p. 8 | EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY by Geo. McCready Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 1, 1905

EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY

By Geo. McCready Price

XIII. THE SUCCESSIVE AGES.

THE second postulate of Geology, which every true lover of inductive methods must object to assuming as a preliminary to all investigation, is that our globe originated by the hot process, in any manner whatever—whether according to the theory of Kant, La Place, Mädler, Lockyer, or Faye—for they are all alike in teaching that our globe was once fluid throughout.

As to the Earth's Origin.

The pro and con of this, as a theory in itself, may be discussed at some length in some future papers. Just here I only wish to point out how this theory of our earth having originated in such a manner that its interior is or was molten or liquid from heat, not only enters into all modern discussions as to the causes of volcanoes and earthquakes, and the metamorphism of the sedimentary rocks, but by its being the foundation for the hypothetical rise and fall of whole countries—a "pulsating crust," Dawson calls it—forms an integral part of the whole structure of Uniformity. We might note in passing that it is contrary to the account given in Genesis of the origin of our world. But what have we to do with the origin of our world in this science of Geology—a science based principally on an investigation of the fossiliferous rocks, and which can tell us about as much concerning the real condition of the earth's interior as a fly can discover of the pulp of an orange by walking over an inch or two of its surface, and sucking at its rind here and there? As Prof. T. G. Bonney expresses it, "We can see about as much of the earth's interior as of a cricket ball's stuffing through a few pin scratches on the leather." Hence it seems to me the height of absurdity to make any theory regarding our earth's origin a postulate or starting point on which to build anything that we wish to palm off as inductive science.

An Unproven Hypothesis.

That these two propositions, viz., Uniformity and the molten-interior-of-the-earth theory, are, whenever used in our text-books, pure assumptions and not conclusions of Geology, few will, I think, deny. But these, useless and improbable, per se tho we may regard them, and far-reaching as they doubtless are in warping the conclusions of the scientific investigation of the rocks, are yet quite subordinate in their baleful effects on the science to the all-pervading power of the THIRD postulate of this curiously deductive science, viz., that there has been a succession of life on the globe from the low to the high, and that relics of these successive life-forms are pigeonholed in the rocks to reveal this fact to us. It will be largely the business of this and some succeeding articles to show how this idea, beginning as a crude and hasty generalization from a very few imperfectly understood facts, almost instantly expanded into the iron dogma that it is to-day; how it has continued to pervert the teachings of science for a hundred years in spite of its signal failure to explain the facts of the rocks; and how this idea, in fixing upon any fossil type or types as intrinsically older than all or any others, involved, from the very beginning, the utterly preposterous notion that, while one kind of fossils was being deposited in one locality, another and very diverse kind of life positively was not living or being fossilized in another locality—preposterous, I say, for who will claim to possess the supernatural knowledge of the past implied in such a statement?

A Theory that Proves Too Much.

About a century and a half ago, the great French naturalist, Buffon, put forth the generalization that, over all the continents, "the remains of large terrestrial animals occur at a small depth below the surface, showing that they apparently dwelt in these regions at no very remote age; whereas the deeper-lying remains of marine creatures in the same region belong to extinct species, or are related only to forms now inhabiting far distant seas."—Zittal's "History of Geology," etc., page 42.

But this may be admitted as a fairly general truth, while refusing to see how it can be stretched out and patched up into the long, thin line of the "Phylogenic Series," so-called, which, as everybody knows, is practically, in all its details, from the low to the high, the duplicate of the "Taxonomic Series" of our modern world. Moreover, it is hard to see why this argument of Buffon's would not prove the gigantic dinosaurs of Colorado and Wyoming, and the huge amphibians of the Texas Permian rocks, as much modern deposits as any Tertiary or Pleistocene; for they also certainly "occur at a small depth below the surface," which fact ought to prove for them as well "that they dwelt in these regions at no very remote age;" and because, in most cases, nothing but a strong imagination can prove other or "younger" formations stratigraphically imposed upon them.

One Scientific Method.

