginning when our globe was incandescent. The first step nature took in rock-making was the formation of the stable oxides, that is, the burning of silicon, aluminum and the like into their cinders, silica, alumina, and the like. But the crust which first hardened over a molten, incandescent globe nowhere appears. The oldest rocks are everywhere buried under their own ruins. When the world was incandescent where were the oceans? Not on the earth but in the air above it. No matter has been added — save in the fall of mete orites — and none has been taken away. The waters were here from " the beginning," here in their ele mental gases. As silica is the oxide of silicon and implies a time when its elements were free, so water is the oxide of hydrogen and implies a time when its elements had not combined.

Water is a cinder from the burning of gas with gas, as silica is a cinder from the burning of a gas with a solid. When the earth and its atmosphere had cooled to the dew-point, condensation occurred. Oxidation must have occurred before, and the oceans must have hung as a pavilion of clouds and a thick veil of mist over the earth before they fell in rain upon its surface. They did not fall alone. The primeval atmosphere was loaded with other vapors than those of water. The vapor of every element which is volatile at a high heat would have filled the sky. Chlorine and sulphur and carbon, in the form of acid gases mixed with watery vapor, would have formed a dense atmosphere. These acids would have come down in the rain, entered into combination with certain bases and loaded the sea as they had loaded the air.

We are not left to conjecture. We have portions of the primitive sea imprisoned in pores of the rock formed on its bottom. This fossil sea-water, as Dr. Hunt has shown, is far richer than our seas in the salts of lime and magnesia, but not in common salt. Most of the chlorine in the present seas has entered into combination with sodium and formed common salt, but half the chlorine in the primeval sea was combined with lime and magnesia — a fact we shall find of great significance in the after-history of the globe. Gold and silver aud copper and lead are held in solution by the sea. Copper is found in the blood of marine mollusks, and copper, silver, and lead are found in the ashes of marine weeds, while a German chemist has announced the discovery of gold in sea water. Sonstadt's experiments have led him to esti mate one grain of gold to each tun of ocean, or one dollar to each twenty-five tuns, and if this estimate is correct the oceans hold eleven million two hundred thousand times as much gold as all the nations of men have dug from the earth !

These metals were held in solution by the primeval sea in larger stores, we have reason to believe, than they are contained in the seas of our own time. What has become of the excess? History is recorded in metals as well as in rocks and oceans. If the rest to which nature came in crystal line granite implies vast antecedent activities, the metal she has brought to rest in strata and veins and fissures of the earth is the inscribed record of activi ties equally great. What quartz is among rocks, that iron is among metals, the most abundant and the most universally diffused. It forms, possibly, the core of the globe to within five hundred miles of the surface. It appears, certainly, as a large constituent in the deepest known rocks, and its ores vein the oldest rocks which come to the surface.

It is as old as its containing rock. What is its history? Symbols will help the mind to traverse the history of an atom of iron. It is the province of science to make the mind see where the eye cannot. Our eyes cannot see an atom, but we must see it. We symbolize the iron atom by Fig. 2 at 1. We cannot question it as to its essence or origin. We do not know that it ever had an origin, and we must take it as the mathematician takes his numbers. The first step we find nature taking with that atom is to burn it. The atom combines with one and a half atoms of oxygen and is then a molecule. Our molecule is insoluble in water. If it were in the sea it would find its way to the bottom and rest there in the mud. If this oxidation occurred when the world was young and there was yet " no sea," the molecules would lie as cinders on the earth.

They would be diffused through the rocks forming at the time of their oxidation. They are diffused through almost all the rocks of the earth's crust. And as gravel and clay and sand and soil are merely abraded rocks, they are diffused through almost all the top-dressing of the rocky crust. As they are insoluble in water, the rain which sinks through the soil has no power to pick them out and carry them away. But if the rain fails on a soil overgrown with vegetation the result may be different. Moss, ferns, grass, leaves — all forms of vegetation — while rotting, yield por tions of their carbon to the water which falls on them. Freighted with this carbon the water sinks into the soil, and every molecule of iron it finds on the way it picks out and carries with it. For the molecule gives up one portion of its oxygen to the carbon in the water and forms with it carbonic acid.

What remains now is a protoxide — one atom of iron to one of oxy gen — and this is soluble in water containing acid. The water can move the molecule as soon as this interchange has occurred. If we look now on a stagnant ditch in a meadow, or a stagnant pool on a way side where vegeta tion is rank and rotting, we may see it mantled with an Fig. 2. iridescent scum. This scum is the iron picked from the soil and carried hither by the acidulated water. The molecules which lay against the air took from it each another portion of oxygen, and, becoming again insoluble, separated from the water and formed this thin, shining film. After a time the film sinks to the bottom where it is followed by other films which appear now as a reddish ochre. If the water comes up in a bog the iron-molecules it brought are precipitated as bog-ore.

We have found the atom oxidizing and becoming a Fig. 2. History in Symbols of an Atom of Iron.— 1. An atom. 2. The atom having combined with a portion and a half of oxygen appears in a molecule of peroxide. 3. The molecule diffused through rocks or soH, and yielding a portion of its oxygen to the carbon which a water-drop, represented to the right, has carried down into the soil from decaying vegetation above. 4. The iron molecule, reduced now to a protoxide, is taken from the soil by acidulated water and borne to 5. A bog or spring or pond. 6. The molecules ol protoxide which lie against the air, absorb from it another por tion of oxygen and becoming peroxide, separate from the water and unite to form a thin iridescent film. The film, growing thick, falls to the bottom and appeal's as iron-ochre or bog ore — the first stage of all iron ores. molecule.

