Popular Science Monthly/Volume 20/November 1881/A Half-Century of Science I
| A HALF-CENTURY OF SCIENCE.[1] |
By Sir JOHN LUBBOCK.
IN the name of the British Association, which for the time I very unworthily represent, I beg to tender to you, my Lord Mayor, and through you to the city of York, our cordial thanks for your hospitable invitation and hearty, welcome. We feel, indeed, that in coming to York we were coming home: gratefully as we acknowledge and much as we appreciate the kindness we have experienced elsewhere, and the friendly relations which exist between this Association and most—I might even say all—our great cities, yet Sir R. Murchison truly observed, at the close of our first meeting in 1831, that to York, "as the cradle of the Association, we shall ever look back with gratitude; and whether we meet hereafter on the banks of the Isis, the Cam, or the Forth, to this spot we shall still fondly revert." Indeed, it would have been a matter of much regret to all of us if we had not been able on this, our fiftieth anniversary, to hold our meeting in our mother city.
My Lord Mayor, before going further, I must express my regret, especially when I call to mind the illustrious men who have preceded me in this chair, that it has not fallen to one of my eminent friends around me to preside on this auspicious occasion. Conscious, however, as I am of my own deficiencies, I feel that I must not waste time in dwelling on them, more especially as in doing so I should but give them greater prominence. I will, therefore, only make one earnest appeal to your kind indulgence.
The connection of the British Association with the city of York does not depend merely on the fact that our first meeting was held here. It originated in a letter addressed by Sir D. Brewster to Professor Phillips, as Secretary to your York Philosophical Society, by whom the idea was warmly taken up. The first meeting was held on September 26, 1831, the chair being taken by Lord Milton, who delivered an address, after which Mr. William Vernon Harcourt, chairman of the Committee of Management, submitted to the meeting a code of rules which had been so maturely considered and so wisely framed, that they have remained substantially the same down to the present day. The constitution and objects of the Association were so ably described by Mr. Spottiswoode, at Dublin, and are so well known to you, that I will not dwell on them this evening. The excellent President of the Royal Society, in the same address, suggested that the past history of the Association would form an appropriate theme for the present meeting. The history of the Association, however, is really the history of science, and I long shrank from the attempt to give even a panoramic survey of a subject so vast and so difficult; nor should I have ventured to make any such attempt, but that I knew I could rely on the assistance of friends in every department of science.
Certainly, however, this is an opportunity on which it may be well for us to consider what have been the principal scientific results of the last half-century, dwelling especially on those with which this Association is more directly concerned, either as being the work of our own members or as having been made known at our meetings. It is, of course, impossible within the limits of a single address to do more than allude to a few of these, and that very briefly. In dealing with so large a subject, I first hoped that I might take our annual volumes as a text-book. This, however, I at once found to be quite impossible. For instance, the first volume commences with a Report on Astronomy by Sir G. Airy; I may be pardoned, I trust, for expressing my pleasure at finding that the second was one by my father, on the Tides, prepared, like the preceding, at the request of the council; then comes one on Meteorology by Forbes; Radiant Heat by Baden Powell; Optics by Brewster; Mineralogy by Whewell, and so on. My best course will therefore be to take our different sections one by one, and endeavor to bring before you a few of the principal results which have been obtained in each department.
The Biological Section is that with which I have been most intimately associated, and with which it is, perhaps, natural that I should begin. Fifty years ago it was the general opinion that animals and plants came into existence just as we now see them. We took pleasure in their beauty; their adaptation to their habits and mode of life in many cases could not be overlooked or misunderstood. Nevertheless, the book of Nature was like some richly illuminated missal, written in an unknown tongue; the graceful forms of the letters, the beauty of the coloring, excited our wonder and admiration; but of the true meaning little was known to us; indeed, we scarcely realized that there was any meaning to decipher. Now glimpses of the truth are gradually revealing themselves; we perceive that there is a reason—and in many cases we know what that reason is—for every difference in form, in size, and in color; for every bone and every feather, almost for every hair. Moreover, each problem which is solved opens out vistas, as it were, of others perhaps even more interesting. With this great change the name of our illustrious countryman, Darwin, is intimately associated, and the year 1859 will always be memorable in science as having produced his great work on "The Origin of Species." In the previous year he and Wallace had published short papers, in which they clearly state the theory of natural selection, at which they had simultaneously and independently arrived. We can not wonder that Darwin's views should have at first excited great opposition. Nevertheless, from the first they met with powerful support, especially in this country, from Hooker, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer. The theory is based on four axioms:
"1. That no two animals or plants in nature are identical in all respects. 2. That the offspring tend to inherit the peculiarities of their parents. 3. That of those which come into existence, only a small number reach maturity. 4. That those which are, on the whole, best adapted to the circumstances in which they are placed are most likely to leave descendants."
