STROMNESS AND ITS ASTEROLEPIS. --THE
LAKE OF STENNIS 25
025
026
027 028
029
030
031
032
033
034
035
036
>Stromness, dinosaur, Asterolepis, Old Red Sandstone = Devonian era,
Lake of
Stennis, Ganoids, Coelacanths, Latimeriidae,
THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 37
037
038
039
040
041
042
043
044
045
046
047
Emphases as in the original.
p41 "Life is governed by external conditions, and new conditions imply
new races; but then, as to their creation, that is the '
mystery of mysteries.' Are they
created by an immediate fiat and direct act of the Almighty? or has He
originally impressed life with an elasticity and adaptability, so that
it shall take upon itself new forms and characters, according to the
conditions to which it shall be subjected? ...
Either way, it matters little, physically
or morally, either mode implies the same omnipotence, and
wisdom, and foresight, and protection; and it is only your little
religious sects and scientific coteries which make a pother about the
matter,-- sects and coteries of which it may be justly said, that they
would almost exclude God from the management of his own world, if not
managed and directed in the way that they would have it." Now, this is
surely a most unfair representation of the consequences, ethical and
religious, involved in the development hypothesis. It is not its
incompatibility with belief in the existence of a First Great cause
that has to be established, in order to prove it harmlesss; but its
compatibility with ceratin other all-important beliefs, without which
simple Theism is of no moral value whatever -- a belief in the
immortality and responsibility of man, and in the scheme of salvation
by a Mediator and Redeemer. Dissociated from these beliefs, a belief in
the existence of a God is of as little
ethical value as a belief in the
existence of the great sea-serpent.
Let us see whether we cannot determine what the testimony of Geology,
on this question of creation by development, really is.
p43 [Churches] must greatly extend their educational walks into the
field of physical science. ... they do not now seem sufficiently
aware--though the low thunder of every railway, and the snort of every
steam engine, and the whistle of the wind amid the wirres of every
electric telegraph, serve to publish the fact-- that it is in the
departments of physics, not of metaphysics, that the greater minds of
the age are engaged.... In that educational course through which,
in this country, candidates for the ministry pass, in preparation for
their office, I find every group of great minds... representated, save
the last.
p46 [According to the development theory] In the first place, the
earlier fossils ought to be very
small
in size; and in the second, very
low
in organization. In cutting into the stony womb of nature, in order to
determine what it contained mayhap millions of ages ago, we must
expect, if the development theory be true, to look upon mere embryos
and foetuses. And if we find, instead, the full grown and the mature,
then we must hold that the testimony of Geology is not only
not in accordance with the theory,
but in positive opposition to it.
> Evolution = Progressive Development hypothesis, Maillet, Lamarck,
THE RECENT HISTORY OF THE ASTEROLEPIS. --ITS FAMILY 48
048
049
050
051
052
053
054
055
056
057
058
059
060
061
p48 [Lamarck] had a trick of dreaming when wide awake, and of calling
his dreams philosophy.
> dogfish, Osteolepis (bony fish), diplopterians,
Coelacanths, Acanths, Holoptychius, reptile teeth
CEREBRAL
DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARLIER VERTEBRATA. -- ITS APPARENT PRINCIPLE
62
062
063
064
065
066
067
068 069
070
071
072
073 074
075
076
077
078
079
080
081
082 083
084
085
086
087
088
089
090
091
092
093
>early vertebrata, cerebral development, cranial bucklers,
acanths, cod, Coccosteus cranium, Osteolepis cranium,
Asterolepis cranium, ichthyic teeth, reptile teeth, Ichthyosaurus,
Dipterus Cranium,
THE ASTEROLEPIS. --ITS STRUCTURE, BULK, AND ASPECT 94
094 095
096
097
098
099
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115 116
117
118
119 120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127 128
129
p127 [I]n the not unimportant circumstance of size, the most ancient
Ganoids yet known, instead of taking their places, agreeably to the
demands of the development hypothesis, among the sprats, sticklebacks,
and minnows of their class, took their place among its huge basking
sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and bulky sword-fishes. They were giants,
not dwarfs... Instead of being, as the development hypothesis would
require, a fish low in its organization, it seems to have ranged on the
level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian families ever called into
existence.
p129 "In no degree does the geologic testimony rrespecting the earliest
Ganoids differ from what, in the supposed case would be the testimony
of Eden regarding the earliest men. Up to a certain point in the
geologic scale we find that the Ganoids
are not; and when they at length
make their appearance upon the stage, they enter large in their stature
and high in their organization.
