Gideon Algernon Mantell

“ Deeply impressed with the conviction that it is of the highest importance the young and inquiring mind should have a correct idea of natural phenomena—that it should not be left to its own unaided efforts to unravel the mysteries of the beautiful world in which this first state of being is destined to be passed—or have its curiosity stifled or misled by unsatisfactory or erroneous conjectures—I have endeavoured in this little work to explain in a simple and attractive guise, some of the grand truths relating to the ancient physical history of our planet, which modern geology has established. ”

“ It realizes, indeed, our beau-ideal of a familiar yet dignified philosophical style: being alike condensed and luminous, possessing a graceful flowing eloquence, and rising as the subject may require, into the sublime as well as the beautiful. We are not aware of the existence of any work, on any department of science, which has higher claims at once to a place in the library of the philosopher, and on the table of a refined family."—Review of the American Edition of the Wonders of Geology. ”

“ The greatest natural operations are produced by the most simple and apparently inadequate agents: for as the « 98 » illustrious Galileo emphatically remarked, "La nature fait beaucoup avec peu, et ses opérations sont toutes également merveilleuses." The profound thinker Hobbes, in the same spirit observes, "The majesty of God appeareth no less in small things than in great, and as it exceedeth human sense in the immensity of the universe, so also doth it in the smallness of the parts thereof." ”

“ But though flints contain in abundance relics of the same species of marine animals as the chalk, they are not like that rock composed of an aggregation of fossil remains; on the contrary, the siliceous earth, which is their constituent substance, was evidently once in a state of complete solution in water, and precipitated into the chalk before the latter was consolidated, the organic bodies serving as nuclei or centres around which the silex concreted; for the deposition of the flint, like that of the chalk, appears to have taken place periodically. ”

“ In the Red Coral, so largely employed in the manufacture of beads, brooches, and other ornaments, not only « 96 » the animalcules, but also their receptacles, are composed of a soft perishable substance. When alive, the polypes, as well as the investing fleshy integument, are of a delicate bluish tint; the internal calcareous axis alone possesses the peculiar red colour. Upon being taken out of the sea, vitality quickly ceases, the soft parts decompose, and the beautiful crimson stone commonly known as the true coral, is obtained free from all traces of the soft mass by which it was secreted. ”

“ The stranger who approaches Brighton by the railroads through deep tunnels and cuttings in the chalk, and perceives the town spread over the plain and on the sides of a valley of the South Downs, will naturally expect to find the sea-shore bounded by chalk-cliffs. ”

“ From the close analogy of the fossil corals to existing forms, it would not be difficult to give restored figures of the originals. Every little branch might be represented fraught with living polypes: in some cells the agile inmates might be shown with the mouth expanded, and the tentacula in rapid motion; in others withdrawn into their stony recesses, and devouring the infinitesimal atoms that constitute their food: even their varied hues might be introduced, and thus a vivid picture be presented of the microscopic beings which peopled the waters of the ancient chalk ocean. ”

“ Here then a remarkable phenomenon presents itself for our consideration; this flint, now so hard and unyielding, must once have been in a soft or fluid state, for the delicate markings of the case and spine of an Echinus, or Sea-Urchin, are deeply impressed on its surface; [B] and a fragile shell with its spines, is partially imbedded in its substance. [C] Nay more, upon breaking off one end of the pebble, [D] we find that a sponge, or some analogous marine zoophyte, is entirely enveloped by the flint; and also that there are here and there portions of minute corals, and scales of fishes. ”

“ The internal chambers are air-cells, and the animal can fill the siphunculus with fluid, or exhaust it at will; the difference thus effected in its specific gravity enables it to rise to the surface or sink to the bottom with facility. Now if' we imagine a Cuttle-fish placed in the outer chamber of a Nautilus-shell, and provided with a siphuncule, but having neither ink-bag nor osselet—these organs being unnecessary to an animal possessing a chambered shell—we shall have a general idea of the nature of the recent species. ”