Of course there is one way of proving the relative ages of strata which we can all acknowledge to be truly scientific. When we find undisturbed strata lying one above another, the lower one is evidently the older of the two; but whether laid down ten minutes earlier or ten million years earlier, how are we to tell, except by assuming the succession of life en bloc, and deciding the matter according to the fossils they contain? And in doing this, we are also tacitly assuming Uniformity, or that these beds, with change of flora and fauna, did not occur by any abnormal action of the elements which might wash different kinds of contemporary faunas and floras into their present positions. But no one pretends that this test of superposition is of any service in comparing the rocks of distant or disconnected regions. How, then, shall we correlate the rocks of distant lands, except we assume that there has been a succession of life upon the globe in a particular order?

The Onion-coat Theory.

All admit that there are everywhere rocks at the base of the fossil-bearing strata which are non-fossiliferous; and all agree in calling them Archæan. Now, where we find certain fossils next to the Archæan, with perhaps hundreds of feet of beds containing successively very diverse kinds of fossils superimposed upon these lower ones, the presumption is—on the basis of Uniformity—that these beds next to the Archæan are very, very old. But to say that they are intrinsically older than others, even than some that may occur above them in this particular locality, is to assume either—

(1) That these hypothetically "oldest" beds encircled all the Archæan like Werner's onion-coats; or, (2) that while these beds were forming in this locality, other and very diverse kinds of plants and animals positively were not living or being buried in other distant localities.

It would appear that this onion-coat hypothesis was still entertained by Wm. Smith and Cuvier, and the other early nineteenth century geologists, having been inherited from Werner. If so, it was soon abandoned, at least partially, tho not before they had their "phylogenic series" pretty well arranged in detail according to the start got from one or two localities in Western Europe. It was bad enough to conclude that, because the fossils occurred in a certain order in a few localities in England or Germany; therefore they must throughout the whole world occur in this particular order—the "onion-coat" again; but the astounding thing about it is that no one seems ever to have stopped to consider the

Supernatural Knowledge of the Past

implied in the only remaining alternative, viz., the preposterous assumption that, while certain types of fossils were forming in a certain locality, A, other and very diverse fossils positively were not forming in other distant localities, B and C. A notion like this, masquerading in the garb of science, is deserving only of contempt.

A Striking Example in Point.

To illustrate this point, we may consider a more concrete example. There are in various parts of British Columbia, rocks containing valuable coal beds, equal, I believe, to many of the coals of the East. These beds are called "Cretaceous," and the Cretaceous System, as we all know, is classed as the last in the "Mesozoic Series." But in very many cases these beds are found resting on the granite or other azoic rocks which we can not prove ever contained fossils, and, in scores of other cases, no stratigraphical evidence can prove other or "older" rocks between them and the Archæan. In very many localities, also, these beds may themselves be metamorphosed or crystalline, and may make up the whole surface rocks with no others above them.

In Nova Scotia, again, there are also vast coal beds, classed as the true coal-measures, which in like manner rest in places upon azoic rocks, and in others can not be proved to have other or "older" rocks beneath them, or cretaceous or any other rocks above them. And, in spite of their being so many million years "older" than the cretaceous of British Columbia, I think they are not as generally metamorphosed or crystalline as the latter.

The very natural question now arises,

How Are We to Prove,

in any true, scientific sense of the word, that these coal-measures of Nova Scotia are older, and, according to the popular arrangement, almost immeasurably older, than the quite similar coal beds of British Columbia? I doubt if there is a man in America who would, off-hand, undertake to frame any sort of answer at all to such a question, save that the Nova Scotia beds are carboniferous, and the British Columbian ones are cretaceous, and that therefore the former are immensely older than the latter; and the more we consider the matter the more clearly we see that nothing more scientific than this can possibly be given, that in fact we can not undertake to compare these localities, as to age, without assuming entire the succession-of-life idea. They both rest on the Archæan. How are we to be sure that, when the carboniferous plants were living in Nova Scotia, the cretaceous flora did not exist in British Columbia? It would be hard for me to believe in the mental soundness of the man who would profess this supernatural knowledge of the past.

[This subject will be continued next week.]