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The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work, with his quantitative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding God--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly syllogizes God out of the universe as he would a mythological demon infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however, that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In admitting the existence of "vital manifestation," therefore, he virtually admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause, which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents, remain as they are.

In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful translation, let us look this "genesis" squarely in the face:--

But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and that of materialistic science:--

THE BIBLE GENESIS.

THE SCIENTIFIC GENESIS.

And yet no scientific authority has ever been claimed for these sacred Hebrew writings. They were simply designed as a rule of human faith and conduct, ostensibly having the divine sanction, and containing historical, devotional, didactic, and prophetical writings, to be read through, at least once a year, in the Jewish synagogues.

The germ in the seed is capable of assimilating, by well-determined and thoroughly specialized processes, the nutrient matter contained in its environment, precisely as the "primordial germ" develops under its environing conditions. From the moment they strike their rootlets into the ground, the processes of development and growth are the same. The only point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go back to the first living organism of a species--its primordially developed form--we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds themselves.

At this point--one not merely theoretical, or speculatively possible only, but absolutely fixed and determinable in our backward survey of the vital forces of nature--we find individual parentage lost in a natural matrix, or in the vital principle implanted as a "primordium," in the earth itself. To this inevitable induction of Dr. Harvey we are all driven in the end, by those intuitive processes of reasoning which are hardly less conclusive than mathematical induction itself. We may call these "primordia viventium" plastide particles, bioplasts, vital units, or whatsoever we will,--the name is nothing, the working process is everything. Scientific speculation accomplishes nothing, therefore, by its new terminology, except it be to confound the ignorant and astonish the wise. To call the homogeneous basis of an egg "blastima," and its germinal point a "blastid," is all well enough in its way; but it adds no new knowledge, nor additional wealth of language, wherewith to predicate vital theories, whether they relate to the progeny of a hen-coop or the lair of a tiger in an Indian jungle.

We accept the theory of "primordial germs," not simply because it is contained in the Bible Genesis, nor because it was conceived by the great and gifted Harvey as a possible solution of the whole difficulty, but because it presents, as we have before said, a satisfactory explanation of all the phenomenal facts of life with which we are acquainted. If Mr. Herbert Spencer will descend from his stilted theory of "molecular machinery worked by molecular force," and tell us what it all means; and, at the same time, turn us out a single plastide particle, or fungus spore, by any generating process referable to "the machinery" in question, we will as devoutly worship Matter and Motion as ever ancient Egyptian did the god Osiris. But until he does this, we prefer to accept the positive assurance of Professor Lionel S. Beale, a far more competent authority to speak of hypothetical molecules, that none of the "forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed" ever produced a vital manifestation, or succeeded in "making life a slave to force." We shall consider this question of "molecular force" in its proper place, and with reference to the different theories of life advanced by the materialists, without pursuing it further in this connection.

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul."

The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires" more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.

Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.

When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter, between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which no daring mortal could ever pass.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the "Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end, and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.

The bridge will never be built.

Life--Its True Genesis.

The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a "correlate" of this or that motion , but to ascertain how and in what way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.

To deny the existence of this vital principle because we cannot bottle it up in our airless flasks: to reduce it to some unknown correlate of motion because it constantly defies our poor mental grasp; to insist upon its artificial production because elementary substances may be chemically handled in our laboratories--is the same sort of preposterous folly that Newton would have been guilty of, had he attempted to show that there was no such thing as "gravity" in the universe; that it was only some undiscovered correlative of a thermal limit,--some unknown molecular complexity or entanglement in cosmic ether--some spontaneously occurring affinity or antagonism of ethereal molecules in the interplanetary spaces--some "potentiated potentiality" of mere sky-mist,--conditions of which he could have had no experimental knowledge, nor have given the slightest analogical proof. That we are justified in thus partially travestying the technical methods of some of our modern scientists, so called--especially those of the materialistic school--those advocating a purely physical theory of life, we need only quote a sentence or two from Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London. This eminent physiologist, in his recent work on "The Mystery of Life," says: "Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one vital action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. The assertion that life is correlated force rests upon assertion alone, and we are just as far from an explanation of vital phenomena by force-hypotheses as we were before the discovery of the doctrine of the correlation of forces." And he further adds that each additional year's labor, in this special field of investigation, "only confirms him more strongly than ever in the opinion that the physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained."

