sign in sign up
<<
Home , Philip Henry Gosse, William Buckland

The Evolution Debate 1813-1870

Edited by David Knight The Evolution Debate 1813-1870 Edited and with new introductions by David Knight

Volume I Essay on the Theory ofthe Earth

Volume II and Mineralogy, Considered with Reference to , Volume I

Volume III Geology and Mineralogy, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, Volume II William Buckland

Volume IV Philip Gosse

Volume V On the Origin ofSpecies

VolumeVI Palaeontology Richard Owen

Volume VII Man's Place in Nature

Volume VIII The Geological Evidences ofthe Antiquity ofMan

Volume IX Part I: Contributions to the Theory ofNatural Selection AlfredRusselWallace Part II: On the Tendency ofSpecies to Form Varieties Charles Darwin andAlfredRusselWallace The Evolution Debate 1813-1870

Volume I

Essay on the Theory ofthe Earth Georges Cuvier

with a new introduction by David Knight

Published in Association with the Museum i~ ~~o~1~~n~~;up ~}~ NATURAL HISTORY LONDON AND NEW YORK MUSEUM First published 1813 This edition reprinted 2003 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Transferred to Digital Printing 2008

Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group Editorial material and selection © 2003 David Knight Typeset in Times by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-415-28922-X (set) ISBN 0-415-28923-8 (volume I)

Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality ofthis reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) © The , London, England.

THE EVOLUTION DEBATE 1813-1870 General Introduction

David Knight

In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of descent with modification, propelled by natural selection. People often suppose that he had invented the idea ofevolution, and that subsequent debate was between benighted bishops and -bashers on the one hand, and enlightened scientists on the other; or maybe between decent upholders of traditional values and ruthless materialists. But evolution was an old idea, and Darwin's role was to work out a scientifically respectable version of it, one which involved stretching the boundaries of what most people saw as scientific method. Nobody had ever seen one change into another, and so Darwin could not generalise from a number ofauthentic cases as the inductive logic ofFrancis Bacon would have allowed. Thus his arguments were like legal pleas, manifestos, or sermons, aiming to convince beyond reasonable doubt - a rope of weak fibres twisted together into something stronger, but not a rigorous deductive chain like Euclid's geometry, which provided another model ofscientific inference. So to many contemporaries expert in natural history, his theory seemed speculative, unnecessary and untestable, all too liable to divert serious students from the real business of classifying organisms and strata, or understanding anatomy and physiology. Incredulous critics saw mere higgledy• piggledy chance in the supposed operation of natural selection: Darwin, and his great ally , tried to get them to see law and probability, and to take more seriously the great sweep of geological time. Inthis series, reproduced in facsimile from the rich collections ofthe library ofthe Natural History Museum in London, we shall encounter important but accessible scientific books making the case for and against evolution during Darwin's lifetime. A prologue to our story: in the opening years ofthe nineteenth century, three important authors published works that renewed debate about design and evolution. In 1802, William Paley's Natural Theology came out, making the case in classic prose that the world was a great clock (the best of all possible clocks), we and other organisms little clocks, and God the clockmaker. Everywhere Paley saw

vii THE EVOLUTION DEBATE contrivance and he believed that God's goodness could be inferred from the general prevalence ofhappiness. In that same year, the eminent doctor and poet Erasmus Darwin died, and in 1803 his long evolutionary poem The Temple ofNature - with scientific footnotes - was published. 1 He saw progressive change everywhere, and evolution leading inexorably onward and upward: but his views were not bland, as his line 'One great slaughterhouse the warring world' indicates - he had lived after all in revolutionary times. In 1809 his grandson Charles was born, and also that year lB. Lamarck, based at the great natural history museum in Paris, who had published standard works on the classification of , brought out his evolutionary treatise, .? His theory was again pro• gressive; but use, disuse and environment determine the exact course ofevolution rather as the terrain determines the exact course ofa river to the sea. In Lamarck's writing, nature's strivings could also be unsympathetically read as the urge among animals and plants to improve themselves. In that decade evolution seemed an idea that had had its day: it belonged with the speculative systems of the eighteenth century, an outdated kind ofscience propounded by the elderly, out oftouch with the latest high standards ofaccuracy and detail in science. English speakers learned about Lamarck's ideas chiefly through a chapter refuting them, in Charles Lyell's influential Principles ofGeology, 1830-33.3 In France, Lamarck had a rival at the museum, Georges Cuvier, who specialised in vertebrates. The museum adjoined the zoo, and Cuvier would dissect animals which died there; he became also particularly interested in . By 1800, enough was known in about America, Australia, Africa and Asia to make it evident that fossils were the remains of creatures most of which were no longer to be found: they were extinct. This idea, startling especially to those who believed that this was the best ofall possible worlds and would have been made that way in the beginning, fascinated Cuvier's contemporaries. As Napoleon sought to emulate Augustus by rebuilding his capital in marble, the limestone quarries ofMontmartre were worked, and they proved to be rich in fossils. Workmen were ordered to report their finds to Cuvier who, by comparing these skeletons to those of animals now living, found that he could reconstruct extinct creatures, sorting out which bones went together from the disordered and incomplete remains found in the rocks." He followed , who had noted that nature did nothing in vain - that is, all the parts of animals are in proportion, and are relevant to its mode of life. Herbivores do not have great claws, or canine teeth: all ofa creature's organs are interdependent, and Cuvier after a bit believed that from a single bone he could reconstruct a complete animal. But this to him meant (as it had to Aristotle) that there could be no element ofchance in the design ofanimals; and he had no time for what to him seemed Lamarck's absurdities. As Permanent Secretary to the Institut (Academy of Sciences),' it fell to him to deliver Lamarck's obituary, and Cuvier did his best to inter his ideas along with their progenitor. What especially struck Cuvier was that beneath Paris there were several distinct and distinguishable species of bears, elephants and other creatures: indeed, there was clear evidence ofa whole series ofextinct faunas. Any idea that extinct creatures might all have

