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Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution

A >> Alpheus Spring Packard >> Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution




"These enormous banks of madrepores and millepores, heaped upon each
other, covered and intermingled with serpulae, different kinds of
oysters, patellae, barnacles, and other shells fixed by their base,
form irregular mountains of an almost limitless extent.

"But when, after the lapse of considerable time, the sea has left
the places where these immense deposits are laid down, then the slow
but combined alteration that these great masses undergo, left
uncovered and exposed to the incessant action of the air, light, and
a variable humidity, changes them gradually into fossils and
destroys their membranous or gelatinous part, which is the readiest
to decompose. This alteration, which the enormous masses of the
corals in question continued to undergo, caused their structure to
gradually disappear, and their great porosity unceasingly diminished
the parts of these stony masses by displacing and again bringing
together the molecules composing them, so that, undergoing a new
aggregation, these calcareous molecules obtained a number of points
of contact, and constituted harder and more compact masses. It
finally results that instead of the original masses of madrepores
and millepores there occurs only masses of a compact calcareous
rock, which modern mineralogists have improperly called _primitive
limestone_, because, seeing in it no traces of shells or corals,
they have mistaken these stony masses for deposits of a matter
primitively existing in nature."

He then reiterates the view that these deposits of marble and
limestones, often forming mountain ranges, could not have been the
result of a universal catastrophe, and in a very modern way goes on to
specify what the limits of catastrophism are. The only catastrophes
which a naturalist can reasonably admit as having taken place are
partial or local ones, those dependent on causes acting in isolated
places, such as the disturbances which are caused by volcanic eruptions,
by earthquakes, by local inundations, by violent storms, etc. These
catastrophes are with reason admissible, because we observe their
analogues, and because we know that they often happen. He then gives
examples of localities along the coast of France, as at Manche, where
there are ranges of high hills made up of limestones containing Gryphaeae,
ammonites, and other deep-water shells.

In the conclusion of the chapter, after stating that the ocean has
repeatedly covered the greater part of the earth, he then claims that
"the displacement of the sea, producing a constantly variable
inequality in the mass of the terrestrial radii, has necessarily caused
the earth's centre of gravity to vary, as also its two poles.[79]
Moreover, since it appears that this variation, very irregular as it is,
not being subjected to any limits, it is very probable that each point
of the surface of the planet we inhabit is really in the case of
successively finding itself subjected to different climates." He then
exclaims in eloquent, profound, and impassioned language:

"How curious it is to see that such suppositions receive their
confirmation from the consideration of the state of the earth's
surface and of its external crust, from that of the nature of
certain fossils found in abundance in the northern regions of the
earth, and whose analogues now live in warm climates; finally, in
that of the ancient astronomical observations of the Egyptians.

"Oh, how great is the antiquity of the terrestrial globe, and how
small are the ideas of those who attribute to the existence of this
globe a duration of six thousand and some hundred years since its
origin down to our time!

"The physico-naturalist and the geologist in this respect see things
very differently; for if they have given the matter the slightest
consideration--the one, the nature of fossils spread in such great
numbers in all the exposed parts of the globe, both in elevated
situations and at considerable depths in the earth; the other, the
number and disposition of the beds, as also the nature and order of
the materials which compose the external crust of this globe studied
throughout a great part of its thickness and in the mountain
masses--have they not had opportunities to convince themselves that
the antiquity of this same globe is so great that it is absolutely
beyond the power of man to appreciate it in an adequate way!

"Assuredly our chronologies do not extend back very far, and they
could only have been made by propping them up by fables. Traditions,
both oral and written, become necessarily lost, and it is in the
nature of things that this should be so.

"Even if the invention of printing had been more ancient than it is,
what would have resulted at the end of ten thousand years?
Everything changes, everything becomes modified, everything becomes
lost or destroyed. Every living language insensibly changes its
idiom; at the end of a thousand years the writings made in any
language can only be read with difficulty; after two thousand years
none of these writings will be understood. Besides wars, vandalism,
the greediness of tyrants and of those who guide religious opinions,
who always rely on the ignorance of the human race and are supported
by it, how many are the causes, as proved by history and the
sciences, of epochs after epochs of revolutions, which have more or
less completely destroyed them.