> dernak tybercles, Asterolepis,
FISHES OF THE
SILURIAN ROCKS, UPPER AND LOWER. --THEIR RECENT HISTORY, ORDER,
AND SIZE . 130
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
>lower silurian = Ordovician, upper silurian = Silurian,
Roderick Murchison, cartilaginous fishes
HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS.-OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED 147
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
"We find that in the progress of creation the fishes
began to be by groupes and septs,
arranged according to the principle on which it erects its orders. The
Placoids, the Ganoids succeeded them, and the Ctenoids and Cycloids
brought up the rear.
>Placoids, Ganoids, Ctenoids and Cycloids, Agassiz, family
Sturiones (osseous fishes), Suctorii (Cyclostomi, or Lampreys),
THE PLACOID BRAIN. -- EMBRYONIC CHARACTERISTICS NOT NECESSARILY
OF A LOW ORDER 160
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168 169
170
171
172
173 174
175
176
177
178
179
180
p161 "It has been calculated by naturalists, that in the vertebrata,
the brain in the class of fishes bears an average proportion to the
spinal cord of about two to one; in the class of reptiles, of about two
and a half to one; in the class of birds, of about three to one; in the
class of mammals, of about four to one; and in the high-placed
sceptre-bearing human family, a proportion of not less than
twenty-three to one.
>progression according to the substance of brain: mammal, bird,
reptile, fish, invertebrates.
THE PROGRESS OF DEGRADATION. --ITS HISTORY 181
181
182 183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194 195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
EVIDENCE OF THE SILURIAN MOLLUSCS. --OF THE FOSSIL FLORA.--ANCIENT TREE
205
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215 216
217
218
219 220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227 228
229
>fucoids, gymnosperms, monocots, dicots,
SUPERPOSITION NOT PARENTAL RELATION. --THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE 230
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
p233 "I have been reading the history of creation in the side of your
deep ditch," says the philosopher, "and find the record really very
complete. Look there," he adds, pointing to the unfossiliferous strip
that runs along the bottom of the bank; "there, life, both vegetable
and animal, first began. It began, struck by electricity out of
albumen, as a congeries of minute globe-shaped atoms, -- each a hollow
sphere within a sphere, as in the well-known Chinese puzzle; and from
these living atoms were all the higher forms progressively developed.
The ditch, of course, exhibits none of the atoms with which being first
commenced; for the atoms don't keep; -- we merely see their place
indicated by that unfossilliferous band at the bottom; but we may
detect immediately over it almost the first organisms into which --
parting thus early into the two great branches of organic beings --
they were developed.
There
are the fucoids, the first-born among vegetables, -- and
there the zoophytes, well nigh the
lowest of the animal forms...."
p241 It is to Geology as it is known to be, that the Lamarckian has
appealed, - not to Geology as it is not known to be. He has summoned
into court existing witnesses; and, finding their testimony
unfavorable, he seeks to neutralize their evidence by calling from the
"vasty deep," of the unexamined and the obscure, witnesses that "won't
come," - that by the legitimate authorities are not known even to
exist, and with which he himself is, on his own confession, wholly
unacquainted, save in the old scholastic character of mere
possibilities. The possible fossil can have no more standing in this
controversy than the "possible angel." He tells us that we have not yet
got down to that base-line of all the fossiliferous systems at which
life first began; and very possibly we have not. But what of that? He
has carried his appeal to Geology as it is; - he has referred his case
to the testimony of the known witnesses, for in no case can the unknown
ones be summoned or produced. It is on the evidence of the known, and
the known only, that the exact value of his claims must be determined;
and his appeal to the unknown serves but to show how thoroughly he
himself feels that the actually ascertained evidence bears against him.
The severe censure of Johnson on reasoners of this class is in no
degree over-severe. "He who will determine," said the moralist,
"against that which he knows, because there may be something which he
knows not, - he that can set hypothetical possibility against
acknowledged certainty,- is not to be admitted among reasonable beings."
LAMARCAIAN HYPOTHESIS OF THE ORIGIN OF PLANTS. -- ITS CONSEQUENCES
243
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
p244 It is a curious fact, to which in the passing, I must be permitted
to call the attention of the reader, that all the leading assertors of
the development hypothesis have been bad geologists.