viii THE EVOLUTION DEBATE missed the same boat at the time ofNoah's flood would not do: there must have been a series ofcatastrophes. And by the 1820s, evidence from England indicated that before these mammals there had been ages ofreptiles. William Buckland had been the first to describe what Richard Owen was later to call a , a marine species, and Cuvier confirmed the reptilian character ofthe first land species, named by the Sussex doctor (who found it) 'iguanadon' after its supposed affinity to the iguana. Buckland, both an ordained clergyman and the first Professor of Geology at Oxford University, believed in the 1820s that he had found convincing evidence of Noah's flood in a Yorkshire cave that had been a 's den. But Lyell, his former pupil, convinced him in the 1830s that geological changes were slow and steady and that, as far as possible, past changes were to be explained in terms of causes now operating. By 1836 Buckland had abandoned beliefin a unique deluge, and believed that the Earth was very old - there had been millions ofyears before any ofthe events described in the Bible, as his wonderful fold-out plate in volume 3 shows. By then he had become fascinated by , and made a study of their footprints and their excreta as well as their bones. He believed that catastrophes and new creations separated the various geological epochs; and, like Cuvier, that since every belonged to some distinct species or other, and the parts ofanimals were so fitted to their role, there could have been no gradual evolutionary process like Lamarck's or Erasmus Darwin's. In 1844, Charles Darwin, home from his voyage on HMS Beagle and married, wrote up the sketch ofhis theory written in 1842 into an essay to circulate among a few friends, to be published ifhe should die. That same year the publisher Robert Chambers of Edinburgh published anonymously Vestiges ofthe Natural History ofCreation.; an extremely successful evolutionary book that went through edition after edition, with a sequel, Explanations, published in1845. There was great speculation about who the author could be, and the work was loudly denounced from pulpits as immoral, and by men of science as riddled with errors; it turned out here as often that any publicity is good publicity. That book forms an important part ofour story, making evolution well known, and stimulating Alfred Tennyson, who was writing In Memoriam,' to include the famous line about nature being red in tooth and claw. Because there is a facsimile with an excellent introduction in print, Vestiges is not included in this set. It generated various responses, and put evolution in bad odour among men ofscience (including T.H. Huxley) in the 1850s. Vestiges made evolution a familiar idea, attractive to those who sought to see the wood rather than the trees; though wildly speculative and perhaps even, as critics alleged, atheistic - a term which implied disregard ofthe Ten Commandments as well as combative lack ofbelief. One reaction was 's Omphalos of1857. Gosse was a Fellow ofthe Royal Society, but also a preacher among the Brethren and thus a Biblical literalist" (we might say fundamentalist, but that is a twentieth-century word for a twentieth-century phenomenon). He sought to save the literal truth ofthe Genesis story (or stories) 'prochronically' by making the fossils mere simulacra ofbones.