Darwin commenced his work by discussing the causes and extent of variability in animals, and the origin of domestic varieties; he showed the impossibility of distinguishing between varieties and species, and pointed out the wide differences which man has produced in some cases—as, for instance, in our domestic pigeons, all unquestionably descended from a common stock. He dwelt on the struggle for existence (which has since become a household word), and which, inevitably resulting in the survival of the fittest, tends gradually to adapt any race of animals to the conditions in which it occurs. While thus, however, showing the great importance of natural selection, he attributed to it no exclusive influence, but fully admitted that other causes—the use and disuse of organs, sexual selection, etc.—had to be taken into consideration. Passing on to the difficulties of his theory, he accounted for the absence of intermediate varieties between species, to a great extent, by the imperfection of the geological record. But, if the geological record be imperfect, it is still very instructive. The further paleontology has progressed, the more it has tended to fill up the gaps between existing groups and species; while the careful study of living forms has brought into prominence the variations dependent on food, climate, habitat, and other conditions, and shown that many species, long supposed to be absolutely distinct, are so closely linked together by intermediate forms that it is difficult to draw a satisfactory line between them.
The principles of classification point also in the same direction, and are based more and more on the theory of descent. Biologists endeavor to arrange animals on what is called the "natural system." No one now places whales among fish, bats among birds, or shrews with mice, notwithstanding their external similarity; and Darwin maintained that "community of descent was the hidden bond which naturalists had been unconsciously seeking." How else, indeed, can we explain the fact that the framework of bones is so similar in the arm of a man, the wing of a bat, the foreleg of a horse, and the fin of a porpoise—that the neck of a giraffe and that of an elephant contain the same number of vertebræ?
Strong evidence is, moreover, afforded by embryology; by the presence of rudimentary organs and transient characters, as, for instance, the existence in the calf of certain teeth which never cut the gums, the shriveled and useless wings of some beetles, the presence of a series of arteries in the embryos of the higher vertebrata exactly similar to those which supply the gills in fishes, even the spots on the young blackbird, the stripes on the lion's cub; these, and innumerable other facts of the same character, appear to be incompatible with the idea that each species was specially and independently created; and to prove, on the contrary, that the embryonic stages of species show us more or less clearly the structure of their ancestors.
Darwin's views, however, are still much misunderstood. I believe there are thousands who consider that according to his theory a sheep might turn into a cow, or a zebra into a horse. No one would more confidently withstand any such hypothesis, his view being, of course, not that the one could be changed into the other, but that both are descended from a common ancestor. No one, at any rate, will question the immense impulse which Darwin has given to the study of natural history, the number of new views he has opened up, and the additional interest which he has aroused in, and contributed to, biology. When we were young, we knew that the leopard had spots, the tiger was striped, and the lion tawny; but why this was so it did not occur to us to ask; [and, if we had asked], no one would have answered. Now we see at a glance that the stripes of the tiger have reference to its life among jungle-grasses; the lion is sandy, like the desert; while the markings of the leopard resemble spots of sunshine glancing through the leaves.
The science of embryology may almost be said to have been created in the last half-century. Fifty years ago it was a very general opinion that animals which are unlike when mature were dissimilar from the beginning. It is to Von Baer, the discoverer of the mammalian ovum, that we owe the great generalization that the development of the egg is in the main a progress from the general to the special; in fact, that embryology is the key to the laws of animal development. Thus the young of existing species resemble in many cases the mature forms which flourished in ancient times. Huxley has traced up the genealogy of the horse to the Miocene Anchitherium. In the same way Gaudry has called attention to the fact that, just as the individual stag gradually acquires more and more complex antlers—having at first only a single prong, in the next year two points, in the following three, and so on—so the genus, as a whole, in Middle Miocene times had two pronged horns; in the Upper Miocene, three; and that it is not till the Upper Pliocene that we find any species with the magnificent antlers of our modern deer. It seems to be now generally admitted that birds have come down to us through the Dinosaurians, and, as Huxley has shown, the profound break once supposed to exist between birds and reptiles has been bridged over by the discovery of reptilian birds and bird-like reptiles; so that, in fact, birds are modified reptiles. Again, the remarkable genus Peripatus, so well studied by Moseley, tends to connect the annulose and articulate types.
Again, the structural resemblances between Amphioxus and the Ascidians had been pointed out by Goodsir; and Kowalevsky in 1866 showed that these were not mere analogies, but indicated a real affinity. These observations, in the words of Allen Thomson, "have produced a change little short of revolutionary in embryological and zoölogical views, leading as they do to the support of the hypothesis that the Ascidian is an earlier stage in the phylogenetic history of the mammal and other vertebrates."
The larval forms which occur in so many groups, and of which the insects afford us the most familiar examples, are, in the words of Quatrefages, embryos, which lead an independent life. In such cases as these, external conditions act upon the larva? as they do upon the mature form; hence we have two classes of changes, adaptational or adaptive, and developmental. These and many other facts must be taken into consideration; nevertheless, naturalists are now generally agreed that embryological characters are of high value as guides in classification, and it may, I think, be regarded as well established that, just as the contents and sequence of rocks teach us the past history of the earth, so is the gradual development of the species indicated by the structure of the embryo and its developmental changes. When the supporters of Darwin are told that his theory is incredible, they may fairly ask why it is impossible that a species in the course of hundreds of thousands of years should have passed through changes which occupy only a few days or weeks in the life-history of each individual.