THE TWO FLORAS, MARINE AND TERRESTRIAL. -- BEARING OF THE EXPERIENCE
ARGUMENT 262
262
263
264
265
266
267
268 269
270
271
272
273 274
275
276
THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS IN ITS EMBRYONIC STATE. - OLDER THAN
ITS ALLEGED FOUNDATIONS 277
277
278
279
280
281
282 283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294 295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
p288 The astronomer founded his belief in the mobility of the earth and
the
immobility of the sun, not on a mere dream-like hypothesis, founded on
nothing, but on a wide and solid base of pure induction. Galileo was no
mere dreamer ; - he was a discoverer of great truths, and a profound
reasoner regarding them : and on his discoveries and his reasonings,
compelled by the inexorable laws of his mental constitution, did he
build up certain deductive beliefs, which had no previous existence in
his mind. His convictions were consequents, not antecedents. Such,
also, is the character of geological discovery and inference, and of
the existing belief, - their joint production, - regarding the great
antiquity of the globe.
No
geologist worthy of the name began with the belief, and then set
himself to square geological phenomena with its requirements. It is a
deduction, - a result ; - not the starting assumption, or given sum, in
a process of calculation, but its ultimate finding or answer. Clergymen
of the orthodox Churches, such as the Sumners, Sedgwicks, Bucklands,
Conybeares, and Pye Smiths of England, or the Chalmerses, Duncans, and
FIemings of our own country, must have come to the study of this
question of the world's age with at least no bias in favor of the
geological estimate. The old, and, as it has proven, erroneous reading
of the Mosaic account, was by much too general a one early in the
present century, not to have exerted upon them, in their character as
ministers of religion, a sensible influence of a directly opposite
nature. And the fact of the complete reversal of their original bias,
and of the broad unhesitating finding on the subject which they
ultimately substituted instead, serves to intimate to the uninitiated
the strength of the evidence to which they submitted. There can be
nothing more certain than that it is minds of the same calibre and
class, engaged in the same inductive track, that yielded in the first
instance to the astronomical evidence regarding the earth's motion,
and, in the second, to the geological evidence regarding the earth's
age.*
p296 Give me your facts, said the Frenchman, that I may accommodate
them to my theory. And no one can look at the progress of the
Lamarckian hypothesis, with reference to the dates when, and the men by
whom, it was promulgated, without recognizing in it one of perhaps the
most striking embodiments of the Frenchman's principle which the world
ever saw. It is not the illiberal religionist that rejects and casts it
off, - it is the inductive philosopher.
p301 "No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis; - it has
been resigned to sciolists and smatterers; - and there is but one other
alternative.
They began to be,
through the miracle of creation. From the evidence furnished by
these rocks we are shut down either to the belief in
miracle, or to the belief in
something else infinitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly
unsupported by testimony as it is contrary to experience.
FINAL CAUSES. --THEIR BEARING ON GEOLOGIC HISTORY
--CONCLUSION 303
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315 316
317
318
319 320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327 328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
p307 There is geologic evidence, as has been shown, that in the course
of creation the higher orders succeeded the lower. We have no good
reason to believe that the mollusc and crustacean preceded the fish,
seeing that discovery, in its slow course, has already traced the
vertebrata in the ichthyic form, down to deposits which only a few
years ago were regarded as representatives of the first beginnings of
organized existence on our planet, and that it has at the same time
failed to add a lower system to that in which their remains occur. But
the fish seems most certainly to have preceded the reptile and the
bird; the reptile and the bird to have preceded the mammiferous
quadruped; and the mammiferous quadruped to have preceded
man,-rational, accountable man, whom God created in his own image, -
the much-loved Benjamin of the family, - last-born of all creatures. It
is of itself an extraordinary fact, without reference to other
considerations, that the order adopted by Cuvier, in his animal
kingdom, as that in which the four great classes of vertebrate animals,
when marshalled according to their rank and standing, naturally range
should be also that in which they occur in order of time. The brain
which bears an average proportion to the spinal cord of not more than
two to one, came first,- it is the brain of the fish; that which bears
to the spinal cord an average proportion of two and a half to one
succeeded it, - it is the brain of the reptile ; then came the brain
averaging as three to one, - it is that of the bird; next in succession
came the brain that averages as four to one, - it is that of the
mammal; and last of all there appeared a brain that averages as
twenty-three to one, - reasoning, calculating man had come upon the
scene. All the facts of geological science are hostile to the
Lamarckian conclusion, that the lower brains were developed into the
higher. As if with the express intention of preventing so gross a
mis-reading of the record, we find, in at least two classes of animals,
- fishes and reptiles, - the higher races placed at the beginning: the
slope of the inclined plane is laid, if one may so speak, in the
reverse way, and, instead of rising towards the level of the succeeding
class, inclines downwards, with at least the effect, if not the design,
of making the break where they meet exceedingly well marked and
conspicuous. And yet the record does seem to speak of development and
progression ; - not, however, in the province of organized existence,
but in that of insensate matter, subject to the purely chemical laws.