ix THE EVOLUTION DEBATE

Just as Adam and Eve would have had navels though they had no mothers, so the trees in a new-made Garden of Eden would have had rings indicating an unreal age, and the rocks fossils wrongly implying that there had been dinosaurs or mastodons. His scientific contemporaries, mostly liberal-minded churchmen believing, like Buckland, in a world created millions ofyears before Archbishop Ussher's famous 4004 Be, were appalled at what they saw as the suggestion that God would have filled the world with faked clues as to His activities; while the new breed of agnostics smiled at the mental gymnastics necessary to reconcile Genesis and geology. In the following year Charles Darwin received the letter from Wallace that set out a theory extremely similar to the one Darwin had proposed in 1844 and had been working on ever since, building up a mass of evidence and preparing what would have been an enormous, carefully annotated three-volume work to be called Natural Selection. Darwin's friends Lyell and Joseph Hooker of Kew, in on the secret and familiar with the 1844 sketch, arranged for part 0 f that and Wallace's letter to be read together at a meeting ofthe Linnean Society in London (a great non-event, since neither Darwin nor Wallace could be there) and published." They made Darwin get down to a one-volume version of his theory: this 'abstract', appearing in 1859 without footnotes or bibliography, was The Origin ofSpecies. The crucial idea was natural selection, or survival of the fittest (Herbert Spencer's phrase) in the struggle for existence (Thomas Malthus' phrase); which, in the vast tracts oftime invoked by Lyell, would produce the transformations seen in the fossil record as animals and plants diverged to fill niches. Given that every organ• ism is a little different from its brothers, sisters and cousins, and using his theory, Darwin accounted in more or less detail for the distribution ofanimals and plants, the fossil record, vestigial organs like our appendix which do not fit the Aristotelian idea of design, and the way animals and plants fall into classes. The book is quite unlike Isaac Newton's Principia [1687] or Antoine Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry [1790]; it looks not unlike Vestiges, and was deceptively easy to read so that its power, originality and basis in data were not apparent to all. The word 'evolution' is absent from the first edition (though its last word is 'evolved') because to Darwin and his contemporaries it implied progress; whereas devel• opment under natural selection was an open-ended, divergent, filling of niches. Richard Owen had worked with Darwin on the handsome volumes of the Zoology ofthe Voyage ofHMSBeagle [1840-42], for which he described the fossil mammals. These were particularly striking, because of their difference from contemporary fossils found in Europe: there were for example armadillo-like creatures, some ofenormous size. To an evolutionist, this would imply that modem armadillos were the descendents ofsimilar species now extinct, but Owen resisted straightforward, materialistic, evolutionary ideas while himself suggesting an idealistic progressive scheme hard for contemporaries and successors to fathom. Owen was famous for doing what Cuvier had said would be possible, identifying a bone from New Zealand as coming from a huge and previously unknown extinct ostrich. He stayed with Bishop for the Oxford meeting ofthe

x THE EVOLUTION DEBATE

British Association for the Advancement of Science, and primed him with arguments against Darwin. As the first Director (strictly, Superintendent) of the Natural History Museum, he pressed for, planned and oversaw the transfer of the natural history specimens from the in Bloomsbury to their purpose-built 'cathedral ofscience' in South Kensington, then still on the edge of London, on a site bought years before from the profits of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace in nearby Hyde Park. IO His books and papers are preserved there. Darwin as an independent scholar could write and think as he wanted: Owen had to keep the members ofparliament, who would vote the funds, and his eminent trustees (the 'establishment') happy with his project, and had responsibilities as a figurehead and spokesman for natural history.11 He could not go in for wild speculation. Thomas Henry Huxley often clashed with Owen, and notably at the Oxford B.A.A.S. meeting where he denied Owen's claim that the brains of humans and apes were very different, accusing him ofincompetence in dissection. Darwin in the Origin had kept humans as far as possible out of the story, but had written enigmatically (p. 488, Volume 5) that 'Light will be thrown on man and his history': his own book on The Descent ofMan did not come out for another decade [1871]. The formidable Huxley, who had been brought late into Darwin's secret, greatly admired the Origin which he reviewed in The Times, at that time still Britain's greatest and most important newspaper; and declared himselfto Darwin to be sharpening his beak and claws to defend evolutionary theory. A man of enormous energy, a 'plebeian' sickened by what he saw as the churches' monopoly ofeducation and indifference to squalor, he invented the word'agnostic' and made war on Darwin's behalf. His hawkish utterances made it difficult for later generations to perceive that opponents of Darwin included many eminent natural historians who cautiously found evolution hypothetical or wanting for scientific reasons. He was bold enough to bring human evolution into the forefront ofdebate, and his little book was accessible and illuminating. A brilliant essayist and lecturer, he ensured that the radical implications ofevolution were widely seen. Charles Lyell had learned geology with Buckland who, like other professors, gave lectures in science although there were no formal degree courses in classics• based Oxford at that time. Lyell had intended to practise law, and became very good at presenting a case. He studied volcanic phenomena, and in his well-written and accessible Principles ofGeology urged'actualism' or '' meaning that past changes should be explained in terms of causes now acting. Captain Fitz Roy gave Darwin a copy. John Steven Henslow the botanist and with whom Darwin had learned geology at Cambridge recommended to him as he set off on HMS Beagle that he read the book, but not believe it. However, the young Darwin became Lyell's ardent disciple, and on his return from the voyage, friend and admirer. While respected and very influential, to other Lyell seemed an extremist, uneasy about admitting any catastrophes like the Ice Ages, or significant progressive changes through the fossil record. Lyell was in on Darwin's secret from 1844, but was unconvinced about evolution: he

