Earthlings

“ But where is that favoured land?—It is in that great continent to whose distant shores Europe has sent forth her adventurous sons, to wrest for themselves a habitation from the wild inhabitants of the forest, and to convert the neglected soil into fields of exuberant fertility. ”

“ Thus engaged in almost continual observation, he was enabled to trace the manner in which numbers of the feathered and insect tribes worked out the purposes of their existence. As the multifarious branches of the trees of the forest expanded themselves into fulness of leaf, he saw nations after nations of living things on the move to claim his attention, all pouring forth to seize on their share of the abundance of nature. ”

“ Where, as on mountain ranges, we find, contrary to the general rule, the same species in different localities, the migration from the door of the ark loses all semblance of probability, unless we are pleased to imagine that creatures, now without the instinct of migration, for a long time possessed it, and roamed about the world through many a sultry plain to pick out a hill-side here and there with a temperature suited to their constitutions. ”

“ The Pleistocene fauna was strangely mixed in character, the free roads of migration bringing together Old World and South American types, and mingling them with indigenous forms in a cosmopolitan assemblage. ”

“ Let us consider, in the first place, the chances for the preservation of remains of the present fauna and flora of a country. The surface of the land may be densely clothed with forest and abundantly peopled with animal life. But the trees die and moulder into soil. The animals, too, disappear, generation after generation, and leave few or no perceptible traces of their existence. ”

“ But on some worlds, for ages they continue to fly even after they have become land-type beings.
It is both amazing and amusing to observe the early civilization of a primitive race of human beings taking shape, in one case, in the air and treetops and, in another, midst the shallow waters of sheltered tropic basins, as well as on the bottom, sides, and shores of these marine gardens of the dawn races of such extraordinary spheres. ”

“ For more than twenty centuries neither deserts nor Arctic wastes had existed. All animal species had disappeared. Trees survived only as ornamental growths in city parks. The Earth was a relic of the past, a barbaric museum piece. ”

“ The kind of subsistence indicated assumes a tropical or sub-tropical climate. In such a climate, by common consent, the habitat of primitive man has been placed. In fruit and nut-bearing forests under a tropical sun, we are accustomed, and with reason, to regard our progenitors as having commenced their existence.
The races of animals preceded the race of mankind, in the order of time. We are warranted in supposing that they were in the plenitude of their strength and numbers when the human race first appeared. ”

“ The air, the earth, the undergrowth, the tree-trunks, the flowers, and the fruits, all support their specially adapted tribes of birds. Each species fills a place in nature, and can only continue to exist so long as that place is open to it; and each has become what it is in every detail of form, size, structure, and even of colour, because it has inherited through countless ancestral forms all those variations which have best adapted it among its fellows to fill that place, and to leave behind it equally well adapted successors. ”

“ We are thus enabled to trace the history of lakes and rivers, of forests and mosses: we can follow the succession of animals that have wandered over the land, and many of which had died out ere the days of history began: we can dimly perceive the conditions of life amidst the earliest human population of the country: we can recover abundant evidence of the extraordinary vicissitudes of climate which, since these ancient times, have affected not this land only, but the whole northern hemisphere. ”

“ How fertile must the low-lands be from the accumulation of fallen leaves and trees for centuries! How propitious the swamps and slimy beds of the rivers, heated by a downward sun, to the amazing growth of alligators, serpents and innumerable insects! How inviting the forests to the feathered tribes, where you see buds, blossoms, green and ripe fruit, full grown and fading leaves all on the same tree! How secure the wild beasts may rove in endless mazes! ”

“ Fossil remains show that regions far north, now covered with perpetual ice, once supported a luxuriant flora and fauna, and many regions in the temperate and equatorial zones that are now deserts were once overgrown with forests and teeming with animal life. The fundamental thing of the cosmos is change—birth, growth, maturity ”

“ Now, all history and all tradition, so far as they throw light on the question at all, agree in showing that the centre in which the human species originated must have been somewhere in the temperate regions of the East, not far distant from the Caucasian group of mountains. ”

“ The rich alluvial silt of mighty river systems, the immemorial manuring of the virgin soil, the fierce energy of an almost equatorial sun, and the universal presence of abundant water, combine to make life in that marvellous region unusually wealthy, varied, and crowded, so that the struggle for existence is there perhaps more directly visible to the seeing eye than in any other known portion of God's universe. ”

“ Moreover, an additional fact of great interest here comes to fortify all our inferences—the organic remains of plants and animals which abound in the earth are not those of the tribes that now live, but of many wholly extinct, and often quite different, races—different in form and structure, and, consequently, in function and habits of life, though certainly belonging to a general system of nature founded on analogous principal conditions. ”

“ But the study of geology opens to us the spectacle of many groups of species which have, in the course of the earth's history, succeeded each other at vast intervals of time; one set of animals and plants disappearing, as it would seem, from the face of our planet, and others, which did not before exist, becoming the only occupants of the globe. ”

“ Such are the elements of the scenery, but it is a hopeless attempt to paint the general effect. Learned naturalists describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude of objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each. To a learned traveller this possibly may communicate some definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium can imagine its appearance when growing in its native soil? Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse, can magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd others into an entangled jungle? ”