We have seen molecules diffused through rocks and soil. We have seen them giving up to the carbon of decaying vegetation, brought to them by water, a portion of their oxygen and becoming soluble. We have seen them taken up then by tlie water and carried to ditches or ponds or bogs and there ag gregated as iron-ochre or bog-ore. By other agencies this ochre or bog-ore is changed into any of the forms of iron found in the earth's crust. The shining film on the pool will give us a vision of other times. For as nature works to-day in gather ing up and aggregating her molecules, so she has always wrought. A little bed of iron-ochre on the bottom of a ditch tells you that so much vegetation had to grow and die and rot and yield its carbon to percolating waters, before so many molecules of iron could be gathered from the soil and brought together on the face of a ditch.

A mountain of iron-ore — as that in Missouri — tells you that so much vegetation, the same in proportion as the mountain to the ochre, had to grow and die and rot on the face of a primeval world, and yield its carbon to be burned by iron-molecules and thus to acidulate the percolating waters, before so many particles of iron could be gathered from the ground and aggregated in a bog or under stagnant waters. The iridescent film we see so often we do not see at all, may give wing to our imagination and show us a vision of other worlds as well as other times. A law here is a law of the universe. Our minds are so made that when we see the results of* a process going on before our eyes, and then see the same results brought to us, even from interplanetary spaces, we must assert a like process for a like result.

On the twelfth of February, 1865, ten o'clock at night, a hundred and fifty miles above Iowa, there appeared a meteor two thousand feet long and four hundred feet in diameter. It shone like a sun and illuminated the entire State of Iowa and portions of Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Men and animals were smitten with dread. It shot athwart the sky at a speed of twenty one miles a second, and exploded at a height of ten miles with detonations which shook the houses far and near. The meteor contained by weight seven per cent. of metallic iron. Meteoric stones, then, we are con strained to say, are waifs from another world, per chance a dismantled world, in which vegetation was performing the same functions in aggregating molecules of iron as it performs here.* Less abundant than iron is lead, but not less inter esting as an episode in the earth's history is THE HISTORY OF AN ATOM OF LEAD.

Lead is held in solution by the seas, and was held in larger per cent, by the primeval seas. Where is the excess? How has it been abstracted from the sea and laid to rest in the limestones? Prof. Whitney prepared the way for an important *"The presence of graphites, of native iron and of sulphurets in most ærolites, tells us in unmistakable language that these bodies come from a region where vegetable life has performed a part not unlike that which it plays on our globe, and even leads us to hope for the discovery in them of organic forms which may give us some notion of life in other worlds than our own." — T. Sterry Hunt. The Chemistry of the Earth. Hep. Smith Inst, 1862. reform in geology when, in a government report on the lead region of Wisconsin and Illinois, he called attention to the fact that metals had been introduced into the rocks of the Northwest at the very time when life was introduced on a grand scale into the oceans of the globe.

From the oceans came the lead — not from an imaginary ocean of lava at the earth's core. Suppose we had a tank, filled with sea-water. And suppose we were to introduce a solution of lead until the water is saturated with it. The lead must be in a form known as sulphate, a compound of the metal and sulphuric acid. Symbols will help us, and we write the chemical symbol of this compound, Pb. S4 ., which we are to read, lead combined with sulphur combined with four portions of oxygen. Lead in this form the sea can hold in solution, and in this form we are to suppose all the lead was held while it was yet fluent. Our tank-sea, heavy with sulphate of lead is an epitome of the primeval sea. We may cover it over to prevent evaporation, and then wait and watch for the appearance of lead. But no lead is apparent.

Not a spangle appears on the walls of the tank. It is evident that the lead cannot help itself out of the sea. Calling to mind the fact that lead was introduced into the rocks when life was introduced into the sea, we stock our tank with sea weeds and low forms of animal life, like polyps and and medusæ. We watch and wait again, but no lead is precipitated. It is evident that life cannot help the lead out of the sea. We wait till death has occurred — the death of a plant, or of some animal, as a polyp or jelly fish whose body is composed chiefly of carbon. The glass would now reveal minute cubes of lead spangling the floor of the tank. As deaths are mul tiplied the crystals grow larger. It is evident that in some way death helps the lead out of the sea into the rocks on its bottom. How? As the mole cule of iron gave up a portion of its oxy gen to the carbon of the dead plant and became soluble, so the molecules of lead give up their oxygen to the carbon of the dead, and become insoluble.

We change the symbol now and read Pb. S., which means that a lead atom has combined with a sulphur atom. This form of lead we call plumbic sulphide, or galena. Being insoluble it sinks and crystalizes in cubes on the floor of the sea. Currents may sweep it into fissures in the rock, and after-changes wrought on the containing rock may modify its form or chemical structure. Very different from lead in its properties is copper, but not very different from the history of lead is THE HISTORY OF AN ATOM OF COPPER. Copper, like lead, is both fluent and fixed. Held in solution by the seas it circulates with their waters; Fig. 3. History in Symbols of an Atom of Lead.— 1. An atom. 2. The atom combined with sulphuric acid and appearing in a molecule of plumbic sulphate held in solution by sea-water. 3.