EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY by George McCready Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 5, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 14.

EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY

By George McCready Price

XVIII. EXTINCT SPECIES.

(Continued.)

ZITTEL gives us a peep behind the scenes which helps us somewhat to understand the matter of extinct species. He pictures the uncritical work of the earlier writers on Paleophytology, or the science of fossil plants, how—

many of the fossil genera and species had been based on insufficient grounds of distinction, and how often miserably-preserved fossil remains, whose identification was impossible, had been used for the erection of new genera or made the basis of some wonderful new hypothesis. Many of the special papers on fossil plants had been contributed by authors with insufficient botanical training, and were in consequence an untrustworthy foundation for an inductive reasoning regarding the past periods of vegetation and their climatic conditions.—History of Geology, p. 373.

A Vital Deficiency.

But August Schink, late Professor of Botany in Leipzig (1868-91), by more critical methods, "practically initiated a reform in paleophytology;" and Zittel declares that "now, the author of a paper on any department of paleophytology is expected to have a sound knowledge of systematic botany."—Id. p. 375.

And he adds: "It can not be said that paleozoology [the science of fossil animals] has yet arrived at this desirable standpoint."

But he justifies this charge of want of confidence by saying that—

Comparatively few individuals have such a thorough grasp of zoological and geological knowledge as to enable them to treat paleontological researches worthily, and there has accumulated a dead weight of stratigraphical-paleontological literature wherein the fossil remains of animals are named and pigeonholed solely as an additional ticket of the age of a rock-deposit, with a wilful disregard of the much more difficult problem of their relationships in the long chain of existence.

The terminology which has been introduced in the innumerable monographs of special fossil faunas in the majority of cases makes only the slenderest pretext of any connection with recent systematic zoology; if there is a difficulty, then stratigraphical arguments are made the basis of a solution. Zoological students are, as a rule, too actively engaged and keenly interested in building up new observations to attempt to spell through the arbitrary paleontological conclusions arrived at by many stratigraphers, or to revive their laborers from a zoological point of view.—Id. pp. 375-76. Italics supplied.

This scathing impeachment of the trustworthiness of the current specific and generic distinctions established for the fossil animals, has no doubt a special reference to the case of the lower forms of life. For if, in spite of the masterly, and withal careful, work of Cuvier, Owen, Wallace, Huxley, and Ray Lankester, there are still grounds for such grave doubts of the values of specific distinctions in the case of the mammals, whose general structure and life-history* are so well known and their almost countless examples of variation so well studied out, what must it be in the case of the lower vertebrates, and especially of the invertebrates, whose general life-history is in so many instances only dimly understood, and the limits of their variations absolutely unknown? Remembering this, what is our amazement when we read in this same volume by Professor Zittel that the modern tendency is toward the erection of the closest possible distinctions between genera and species, until recent paleontological literature is fairly inundated with new names; and all this with—

The Purpose, Unblushingly Avowed,

of enhancing the value of such distinctions as a means of determining the relative ages of strata and to bring the autogenetic and phylogenetic development of the various forms into more apparent agreement. I do not exaggerate in the least. Zittel is here speaking about Brachiopods:

Whereas Davidson in his systematic treatment allowed for a considerable extent of variability in his definitions of genera and species, the new direction of research guided by Hall, Clarke, Beecher in North America, and by Waager and Bittner in Europe, tries to restrict generic and specific definitions within the narrowest possible limits, in order to enhance the value of fossil Brachiopods for the characterization of stratigraphical horizons. A systematic review of all known Brachiopods forms an introductory chapter in the comprehensive monograph of Paleozoic types which has been published by Hall and Clarke. The number of genera has been greatly increased, and in many cases species have been elevated to the rank of genera. A new classification was proposed in 1889 by Beecher, in which it has been the author's aim to bring the autogenetic and phylogenetic development of the group into more apparent correspondence, and to apply the differences in the beak region more often for systematic distinctions.—"History of Geology and Paleontology," p. 400.

Deductions Unscientific and Illogical.

I hope my readers will have the perseverance to "spell through" this rather technical quotation, solely for the purpose of seeing the scientific (?) character of the reasoning involved. For it is surely a case of first assuming your premises, and then proving them by means of your conclusion. The method employed seems about like this: First, assume the succession of life from the low to the high as a whole; then, in any particular group, as in this one of Brachiopods, decide the momentous question as to which came first and which later in "geological time" by comparing them as to size, shape, etc., with the live modern individual in its development from the egg to maturity; and lastly take the results of this arrangement in supposed chronological succession to prove just how the modern forms have evolved.

On pages 403 and 405 of Zittel's "History" will be found similar statements about the Mollusca; and tho Zittel himself plainly does not approve of these methods, there is no doubt that the practise referred to in his quotation is quite general throughout modern paleontological literature. But I can only look upon the whole thing as a most fearful example of intelligent men being hypnotized by their theory into blind obedience to its suggestions and necessities.

A Candid Admission.

