Charles Henry Hitchcock

“ Those who would benefit their fellow-men need not despair. Those senseless tribes had only dead matter to work upon, and the touch of a hammer may ruthlessly destroy what has endured for ages, and it can never be repaired. But man can influence the living mind, imparting lessons that will outlast, in their influence, both time and fate. Then let all our actions be upright, and we shall thus—
——"departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time." ”

“ Time has approved of this sagacious anticipation, and we can now maintain with serene confidence that the four great Eozoic periods—Laurentian, Labrador, Atlantic or Montalban, and Huronian—were all enlivened by the existence of both vegetable and animal life. And Eozoic life had its peculiar characteristics just as much as the Silurian or Carboniferous. This life has appeared in consonance with the general principles of evolution as announced by our most learned sages. ”

“ When we study the scheme of worlds revolving around the sun, we discover that they all rotate on their axes in the same direction; that they all proceed from west to east, their orbits being nearly circular, and in almost the same plane, which is nearly coincident with that of the sun; that the sun moves on his axis in less time than any of the planets, and each planet rotates more quickly than its satellite. ”

“ All the Greenland glaciers become confluent in the interior, so that it is not a typical mer de glace, but a sheet of ice, which overspreads the highest mountains. It is only near the edge that the several streams manifest their independent existence. Thence the usual phenomena of Alpine glaciers manifest themselves. The sub-glacial streams pouring into the sea produce certain peculiarities. Immense supplies of heat penetrate the ice from the sun's rays, which melt very much ice and discharge muddy torrents of great size. ”

“ Assuming it well established that the center of dispersion for the Eastern American drift was in the west part of Labrador, we are met by the difficulty that the land beneath this central mer de glace is not so much elevated as the New England mountains which have been covered by the ice originating in those Laurentian highlands. As to the facts, they are indisputable—the glacier has moved over slopes higher than the mountains at its source; and it may be that we have something new to learn from these facts about ice accumulation and movement. ”

“ THE surmises and discoveries of the past twenty years have established the fact of the existence of life throughout the entire series of stratified rocks known to geologists, both sedimentary and metamorphic. When Principal Dawson published his description of the Eozoön in the Laurentian foundations, he was led to suggest the adoption of the term Eozoic in place of Azoic for all the ages older than Paleozoic, since, if life existed in the oldest formation, it must have continued to flourish in the following æons, even though evidences of its presence had not then been accumulated. ”

“ One species has the thumb recurved, and the other shows it pointed directly forward. The front is about one-third the size of this large hind-foot, and the toes are arranged like those of the front-feet of the Herpetoids. One of the species seems to have had a long, slender tail. This batrachian must have been as large as an elephant, and exceeded in size every other animal among the Ichnozoa. Imagine a frog as large as an elephant, whether announcing the advent of spring by piping, croaking at night in the summer, or taking gigantic leaps after the manner of his modern representatives! ”

“ Alike fraught with instinct has been the serial progress of the earth. It first presents itself to view simply as a mass of inorganic material, a heterogeneous mixture of elements, inert and motionless, the "chaos" of theological writers. But this material is endowed with activity; the atoms possess affinities for one another, and the mass cannot remain motionless in space, surrounded by worlds and systems. Gravitation causes the mass to rotate upon its axis and to revolve about other bodies, and chemical affinity unites the atoms into compounds. ”

“ Progress implies a beginning. Following out the argument to its legitimate extent, we are forced to the conclusion that the Almighty actually created the material of the solar system out of nothing. Matter could not have existed from eternity, else the phases of growth had all been completed, and we should have passed beyond the period of organic activity. ”

“ With considerable hesitation, thirty-four species of Ichnozoa may be referred to insects. These animals generally have six feet. If attention be paid to the manner in which the common fly walks, it will appear that every foot is brought to the ground, each in a different place, so that every extremity makes a mark. A fly that has been immersed in a colored fluid, and then travels over a sheet of white paper, will leave impressions as distinct as those found upon stone, and the colored track-ways must be our guides to the affinities of the ancient ichnites, like the Copeza. ”

“ The Nebulous Period.—The usual geological argument for nebulosity is derived from the attempt to understand the origin of the condition of igneous fluidity. If the earth has been cooling from fusion, perhaps this is a cooler condition than the still earlier hotter state of fiery gas. Solids expand into liquids when heated, and liquids may become gases for the same reason. This gas, however, may not necessarily have been hotter than when condensed. The particles of matter must be the same when volatilized, as in both the liquid and solid states. ”

“ The ice along the southern melting edge would be charged with moisture percolating through the pores and capillaries, descending the icy slopes obedient to gravity, and no longer requiring the shearing force. The amount of motion would in these circumstances be like that of the Greenland sheet, sixty feet per diem, rather than the sluggish crawl of one to three feet in the same time of the comparatively poorly developed Alpine glaciers. In agreement with these views we find the motion northward toward the pole to be very slight, though the land may be inclined northerly as in Grinnell Land. ”