The phenomena of yolk-segmentation, first observed by Prevost and Dumas, are now known to be in some form or other invariably the precursors of embryonic development; while they reproduce, as the first stages in the formation of the higher animals, the main and essential features in the life-history of the lowest forms. The "blastoderm," as it is called, or first germ of the embryo in the egg, divides itself into two layers, corresponding, as Huxley has shown, to the two layers into which the body of the Cœlenterata may be divided. Not only so, but most embryos at an early stage of development have the form of a cup, the walls of which are formed by the two layers of the blastoderm. Kowalevsky was the first to show the prevalence of this embryonic form, and subsequently Lankester and Haeckel put forward the hypothesis that it was the embryonic repetition of an ancestral type, from which all the higher forms are descended. The cavity of the cup is supposed to be the stomach of this simple organism, and the opening of the cup the mouth. The inner layer of the wall of the cup constitutes the digestive membrane, and the outer the skin. To this form Haeckel gave the name Gastrœa. It is perhaps doubtful whether the theory of Lancaster and Haeckel can be accepted in precisely the form they propounded it; but it has had an important influence on the progress of embryology. I can not quit the science of embryology without alluding to the very admirable work on "Comparative Embryology" by our new general secretary, Mr. Balfour, and also the "Elements of Embryology" which he had previously published in conjunction with Dr. M. Foster.
In 1842 Steenstrup published his celebrated work on the "Alternation of Generations," in which he showed that many species are represented by two perfectly distinct types or broods, differing in form, structure, and habits; that in one of them males are entirely wanting, and that the reproduction is effected by fission, or by buds, which, however, are in some cases structurally indistinguishable from eggs. Steenstrup's illustrations were mainly taken from marine or parasitic species, of very great interest, but not generally familiar, excepting to naturalists. It has since been shown that the common Cynips, or gall-fly, is also a case in point. It had long been known that in some genera belonging to this group males are entirely wanting, and it has now been shown by Bassett, and more thoroughly by Adler, that some of these species are double-brooded; the two broods having been considered as distinct genera. Thus, an insect known as Neuroterus lenticularis, of which females only occur, produces the familiar oak-spangles so common on the under sides of oak-leaves, from which emerge, not Neuroterus lenticularis, but an insect hitherto considered as a distinct species, belonging even to a different genus (Spathegaster baccarum). In Spathegaster both sexes occur; they produce the currant-like galls found on oaks, and from these galls Neuroterus is again developed. So also the King Charles oak-apples produce a species known as Teras terminalis, which descends to the ground, and makes small galls on the roots of the oak. From these emerge an insect known as Biorhiza aptera, which again gives rise to the common oak-apple.
It might seem that such inquiries as these could hardly have any practical bearing. Yet it is not improbable that they may lead to very important results. For instance, it would appear that the fluke which produces the rot in sheep, passes one phase of its existence in the black slug; and we are not without hopes that the researches, in which our lamented friend Professor Rolleston was engaged at the time of his death, which we all so much deplore, will lead, if not to the extirpation, at any rate to the diminution, of a pest from which our farmers have so grievously suffered.
It was in the year 1839 that Schwann and Schleiden demonstrated the intimate relation in which animals and plants stand to each other, by showing the identity of the laws of development of the elementary parts in the two kingdoms of organic nature.
As regards descriptive biology, by far the greater number of species now recorded have been named and described within the last half century. Dr. Günther has been good enough to make a calculation for me. The numbers, of course, are only approximate, but it appears that, while the total number of animals described up to 1831 was not more than 70,000, the number now is at least 320,000.
Lastly, to show how large a field still remains for exploration, I may add that Mr. Waterhouse estimates that the British Museum alone contains not fewer than 12,000 species of insects which have not yet been described, while our collections do not probably contain anything like one half of those actually in existence. Further than this, the anatomy and habits even of those which have been described offer an inexhaustible field for research, and it is not going too far to say that there is not a single species which would not amply repay the devotion of a lifetime.
One remarkable feature in the modern progress of biological science has been the application of improved methods of observation and experiment, and the employment in physiological research of the exact measurements employed by the experimental physicist. Our microscopes have been greatly improved. The use of chemical reagents in microscopical investigations has proved most instructive, and another very important method of investigation has been the power of obtaining very thin slices by imbedding the object to be examined in paraffine or some other soft substance. In this manner we can now obtain, say, fifty separate sections of the egg of a beetle or the brain of a bee.
At the close of the last century Sprengel published a most suggestive work on flowers, in which he pointed out the curious relation existing between these and insects, and showed that the latter carry the pollen from flower to flower. His observations, however, attracted little notice until Darwin called attention to the subject in 1862. It had long been known that the cowslip and primrose exist under two forms, about equally numerous, and differing from one another in the arrangements of their stamens and pistils; the one form having the stamens on the summit of the flower and the stigma half-way down, while in the other the relative positions are reversed, the stigma being at the summit of the tube and the stamens half-way down. This difference had, however, been regarded as a case of mere variability; but Darwin showed it to be a beautiful provision, the result of which is that insects fertilize each flower with pollen brought from a different plant; and he proved that flowers fertilized with pollen from the other form yield more seed than if fertilized with pollen of the same form, even if taken from a different plant.