"How many are the causes by which man loses all trace of that which
has existed, and cannot believe nor even conceive of the immense
antiquity of the earth he inhabits!

"How great will yet seem this antiquity of the terrestrial globe in
the eyes of man when he shall form a just idea of the origin of
living bodies, as also of the causes of the development and of the
gradual process of perfection of the organization of these bodies,
and especially when it will be conceived that, time and favorable
circumstances having been necessary to give existence to all the
living species such as we actually see, he is himself the last
result and the actual maximum of this process of perfecting, the
limit (_terme_) of which, if it exists, cannot be known."

In the fourth chapter of the book there is less to interest the reader,
since the author mainly devotes it to a reiteration of the ideas of his
earlier works on physics and chemistry. He claims that the minerals and
rocks composing the earth's crust are all of organic origin, including
even granite. The thickness of this crust he thinks, in the absence of
positive knowledge, to be from three to four leagues, or from nine to
twelve miles.

After describing the mode of formation of minerals, including agates,
flint, geodes, etc., he discusses the process of fossilization by
molecular changes, silicious particles replacing the vegetable or animal
matter, as in the case of fossil wood.

While, then, the products of animals such as corals and molluscs are
limestones, those of vegetables are humus and clay; and all of these
deposits losing their less fixed principles pass into a silicious
condition, and end by being reduced to quartz, which is the earthy
element in its purest form. The salts, pyrites, and metals only differ
from other minerals by the different circumstances under which they were
accumulated, in their different proportions, and in their much greater
amount of carbonic or acidific fire.

Regarding granite, which, he says, naturalists very erroneously consider
as _primitive_, he begins by observing that it is only by conjecture
that we should designate as primitive any matter whatever. He recognizes
the fact that granite forms the highest mountains, which are generally
arranged in more or less regular chains. But he strangely assumes that
the constituents of granite, _i.e._, felspar, quartz, and mica, did not
exist before vegetables, and that these minerals and their aggregation
into granite were the result of slow deposition in the ocean.[80] He
goes so far as to assert that the porphyritic rocks were not thus formed
in the sea, but that they are the result of deposits carried down by
streams, especially torrents flowing down from mountains. Gneiss, he
thinks, resulted from the detritus of granitic rocks, by means of an
inappreciable cement, and formed in a way analogous to that of the
porphyries.

Then he attacks the notion of Leibnitz of a liquid globe, in which all
mineral substances were precipitated tumultuously, replacing this idea
by his chemical notion of the origin of the crystalline and volcanic
rocks.

He is on firmer ground in explaining the origin of chalk and clay, for
the rocks of the region about Paris, with which he was familiar, are
sedimentary and largely of organic origin.

In the "Addition" (pp. 173-188) following the fourth chapter Lamarck
states that, allowing for the variations in the intensity of the cause
of elevation of the land as the result of the accumulations of organic
matter, he thinks he can, without great error, consider the mean rate as
324 mm. (1 foot) a century. As a concrete example it has been observed,
he says, that one river valley has risen a foot higher in the space of
eleven years.

Passing by his speculations on the displacement of the poles of the
earth, and on the elevations of the equatorial regions, which will
dispense with the necessity of considering the earth as originally in a
liquid condition, he allows that "the terrestrial globe is not at all a
body entirely and truly solid, but that it is a combination (_reunion_)
of bodies more or less solid, displaceable in their mass or in their
separate parts, and among which there is a great number which undergo
continual changes in condition."

It was, of course, too early in the history of geology for Lamarck to
seize hold of the fact, now so well known, that the highest mountain
ranges, as the Alps, Pyrenees, the Caucasus, Atlas ranges, and the
Mountains of the Moon (he does not mention the Himalayas) are the
youngest, and that the lowest mountains, especially those in the more
northern parts of the continents, are but the roots or remains of what
were originally lofty mountain ranges. His idea, on the contrary, was,
that the high mountain chains above mentioned were the remains of
ancient equatorial elevations, which the fresh waters, for an enormous
multitude of ages, were in the process of progressively eroding and
wearing down.