xi THE EVOLUTION DEBATE kept a notebook on the 'species question', 12 but remained sitting on the fence even after the Origin came out in 1859, though sympathetic and going, as Darwin had hoped, part ofthe way. In an updated version ofBuckland's early work, however, he was drawn into investigations ofcaves where human remains were found along with those ofextinct animals. In a masterly survey, he sununarised researches in previously unexplored caves where scrupulous excavation had confirmed that humans lived at the same time as animals such as manunoths; and the discovery in the Neanderthal of a skull that was human but very different from ours. His cautious conclusion in Geological Evidencesfor the Antiquity ofMan [1863] was that evolution was real, that humans were products ofit, and that since our nearest relatives were the great apes, the place to look for fossil hominids would be in central Africa or east Asia where chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans were to be found. He dilly amended the chapter critical ofLamarck for the tenth edition of Principles ofGeology [1868]. So great was Lyell's prestige by the 1860s that his public adherence to evolution was extremely important; so his Antiquity ofMan was a landmark in bringing together archaeology and geology, and making human ancestry an important scientific question. Alfred Russel Wallace's background was very different from that of Darwin, cushioned by his Darwin and Wedgwood inheritance; he did not need to earn his living. Like Huxley, Wallace was a plebeian, but unlike Huxley he did not rage against the establishment, nor did he assert his claims against Darwin as Huxley did against Owen. Like Darwin, he came to his evolutionary beliefs on his travels, where he made great collections." Whereas Darwin on HMS Beagle collected specimens and sent them home regularly, making a reputation as a naturalist, Wallace, on the Amazon with , collected professionally for museums and for trade. On his voyage home, however, the ship caught fire and everything but one small tin box was destroyed. He and the crew were lucky to be rescued. Something similar had happened a generation before with Stamford Raffles, bringing back collections from Indonesia where he had founded Singapore: shipping was a risky business. Wallace then turned his own attention to Indonesia, being particularly interested in orang-utans (the Malay term for 'wild man ofthe woods'). He was free from the racism endemic among his contemporaries, and related easily to the Dyaks and Malays among whom he found himself. His books about the Amazon and are masterpieces. In the course of his travels he noted that while the flora and fauna of the island of Bali have an Asiatic character, Lombok (near enough to be visible across a deep strait) is Australian. The identification ofthis first 'Wallace line' makes him a great figure in studies ofthe distribution oforganisms. While recovering from fever in Malaysia in 1858, he wrote to Darwin, setting out his theory of development by natural selection. He never claimed equality with Darwin, recognising that the idea had come independently to him much later, although since the first publication was a joint one and science is public knowledge, they might have been given equal credit: Wallace even called one ofhis books Darwinism. His Natural Selection of 1870 shows him wrestling with human origins, as Darwin was still reluctant to do (his

