GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS.

CHAPTER V.

INORGANIC GEOLOGICAL DYNAMICS.

Sect. 1.-Necessity and Object of a Science of Geological Dynamics.

WHEN the structure and arrangement which men observed in the

materials of the earth instigated them to speculate concerning the past changes and revolutions by which such results had been produced, they at first supposed themselves sufficiently able to judge what would be the effects of any of the obvious agents of change, as water or volcanic fire. It did not at once occur to them to suspect, that their common and extemporaneous judgment on such points was far from sufficient for sound knowledge;-they did not foresee that they must create a special science, whose object should be to estimate the general laws and effects of assumed causes, before they could pronounce whether such causes had actually produced the particular facts which their survey of the earth had disclosed to them.

Yet the analogy of the progress of knowledge on other subjects points out very clearly the necessity of such a science. When phenomenal astronomy had arrived at a high point of completeness, by the labors of ages, and especially by the discovery of Kepler's laws, astronomers were vehemently desirous of knowing the causes of these motions; and sanguine men, such as Kepler, readily conjectured that the motions were the effects of certain virtues and influences, by which the heavenly bodies acted upon each other. But it did not at first occur to him and his fellow-speculators, that they had not ascertained what motions the influences of one body upon another could produce; and that, therefore, they were not prepared to judge whether such causes as they spoke of, did really regulate the motions of the planets. Yet such was found to be the necessary course of sound inference. Men needed a science of motion, in order to arrive at a science of the

heavenly motions: they could not advance in the study of the Mechanics of the heavens, till they had learned the Mechanics of terrestrial bodies. And thus they were, in such speculations, at a stand. for nearly a century, from the time of Kepler to the time of Newton, while the science of Mechanics was formed by Galileo and his successors. Till that task was executed, all the attempts to assign the causes of cosmical phenomena were fanciful guesses and vague assertions; after that was done, they became demonstrations. The science of Dynamics enabled philosophers to pass securely and completely from Phenomenal Astronomy to Physical Astronomy.

In like manner, in order that we may advance from Phenomenal Geology to Physical Geology, we need a science of Geological Dynamics;—that is, a science which shall investigate and determine the laws and consequences of the known causes of changes such as those which Geology considers :-and which shall do this, not in an occasional, imperfect, and unconnected manner, but by systematic, complete, and conclusive methods;-shall, in short, be a Science, and not a promiscuous assemblage of desultory essays.

The necessity of such a study, as a distinct branch of geology, is perhaps hardly yet formally recognized, although the researches which belong to it have, of late years, assumed a much more methodical and scientific character than they before possessed. Mr. Lyell's work (Principles of Geology), in particular, has eminently contributed to place Geological Dynamics in its proper prominent position. Of the four books of his Treatise, the second and third are upon this division of the subject; the second book treating of aqueous and igneous causes of change, and the third, of changes in the organic world.

There is no difficulty in separating this auxiliary geological science from theoretical Geology itself, in which we apply our principles to the explanation of the actual facts of the earth's surface. The former, if perfected, would be a demonstrative science dealing with general cases; the latter is an aetiological view having reference to special facts; the one attempts to determine what always must be under given conditions; the other is satisfied with knowing what is and has been, and why it has been; the first study has a strong resemblance to Mechanics, the other to philosophical Archæology.

Since this portion of science is still so new, it is scarcely possible to give any historical account of its progress, or any complete survey of its shape and component parts. I can only attempt a few notices,

which may enable us in some measure to judge to what point this division of our subject is tending.

We may remark, in this as in former cases, that since we have here to consider the formation and progress of a science, we must treat as unimportant preludes to its history, the detached and casual observations of the effects of causes of change which we find in older writers. It is only when we come to systematic collections of information, such as may afford the means of drawing general conclusions; or to rigorous deductions from known laws of nature;-that we can recognize the separate existence of geological dynamics, as a path of scientific research.

The following may perhaps suffice, for the present, as a sketch of the subjects of which this science treats :-the aqueous causes of change, or those in which water adds to, takes from, or transfers, the materials of the land: the igneous causes; volcanoes, and, closely connected with them, earthquakes, and the forces by which they are produced;—the calculations which determine, on physical principles, the effects of assumed mechanical causes acting upon large portions of the crust of the earth;-the effect of the forces, whatever they be, which produce the crystalline texture of rocks, their fissile structure, and the separation of materials, of which we see the results in metalliferous veins. Again, the estimation of the results of changes of temperature in the earth, whether operating by pressure, expansion, or in any other way;-the effects of assumed changes in the superficial condition, extent, and elevation, of terrestrial continents upon the climates of the earth;-the effect of assumed cosmical changes upon the temperature of this planet;-and researches of the same nature as these.