Not long ago I had occasion to write to a well-known geologist about a Lower Cambrian mollusk which appears strikingly like a modern species. I give below an extract from his reply which bears directly upon this point. I withhold the name, for it was given in a half-confidential manner, but I may say that the author's work on the Paleozoic fossils is recognized on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some geologists make it a point to give a new name to all forms found in the Paleozoic rocks, i. e., a name different from those of modern species. I was taken to task by a noted Paleontologist for finding a pupa [a kind of land-snail] in Devonian beds; but I could not find any point in which it differed from the modern genus (? species). Yet if I could have had more perfect specimens I might have found differences.

Such disclosures speak volumes for those able to understand, and lead one to receive with a smile the familiar assertion that all the species of the Paleozoic and other "older" rocks are extinct. And we can now form a truer estimate of the high scientific accuracy of Lyell's ingenious division of the Tertiary beds according to their contained percentages of living or extinct Mollusks. But O, "Tell it not in Gath!"

Discoveries That Disprove Geological Hypotheses.

Going back now to our main subject in this series of articles on Geology which was a denial of the reality of a life-succession and of the "ages" of the common text-books, we must bear in mind that the present classification of the fossils was outlined in all its general details when little or nothing was known of the contents of the depths of the ocean, or even of the land forms of Africa, Australia, and other foreign countries. On pp. 128-137 of his "History," Zittel shows how, up to 1820, little or nothing of a scientific character was known of any of the classes of living animals save mammals. I need not go into this subject at length, but it may suffice to say that during the last half century or more a steady progress of discovery has resulted in showing case after case where families and genera long boldly said to have been extinct since "Paleozoic time" are found in thriving abundance and in little-altered condition in unsuspected places all over the world. Nor need I here dwell on the obvious absurdity of these inhabitants of the modern seas and the modern land, skipping all the uncounted millions of years from "Paleozoic times" down to the "recent," for, tho found in profuse abundance in these "older" rocks, not a trace of many of them is to be found in all the "subsequent" deposits. About this, too, I may have something more to say sometime. I wish only to reiterate here that the traditional arrangement of the fossils in single file, and the association of a time value with their "successive appearances" when thus arranged, was invented when little or nothing was known of the rocks outside of England and Germany, and in complete ignorance of some of the most important facts concerning the fossil and the living forms, just as Zittel says that the theories of the igneous origin of the crystalline rocks "had been laid without the assistance of chemistry" and the knowledge of the microscopic structure of these rocks.—"History of Geology," pp. 327, 341. All of which reminds us of the old tale of the three little green peas in the little green pod, who, noticing that their little world was all green, and they themselves green also, shrewdly concluded that the whole universe must be green likewise.

Some Fundamental Facts.

To sum the matter up in a few short sentences, I may say that the popular doctrine that life has occurred on our globe in a certain order of development originated in ignorance or a disregard of the following fundamental facts, the first four of which I ask pardon for repeating from previous articles so that my readers may have them here together:

1. The "broad fact" as stated by Zittel that any kind of rocks whatever, i. e., containing any kinds of fossils, may rest on the Archean, or may themselves be metamorphosed and crystalline.

2. That any kind of beds may rest in such perfect conformability on any other so-called "older" beds over vast stretches of country that "were it not for fossil evidence one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with," while "the vast interval of time" intervening is "unrepresented either by deposition or erosion."

3. That in very many cases and over many square miles of country these conditions are exactly reversed, and such very "ancient" rocks as Cambrian limestones occur on top of the comparatively "young" Cretaceous, while the line between them "acts exactly like the line of contact of two nearly horizontal formations," and in a natural section cut out by a river, the two "appear to succeed one another conformably."

4. That many of the rivers of the world in working across the country completely ignore the varying ages of the rocks in the different parts of their channels, and act precisely as if they began sawing at them all at the same time.

5. That very, very many, perhaps a large proportion of the forms of the so-called "older" rocks, long regarded as extinct, are alive and thriving to-day in our modern world.

6. Hence, since no one kind of fossil can possibly be proved to be intrinsically older than any other kind, it follows that no one kind of fossil life can be proved to be older than man himself. Therefore man himself must have been an unwilling spectator of cosmic changes of climate and of the position of the land and the water which could only have occurred to him as an awful watery catastrophe—the scientific complement of the Biblical Deluge.

However, when I charge this life-succession idea with being an unscientific fancy unworthy of a moment's consideration by reasoning beings, I do not at all mean that the present orderly arrangement of the fossils should be disarranged or set aside. We can, I think, work with and speak of these fossil forms without being in any way biased by the traditional age-values so long associated with them. Let the arrangement in customary order stand by all means. It is a well-nigh perfect taxonomic or classification series of that ancient world which has long vanished from the sight of man, and which lives now only in scattered traditional memories and in the Inspired Record of what man once enjoyed of nature's glory and beauty. Let it stand by all means, for it will be indispensable in the reconstruction of the science of Geology on a truly scientific, because inductive, basis, by which reconstruction we may hope to reproduce a more or less faithful picture of that marvelous world which man once beheld, but whose ruins now lie buried thousands of feet deep beneath our feet. (Concluded next week.)