“ The organic substances are the durable remains of the animals and plants which lived and died in the sea, and of terrestrial and fluviatile species that were transported from islands or continents by rivers and their tributaries. The whole constitutes such an assemblage of strata as would probably be presented to observation, if a mass of the bed of the Atlantic 2,000 feet in thickness, were elevated above the waters, and became dry land; the only essential difference would be in the generic and specific characters of the imbedded animal and vegetable remains. ”

“ The base of the cliff to the height of a few feet, is seen to consist of the white chalk with its usual layers of flint nodules, forming a low wall or terrace, which slopes seaward, and extends far into the British channel—probably to the opposite coast of France: at low-water a considerable expanse of modern shingle and sand is spread over, and in a great measure conceals, the chalk, at a few yards distance from the cliff. ”

“ All the various kinds of Foraminifera swarm in the present seas, and were not less numerous in the ancient ocean. We have seen that the white chalk almost wholly consists of a few genera of these animalcules; and in many strata of sand they are so abundant, that a cubic inch of the mass contains upwards of sixty thousand. In the Rotalia, the body is entirely enclosed within the shell, and occupies all the cells; and long, soft, tentacula are sent off through the foramina. The shell, therefore, though resembling in form that of the Nautilus, is essentially different ”

“ From these investigations, we learn that the Pebble, which has formed the subject of our contemplation, had its origin in a living zoophyte that was growing on a rock, in a sea whose boundaries have long since been swept away; that corals, shells, and echini inhabited the bottom of the deep; and that fishes related to existing families, sported in the waters of that ancient ocean. In fine, we have presented to us the scene so exquisitely described by the American poet:—
THE CORAL GROVE. THE CORAL GROVE.
Deep in the waves is a coral grove. ”

“ In describing sponge as an animal substance, it may be necessary to explain that the sponge in ordinary use is the flexible skeleton of a living zoophyte, and was originally invested with a gelatinous or slimy matter, which lined all the pores and channels. When alive in the water, currents constantly enter the outer pores, traverse all the internal inosculating canals, and issue from the larger orifices which often project above the surface in perforated papillæ. ”

“ One more character inscribed on the pebble remains to be interpreted; it is the minute branch of coral partially imbedded in the flint. [P] The surface of this coral, when seen with a powerful lens, is found to be studded with small pores or cells. In a recent state, each cell was inhabited by a living polype or animalcule, which, though permanently united at its base to the « 47 » general mass, had an independent existence, and possessed sensation and voluntary motion; expanding its thread-like feelers or tentacula to catch its prey, and withdrawing, at will, into its little cell. ”

“ We have thus acquired satisfactory proof that the flint of which our pebble is composed, was once fluid in an ocean teeming with beings, of genera and species unknown in a living state, and that it consolidated and became imbedded in the chalk, which was then being deposited at the bottom of the sea; hence the shells, corals, and other organic remains, which we now find attached to its surface, and enclosed in its substance. ”

“ The nodules and veins of flint that are so abundant in « 83 » the upper chalk, have probably been produced by the agency of heated waters and vapours; the perfect fluidity of the siliceous matter before its consolidation is proved, not only by the sharp moulds and impressions of shells and other organisms retained by the flints, but also by the presence of numerous remains in the substance of the nodules, and the silicified condition of the sponges and other zoophytes which abound in the cretaceous strata. ”

“ Certain genera are restricted to the most ancient sedimentary rocks, in which they occur in almost incredible numbers; others have a wider range and are met with in the later secondary deposits; while a few are found in the newest beds, and have living representative species in the seas of warm climates. From the immense antiquity of their lineage, these Terebratulæ have been humourously termed the "fossil aristocracy." Some of the most common chalk species are figured of the natural size in Lign. ”