Many able and eminently learned physiologists have been disposed to recognize the presence of pre-existing "germs" in the earth, but not to the extent of accounting for all life-manifestations therein, as the doctrine is conclusively taught in the Bible Genesis. The language of this genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which the command "to bring forth" was issued:--

But the more conclusive proofs of the correctness of the order of creation, as given in the Bible Genesis, are to be found in the accurate observations of modern geological science. Before there could have appeared in the primeval oceans any living organism, even the lowest primordial forms of crustacea, there must have been marine vegetation--that springing from inorganic matter and laying the foundation of organic life. Plants originate in, and are solely nourished by, inorganic substances; or, to speak more definitely, they originate from primordial germs--the first elementary principles of life--whenever inorganic conditions favor, and, assimilating air, water, and other inorganic materials, convert them into organic substances, or such as answer to the conditions of organic life. In doing this, they take up and decompose carbonic acid, retain the carbon, and give off oxygen--a vital process not known to occur in the case of animal life. That their primordial germs, or vital units, are in the earth, as the Bible Genesis declares, is conclusively shown by the experimental processes first successfully entered upon by the Abb? Spallanzani, Charles Bonnet, and others, and more recently renewed and advocated by M. Pasteur, and his co-laborers in super-heated flask experimentation, as well as logically established by inductive methods.

But to return to land vegetation. This appeared and flourished throughout the Devonian period, if not anterior to it, and long before the appearance of batrachian reptiles and other low air-breathing forms of life. In fact, there could have been no life-breathing atmosphere until the earlier land vegetation had whipped out its more destructive elements, and paved the way, in necessary conditions, for the appearance of air-breathing animals. Hence the command for the earth to bring forth both marine and land vegetation--the vegetation of the earth--before there was any similar command respecting either marine or land forms of organic life. But by what logical method was this exact order inferred in the Bible Genesis? Neither the Jews, nor their earlier Hebrew ancestors, nor the Phoenicians before or after them, were in any sense of the word metaphysicians; nor did their language admit of those nicer distinctions and speculative conclusions which would have enabled any writer using it, thousands of years ago, to draw the commanding induction contained in this remarkable genesis. There is nothing in the incomparable methods of M. Comte, or the metaphysical spirit of Herbert Spencer, in his most daring speculations, which gives the world a more legitimate and conclusive induction than is contained in this simple statement of the order of creation. That it should have been a mere piece of guess-work on the part of Moses, or any other writer of his time,--covering, as it does, so many particularities of statement, all according with the exact observations of geologic science, and supported by paleontologic records,--requires quite as much credulity of judgment as to accept it for divinely inspired truth. A disciple of M. Comte might object to this conclusion as susceptible of two interpretations, the one a legitimate induction, and the other not. But the mind of the profounder reasoner would accept the interpretation which is supported by the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind, it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed in the formation of a judgment, is at once rejected because of its utter incredibility.

But let us examine the Bible Genesis a little further in this direction. It is said in the second verse of the first chapter that "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," that is, upon the face of the abyss--the chaotic mass at creation--the earth "without form and void."

And hence, also, the two separate averments in the second chapter of Genesis, both entirely meaningless apart from the construction we here give it, that "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow" the vegetation of the earth, and "out of the ground" produced he every beast of the field, etc.,--all of which has a definite and comprehensive significance in this one sense only, that the animating principle of life is in the earth, as the language of this most remarkable genesis implies. And this seems to have been the patristic idea, namely, that law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, nor any specific act of creation, were what governed in the case of both vegetal and animal life.

St. Augustine says: "In prima institutione naturae non quseritur miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat." And it is certain that both St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Basil held the same view. And they further held that the animating principle of life once implanted in nature, held good for all time. But we are not seeking for early and mediaeval authority. What we propose to show is, that nature is still implicitly obeying just such a law as that implied in the command given her "to bring forth," however doubtful may be the authority on which it rests, in the opinion of our modern scientists.

And here we may as well anticipate an objection which will be raised against the presence of this animating principle of life in the earth, as to meet and answer it further on in the argument. But as the objection to which we refer is one of those dragon's teeth we do not care to leave behind us, we will meet it at the very threshold of the controversy. It will probably be admitted that the vegetation of the earth may appear in the way and manner indicated in the biblical genesis, the same as infusorial forms appear in super-heated and hermetically-sealed flasks. But how about the pre?xisting germs or vital units of the mastodon, the megatherium, and other gigantic mammiferous quadrupeds of the Eocene period? From what experimental flasks, in the great laboratory of nature, did they first make their appearance? The objection is a legitimate one, and we will answer it.