“ All of these may have spurned the reptiles crawling beneath their feet; yet the lower orders of animal life—such as flourished hundreds of thousands of years since, before the surface of the earth was fitted for the residence of man—have left memorials of their passage enduring and indelible. ”

“ Hitchcock to investigate the subject. As soon as it was convenient, this gentleman went to Greenfield and examined the specimens. His acquaintance with geological literature and methods of investigation apprised him that this new theory, though plausible, must pass through a severe ordeal before it could be established. Not merely was it questionable whether footprints could be preserved for ages, but it was a monstrous assumption—unheard of in geological circles—to talk of birds as a part of the Triassic fauna! ”

“ When a stream of lava flows down a slope, the surface and sides of the molten river are soon covered by a thick crust, the result of cooling. This will become so firm that men may walk upon it, as upon ice over lakes in the winter. During one of the eruptions from Vesuvius, when lava covered the town of Resina—the old Herculaneum—some of the inhabitants, driven to the tops of the houses, escaped by walking over the stiffened crust, before the flow had ceased. Whenever the lateral walls of the stream are broken, the lava will flow out and change its course. ”

“ The ores are first formed in the hydrated condition, and then lose their water by metamorphic agencies, becoming specular and magnetic, or the state in which the Laurentian irons are now known. Ores of iron are conceived to have been formed under similar conditions in all ages. At the present day they accumulate in swamps and low grounds in the condition of the hydrated peroxide (ferric) , or bog-ore, oftentimes in company with manganese. The presence of organic vegetable matter is requisite in order to extract the iron from the rock or soil and effect its deposition. ”

“ If one does not care to imagine the atoms called into existence in a heated condition, he may suppose that matter first appeared with the common frigid temperature of space, or about one hundred degrees Fahrenheit below the freezing-point of water, and that the elements were uncombined. Newly born, these particles would immediately commence to display their affinities, and the result would be explosive combinations, giving off intense light and heat. The latter force permeating the elements, would soon reduce them, first to igneous fluidity, and then into heated vapors. ”

“ He conceives that during the first stadium only one agency—gravitation—acted upon matter, the results being a spherical aggregation of the particles and the production of an intense degree of heat. The second stadium adds to gravitation the agency of heat and other physical forces. In the third, chemical affinities are developed, and a cooling globe is the sphere of their action. The fourth stadium brings to view water, with its ability to accumulate formations by deposition of detritus. In the fifth, life and the power of organization are introduced. ”

“ The cooling influence increasing its power, the number of falling drops increases, but they continuously return to the outer envelope, till the crust is sufficiently thick and cool to retain them. Thus, at the beginning of this age, there was a terrible conflict between the clouds and the earth, the former pouring down streams of water, which the latter refuse to receive; but the clouds eventually gain the mastery, and the earth sullenly evolves simmering masses of vapor from a hot-water bath. ”

“ Organisms are preserved because of the more or less complete substitution of mineral for animal matter. Pieces of coal or wood that have been deposited in clay may be washed out, but the small pores and interstices will be seen to be filled with the matrix. When the burial has been in a solution capable of precipitating solid matter, the wood will be found more or less changed according to the nature of the solution and its capacity for alteration. ”

“ It is less easy to determine the character of worlds in the former condition of ours, just incrusted after igneous fluidity, no longer a sun, but shining by borrowed light reflected from some greater sphere, because they are wrapped in an opaque envelope. The moon, whose proximity enables us to inspect her hills, craters, and valleys, appears to have been thoroughly cooled from fusion. She is solid to the core, and has approximated to that final period of barren desolation not yet attained by the earth. Most of the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn ”

“ Greenland.—The study of the Greenland glaciers takes us a step further toward the understanding of the American ice-sheet. We have hardly appreciated the size of this island—it being larger than the Alpine glaciated tract. It is over twelve hundred miles long, and four hundred broad, or as far as from Boston to the Missouri River. The interior is covered by a field of ice never crossed in a direct line by any civilized being. From three points attempts have been made to learn something of its nature. ”

“ There is presented to us a kernel of corn containing within itself the elements of vital action. So long as it is stored in a granary it is quiescent, but when planted in the soil it germinates, producing first the tender blade, then the tasseled tops, the silky ears, and, finally, rows of mature kernels upon the spike, inclosed by a sheathy covering. As soon as the seed is properly situated for development, an inward impulse urges onward the growth till the process is completed. ”

“ THE few hints afforded by geology respecting the earliest stages of the earth's history, when compared with studies into the nature of nebulæ, comets, and suns, suggest the existence of a series of mutations through which worlds destined for the occupation of intelligent beings must pass, in order to be properly fitted for the residence of mind. ”