xii THE EVOLUTION DEBATE

Descent ofMan was published a year later); and brings out what a clear and attractive writer he was. Evolution was coldly accepted in France, although Lamarck and Geoffroy Sainte-Hilaire had argued for it against Cuvier: it was seen as speculative and retrograde. Darwin was rather grudgingly elected as a mere corresponding member ofthe Academy of Sciences in 1878. We should perhaps remember that at the same time, the atomic theory in chemistry was also seen as speculative in France: it was a period of positivism. It was different in Germany, where in Jena played a part like that ofHuxley in Britain. His evolutionary theory was much more progressive than Darwin's, with mankind at the top of a tree rather than at the end of a branch on a shrub or bush. 14 In the USA, curiously enough in face ofthe current power of '' there, evolution was at first readily accepted, among clergy" as well as men of science; despite the vociferous opposition of , 16 who was in some sense the American equivalent of Owen. A Swiss, his studies ofglaciers had led him to the idea that there had been an , and his work on fish made him, like Owen, one of Cuvier's great successors. Invited to America, he presided over the great museum at Harvard. His colleague there, , a botanist especially interested in plant distribution, had long been a correspondent ofDarwin's and in on his secret, and he argued very effectively that evolutionary theory was fully compatible with theism." Although horses had become extinct in the Americas until the Conquistadors introduced them, the evolutionary history ofthe horse was worked out from American fossils dug up in the West by great expeditions sent from the east coast. In Britain, Owen described the toothed bird fossil Archaeopteryx, and Huxley examined the pelvises of dinosaurs, indicating how some must have run on their hind legs not unlike ostriches. In the Origin, Darwin had deplored the imperfection ofthe fossil record; by the time he died in 1882 it was far more complete, and evolution that much more plausible. Buckland had, in his later years, been appointed Dean of West• minster, presiding over the great abbey. Under one of his successors, Darwin was buried there alongside Newton in a great public ceremony. His grandfather's wild speculation had become utterly respectable two generations on. Wallace lived to a great old age and, with Joseph Hooker, was one ofthe guests at the celebrations in 1909 ofthe half-century of the Origin. By then, with the rise ofgenetics, most ofthose present put little faith in natural selection, but that is another story. Darwin was not the only pioneer of evolution, and his theory not the only one: what is certain is that over the six decades covered in our selection, evolution became a serious scientific doctrine. Durham, October 2002

Erasmus Darwin, Cosmologia, ed. and publ. S. Harris, 2002; D. King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin: a Life ofUnequalled Achievement, London: Giles de 1aMare 1999. 2 1.B. Lamarck, Philosophie Zoologique [1809], Weinheim: Engelmann, 1960. 3 C. Lyell, Principles ofGeology [1830-33], ed. M.l.S. Rudwick, Lehre: Cramer, 1970. 4 M.l.S. Rudwick, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World, Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 1992.

xiii THE EVOLUTION DEBATE

5 M.P. Crosland, Science under Control: the French Academy ofSciences, 1795-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.115-22. 6 [R. Chambers], Vestiges ofthe Natural History ofCreation [1844], ed. lA. Secord, Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press. 1994. 7 A. Tennyson, In Memoriam, ed. S.Shatto and M.Shaw, Oxford: , 1982. 8 A.Thwaite, Glimpses ofthe Wonderful: the Life ofPhilip Henry Gosse, London: Faber, 2002. 9 C. Darwin and A.R. Wallace, Evolution by Natural Selection, intr. G. de Beer, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958. lOS. Forgan and G. Gooday, 'Constructing South Kensington: the Buildings and Politics ofT.H. Huxley's Working Environments', British Journalfor the History ofScience, 29 (1996), 435-68. 11 N.A. Rupke, Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994. 12 L.G. Wilson ed., Sir Charles Lyell's Scientific Journals on the Species Question, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970. 13 P. Raby, Alfred Russel Wallace: a Life, London: Pim1ico, 2002; M. Schermer, In Darwin's Shadow: the Life ofAlfredRussel Wallace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 14 E. Haeckel, , ed. R.P. Hartmann, O. Breidbach and 1. Eib1• Eibesfe1dt, Munich: Prestel, 1998. The Emst-Haecke1-Haus in the University of lena lS now a museum. 15 D.N. Livingstone, Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: the Encounter between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1987. 16 L. Agassiz, Essay on Classification, [1859] ed. E. Lurie, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. A facsimile reprint has been recently published: Bristol: Thoemmes, 2002. 17 A. Gray, Darwiniana, ed. A.H. Dupree, [1876] Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.