Attention having been thus directed to the question, an astonishing variety of most beautiful contrivances has been observed and described by many botanists, especially Hooker, Axel, Delpino, Hildebrand, Bennett, Fritz Müller, and, above all, Hermann Müller and Darwin himself. The general result is that to insects, and especially to bees, we owe the beauty of our gardens, the sweetness of our fields. To their beneficent though unconscious action flowers owe their scent and color, their honey—nay, in many cases, even their form. Their present shape and varied arrangements, their brilliant colors, their honey, and their sweet scent are all due to the selection exercised by insects. In these cases the relation between plants and insects is one of mutual advantage. In many species, however, plants present us with complex arrangements adapted to protect them from insects; such, for instance, are in many cases the resinous glands which render leaves unpalatable; the thickets of hairs and other precautions which prevent flowers from being robbed of their honey by ants. Again, more than a century ago our countryman, Ellis, described an American plant, Dionæa, in which the leaves are somewhat concave, with long lateral spines and a joint in the middle; close up with a jerk like a rat-trap the moment any unwary insect alights on them. The plant, in fact, actually captures and devours insects. This observation also remained as an isolated fact until within the last few years, when Darwin, Hooker, and others have shown that many other species have curious and very varied contrivances for supplying themselves, with animal food.
Some of the most fascinating branches of botany morphology, histology, and physiology—scarcely existed before 1830. In the two former branches the discoveries of Von Mold are preëminent. He first observed cell-division in 1835, and detected the presence of starch in chlorophyl-corpuscles in 1837, while he first described protoplasm, now so familiar to us, at least by name, in 1846. In the same year Amici discovered the existence of the embryonic vesicle in the embryo sac, which develops into the embryo when fertilized by the entrance of the pollen-tube into the micropyle. The existence of sexual reproduction in the lower plants was doubtful, or at least doubted by some eminent authorities, as recently as 1853, when the actual process of fertilization in the common bladderwrack of our shores was observed by Thuret, while the reproduction of the larger fungi was first worked out by De Bary in 1863.
As regards lichens, Schwendener proposed, in 1869, the startling theory, now, however, accepted by some of the highest authorities, that lichens are not autonomous organisms, but commensal associations of a fungus parasitic on an alga. With reference to the higher cryptogams it is hardly too much to say that the whole of our exact knowledge of their life-history has been obtained during the last half-century. Thus, in the case of ferns, the male organs, or antheridia, were first discovered by Nägeli in 1844, and the archegonia, or female organs, by Suminski in 1848. The early stages in the development of mosses were worked out by Valentine in 1833. Lastly, the principle of alternation of generations in plants was discovered by Hofmeister. This eminent naturalist also, in 1851-54, pointed out the homologies of the reproductive processes in mosses, vascular cryptogams, gymnosperms, and angiosperms.
Nothing could have appeared less likely than that researches into the theory of spontaneous generation should have led to practical improvements in medical science. Yet such has been the case. Only a few years ago bacteria seemed mere scientific curiosities. It had long been known that an infusion—say, of hay—would, if exposed to the atmosphere, be found, after a certain time, to teem with living forms. Even those few who still believe that life would be spontaneously generated in such an infusion, will admit that these minute organisms are, if not entirely, yet mainly, derived from germs floating in our atmosphere; and, if precautions are taken to exclude such germs, as in the careful experiments especially of Pasteur, Tyndall, and Roberts, every one will grant that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred no such development of life will take place. These facts have led to most important results in surgery. One reason why compound fractures are so dangerous, is because, the skin being broken, the air obtains access to the wound, bringing with it innumerable germs, which too often set up putrefying action. Lister first made a practical application of these observations. He set himself to find some substance capable of killing the germs, without being itself too potent a caustic, and he found that dilute carbolic acid fulfilled these conditions. This discovery has enabled many operations to be performed which would previously have been almost hopeless.
The same idea seems destined to prove as useful in medicine as in surgery. There is great reason to suppose that many diseases, especially those of a zymotic character, have their origin in the germs of special organisms. We know that fevers run a certain definite course. The parasitic organisms are at first few, but gradually multiply at the expense of the patient, and then die out again. Indeed, it seems to be thoroughly established that many diseases are due to the excessive multiplication of microscopic organisms, and we are not without hope that means will be discovered by which, without injury to the patient, these terrible though minute enemies may be destroyed, and the disease thus stayed. The interesting researches of Burdon-Sanderson, Greenfield, Koch, Pasteur, Toussaint, and others, seem to justify the hope that we may be able to modify these and other germs, and then by appropriate inoculation to protect ourselves against fever and other acute diseases.
The history of anæsthetics is a most remarkable illustration of how long we may be on the very verge of a most important discovery. Ether, which, as we all know, produces perfect insensibility to pain, was discovered as long ago as 1540. The anæsthetic property of nitrous oxide, now so extensively used, was observed in 1800 by Sir H. Davy, who actually experimented on himself, and had one of his teeth painlessly extracted when under its influence. He even suggests that, "as nitrous oxide gas seems capable of destroying pain, it could probably be used with advantage in surgical operations." Nay, this property of nitrous oxide was habitually explained and illustrated in the chemical lectures given in hospitals, and yet for fifty years the gas was never used in actual operations.
