Part 10 (2/2)
The limestone-mountains which form the base of the whole system, attain in places, according to Professor Phillips, a thickness of 2,500 feet.
They are of marine origin, as is apparent by the mult.i.tude of fossils they contain of Zoophytes, Radiata, Cephalopoda, and Fishes. But the chief characteristic of this epoch is its strictly terrestrial flora--remains of plants now become as common as they were rare in all previous formations, announcing a great increase of dry land. In older geological times the present site of our island was covered by a sea of unlimited extent; we now approach a time when it was a forest, or, rather, an innumerable group of islands, and marshes covered with forests, which spread over the surface of the cl.u.s.ters of islands which thickly studded the sea of the period.
The monuments of this era of profuse vegetation reveal themselves in the precious Coal-measures of England and Scotland. These give us some idea of the rich verdure which covered the surface of the earth, newly risen from the bosom of its parent waves. It was the paradise of terrestrial vegetation. The grand _Sigillaria_, the _Stigmaria_, and other fern-like plants, were especially typical of this age, and formed the woods, which were left to grow undisturbed; for as yet no living Mammals seem to have appeared; everything indicates a uniformly warm, humid temperature, the only climate in which the gigantic ferns of the Coal-measures could have attained their magnitude. In Fig. 37 the reader has a restoration of the arborescent and herbaceous Ferns of the period. Conifers have been found of this period with concentric rings, but these rings are more slightly marked than in existing trees of the same family, from which it is reasonable to a.s.sume that the seasonal changes were less marked than they are with us.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 37.--Ferns restored. 1 and 2. Arborescent Ferns. 3 and 4. Herbaceous Ferns.]
Everything announces that the time occupied in the deposition of the Carboniferous Limestone was one of vast duration. Professor Phillips calculates that, at the ordinary rate of progress, it would require 122,400 years to produce only sixty feet of coal. Geologists believe, moreover, that the upper coal-measures, where bed has been deposited upon bed, for ages upon ages, were acc.u.mulated under conditions of comparative tranquillity, but that the end of this period was marked by violent convulsions--by ruptures of the terrestrial crust, when the carboniferous rocks were upturned, contorted, dislocated by faults, and subsequently partially denuded, and thus appear now in depressions or basin-shaped concavities; and that upon this deranged and disturbed foundation a fourth geological system, called Permian, was constructed.
The fundamental character of the period we are about to study is the immense development of a vegetation which then covered much of the globe. The great thickness of the rocks which now represent the period in question, the variety of changes which are observed in these rocks wherever they are met with, lead to the conclusion that this phase in the Earth's history involved a long succession of time.
Coal, as we shall find, is composed of the mineralised remains of the vegetation which flourished in remote ages of the world. Buried under an enormous thickness of rocks, it has been preserved to our days, after being modified in its inward nature and external aspect. Having lost a portion of its elementary const.i.tuents, it has become transformed into a species of carbon, impregnated with those bituminous substances which are the ordinary products of the slow decomposition of vegetable matter.
Thus, coal, which supplies our manufactures and our furnaces, which is the fundamental agent of our productive and economic industry--the coal which warms our houses and furnishes the gas which lights our streets and dwellings--is the substance of the plants which formed the forests, the vegetation, and the marshes of the ancient world, at a period too distant for human chronology to calculate with anything like precision.
We shall not say--with some persons, who believe that all in Nature was made with reference to man, and who thus form a very imperfect idea of the vast immensity of creation--that the vegetables of the ancient world have lived and multiplied only, some day, to prepare for man the agents of his economic and industrial occupations. We shall rather direct the attention of our young readers to the powers of modern science, which can thus, after such a prodigious interval of time, trace the precise origin, and state with the utmost exactness, the genera and species of plants, of which there are now no identical representatives existing on the face of the earth.