xiv INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I

David Knight

Jean Leopold Nicholas Frederic Cuvier (1769-1832), always known as Georges, was born in a French-speaking Lutheran town, Montbeliard, then ruled by the Duke of Wurttemberg.' He studied at the Karlsschule in Stuttgart, getting a modem education with a focus upon administration. When he graduated in 1788, however, there were few jobs available because ofthe financial crisis which was to precipitate the French Revolution of 1789. He found a post as tutor to a Protestant noble family in Normandy, away from the turmoil of revolutionary Paris, and devoted himself inconspicuously to natural history until 1795, being especially delighted to find himselfbeside the sea with marine creatures to investigate. Invited then to Paris, his skills in administration, science and education found their outlet in the Academy ofSciences,? the Museum ofNatural History," the Napoleonic University and the Council ofState. He was conservative, delighting in good order, a staunch Protestant. His position in French science was one ofvery great power. At the Museum, despite his knowledge of molluscs, he was in charge of comparative anatomy especially ofvertebrates, the invertebrates being the concern of his colleague lB. Lamarck. As Napoleon set about emulating Augustus by building triumphal arches and other monuments, the limestone at Montmartre was quarried; and it proved to be very rich in fossils. Cuvier described them, and realised that they represented a series of faunas beneath Paris. They could not therefore all be the bones ofanimals for which there was no room in Noah's Ark: there must have been a series ofextinctions. Cuvier became extraordinarily skilled at reconstructing extinct animals from fragmentary and confused fossil bones," using the principles of comparative anatomy that he had learned from studying vertebrates living now. Aristotle's idea that nature does nothing in vain, that all the parts oforganisms cohere, was very important to Cuvier; who in 1812 collected and published his various memoirs as Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles des quadrupeds? The introduction, or 'Discours preliminaire', to this massive and elegantly illustrated work was the essay here translated and published in 18B.1t was undertaken at the request ofRobert Jameson, Professor ofNatural History at the University ofEdinburgh, by Robert Kerr, who had earlier translated

xv INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME I

A.L. Lavoisier's Elements ofChemistry [1790]. The portentous title they chose, Essay on the Theory of the Earth, was misleading; Cuvier had deliberately employed 'Preliminary Discourse' because he did not wish to appear to be writing something like an eighteenth-century system: modem Parisian science was empirical, with limited objectives, and Cuvier despised Lamarck for his system• building. The discourse was based upon a series oflectures, and in 1821 Cuvier retitled it Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe, still a modest title. The book was not meant to be a pretentious grand theory, although it did get taken that way. It was very successful in its English version, reaching a fifth edition in 1827. Cuvier was the leading palaeontologist and zoologist ofhis era, much admired by Charles Darwin among others. In contrast to Linnaeus and others in the eighteenth century who had been content to use external characters in classifying, Cuvier focused his attention upon the internal parts. He believed that he could reconstruct an animal from a single bone - a feat achieved by Richard Owen, 'the English Cuvier', with the moa from New Zealand. Cuvier's great work on living creatures, TheAnimal Kingdom: was accordingly a classic ofits day. He was scathing in his criticisms of evolutionary theory, put forward by Lamarck and supported by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, refusing to believe that the evident correlation of the parts of organisms could be the result of adaptations to the environment. He saw in the past history ofthe Earth evidence for a series of catastrophes that had starved, drowned or (in the case of the ) frozen whole faunas. To meet Cuvier's criticisms, an evolutionary theory would have to be better than Lamarck's, with a more plausible mechanism, and geologists would have to face up to what Prospero called the dark backward and abysm oftime. Durham, October 2002

W. Coleman, Georges Cuvier Zoologist: a Study in the History of Evolutionary Theory, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964, pp. 6-12, 108-9. 2 M.P. Crosland, Science under Control: the French Academy ofSciences, 1795-1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 119-23. 3 1.P.R. Deleuze, History and Description of the Royal Museum ofNatural History, Paris: Royer, 1823. 4 M.l.S. Rudwick, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World, Chicago, Ill.: Chicago University Press, 1992, pp. 30-37. 5 G. Cuvier, Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupeds, [1812], 4 vols., Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1969; the 'Discours preliminaire' is in voLl, pp.1-116. 6 G. Cuvier, The Animal Kingdom, ed. and tr. E. Griffith et al., 16 vols., London: Whittaker, 1827-35, is the best translation.

xvi :J'LlT£' .1.

ESSAY

ON THE

TRANSLATED FROM THE FUENCII or,' M.CUVIER,

PERPETUAL SECRF.TARY OF rus FRENCH INSTITUTE, PIl.Ol'£SSOIl. .UW ADMINISTRi\.TOR OF TilE MUSEUM Oll NATURAL HISTORY, ~C. 9'C.

:BY ROBERT KERR, F.R.S. & F.A.S. EDB'.

WITli MINERALOGICAL NOTES,

AND AN ACCOUNT OF CUVIER'S GEOLOGICAL DISCOVElUES,

By PROFESSOR JAMESON.

EDINBURGH:

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, SOUTH BRIDGE-STUKEl', EDINBURGH; AND JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMAI\LE-STREE'r, AND ROBERT BALDWIN, PATERNOSTER-now, LONDON. 181S.