Few branches of science have made more rapid progress in the last half-century than that which deals with the ancient condition of man. When our Association was founded, it was generally considered that the human race suddenly appeared on the scene, about six thousand years ago, after the disappearance of the extinct mammalia, and when Europe, both as regards physical conditions and the other animals by which it was inhabited, was pretty much in the same condition as in the period covered by Greek and Roman history. Since then the persevering researches of Layard, Rawlinson, Botta, and others have made known to us, not only the statues and palaces of the ancient Assyrian monarchs, but even their libraries; the cuneiform characters have been deciphered, and we can not only see, but read in the British Museum, the actual contemporary records, on burned-clay cylinders, of the events recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament and in the pages of Herodotus. The researches in Egypt also seem to have satisfactorily established the fact that the pyramids themselves are at least six thousand years old, while it is obvious that the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchies can not suddenly have attained to the wealth and power, the state of social organization, and progress in the arts, of which we have before us, preserved by the sand of the desert from the ravages of man, such wonderful proofs.
In Europe, the writings of the earliest historians and poets indicated that, before iron came into general use, there was a time when bronze was the ordinary material of weapons, axes, and other cutting implements, and though it seemed a priori improbable that a compound of copper and tin should have preceded the simple metal iron, nevertheless, the researches of archæologists have shown that there really was in Europe a "bronze age," which at the dawn of history was just giving way to that of "iron." The contents of ancient graves, buried in many cases so that their owner might carry some at least of his wealth with him to the world of spirits, left no room for doubt as to the existence of a bronze age; but we get a completer idea of the condition of man at this period from the Swiss lake-villages, first made known to us by Keller. Along the shallow edges of the Swiss lakes there flourished, once upon a time, many populous villages or towns, built on platforms supported by piles, exactly as many Malayan villages are now. Under these circumstances innumerable objects were one by one dropped into the water; sometimes whole villages were burned, and their contents submerged; and thus we have been able to recover, from the waters of oblivion in which they had rested for more than two thousand years, not only the arms and tools of this ancient people, the bones of their animals, their pottery and ornaments, but the stuffs they wore, the grain they had stored up for future use, even fruits and cakes of bread.
But this bronze-using people were not the earliest occupants of Europe. The contents of ancient tombs give evidence of a time when metal was unknown. This also was confirmed by the evidence then unexpectedly received from the Swiss lakes. By the side of the bronze-age villages were others, not less extensive, in which, while implements of stone and bone were discovered literally by thousands, not a trace of metal was met with. The shell-mounds, or refuse-heaps, accumulated by the ancient fishermen along the shores of Denmark, fully confirmed the existence of a "stone age."
No bones of the reindeer, no fragment of any of the extinct mammalia, have been found in any of the Swiss lake-villages or in any of the thousands of tumuli which have been opened in our own country, or in Central and Southern Europe. Yet the contents of caves and of river-gravels afford abundant evidence that there was a time when the mammoth and rhinoceros, the musk-ox and reindeer, the cave-lion and hyena, the great bear and the gigantic Irish elk wandered in our woods and valleys, and the hippopotamus floated in our rivers; when England and France were united, and the Thames and the Rhine had a common estuary. This was long supposed to be before the advent of man. At length, however, the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes in the valley of the Somme, supported as they are by the researches of many Continental naturalists, and in our own country of MacEnery and Godwin-Austen, Prestwich and Lyell, Vivian and Pengelly, Christy, Evans, and many more, have proved that man formed a humble part of this strange assembly. Nay, even at this early period there were at least two distinct races of men in Europe; one of them—as Boyd Dawkins has pointed out—closely resembling the modern Esquimau in form, in his weapons and implements, probably in his clothing, as well as in so many of the animals with which he was associated.
At this stage man appears to have been ignorant of pottery, to have had no knowledge of agriculture, no domestic animals, except, perhaps, the dog. His weapons were the axe, the spear, and the javelin; I do not believe he knew the use of the bow, though he was probably acquainted with the lance. He was, of course, ignorant of metal, and his stone implements, though skillfully formed, were of quite different shapes from those of the second stone age, and were never ground. This earlier stone period, when man coexisted with these extinct mammalia, is known as the Palæolithic or Early Stone Age, in opposition to the Neolithic or Newer Stone Age. The remains of the mammalia which coëxisted with man in prehistoric times have been most carefully studied by Owen, Lartet, Rütimeyer, Falconer, Busk, Boyd Dawkins, and others. The presence of the mammoth, the reindeer, and especially of the musk-ox, indicates a severe, not to say an arctic climate, the existence of which, moreover, was proved by other considerations; while, on the contrary, the hippopotamus requires considerable warmth. How, then, is this association to be explained?
While the climate of the globe is, no doubt, much affected by geographical conditions, the cold of the glacial period was, I believe, mainly due to the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, combined with the obliquity of the ecliptic. The result of the latter condition is a period of twenty-one thousand years, during one half of which the northern hemisphere is warmer than the southern, while during the other ten thousand five hundred years the reverse is the case. At present we are in the former phase, and there is, we know, a vast accumulation of ice at the south pole. But when the earth's orbit is nearly circular, as it is at present, the difference between the two hemispheres is not very great; on the contrary, as the eccentricity of the orbit increases, the contrast between them increases also. This eccentricity is continually oscillating within certain limits, which Croll and subsequently Stone have calculated out for the last million years. At present, the eccentricity is ·016, and the mean temperature of the coldest month in London is about 40°. Such has been the state of things for nearly one hundred thousand years; but before that there was a period, beginning three hundred thousand years ago, when the eccentricity of the orbit varied from ·26 to ·57. The result of this would be greatly to increase the effect due to the obliquity of the orbit; at certain periods the climate would be much warmer than at present, while at others the number of days in winter would be twenty more, and of summer twenty less than now, while the mean temperature of the coldest month would be lowered 20°. We thus get something like a date for the last glacial epoch, and we see that it was not simply a period of cold, but rather one of extremes, each beat of the pendulum of temperature lasting for no less than twenty-one thousand years. This explains the fact that, as Morlot showed in 1854, the glacial deposits of Switzerland, and, as we now know, those of Scotland, are not a single uniform layer, but a succession of strata indicating very different conditions. I agree also with Croll and Geikie in thinking that these considerations explain the apparent anomaly of the coexistence in the same gravels of arctic and tropical animals; the former having lived in the cold, while the latter flourished in the hot, periods.