“ In a living state, the case is flexible and filled with a granular jelly, which is the soft body of the animalcule, and the tubes and the outer surface are invested with a similar substance. After death the soft parts dissolve; but the case and its spines often remain unchanged.
In another magnified portion of the pebble, a specimen of the microscopic discoidal shells which we have already seen compose the greater part of the white chalk (Lign. 5, p. 14) , is beautifully displayed when viewed by transmitted light, under a highly magnifying power (Lign. 12) . ”

“ To avoid confusion, we will reverse the order of our inquiry, and first contemplate the formation of the flint in its native rock. The Chalk, that beautiful white stone, which (as an American friend, who saw it for the first time, observed) , is so like an artificial production, abounds in « 12 » marine shells and corals, and in the remains of fishes, crabs, lobsters, and reptiles, all of which differ essentially from living species; although a few of the corals and shells resemble, in some particulars, certain kinds that inhabit the seas of hot climates. ”

“ The form of the original zoophyte when living, must have been that of an inverted cone or funnel, (hence the scientific name Choanite or funnel-like,) with a long cylindrical digestive cavity in the centre, from which tubes ramified through « 44 » every part of the mass. It was attached to a rock, stone, or shell, by root-like fibres which spread out from its base; and its soft body was strengthened, as is the case in many sponges and animals of a similar nature, by numerous siliceous spines or spicula, which are often found in the flint and chalk (see Lign. 10. fig. 5) . ”

“ Amidst the turmoil of the world and the dreary intercourse of common life, we possess in these pursuits a never-failing source of delight, of which nothing can deprive us—an oasis in the desert, to which we may escape, and find a home « 56 » "wherever the intellect can pierce, and the spirit can breathe the air." ”

“ Zoophytes, especially sponges, occur in such prodigious numbers in some of the chalk strata, that the nucleus of almost every flint nodule is an organic body. In many instances the silex has completely permeated the animal substance, as in the pebbles before described; but sometimes the sponge is a white calcareous mass, occupying a hollow in the flint: a branched specimen of this kind, « 88 » exposed on breaking a small nodule, is represented at Lign. ”

“ But associated with the true Poriferæ or sponges, are numerous zoophytes which resemble them in form, but are of an entirely distinct nature; for they are the fossilized remains of Polyparia, that is, of the frame-work of an aggregation of polypes, each individual of which had « 89 » an independent existence, although the whole were united by one common living integument, like the Alcyonium, or dead-men's fingers, of our coasts. ”

“ The incessant dashing of the waves against the base of the chalk-cliffs, undermines the strata, and huge masses of rock are constantly giving way and falling into the waters. The chalk then becomes softened and disintegrated, and is quickly reduced to the state of mud, and transported to the tranquil depths of the ocean, where it subsides and forms new deposits; but the flints thus detached, are broken and rolled by attrition into the state of boulders, pebbles, and gravel, and ultimately of sand.
« 27 »
Lign. ”

“ All the animalcules found in the Richmond earth are marine, and most of them belong to genera, and many to « 101 » existing species; although the position of the American strata proves that they are referable to a period of immense antiquity.
In Germany, beds of a white infusorial earth, resembling magnesia in appearance, and termed Bergh-mehl, or fossil farina, occur at Bilin, and several other places: at San Fiora in Tuscany, near Egra in Bohemia, in the Bermudas, Barbadoes, &c., similar deposits have been discovered; all being composed of the shields of various kinds of animalcules. ”

“ Fossil animalcules and corals similar to those « 52 » we have discovered in the pebble and in the chalk, and hundreds of other genera and species equally minute, occur in such prodigious numbers, as to warrant the conclusion, that this class of animal existence has contributed more largely than any other, to the formation of the sedimentary strata. ”

“ Very rarely can we find a work which is so perfect an example of the art of book, making, in the best understanding of that term; we mean technically and mechanically as well as intellectually. Dr. Mantell's 'Medals of Creation' are, indeed, among the chef d'œuvres of the art ”