PREFACR

ALTHOUGH the Mosaic account of the crea• tion of the world is an inspired writing, and consequently rests on evidence totally inde• pendent of human observation and expe• rience, still it is interesting, and in many re• spects important, to know that it coincides with the various phenomena observable in the mineral. kingdom. The structur~ of the earth, and the mode of distribution of extra• neous fossils or petrifactions, are so many di• reet evidences of the truth of the scripture account ofthe formation ofthe earth; sud they might be used as proofs ofits author having been inspired, because the mineralogical facts discovered by modern naturalists were un- VI· PItEFACE. known to the sacred historian. Even the pe• riods oftime, the six days ofthe Mosaic de• scription, are not inconsistentwithour theories of the earth. There are, indeed, many physi• cal considerations which render it probable that the motions ofthe earth may have been slower during the time of its formation than after it was formed," and consequently that the day, or period between morning and even• ing, may have then been indefinitely longer than it is at present. If Buchs. :hypothesis is at all admissible, it willi go far in supporting the opinion which has long been maintained on this subject·by many of the ablest and most learned scripture critics. The deluge, one of the grandest natural events described in the Bible, is equally confirmed, with re• gard to its extent and the period of its oc• currence, by a careful study of the various phenomena observed on and near the earth's surface. The age of the human race, also a

:I: T'ide Bishop Horsley's Sermons, p. 445. Second edi- tion. ' PREFACE. vu most important.enquiry, is satisfactorily de• termined by an appealto natural appearances; and the p:retendoo., graat.3Utiquity of somena• dons, so much insisted on by certain philoso• phers, is thereby shewn to be entirely un• founded.

These enquiries, particularly what regards the deluge, form a principal object of the Es• say of Cuvier, now presented to the 'English reader. After describing the principal results at which the theory of the earth, in his opi• nion, has arrived, he next mentions the vari• ous relations which connect the history of the fossilbones ofland animals with these results; explains the principles on whi~h iti,founded the art of ascertaining these bones, Of, in other words, of discovering a genus, and of distinguishing a species, by a single fragment of bone; and gives a rapid sketch of the re• sults to which his researches lead, of the new genera and species which these have been the means of discovering, and of the different for• mations in which they are contained. Some YHI PREFACE. natumlists, as La. Mark, ha.ving maintained that the present existing races of quadrupeds are mere modifications or varieties ofthose an.. cient races which we now find in a fossil state, modifications which may have been produced by change of climate, and other local circum... stances, and since broughtto the present great difference by the operation of similar causes during a long succession of ages,-Cuvier shews that the difference between the fossil species and those which now exist, is bound• ed by Certain limits; that these limits are& great deal more extensive than those which now distinguish the varieties of the same spe• cies; and, consequently, that the extinct sF€'" des of quadrupeds are not varieties of the presently existing ~~. ,This veryinte• resting discussion naturally leads our author to state the proofs of the recent population of the world; of the comparatively modern ori• gin of its present surface; of the deluge, and the subsequent renewal of human society. Subjects so important, and treated by one of the first philosophers ofthe age, a man not PREFACE. IX less distinguished for extent and accuracy of knowledge, than for originality of views, and " elegance of style, cannot fail to excite very general notice, to fix the attention of the na• turalist on a new series of facts, to admonish the sceptic, and afford the highest pleasure to those who delight in illustrating the truth of the Sacred Writings, by an appeal to the facts and reasonings of natural history~

This translation was executed by a gentle• man well known to the philosophicalworld by his various useful writings, the late Mr Kerr, whom a sudden death has snatched from this transitory scene. The few notes I have add• ed, will, I trust, be found interesting;"and the short account of Cuvier's Geological Discove• ries, which accompanies them, will be useful to those ,,:ho have not an opportunity ofcon• sulting the great work.

ROBERT JAMESON.

CONTENTS.

l'AGl::. 1. 'P JlBLIMlNARY Observanons _...... I 2. Plan of this Essay ...... 2 S. Ofthe first Appearance of the Earth 6 4. First Proofs of Revolutions on the Surface of the Earth 7 5. P roofs that such Revolutions have been numerous ,13 6. Proofs that the Revolutions have been sudden 1.5 7. Proofs of the Occurrence of Revolutions before the Existence of Living Beings ..__• 17 8. Examination of the Causes which act at present on the Surface of our Globe 24 9. Of Slips, or Falling Down of the Materials of Moun-

tains •••••••••••••••_ •••••••••••••••••• •••••••••_•••••II 25 10. Of Alluvial Formations 26 11. Ofthe Formation of Downs _ 29 12. Of the Formation of ClillS, or steep Shores _... SO IS. Of Depositions formed in Water _ 32 14. Of Stalactites _ 33 15. Of Lithophytes SS )6. Of Incrustations., ., 54- 8 xii CONTENTS.