“ It is difficult, even in contemplation, to anticipate the time when we shall be entitled to make any other hypothesis in regard to all the marine tribes, and to by far the greater number of the terrestrial;—such as birds, which possess such unlimited powers of migration; insects, which, besides the variability of each species in number, are also so capable of being diffused to vast distances; and cryptogamous plants, to which, as to many other classes, both of the animal and vegetable kingdom, similar observations are applicable. ”

“ How much less common are these land-snails in our part of the world than in Europe; in the Old World, you find them in the fields and gardens at every turn, but here we only see one now and then, and chiefly in the woods. ”

“ On the old supposition of migration from the ark, that the lower animals, as well as men, should have ‘agreed to differ’ on the opposite sides of a narrow deep-sea channel, was indeed a remarkable bundle of coincidences. ”

“ The richness of its soil, its magnificent forests, its numberless navigable streams, its salt springs and licks, its saltpetre caves, its coal strata, and the vast herds of buffaloes and deer that browsed on its hills and amidst its charming valleys, afforded ample inducements to the new settler, who pushed forward with a spirit far above that of the most undaunted tribes, which for ages had been the sole possessors of the soil. ”

“ Fossil insects and indications of other winged tribes have been detected; but no bone nor foot-print of beast, or inhabitant of land, has anywhere been discovered. The fact is all-important, as showing not only a plan, but a progress and succession in the work of creation. A vegetation, so rank and luxuriant as has been traced, trees towering hundreds of feet into the sky, and branches of the densest foliage stretching on every side, was amply fitted to afford shelter and food to families of terrestrial creatures of every kind. ”

“ Now the study of the distribution of animal life upon the present surface of the earth, causes us to look upon this constant interchange of land and sea—this making and unmaking of continents, this elevation and disappearance of islands—as a potent reality, which has always and everywhere been in progress, and has been the main agent in determining the manner in which living things are now grouped and scattered over the earth's surface. ”

“ On the continent, while similar alterations were taking place over large superficial areas, and the tertiary deposits were being drifted up, many of the animals, and whole families, would escape into southern and warmer countries, and some of the species, in consequence, might long survive the destruction of others. But here, insulated and deprived of the means of performing their annual migrations, the races of every kind would all more speedily perish, preying more easily upon each other, and weakened by alteration of habits, and the great physical changes to which they were subjected. ”

“ My eighth geological argument for the divine benevolence [Pg 213] is based upon the perfect adaptation of the natures of animals and plants to the varying condition of the globe through all the periods of its past history.
The very slight changes in climate, situation, and food, that will destroy most species of animals and plants, is hard to be realized by man, whose nature will sustain very great changes of this kind. So will most of the animals and plants that have been domesticated by man, and which accompany him into every soil and climate. ”

“ In the flora, too, the trees and shrubs, the grasses and the herbs, true to their province, retain their botanical individuality, with as much persistence as though separated from their neighbors across the strait, by the broad waters of a mighty ocean and give a contradiction to the doctrines of Darwinism that migration has anything to do with the origin of species, or that natural selection plays any part in permanency of races. ”

“ Geology farther informs us, that, at different times, all the animated tribes which had peopled the earth's surface passed away, or became extinct, and were replaced by new species of different organization and characteristics; and probably at many other periods, as well as on occasions of some great catastrophe in the earth's crust, races wholly unlike any that had preceded them were introduced, from time to time, as new inhabitants of the globe. ”

“ Environmental influences appear in the territorial limits of certain tribes or peoples, as well as in the distribution and density of population. Even in the more complex forms of the mental life, the influence of environment may be found; as in nature myths explaining the activity of volcanoes or the presence of curious 161land forms, or in beliefs and customs relating to the local characterization of the seasons. ”

“ On the other hand, any geographic change that unites areas and leads to intermigration, tends to a community of fauna or to cosmopolitanism. These tendencies have been markedly felt all through the geologic ages, and constitute one of the most vital features of their history. ”

“ But if the poles of the earth could be changed, and if the Arctic zone could be placed in a different relative position to the sun, the snows would melt, the hills would appear, and in a little while even the rocks would be clothed with vegetation. After a time vegetation would produce more soil, and in a few thousand years forests would be filled with beasts and birds. ”

“ No animals roamed its continents. No vegetation grew from its rocks. Not even bacteria struggled with its stones to turn them into soil. So there was no soil. Rock and stones and gravel and even sand—yes. ”

“ The earth would have been a vast greenhouse covered with smoked glass; and a vigorous though mayhap loosely knit and faintly colored vegetation would have luxuriated under its shade.
The fifth and sixth days,—that of winged fowl and great sea monsters, and that of cattle and beasts of the earth,—I must regard as adequately represented by those Secondary ages, Oolitic and Cretaceous, during which birds were introduced, and reptiles received their greatest development, and those Tertiary ages during which the gigantic mammals possessed the earth and occupied the largest space in creation. ”

“ They found two intelligent species living on the planet, and they found that the species lived in peace and that they had no conception of war or of poverty. And they were quite willing to receive the Terrans into their society. ”

“ But the tropics preserve for us still in all their jungles something of the tangled, thickly-peopled aspect which our planet must have presented for countless ages in all latitudes before the advent of primæval man. ”