What he says of the formation of coal is noteworthy:

"Wherever there are masses of fossil wood buried in the earth, the
enormous subterranean beds of coal that are met with in different
countries, these are the witnesses of ancient encroachments of the
sea, over a country covered with forests; it has overturned them,
buried them in deposits of clay, and then after a time has
withdrawn."

In the appendix he briefly rehearses the laws of evolution as stated in
his opening lecture of his course given in the year IX. (1801), and
which would be the subject of his projected work, _Biologie_, the third
and last part of the Terrestrial Physics, a work which was not
published, but which was probably comprised in his _Philosophie
zoologique_.

The _Hydrogeologie_ closes with a "_Memoire sur la matiere du feu_" and
one "_sur la matiere du son_," both being reprinted from the _Journal de
Physique_.


FOOTNOTES:

[60] _Evolution in Biology_, in _Darwiniana_, New York, 1896, p. 212.

[61] _Principles of Geology_.

[62] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, 8th edit., p. 22.

[63] Quoted from Flourens' _Eloge Historique de Georges Cuvier_,
Hoefer's edition. Paris, 1854.

[64] _Remarques sur les Coquilles fossiles de quelques Cantons de la
Touraine_. Mem. Acad. Sc. Paris, 1720, pp. 400-417.

[65] _Eloge Historique de Werner_, p. 113.

[66] _History of Civilization_, i. p. 627.

[67] _France under Louis XV._, p. 359.

[68] _France under Louis XV._, p. 360.

[69] See vol. iii. of his _Memoires sur differentes Parties des Sciences
et des Arts_, pp. 209-403. Geikie does not give the date of the third
volume of his work, but it was apparently about 1771, as vol. ii. was
published in 1770. I copy Geikie's account of Guettard's observations
often in his own words.

[70] Lyell's _Principles of Geology_.

[71] Geikie states that the doctrine of the origin of valleys by the
erosive action of the streams which flow through them, though it has
been credited to various writers, was first clearly taught from actual
concrete examples by Desmarest. _L. c._, p. 65.

[72] Jameson's _Cuvier's Theory of the Earth_, New York, 1818.

[73] J. G. Lehmann of Berlin, in 1756, first formally stated that there
was some regular succession in the strata, his observations being based
on profiles of the Hartz and the Erzgebirge. He proposed the names
Zechstein, Kupferschiefer, rothes Todtliegendes, which still linger in
German treatises. G. C. Fuchsel (1762) wrote on the stratigraphy of the
coal measures, the Permian and the later systems in Thuringia. (Zittel.)

[74] James Hutton was born at Edinburgh, June 3, 1726, where he died
March 26, 1797.

[75] Quoted from Lyell's _Principles of Geology_, eighth edit., p. 17.

[76] _Bulletin Societe Imp. des Naturalistes De Moscou_, xlii. (1869),
pt. 1. p. 4, quoted from Geikie's _Geology_, p. 276, footnote.

[77] Suess also, in his _Anlitz_ etc., substitutes for the folding of
the earth's crust by tangential pressure the subsidence by gravity of
portions of the crust, their falling in obliging the sea to follow.
Suess also explains the later transgressions of the sea by the
progressive accumulation of sediments which raise the level of the sea
by their deposition at its bottom. Thus he believes that the true factor
in the deformation of the globe is vertical descent, and not, as Neumayr
had previously thought, the folding of the crust.

[78] Bruguiere (1750-1799), a conchologist of great merit. His
descriptions of new species were clear and precise. In his paper on the
coal mines of the mountains of Cevennes (Choix de Memoires d'Hist. Nat.,
1792) he made the first careful study of the coal formation in the
Cevennes, including its beds of coal, sandstone, and shale. A. de
Jussieu had previously supposed that the immense deposits of coal were
due to sudden cataclysms or to one of the great revolutions of the earth
during which the seas of the East or West Indies, having been driven as
far as into Europe, had deposited on its soil all these exotic plants to
be found there, after having torn them up on their way.