It is in the style and character of the dwelling-place that gradual
improvement seems to have taken place ; - not in the functions or the
rank of any class of its inhabitants; and it is with special reference
to this gradual improvement in our common mansion-house the earth, in
its bearing on the "conditions of existence," that not a few of our
reasonings regarding the introduction and extnction of species and
genera must proceed.
ILUSTRATIONS
Note: Refer to the above pages for these illustrations.
1. Internal ridge of hyoid plate of Asterolepis 31
2. Shagreen of Raja clavata : --of Sphagodus 54
3. Scales of Acanthodes sulcatus : -- shagreen of Scyllium
stellare 55
4. Scales of Cheiracanthus microlepidotus --shagreen of Spinax
Acanthias 56
5. Section of shagreen of Scyllium stellare: -- of scales
of Cheiracanthus microlepidotus 56
6. Scales of Osteolepis microlepidotus : -- of an undescribed
species of Glyptolepis 57
7. Osseous points of Placoid Cranium 65
8. Osseous centrum of Spinax Acanthias : -- of Raja clavata 67
9. Portions of caudal fin of Cheiracanthus : -- of Cheirolepis 69
10. Upper surface of cranium of Cod 72
11. Cranial buckler of Coccosteus 74
12. Cranial buckler of Osteolepis 75
13. Upper surface of head of Osteolepis 77
14. Under surface of head of Osteolepis 79
15. Head of Osteolepis, seen in profile 80
16. Cranial buckler of Diplopterus 81
17. Ditto 82
18. Palatal dart-head, and group of palatal teeth, of Dipterus 83
19. Cranial buckler of Dipterus 85
20. Base of cranium of Dipterus 86
21.Under jaw of Dipterus 87
22. Longitudinal section of head of Dipterus 88
23. Section of vertebral centrum of Thornback 92
24. Dermal tubercles of Asterolepis 95
25. Scales of Asterolepis 96
26. Portion of carved surface of scale 96
27. Cranial buckler of Asterolepis 98
23. Inner surface of cranial buckler of Asterolepis 99
29. Plates of cranial buckler of Asterolepis 102
30. Portion of under jaw of Asterolepis 103
31. Inner side of portion of under jaw of Asterolepis 104
32. Portion of transverse section of reptile tooth of Asterolepis 105
33. Section of jaw of Asterolepis 106
34. Maxillary bone? 108
35. Inner surface of operculum of Asterolepis 109
36. Hyoid plate 110
37. Nail-like bone of hyoid plate 111
38. Shoulder plate of Asterolepis 112
39. Dermal bones of Asterolepis 113
40. Internal bones of Asterolepis 114
41. Ditto 115
42. Ischium of Asterolepis 116
43. Joint of ray of Thornback : --of Asterolepis 117
44. Coprolites of Asterolepis 118
45. Hyoid plate of Thurso Asterolepis 124
46. Hyoid plate of Russian Asterolepis 127
47. Spine of Spinax Acanthias : -- fragment of Onondago spine 143
48. Tail of Spinax Acanthias : -- of Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris
172
49. Port Jackson Shark (Cestracion Phillippi) 177
50. Tail of Osteolepis 195
51. Tail of Lepidosteus osseus 196
62. Tail of Perch 197
53. Altingia excelsa (Norfolk-Island Pine) 212
54. Fucoids of the Lower Old Red Sandstone 216
65. Two species of Old Red Fucoids 217
56. Fern (?) of the Lower Old Red Sandstone 219
57. Lignite of the Lower Old Red Sandstone 221
68. Internal structure of lignite of Lower Old Red Sandstone 223