Let us pause for a moment, and consider the general characters which belonged to our planet during the Carboniferous period. Heat--though not necessarily excessive heat--and extreme humidity were then the attributes of its atmosphere. The modern allies of the species which formed its vegetation are now only found under the burning lat.i.tudes of the tropics; and the enormous dimensions in which we find them in the fossil state prove, on the other hand, that the atmosphere was saturated with moisture. Dr. Livingstone tells us that continual rains, added to intense heat, are the climatic characteristic of Equatorial Africa, where the vigorous and tufted vegetation flourishes which is so delightful to the eye.
It is a remarkable circ.u.mstance that conditions of equable and warm climate, combined with humidity, do not seem to have been limited to any one part of the globe, but the temperature of the whole globe seems to have been nearly the same in very different lat.i.tudes. From the Equatorial regions up to Melville Island, in the Arctic Ocean, where in our days eternal frost prevails--from Spitzbergen to the centre of Africa, the carboniferous flora is identically the same. When nearly the same plants are found in Greenland and Guinea; when the same species, now extinct, are met with of equal development at the equator as at the pole, we cannot but admit that at this epoch the temperature of the globe was nearly alike everywhere. What we now call _climate_ was unknown in these geological times. There seems to have been then only one climate over the whole globe. It was at a subsequent period, that is, in later Tertiary times, that the cold began to make itself felt at the terrestrial poles. Whence, then, proceeded this general superficial warmth, which we now regard with so much surprise? It was a consequence of the greater or nearer influence of the interior heat of the globe.
The earth was still so hot in itself, that the heat which reached it from the sun may have been inappreciable.
Another hypothesis, which has been advanced with much less certainty than the preceding, relates to the chemical composition of the air during the Carboniferous period. Seeing the enormous ma.s.s of vegetation which then covered the globe, and extended from one pole to the other; considering, also, the great proportion of carbon and hydrogen which exists in the bituminous matter of coal, it has been thought, and not without reason, that the atmosphere of the period might be richer in carbonic acid than the atmosphere of the present day. It has even been thought that the small number of (especially air-breathing) animals, which then lived, might be accounted for by the presence of a greater proportion of carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere than is the case in our own times. This, however, is pure a.s.sumption, totally deficient in proof. Nothing proves that the atmosphere of the period in question was richer in carbonic acid than is the case now. Since we are only able, then, to offer vague conjectures on this subject, we cannot profess with any confidence to entertain the opinion that the atmospheric air of the Carboniferous period contained more carbonic acid gas than that which we now breathe. What we can remark, with certainty, as a striking characteristic of the vegetation of the globe during this phase of its history, was the prodigious development which it a.s.sumed. The Ferns, which in our days and in our climate, are most commonly only small perennial plants, in the Carboniferous age sometimes presented themselves under lofty and even magnificent forms.
Every one knows those marsh-plants with hollow, channelled, and articulated cylindrical stems; whose joints are furnished with a membranous, denticulated sheath, and which bear the vulgar name of ”mare's-tail;” their fructification forming a sort of catkin composed of many rings of scales, carrying on their lower surface sacs full of _spores_ or seeds. These humble _Equiseta_ were represented during the Coal-period by herbaceous trees from twenty to thirty feet high and four to six inches in diameter. Their trunks, channelled longitudinally, and divided transversely by lines of articulation, have been preserved to us: they bear the name of _Calamites_. The engraving (Fig. 38) represents one of these gigantic mare's-tails, or Calamites, of the Coal-period, restored under the directions of M. Eugene Deslongchamps.
It is represented with its fronds of leaves, and its organs of fructification. They seem to have grown by means of an underground stem, while new buds issued from the ground at intervals, as represented in the engraving.
The _Lycopods_ of our age are humble plants, scarcely a yard in height, and most commonly creepers; but the Lycopodiaceae of the ancient world were trees of eighty or ninety feet in height. It was the _Lepidodendrons_ which filled the forests. Their leaves were sometimes twenty inches long, and their trunks a yard in diameter. Such are the dimensions of some specimens of _Lepidodendron carinatum_ which have been found. Another Lycopod of this period, the _Lomatophloyos cra.s.sicaule_, attained dimensions still more colossal. The _Sigillarias_ sometimes exceeded 100 feet in height. Herbaceous Ferns were also exceedingly abundant, and grew beneath the shade of these gigantic trees. It was the combination of these lofty trees with such shrubs (if we may so call them), which formed the forests of the Carboniferous period. The trunks of two of the gigantic trees, which flourished in the forests of the Carboniferous period, are represented in Figs. 39 and 40, reduced respectively to one-fifth and one-tenth the natural size.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 38.--Calamite restored. Thirty to forty feet high.]