It is, I think, now well established that man inhabited Europe during the milder periods of the glacial epoch. Some high authorities, indeed, consider that we have evidence of his presence in pre-glacial and even in Miocene times, but I confess that I am not satisfied on this point. Even the more recent period carries back the record of man's existence to a distance so great as altogether to change our views of ancient history. Nor is it only as regards the antiquity and material condition of man in prehistoric times that great progress has been made. If time permitted, I should have been glad to dwell on the origin and development of language, of custom, and of law. On all of these the comparison of the various lower races, still inhabiting so large a portion of the earth's surface, has thrown much light; while even in the most cultivated nations we find survivals, curious fancies, and lingering ideas, the. fossil remains, as it were, of former customs and religions imbedded in our modern civilization, like the relics of extinct animals in the crust of the earth.
In geology the formation of our Association coincided with the appearance of Lyell's "Principles of Geology," the first volume of which was published in 1830, and the second in 1832. At that time the received opinion was that the phenomena of geology could only be explained by violent periodical convulsions, and a high intensity of terrestrial energy culminating in repeated catastrophes. Hutton and Playfair had indeed maintained that such causes as those now in operation would, if only time enough were allowed, account for the geological structure of the earth; nevertheless, the opposite view generally prevailed, until Lyell, with rare sagacity and great eloquence, with a wealth of illustration and most powerful reasoning, convinced geologists that the forces now in action are powerful enough, if only time be given, to produce results quite as stupendous as those which science records.
As regards stratigraphical geology, at the time of the first meeting of the British Association at York, the strata between the carboniferous limestone and the chalk had been mainly reduced to order and classified, chiefly through the labors of William Smith. But the classification of all the strata lying above the chalk and below the carboniferous limestone respectively, remained in a state of the greatest confusion. The year 1831 marks the period of the commencement of the joint labors of Sedgwick and Murchison, which resulted in the establishment of the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian systems. Our preCambrian strata have recently been divided by Hicks into four great groups of immense thickness, and implying, therefore, a great lapse of time; but no fossils have yet been discovered in them. Lyell's classification of the tertiary deposits, the result of the studies which he carried on with the assistance of Deshayes and others, was published in the third volume of the "Principles of Geology" in 1833. The establishment of Lyell's divisions of eocene, miocene, and pliocene, was the starting-point of a most important series of investigations, by Prestwich and others, of these younger deposits, as well of the post-tertiary, quaternary, or drift-beds, which are of special interest from the light they have thrown on the early history of man.
As regards the physical character of the earth, two theories have been held: one, that of a fluid interior covered by a thin crust; the other, of a practically solid sphere. The former is now very generally admitted, both by astronomers and geologists, to be untenable. The prevailing feeling of geologists on this subject has been well expressed by Professor Le Conte, who says, "The whole theory of igneous agencies—which is little less than the whole foundation of theoretic geology—must be reconstructed on the basis of a solid earth."
In 1837 Agassiz startled the scientific world by his "Discours sur l'ancienne Extension des Glaciers," in which, developing the observation already made by Charpentier and Venetz, that bowlders had been transported to great distances, and that rocks far away from, or high above, existing glaciers, are polished and scratched by the action of ice, he boldly asserted the existence of a "glacial period," during which Switzerland and the north of Europe were subjected to great cold and buried under a vast sheet of ice.
The ancient poets described certain gifted mortals as privileged to descend into the interior of the earth, and have exercised their imagination in recounting the wonders there revealed. As in other cases, however, the realities of science have proved more varied and surprising than the dreams of fiction. Of the gigantic and extraordinary animals thus revealed to us, by far the greatest number have been described during the period now under review. For instance, the gigantic cetiosaurus was described by Owen in 1838, the dinornis of New Zealand by the same distinguished naturalist in 1839, the mylodon in the same year, and the archæopteryx in 1862.
In America, a large number of remarkable forms have been described, mainly by Marsh, Leidy, and Cope. Marsh has made known to us the titanosaurus, of the American (Colorado) Jurassic beds, which is, perhaps, the largest land animal yet known, being a hundred feet in length, and at least thirty feet in height, though it seems possible that even these vast dimensions were exceeded by those of the atlantosaurus. Nor must I omit the hesperornis, described by Marsh in 1872, as a carnivorous, swimming ostrich, provided with teeth, which he regards as a character inherited from reptilian ancestors; the ichthyornis, stranger still, with biconcave vertebra?, like those of fishes, and teeth set in sockets.
