Picture - Cosmic Polymath

SIMPLE AND COMPLEX PLANTS AND ANIMALS 231
have been recently brought to Ught, the evidence has been daily strengthened of continued changes of level effected
by violent convulsions in countries where earthquakes are frequent. There the rocks are rent from time to time,
and heaved up or thrown down several feet at once, and disturbed in such a manner as to show how entirely the
original position of strata may be modified in the course of centuries.
It is not necessary for me to take up in detail the physical geography of the crust of the earth in geologic and
recent times. It will suffice to furnish the reader with a table or chart (Fig. 44) in which the several rock strata
of the earth's crust are given, in which the comparative thicknesses of the strata are indicated, and in which are
located the fossil and other animals in the order of their appearance. Such a table supphes invaluable information
in many directions, but unfortunately it conveys no idea of absolute time in relation to comparative time. The
standard or unit of time has yet to be discovered. The thickness of the various rock strata affords no rehable clue.
If the thiclcness of one stratum be ten times that of another stratum, one is tempted to conclude that the thicker
stratum is ten times the age of the thinner one. This could only be true if the rate of deposit was uniform, which
it never is. The rate of deposit of the stratum only partly determines the time taken in its formation : the
thiclaiess of the stratum and the time of deposit become comparative questions. The same reasoning apphes to
ever5rthing contained in the strata. While the simpler animals are found deepest in the earth's crust, and were
the first to be created, there is nothing to show absolutely how long the several animals existed on the earth.
A study of the table referred to will satisfactorily illustrate my meaning.
The time involved in the various creative acts is inconceivably great, and a practically unknown quantity.
The heavenly bodies, our planet, and its atmosphere had to be prepared before plants and animals could
exist. The plants and animals, moreover, had to be specially constructed to meet the exigencies of the earth,
and its climate at different periods. Geology shows that the plants and animals of successive periods were
specially adapted to the peculiar ptysical conditions of the period, and were perfect in their day and generation.
There were the plants and animals forming the coal-measures ; the great conifers and tree ferns ; ^ the ganoid and
old world fishes, the huge reptiles, the monster mammals, &c., all indicating and chronicUng bygone eras.
Not only were the plants and animals as a whole adapted to the earth as a whole at a particular period, but
a portion of the plants and animals were adapted to particular parts of the earth at different periods. The earth,
its atmosphere, and its chmate have changed and are changing ; a state of matters which accounts for regions
which were once tropical, and contained tropical plants and animals, being now temperate or arctic, and containing
corresponding flora and fauna. The distribution of plants and animals on the earth is not an accidental or chance
distribution. The organic formations kept and keep pace with the physical changes of our planet ; the organic
and inorganic kingdoms being, as explained, mutually adapted and correlated. When the continents and climate
changed, the plants and animals changed also. " The number of reptilian remains, all apparently of the cretaceous
age, is truly surprising ; more than ten species of Pliosaurus, one of Dinosaurus, eight of Chelonian, besides other
forms, having been recognised. . . . The
Aix-la-Chapelle (fossil) plants flourished before the rich reptihan fauna
of the secondary rocks had ceased to exist. The Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl, and Mosasaurus were of coeval
date with the oak, the walnut, and the fig." ^
If there is one thing more certain than another it is that the inorganic and organic kingdoms, as we know
them, are mutually interdependent, and that they are always and everywhere complementary. The geological
record affords conclusive proof that the one is an addition to, and, in a sense, an outcome or extension of the other,
and that both are parts of a great whole. At one period of the earth's history neither plant nor animal existed.
The earth had to be prepared as a habitation for them, and when a fitting habitation was provided, then, and not
till then, did they make their appearance ; the plants coming first, and animals afterwards. The plants and
the more simple ones preceding the more complex up
animals, moreover, appeared in a certain graduated order ;
to a point which, when reached, enabled the simple and the complex to exist side by side, as at the present day.
§ 40. The Simple and Complex Plants and Animals necessary to each Other.
While geology points to the production of the lower plant and animal forms before the higher, this fact (if
fact it be) ^ does not indicate imperfection or want of power in the Creator. With Him all things are possible.
In other words. He could with equal faciUty produce a monad or a man. The geologic record of the future may
1 Professor Goppert, after examining the fossil vegetables of the coal-fields of Germany, has detected, in beds of pure coal, remains of plants
of every family hitherto known to occur fossil in the carboniferous rocks. Many seams, he remarks, are rich in htgillm-iee, Lepidodendra, and
Stigmarim; the latter in such abundance as to appear to form the bulk of the coal. In some places, almost all the plants were calamites, m
others ferns. (Sir Charles Lyell's " Elements of Geology." London, 1871.)
!" Lyell, op. cit. pp. 275, 280. ,,„,., ., -u-i-^ c- ^ ^
» Some scientists are of opinion that the geologic record is so imperfect as not to be reliable. There is however, the possibility of important
fossiliferons strata being destroyed by igneous and other action at successive periods during the formation of the crust of the earth.