The Complete Essays by Herbert Spencer (Vol. 1-3). Spencer Herbert

rocks, for many years considered unfossiliferous, have been found in some of the lowest beds; and the twenty thousand feet of superposed beds, still yield no organic remains. If now these superposed strata throughout a depth of four miles, are without fossils, though the strata over which they lie prove that life had commenced; what becomes of Sir R. Murchison's inference? At page 189 of Siluria, a still more conclusive fact will be found. The "Glengariff grits," and other accompanying strata there described as 13,500 feet thick, contain no signs of contemporaneous life. Yet Sir R. Murchison refers them to the Devonian period—a period which had a large and varied marine Fauna. How then, from the absence of fossils in the Longmynd beds and their equivalents, can we conclude that the Earth was "azoic" when they were formed?

      "But," it may be asked, "if living creatures then existed, why do we not find fossiliferous strata of that age, or an earlier age?" One reply is, that the non-existence of such strata is but a negative fact—we have not found them. And considering how little we know even of the two-fifths of the Earth's surface now above the sea, and how absolutely ignorant we are of the three-fifths below the sea, it is rash to say that no such strata exist. But the chief reply is, that these records of the Earth's earlier history have been in great part destroyed, by agencies which are ever tending to destroy such records.

      It is an established geological doctrine, that sedimentary strata are liable to be changed, more or less profoundly, by igneous action. The rocks originally classed as "transition," because they were intermediate in character between the igneous rocks found below them, and the sedimentary strata found above them, are now known to be nothing else than sedimentary strata altered in texture and appearance by the intense heat of adjacent molten matter; and hence are renamed "metamorphic rocks." Modern researches have shown, too, that these metamorphic rocks are not, as was once supposed, all of the same age. Besides primary and secondary strata which have been transformed by igneous action, there are similarly-changed deposits of tertiary origin—deposits changed, even as far as a quarter of a mile from the point of contact with neighbouring granite. By this process fossils are of course destroyed. "In some cases," says Sir Charles Lyell, "dark limestones, replete with shells and corals, have been turned into white statuary marble, and hard clays, containing vegetable or other remains, into slates called mica-schist or hornblende-schist; every vestige of the organic bodies having been obliterated." Again, it is fast becoming an acknowledged truth that igneous rock, of whatever kind, is the product of sedimentary strata which have been completely melted. Granite and gneiss, which are of like chemical composition, have been shown, in various cases, to pass one into the other; as at Valorsine, near Mont Blanc, where the two, in contact, are observed to "both undergo a modification of mineral character. The granite still remaining unstratified, becomes charged with green particles; and the talcose gneiss assumes a granitiform structure without losing its stratification." In the Aberdeen-granite, lumps of unmelted gneiss are abundant; and we can ourselves bear witness that the granite on the banks of Loch Sunart yields proofs that, when molten, it contained incompletely-fused clots of sedimentary strata. Nor is this all. Fifty years ago, it was thought that all granitic rocks were primitive, or existed before any sedimentary strata; but it is now "no easy task to point out a single mass of granite demonstrably more ancient than all the known fossiliferous deposits." In brief, accumulated evidence shows, that by contact with, or proximity to, the molten matter of the Earth's nucleus, all beds of sediment are liable to be actually melted, or partially fused, or so heated as to agglutinate their particles; and that according to the temperature they have been raised to, and the circumstances under which they cool, they assume the forms of granite, porphyry, trap, gneiss, or rock otherwise altered. Further, it is manifest that though strata of various ages have been thus changed, yet the most ancient strata have been so changed to the greatest extent; both because they have been nearer to the centre of igneous agency; and because they have been for longer periods liable to be affected by it. Whence it follows, that sedimentary strata passing a certain antiquity, are unlikely to be found in an unmetamorphosed state; and that strata much earlier than these are certain to have been melted up. Thus if, throughout a past of indefinite duration, there had been at work those aqueous and igneous agencies which we see still at work, the state of the Earth's crust might be just what we find it. We have no evidence which puts a limit to the period throughout which this formation and destruction of strata has been going on. For aught the facts prove, it may have been going on for ten times the period measured by our whole series of sedimentary deposits.

      Besides having, in the present appearances of the Earth's crust, no data for fixing a commencement to these processes—besides finding that the evidence permits us to assume such commencement to have been inconceivably remote, as compared even with the vast eras of geology; we are not without positive grounds for inferring the inconceivable remoteness of such commencement. Modern geology has established truths which are irreconcilable with the belief that the formation and destruction of strata began when the Cambrian rocks were formed; or at anything like so recent a time. One fact from Siluria will suffice. Sir R. Murchison estimates the vertical thickness of Silurian strata in Wales, at from 26,000 to 27,000 feet, or about five miles; and if to this we add the vertical depth of the Cambrian strata, on which the Silurians lie conformably, there results, on the lowest computation, a total depth of some seven miles. Now it is held by geologists, that this vast series of formations must have been deposited in an area of gradual subsidence. These beds could not have been thus laid one on another in regular order, unless the Earth's crust had been at that place sinking, either continuously or by small steps. Such an immense subsidence, however, must have been impossible without a crust of great thickness. The Earth's molten nucleus tends ever, with enormous force, to assume the form of a regular oblate spheroid. Any depression of its crust below the surface of equilibrium, and any elevation of its crust above that surface, have to withstand immense resistances. It follows inevitably that, with a thin crust, nothing but small elevations and subsidences would have been possible; and that, conversely, a subsidence of seven miles implies a crust of great strength, or, in other words, of great thickness. Indeed, if we compare this inferred subsidence in the Silurian period, with such elevations and depressions as our existing continents and oceans display, we see no evidence that the Earth's crust was appreciably thinner then than now. What are the implications? If, as geologists generally admit, the Earth's crust has resulted from that slow cooling which is even still going on—if we see no sign that at the time when the earliest Cambrian strata were formed, this crust was appreciably thinner than now; we are forced to conclude that the era during which it acquired that great thickness possessed in the Cambrian period, was enormous as compared with the interval between the Cambrian period and our own. But during the incalculable series of epochs thus implied, there existed an ocean, tides, winds, waves, rain, rivers. The agencies by which the denudation of continents and filling up of seas have all along been carried on, were as active then as now. Endless successions of strata must have been formed. And when we ask—Where are they? Nature's obvious reply is—They have been destroyed by that igneous action to which so great a part of our oldest-known strata owe their fusion or metamorphosis.

      Only the last chapter of the Earth's history has come down to us. The many previous chapters, stretching back to a time immeasurably remote, have been burnt; and with them all the records of life we may presume they contained. The greater part of the evidence which might have served to settle the Development-controversy, is for ever lost; and on neither side can the arguments derived from Geology be conclusive.

      "But how happen there to be such evidences of progression as exist?" it may be asked. "How happens it that, in ascending from the most ancient strata to the most recent strata, we do find a succession of organic forms, which, however irregularly, carries us from lower to higher?" This question seems difficult to answer. Nevertheless, there is reason for thinking that nothing can be safely inferred from the apparent progression here cited. And the illustration which shows as much, will, we believe, also show how little trust is to be placed in certain geological generalizations that appear to be well established. With this somewhat elaborate illustration, to which we now pass, our criticisms may fitly conclude.

      Let us suppose that in a region now covered by wide ocean, there begins one of those great and gradual upheavals by which new continents are formed. To be precise, let us say that in the South Pacific, midway between New Zealand and Patagonia, the sea-bottom has been little by little thrust up toward the surface, and is about to emerge.