As giving, in a few words, an idea of the rapid progress in this department, I may mention that Morris's "Catalogue of British Fossils," published in 1843, contained 5,300 species; while that now in preparation by Mr. Etheridge enumerates 15,000. But, if these figures show how rapid our recent progress has been, they also very forcibly illustrate the imperfection of the geological record, and give us, I will not say a measure, but an idea, of the imperfection of the geological record. The number of all the described recent species is over 300,000, but certainly not half are yet on our lists, and we may safely take the total number of recent species as being not less than 700,000. But in former times there have been at the very least twelve periods, in each of which by far the greater number of species were distinct. True, the number of species was probably not so large in the earlier periods as at present; but, if we make a liberal allowance for this, we shall have a total of more than 2,000,000 species, of which about 25,000 only are as yet upon record; and many of these are only represented by a few, some only by a single specimen, or even only by a fragment.
The progress of paleontology may also be marked by the extent to which the existence of groups has been, if I may so say, carried back in time. Thus, I believe that in 1830 the earliest known quadrupeds were small marsupials belonging to the Stonesfield slates; the most ancient mammal now known is Microlestes antiquus from the Keuper of Würtemberg; the oldest bird known in 1831 belonged to the period of the London Clay, the oldest now known is the archæopteryx of the Solenhofen slates, though it is probable that some at any rate of the footsteps on the Triassic rocks are those of birds. So, again, the Amphibia have been carried back from the Trias to the Coal-measures; fish from the Old Red Sandstone to the Upper Silurian; reptiles to the Trias; insects from the Cretaceous to the Devonian; Mollusca and Crustacea from the Silurian to the Lower Cambrian. The rocks below the Cambrian, though of immense thickness, have afforded no relics of animal life, if we except the problematical Eozoön Canadense, so ably studied by Dawson and Carpenter. But, if paleontology as yet throws no light on the original forms of life, we must remember that the simplest and the lowest organisms are so soft and perishable that they would leave "not a wrack behind."
Passing to the science of geography, Mr. Clements Markham has recently published an excellent summary of what has been accomplished during the half-century. But the progress in our knowledge of geography is, and has been, by no means confined to the improvement of our maps, or to the discovery and description of new regions of the earth, but has extended to the causes which have led to the present configuration of the surface. To a great extent, indeed, this part of the subject falls rather within the scope of geology, hut I may here refer, in illustration, to the distribution of lakes, the phenomena of glaciers, the formation of volcanic mountains, and the structure and distribution of coral islands.
The origin and distribution of lakes is one of the most interesting problems in physical geography. That they are not scattered at random, a glance at the map is sufficient to show. They abound in mountain districts, are comparatively rare in equatorial regions, increasing in number as we go north, so that in Scotland and the northern parts of America they are sown broadcast. Perhaps a priori the first explanation of the origin of lakes which would suggest itself, would be that they were formed in hollows resulting from a disturbance of the strata, which had thrown them into a basin-shaped form. Lake-basins, however, of this character are, as a matter of fact, very rare; as a general rule, lakes have not the form of basin-shaped synclinal hollows, but, on the contrary, the strike of the strata often runs right across them. My eminent predecessor, Professor Ramsay, divides lakes into three classes: 1. Those which are due to irregular accumulations of drift, and which are generally quite shallow; 2. Those which are formed by moraines; and, 8, those which occupy true basins scooped by glacier-ice out of the solid rock. To the latter class belong most of the great Swiss and Italian lakes. Professor Ramsay attributes their excavation to glaciers, because it is of course obvious that rivers can not make basin-shaped hollows surrounded by rock on all sides. Now, the Lake of Geneva, 1,230 feet above the sea, is 984 feet deep, the Lake of Brienz is 1,850 feet above the sea, and 2,000 feet deep, so that its bottom is really below the sea-level. The Italian lakes are even more remarkable. The Lake of Como, 700 feet above the sea, is 1,929 feet deep. Lago Maggiore, 685 feet above the sea, is no less than 2,625 feet deep. It will be observed that these lakes, like many others in mountain regions, those of Scandinavia, for instance, lie in the direct channels of the great old glaciers. If the mind is at first staggered at the magnitude of the scale, we must remember that the ice, which scooped out the valley in which the Lake of Geneva now reposes, was once at least 2,700 feet thick; while the moraines were also of gigantic magnitude, that of Ivrea, for instance, being no less than 1,500 feet in height. Professor Ramsay's theory seems, therefore, to account beautifully for a large number of interesting facts.
Passing from lakes to mountains, two rival theories with reference to the structure and origin of volcanoes long struggled for supremacy. The more general view was that the sheets of lava and scoriæ which form volcanic cones such, for instance, as Etna or Vesuvius—were originally nearly horizontal, and that subsequently a force operating from below, and exerting a pressure both upward and outward from a central axis toward all points of the compass, uplifted the whole stratified mass, and made it assume a conical form, giving rise at the same time, in many cases, to a wide and deep circular opening at the top of the cone, called by the advocates of this hypothesis a "crater of elevation."
This theory, though, as it seems to us now, it had already received its death-blow from the admirable memoirs of Scrope, was yet that most generally adopted fifty years ago, because it was considered that compact and crystalline lavas could not have consolidated on a slope exceeding 1° or 2°. In 1858, however, Sir diaries Lyell conclusively showed that in fact such lavas could consolidate at a considerable angle, even in some cases at more than 30°, and it is now generally admitted that, though the beds of lava, etc., may have sustained a slight angular elevation since their deposition, still, in the main, volcanic cones have acquired their form by the accumulation of lava and ashes ejected from one or more craters.