But Bruguiere, who is to be reckoned among the early uniformitarians,
says that "the capacity for observation is now too well-informed to be
contented with such a theory," and he explains the formation of coal
deposits in the following essentially modern way:

"The stores of coal, although formed of vegetable substances, owe their
origin to the sea. It is when the places where we now find them were
covered by its waters that these prodigious masses of vegetable
substances were gathered there, and this operation of nature, which
astonishes the imagination, far from depending on any extraordinary
commotion of the globe, seems, on the contrary, to be only the result of
time, of an order of things now existing, and especially that of slow
changes" (i, pp. 116, 117).

The proofs he brings forward are the horizontality of the beds, both of
coal and deposits between them, the marine shells in the sandstones, the
fossil fishes intermingled with the plant remains in the shales;
moreover, some of the coal deposits are covered by beds of limestone
containing marine shells which lived in the sea at a very great depth.
The alternation of these beds, the great mass of vegetable matter which
lived at small distances from the soil which conceals them, and the
occurrence of these beds so high up, show that at this time Europe was
almost wholly covered by the sea, the summits of the Alps and the
Pyrenees being then, as he says, so many small islands in the midst of
the ocean. He also intimates that the climate when these ferns ("bamboo"
and "banana") lived was warmer than that of Europe at present.

In this essay, then, we see a great advance in correctness of geological
observation and reasoning over any previous writers, while its
suggestions were appreciated and adopted by Lamarck.

[79] Hooke had previously, in order to explain the presence of tropical
fossil shells in England, indulged in a variety of speculations
concerning changes in the position of the axis of the earth's rotation,
"a shifting of the earth's centre of gravity analogous to the
revolutions of the magnetic pole, etc." (Lyell's _Principles_). See also
p. 132.

[80] Cuvier, in a footnote to his _Discours_ (sixth edition, p. 49), in
referring to this view, states that it originated with Rodig (_La
Physique_, p. 106, Leipzig, 1801) and De Maillet (_Telliamed_, tome ii.,
p. 169), "also an infinity of new German works." He adds: "M. de Lamarck
has recently expanded this system in France at great length in his
_Hydrogeologie_ and in his _Philosophie zoologique_." Is the Rodig
referred to Ih. Chr. Rodig, author of _Beitraege zur Naturwissenschaft_
(Leipzig, 1803. 8^o)? We have been unable to discover this view in De
Maillet; Cuvier's reference to p. 169 is certainly incorrect, as quite a
different subject is there discussed.




CHAPTER IX

LAMARCK THE FOUNDER OF INVERTEBRATE PALAEONTOLOGY


It was fortunate for palaeontology that the two greatest zooelogists of
the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries,
Lamarck and Cuvier, lived in the Paris basin, a vast cemetery of corals,
shells, and mammals; and not far from extensive deposits of cretaceous
rocks packed with fossil invertebrates. With their then unrivalled
knowledge of recent or existing forms, they could restore the
assemblages of extinct animals which peopled the cretaceous ocean, and
more especially the tertiary seas and lakes.

Lamarck drew his supplies of tertiary shells from the tertiary beds
situated within a radius of from twenty-five to thirty miles from the
centre of Paris, and chiefly from the village of Grignon, about ten
miles west of Paris, beyond Versailles, and still a rich collecting
ground for the students of the Museum and Sorbonne. He acknowledges the
aid received from Defrance,[81] who had already collected at Grignon
five hundred species of fossil shells, three-fourths of which, he says,
had not then been described.

Lamarck's first essay ("_Sur les fossiles_") on fossils in general was
published at the end of his _Systeme des Animaux sans Vertebres_
(pp. 401-411), in 1801, a year before the publication of the
_Hydrogeologie_. "I give the name _fossils_," he says, "to remains of
living beings, changed by their long sojourn in the earth or under
water, but whose forms and structure are still recognizable.

"From this point of view, the bones of vertebrate animals and the
remains of testaceous molluscs, of certain crustacea, of many
echinoderms, coral polyps, when after having been for a long time
buried in the earth or hidden under the sea, will have undergone an
alteration which, while changing their substance, has nevertheless
destroyed neither their forms, their figures, nor the special
features of their structures."

He goes on to say that the animal parts having been destroyed, the shell
remains, being composed of calcareous matter. This shell, then, has lost
its lustre, its colors, and often even its nacre, if it had any; and in
this altered condition it is usually entirely white. In some cases where
the shells have remained for a long period buried in a mud of some
particular color, the shell receives the same color.