PAGll. 11. OfVolcanoes _ 95 18. Of Astronomical Causes of the Revolutions on the Earth's Surface s'T 19. Of former Systems of Geology...... 39 20. Diversities ofthe Geological Systems, and their Causes 48 21. Statement ofthe Nature and Conditions of the Problem to be solved •..•••....•..,. ,•...... 49 22. Ofthe Progress of Mineral Geology 52 23. Ofthe Importance of Extraneous Fossils, or Petrifac-

< tiona, in Geology 54 24. High Importance of investigating the Fossil Remains ofQuadrupeds ~ •••••••••••••••••••.•••••••••• 57 25. Of the small Probability of discovering new Species of the larger Quad.rupeds. __,••..•_ 61 26. Enquiry respecting the Fabulous Ammals of the An- . cients _ _ _ 14 '.t7. Of the Difficulty of distinguishing the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds _~ __ 88 28. Results of the Researches respecting the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds_ 103 29. Relations oftheSpeciesof Fossil Bones, with. the S~ ~ in which they are found .••_ ...,:_.;,._....,...... :.••_.~.....105 SO. Proofs that the extinct Species of Qaadrupeds are not Varieties of the present existing Speoies. 1l4 31. Proofs tba~ there are no Human Bones in the Fossil State" 1Z'l 32. Proofs ofthe recent Population ofthe World, and that its present Surface is not of very ancient Formation 132 sm. Proofs, from Traditions, of a great Catastrophe, and l!ubsequent Renewal of Human Society._ I46 CONTENTS. xiii

PA.G~. M. Proofs derived from several miscellaneous Considera- tions _ , 165 85. Concluding Reflections , , 171 SUPPLEMl!:NT, being an extract from the Researches ofM. de Prony, on the Hydraulic System of Italy: eea• taining an Account of the Displacement of that Pa.rt of the Coastof the Adriaticwhich is occupied by the

Mouths of the PO n 18S ApPENDIX, containing Mineralogical Notes, and an Ac- countof Ouvler's Geological Discoveries 199

ESSAY

ON'

THE THEORY OF THE EARTH.

S 1. Preliminary ObseTt'allons.

IT is my object, in the following work, to tral'el over groun~hich has as yet been little expJo." red~·aDd to maker my reader a04iua.mted with a species o/Remains, which, though absolutely necessary for understanding the history of the globe, have been hitherto almost uniformly ne• glected.

As an antiquary of a new order, I have been obliged to learn the art of decypherisg and re• storing these remains, ofdiscovering and bring• ing together, in their primitive arrangement, the scattered and mutilated fragments ofwhich they A THEORY OF THE EARTH. are composed, of reproducing, in all their ori• ginal proportions and characters, the animals to which these fragments formerly belonged, and then ofcomparing them with those animals which stilllive on the surface ofthe earth; an art which is almost unknown, and which presupposes, what had scarcely been obtained before, an acquaint• ance with those laws which regulate the coexist• ence of the forma by which the different parts of organized beings are distinguished. I had next to prepare myself for these enquiries by others ofa far more extensive kind, respecting the ani• malawhich still exist. Nothing except an almost complete review of creation in its present state, could give a character of demonstration to the results ofmy investigations into its,r~pcientstate; but that review bas afforded me, at ''thesame time, a great body.pf rules and affinities which are no le.ss satisfactmily detnQU$trated ; and the whole animal kingdom has been subjected to new laws in consequence 'of this Essay on a small part of the theory ofthe earth. «<

* Thiswill beseen more at large in the extensive work upo. Comparative Anatomy. in which I have been employed for more than twenty-five years, and which I intend ~oo to pre• pare forpublicatitlll. TH EORY OF THE EARTH.

The importance of the truths which have been developed in the progress of my labours, has contributed equally with;theoilo1!elty of my prin• ~. results to sustain and encoura~myefforts. May it have a similar effect on the mind of the reader, and induce him to follow me patiently through the difficult paths in which lam under the necessity ofleading him!

The ancient history ofthe globe, whichis the ultimate" object of sll .these.reseaI'eb.~ia 'also, Of' itself one of the most curious subjects that can, engage the attention of enlightened men; and if they take any interest in examining, in the infan• cy ofour species, the almost obliterated traces of so many nations that have become extinct,' they will doubtless take'a similar interest in collect. ing, amidst the darkness which covers the infan• cy of the globe, the traces of those revolutions which took place anterior to the existence ofall nations.

We admire the power by which the human mind has measured the motions of globes which nature seemed to have concealed for ever from pur view: Genius and science have burst the li• mits ofspace, and a few observations, explained