The problems presented by glaciers are of very great interest. In 1843 Agassiz and Forbes proved that the center of a glacier, like that of a river, moves more rapidly than its sides. But how and why do glaciers move at all? Rendu, afterward Bishop of Annecy, in 1841 endeavored to explain the facts by supposing that glacier-ice enjoys a kind of ductility. The "viscous theory" of glaciers was also adopted and most ably advocated by Forbes, who compared the condition of a glacier to that of the contents of a tar-barrel poured into a sloping channel. We have all, however, seen long, narrow fissures, a mere fraction of an inch in width, stretching far across glaciers—a condition incompatible with the ordinary idea of viscosity. The phenomenon of regelation was afterward applied to the explanation of glacier motion. An observation of Faraday's supplied the clew. He noticed in 1850 that, when two pieces of thawing ice are placed together, they unite by freezing at the place of contact. Following up this suggestion, Tyndall found that, if he compressed a block of ice in a mold, it could be made to assume any shape he pleased. A straight prism, for instance, placed in a groove and submitted to hydraulic pressure, was bent into a transparent semicircle of ice. These experiments seem to have proved that a glacial valley is a mold through which the ice is forced, and to which it will accommodate itself, while, as Tyndall and Huxley also pointed out, the "veined structure of ice" is produced by pressure, in the same manner as the cleavage of slate-rocks.
It was in the year 1842 that Darwin published his great work on "Coral Islands." The fringing reefs of coral presented no special difficulty. They could be obviously accounted for by an elevation of the land, so that the coral, which had originally grown under water, had been raised above the sea-level. The circular or oval shape of so many reefs, however, each having a lagoon in the center, closely surrounded by a deep ocean, and rising but a few feet above the sea-level, had long been a puzzle to the physical geographer. The favorite theory was, that these were the summits of submarine volcanoes on which the coral had grown. But, as the reef-making coral does not live at greater depths than about twenty-five fathoms, the immense number of these reefs formed an almost insuperable objection to this theory. The Laccadives and Maldives, for instance—meaning literally the "lac of islands" and the "thousand islands" are a series of such atolls, and it was impossible to imagine so great a number of craters, all so nearly of the same altitude. Darwin showed, moreover, that, so far from the ring of corals resting on a corresponding ridge of rock, the lagoons, on the contrary, now occupy the place which was once the highest land. He pointed out that some lagoons, as, for instance, that of Vanikoro, contain an island in the middle; while other islands, such as Tahiti, are surrounded by a margin of smooth water, separated from the ocean by a coral-reef. Now, if we suppose that Tahiti were to sink slowly, it would gradually approximate to the condition of Vanikoro; and, if Vanikoro gradually sank, the central island would disappear, while on the contrary the growth of the coral might neutralize the subsidence of the reef, so that we should have simply an atoll, with its lagoon. The same considerations explain the origin of the "barrier reefs," such as that which runs, for nearly one thousand miles, along the northeast coast of Australia. Thus Darwin's theory explained the form and the approximate identity of altitude of these coral islands. But it did more than this, because it showed us that there were great areas in process of subsidence, which, though slow, was of great importance in physical geography.[2]
Much information has also been acquired with reference to the abysses of the ocean, especially from the voyages of the Porcupine and the Challenger. The greatest depth yet recorded is near the Ladrone Islands, where a sounding of 4,575 fathoms was obtained. Ehrenberg long ago pointed out the similarity of the calcareous mud now accumulating in our recent seas to the chalk, and showed that the green-sands of the geologist are largely made up of casts of foraminifera. Clay, however, had been looked on, until the recent expeditions, as essentially a product of the disintegration of older rocks. Not only, however, are a large proportion of silicious and calcareous rocks either directly or indirectly derived from material which has once formed a portion of living organisms, but Sir Wyville Thomson maintains that this is the case with some clays also. In that case, the striking remark of Linnæus, that "fossils are not the children but the parents of rocks," will have received remarkable confirmation. I should have thought it, I confess, probable that these clays are, to a considerable extent, composed of volcanic dust.
It would appear that calcareous deposits resembling our chalk do not occur at a greater depth than 3,000 fathoms; they have not been met with in the abysses of the ocean. Here the bottom consists of exceedingly fine clay, sometimes colored red by oxide of iron, sometimes chocolate by manganese oxide, and containing with Foraminifera occasionally large numbers of siliceous Radiolaria. These strata seem to accumulate with extreme slowness: this is inferred from the comparative abundance of whales' bones and fishes' teeth, and from the presence of minute spherical particles, supposed by Mr. Murray to be of cosmic origin—in fact, to be the dust of meteorites, which in the course of ages have fallen on the ocean. Such particles no doubt occur over the whole surface of the earth, but on land they soon oxidize, and in shallow water they are covered up by other deposits. Another interesting result of recent deep-sea explorations has been to show that the depths of the ocean are no mere barren solitudes, as was until recent years confidently believed, but, on the contrary, present us many remarkable forms of life. We have, however, as yet but thrown here and there a ray of light down into the ocean abysses:
To fathom the vast depths of Nature's sea,"
(Concluded in the December number.)