"In France, the fossil shells of Courtagnon near Reims, Grignon near
Versailles, of what was formerly Touraine, etc., are almost all
still in this calcareous state, having more or less completely lost
their animal parts--namely, their lustre, their peculiar colors, and
their nacre.

"Other fossils have undergone such an alteration that not only have
they lost their animal portion, but their substance has been changed
into a silicious matter. I give to this second kind of fossil the
name of _silicious fossils_, and examples of this kind are the
different oysters ('des ostracites'), many terebratulae ('des
terebratulites'), trigoniae, ammonites, echinites, encrinites, etc.

"The fossils of which I have just spoken are in part buried in the
earth, and others lie scattered over its surface. They occur in all
the exposed parts of our globe, in the middle even of the largest
continents, and, what is very remarkable, they occur on mountains up
to very considerable altitudes. In many places the fossils buried in
the earth form banks extending several leagues in length."[82]

Conchologists, he says, did not care to collect or study fossil shells,
because they had lost their lustre, colors, and beauty, and they were
rejected from collections on this account as "dead" and uninteresting.
"But," he adds, "since attention has been drawn to the fact that these
fossils are extremely valuable _monuments_ for the study of the
revolutions which have taken place in different regions of the earth,
and of the changes which the beings living there have themselves
successively undergone (in my lectures I have always insisted on these
considerations), consequently the search for and study of fossils have
excited special interest, and are now the objects of the greatest
interest to naturalists."

Lamarck then combats the views of several naturalists, undoubtedly
referring to Cuvier, that the fossils are extinct species, and that the
earth has passed through a general catastrophe (_un bouleversement
universel_) with the result that a multitude of species of animals and
plants were consequently absolutely lost or destroyed, and remarks in
the following telling and somewhat derisive language:

"A universal catastrophe (_bouleversement_) which necessarily
regulates nothing, mixes up and disperses everything, is a very
convenient way to solve the problem for those naturalists who wish
to explain everything, and who do not take the trouble to observe
and investigate the course followed by nature as respects its
production and everything which constitutes its domain. I have
already elsewhere said what should be thought of this so-called
universal overturning of the globe; I return to fossils.

"It is very true that, of the great quantity of fossil shells
gathered in the different countries of the earth, there are yet but
a very small number of species whose living or marine analogues are
known. Nevertheless, although this number may be very small, which
no one will deny, it is enough to suppress the universality
announced in the proposition cited above.

"It is well to remark that among the fossil shells whose marine or
living analogues are not known, there are many which have a form
closely allied to shells of the same genera known to be now living
in the sea. However, they differ more or less, and cannot be
rigorously regarded as the same species as those known to be living,
since they do not perfectly resemble them. These are, it is said,
extinct species.

"I am convinced that it is possible never to find, among fresh or
marine shells, any shells perfectly similar to the fossil shells of
which I have just spoken. I believe I know the reason; I proceed to
succinctly indicate, and I hope that it will then be seen, that
although many fossil shells are different from all the marine
shells known, this does not prove that the species of these shells
are extinct, but only that these species have changed as the result
of time, and that actually they have different forms from those
individuals whose fossil remains we have found."

Then he goes on in the same strain as in the opening discourse, saying
that nothing terrestrial remains constant, that geological changes are
continually occurring, and that these changes produce in living
organisms a diversity of habits, a different mode of life, and as the
result modifications or developments in their organs and in the shape of
their parts.

"We should still realize that all the modifications which the
organism undergoes in its structure and form as the result of the
influence of circumstances which would influence this being, are
propagated by generation, and that after a long series of ages not
only will it be able to form new species, new genera, and even new
orders, but also each species will even necessarily vary in its
organization and in its forms.

"We should not be more surprised then if, among the numerous fossils
which occur in all the dry parts of the globe and which offer us the
remains of so many animals which have formerly existed, there should
be found so few of which we know the living analogues. If there is
in this, on the contrary, anything which should astonish us, it is
to find that among these numerous fossil remains of beings which
have lived there should be known to us some whose analogues still
exist, from a germ to a vast multitude of living forms, of different
and ascending grades of perfection, ending in man.

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