Picture - Cosmic Polymath

GEOLOGY AS BEARING ON CREATION 229
operative by turns. Gravitation, attraction, repulsion, condensation, rarefaction, cohesion, adhesion, capillarity,
osmose, &c., all take part in building up the inorganic and organic kingdoms. Matter (inorganic and organic)
and force (physical and vital) are each and all under law, and the same law ; and the actions and reactions which
everywhere abound are, in every instance, means to ends. The laws which obtained at the dawn of creation
obtain now. Nothing has suddenly leapt into existence. Time or duration is a factor in the production of
everything the universe contains.
§ 39. Geology as Bearing on Creation.
The formation of the crust of the earth and of the plants and animals which inhabit it may be said to furnish
a history of creation on a small scale. Geology assures us that the surface of our globe is the product of
innumerable forces acting for long periods on heterogeneous substances, and that these forces are at work at
the present day. They consist of water action (seen in rain, waterspouts, rills, rivers, lakes, and oceans), which
produces sediments and strata of various kinds, especially rocks ; atmospheric and cUmatic action, which results
in denudation ;
frost and glacier action, which, with river action, scoops out valleys and transfers huge masses of
foreign matters long distances ; volcanic action, which begets great upheavals and dislocations of existing hori-
zontal strata and gives rise to new strata ; subsidence and elevation of certain areas at different periods (also
resulting in dislocation), whereby islands are engulphed or formed, and continents diminished or increased in
extent, &c. These forces, continually at work in the past, as in the present, have produced the conditions which
modem physical geography reveals.
The formation of chalk furnishes a striking illustration of natural forces at work on a large scale : " Great
light has recently been thrown upon the origin of the unconsoHdated white chalk by the deep soundings made in
the North Atlantic, previous to laying down, in 1858, the electric telegraph between Ireland and Newfoundland.
At depths sometimes exceeding two miles, the mud forming the floor of the ocean was found, by Professor Huxley,
to be almost entirely composed (more than nineteen-twentieths of the whole) of minute Rhizopods, or foraminiferous
shells of the genus Globigerina, especially the species Globigerina bulloides. The organic bodies next in quantity
were the sihceous shells called Polycystinem, and next to them the sihceous skeletons of plants called Diatomacex,
and occasionally some siliceous spiculae of sponges were intermixed. These he supposed to be connected by a mass
of living (?) gelatinous matter to which he gave the name of Bathyhius,^ and which he thought contained abundance
of very minute bodies termed Coccoliths and Coccospheres, which have been detected fossil in chalk.
" Sir Leopold MacCHntock and Dr. Wallich have ascertained that ninety-five per cent, of the mud of a large
part of the North Atlantic consists of Globigerina shells. But Capt. Bullock, R.N., lately brought up from the
enormous depth of 16,860 feet a white, viscid, chalky mud, wholly devoid of Globigerinse. This mud was perfectly
homogeneous (?) in composition, and contained no organic remains visible to the naked eye. Mr. Etheridge, however,
has ascertained by microscopical examination that it is made up of Coccoliths, Biscoliths, and other minute
fossils Hke those of the chalk classed by Huxley as Bathybius, when this term is used in its widest sense. This
mud, more than three miles deep, was dredged up in lat. 20° 19' N., long. 4° 36' B., or about midway between Madeira
and the Cape of Good Hope.
" The recent deep-sea dredgings in the Atlantic conducted by Dr. Wyville Thomson, Dr. Carpenter, Mr. Gwyn
Jeffreys, and others, have shown that on the same white mud there sometimes flourish Mollusca, Crustacea, and
Echinoderms, besides abundance of siliceous sponges, forming on the whole a marine fauna bearing a striking
resemblance in its general character to that of the ancient chalk."
The progressive formation of strata can at present be seen in the deltas of the Nile, Mississippi, and other large
rivers, and in the beds of the several oceans ;
the upheavals are seen in the occasional and violent action of existing
volcanoes ; the glacier action is witnessed in Switzerland and other mountainous countries ; denudation from wind,
raia, frost, &c., is constantly going on in hills, mountains, and valleys, and in glacial, water, and tidal courses. The
elevation and subsidence of land, though usually a very slow process, is an every-day occurrence. It only becomes
sudden and pronounced when due to volcanic action. Sir Charles Lyell remarks : " Such changes have actually
occurred in our own days, and are now in progress, having been accompanied in some cases by violent convulsions,
while in others they have proceeded so insensibly as to have been ascertainable only by the most careful scientific
observations, made at considerable intervals of time. ... In parts of Sweden, and the shores and islands of the
Gulf of Bothnia, proofs have been obtained that the land is experiencing, and has experienced for centuries, a slow
upheaving movement."
1 The gelatinous supposed living matter met with at the sea bottom, and named Bathybius by Huxley, was found on closer examination to
be a chemical product. Huxley's theory on the subject was consequently abandoned by himself.