What could be more surprising than the aspect of this exuberant vegetation!--these immense Sigillarias, which reigned over the forest!
these Lepidodendrons, with flexible and slender stems! these Lomatophloyos, which present themselves as _herbaceous_ trees of gigantic height, furnished with verdant leaflets! these Calamites, forty feet high! these elegant arborescent Ferns, with airy foliage, as finely cut as the most delicate lace! Nothing at the present day can convey to us an idea of the prodigious and immense extent of never-changing verdure which clothed the earth, from pole to pole, under the high temperature which everywhere prevailed over the whole terrestrial globe. In the depths of these inextricable forests parasitic plants were suspended from the trunks of the great trees, in tufts or garlands, like the wild vines of our tropical forests. They were nearly all pretty, fern-like plants--_Sphenopteris_, _Hymenophyllites_, &c.; they attached themselves to the stems of the great trees, like the orchids and _Bromeliaceae_ of our times.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 39.--Trunk of Calamites. One-fifth natural size.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 40.--Trunk of Sigillaria. One-tenth natural size.]
The margin of the waters would also be covered with various plants with light and whorled leaves, belonging, perhaps, to the Dicotyledons; _Annularia fertilis_, _Sphenophyllites_, and _Asterophyllites_.
How this vegetation, so imposing, both on account of the dimensions of the individual trees and the immense s.p.a.ce which they occupied, so splendid in its aspect, and yet so simple in its organisation, must have differed from that which now embellishes the earth and charms our eyes!
It certainly possessed the advantage of size and rapid growth; but how poor it was in species--how uniform in appearance! No flowers yet adorned the foliage or varied the tints of the forests. Eternal verdure clothed the branches of the Ferns, the Lycopods, and Equiseta, which composed to a great extent the vegetation of the age. The forests presented an innumerable collection of individuals, but very few species, and all belonging to the lower types of vegetation. No fruit appeared fit for nourishment; none would seem to have been on the branches. Suffice it to say that few terrestrial animals seem to have existed yet; animal life was apparently almost wholly confined to the sea, while the vegetable kingdom occupied the land, which at a later period was more thickly inhabited by air-breathing animals. Probably a few winged insects (some coleoptera, orthoptera, and neuroptera) gave animation to the air while exhibiting their variegated colours; and it was not impossible but that many pulmoniferous mollusca (such as land-snails) lived at the same time.
But, we might ask, for what eyes, for whose thoughts, for whose wants, did the solitary forests grow? For whom these majestic and extensive shades? For whom these sublime sights? What mysterious beings contemplated these marvels? A question which cannot be solved, and one before which we are overwhelmed, and our powerless reason is silent; its solution rests with Him who said, ”Before the world was, I am!”
The vegetation which covered the numerous islands of the Carboniferous sea consisted, then, of Ferns, of Equisetaceae, of Lycopodiaceae, and dicotyledonous Gymnosperms. The Annularia and Sigillariae belong to families of the last-named cla.s.s, which are now completely extinct.
The _Annulariae_ were small plants which floated on the surface of fresh-water lakes and ponds; their leaves were verticillate, that is, arranged in a great number of whorls, at each articulation of the stem with the branches. The _Sigillariae_ were, on the contrary, great trees, consisting of a simple trunk, surmounted with a bunch or panicle of slender drooping leaves, with the bark often channelled, and displaying impressions or scars of the old leaves, which, from their resemblance to a seal, _sigillum_, gave origin to their name. Fig. 41 represents the bark of one of these Sigillariae, which is often met with in coal-mines.
<script>