These researches are concerned with the causes of change in the inorganic world; but the subject requires no less that we should investigate the causes which may modify the forms and conditions of organic things; and in the large sense in which we have to use the phrase, we may include researches on such subjects also as parts of Geological Dynamics; although, in truth, this department of physiology has been cultivated, as it well deserves to be, independently of its bearing upon geological theories. The great problem which offers itself here, in reference to Geology, is, to examine the value of any hypotheses by which it may be attempted to explain the succession of different races of animals and plants in different strata; and though it may be difficult, in this inquiry, to arrive at any positive result, we

may at least be able to show the improbability of some conjectures which have been propounded.

I shall now give a very brief account of some of the attempts made in these various departments of this province of our knowledge; and in the present chapter, of Inorganic Changes.

Sect. 2.-Aqueous Causes of Change.

THE controversies to which the various theories of geologists gave rise, proceeding in various ways upon the effects of the existing causes of change, led men to observe, with some attention and perseverance, the actual operation of such causes. In this way, the known effect of the Rhine, in filling up the Lake of Geneva at its upper extremity, was referred to by De Luc, Kirwan, and others, in their dispute with the Huttonians; and attempts were even made to calculate how distant the period was, when this alluvial deposit first began. Other modern observers have attended to similar facts in the natural history of rivers and seas. But the subject may be considered as having first assumed its proper form, when taken up by Mr. Von Hoff; of whose History of the Natural Changes of the Earth's surface which are proved by Tradition, the first part, treating of aqueous changes, appeared in 1822. This work was occasioned by a Prize Question of the Royal Society of Göttingen, promulgated in 1818; in which these changes were proposed as the subject of inquiry, with a special reference to geology. Although Von Hoff does not attempt to establish any general inductions upon the facts which his book contains, the collection of such a body of facts gave almost a new aspect to the subject, by showing that changes in the relative extent of land and water were going on at every time, and almost at every place; and that mutability and fluctuation in the form of the solid parts of the earth, which had been supposed by most persons to be a rare exception to the common course of events, was, in fact, the universal rule. But it was Mr. Lyell's Principles of Geology, being an attempt to explain the former Changes of the Earth's Surface by the causes now in action (of which the first volume was published in 1830), which disclosed the full effect of such researches on geology; and which attempted to present such assemblages of special facts, as examples of general laws. Thus this work may, as we have said, be looked upon as the beginning of Geological Dynamics, at least among us. Such generalizations and applications as it contains give the most lively

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interest to a thousand observations respecting rivers and floods, mountains and morasses, which otherwise appear without aim or meaning; and thus this department of science cannot fail to be constantly augmented by contributions from every side. At the same time it is clear, that these contributions, voluminous as they must become, must, from time to time, be resolved into laws of greater and greater generality; and that thus alone the progress of this, as of all other sciences, can be furthered.

I need not attempt any detailed enumeration of the modes of aqueous action which are here to be considered. Some are destructive, as when the rivers erode the channels in which they flow; or when the waves, by their perpetual assault, shatter the shores, and carry the ruins of them into the abyss of the ocean. Some operations of the water, on the other hand, add to the land; as when deltas are formed at the mouths of rivers or when calcareous springs form deposits of travertin. Even when bound in icy fetters, water is by no means deprived of its active power; the glacier carries into the valley masses of its native mountain, and often, becoming ice-bergs, float with a lading of such materials far into the seas of the temperate zone. It is indisputable that vast beds of worn down fragments of the existing land are now forming into strata at the bottom of the ocean; and that many other effects are constantly produced by existing aqueous causes, which resemble some, at least, of the facts which geology has to explain.

[2nd Ed.] [The effects of glaciers above mentioned are obvious; but the mechanism of these bodies, the mechanical cause of their motions,—was an unsolved problem till within a very few years. That they slide as rigid masses;--that they advance by the expansion of their mass;—that they advance as a collection of rigid fragments ; were doctrines which were held by eminent physicists; though a very slight attention to the subject shows these opinions to be untenable. In Professor James Forbes's theory on the subject (published in his Travels through the Alps, 1843,) we find a solution of the problem, so simple, and yet so exact, as to produce the most entire conviction. In this theory, the ice of a glacier is, on a great scale, supposed to be a plastic or viscous mass, though small portions of it are sensibly rigid. It advances down the slope of the valley in which it lies as a plastic mass would do, accommodating itself to the varying shape and size of its bed, and showing by its crevasses its mixed character between fluid and rigid. It shows this character still more curiously by a ribboned struc