But first, let us do so from the materialist's own stand-point. Time, they all agree, is practically infinite--past time, as well as future; while matter is susceptible of an infinite number of diverse movements, changes, modifications, combinations, etc., chemically as well as molecularly considered. This, they claim, is not a mere hypothetical judgment, but a mathematically demonstrable proposition. Grant it for the sake of the argument, and then see if the mastodon does not promptly emerge from some one of their "experimental flasks," as they choose to put it.

For if the number of these diverse movements, changes, modifications, etc., of matter, have been infinite, in its progress from the lowest statical to the highest dynamical manifestation, then every possible, as well as conceivable, form of matter, must have existed somewhere, and at some time, in nature, even to its highest and most potentially endowed plasmic form in which there is life. And if this be true, and the materialists will not deny but rather affirm it, then the inter-uterine conditions of matter, in the case of all animals , as well as the inter-cellular conditions in the case of all plant-life, must have existed, with their necessary environments, somewhere and at some time, in the all-hutched laboratory of nature. Hence, in the infinite number of these changes and combinations--in the countless collocations of molecules and chemically changed conditions of matter, we have the possibilities of all terrestrial life-manifestations, as we have, in the infinite number of cosmical changes, the possibilities of all planetary, cometary, and asteroidal manifestations. For whenever these vital changes occur, the life-manifestations dependent thereon, must as inevitably follow as that infinitely diffused matter should be aggregated by gravity, or by what Humboldt calls, in his "Cosmos," the "world-arranging Intelligence" of the universe.

Who shall say, then, that in that immensely remote and long-protracted era--the Eocene period--in which the gigantic elephantoids first made their appearance, there did not exist somewhere, in some one of nature's more cunning and prolific recesses, the exact plasmic conditions necessary for the appearance of the mastodon? If they existed anywhere , with the necessary environment , then the mastodon could no more help wallowing out of his essential plasma than the earth can help responding to its axial motion. All things are framed in the prodigality of nature, and she never commits an abortion upon herself. If both the conditions and necessary environment were at any time present, as they must have been on the materialistic theory, the mastodon is just as easily accounted for as the first fungus, or the first fungus-spore.

An effort has been made to show that Goethe was the great inspired prophet of the doctrine of "Evolution," as a ceaselessly progressive transformation of one thing into another, in the metamorphoses of plants and animals; and Haeckel quotes this passage from him as entirely conclusive of this point: "Thus much we should have gained that all the more perfect organic beings, among which we include fishes, amphibians, birds, mammals , to be formed according to an archetype, which merely fluctuates more or less in its ever persistent parts, and moreover, day by day, completes and transforms itself by means of reproduction." But this attempt to give a poetic glorification to Haeckelism in Goethe's speculations, and bring his commanding name into support of the evolution theory of development, will prove utterly futile in the light of his "archetype," and the persistency with which he concedes that nature adheres to perfected forms.

Our language, and that of all civilized peoples on the globe, must be thoroughly recast, not only in its philological and etymological character, but in its ideologic, etiologic, and other significations, before we can successfully fall back on an antecedent cause without an effect, or an effect without an antecedent cause. Besides, the human mind would have to undergo as complete a subversion of structure as language itself, before any such attempt at recasting it, on the basis of modern materialistic ideas, could possibly prove successful. And then, at least one-third of our language would have to disappear in this iconoclastic reform. For instance, take any well-tabulated synopsis of our categories and their relations, and they would nearly all have to be recast or entirely abandoned. Time, space, matter, motion, intellect, abstract ideas, volitions, affections, etc., with their several correlates or co-relations, would all have to undergo a thorough recasting process. The personal, intersocial, sympathetic, moral, and religious relations and obligations, would have to be summarily set aside for future revision, if not for sweeping rejection. All our ideas of life, materiality, spirituality, animality, vegetability, sensibility, etc., would have to fall into greater or less desuetude, the language disappearing with the ideas. All the words expressing our ideas of a superhuman agency, of God, angels, heaven, revelation, religious doctrines, sentiments, acts of worship, piety, human accountability to divine institutions, rites, ceremonies, etc.,--to say nothing of maleficent spirits, mythological and other fabulous divinities, entering so largely into the spirit and machinery of all our best poetry--would utterly disappear from our language. All our churches, minsters, chapels, tabernacles, cathedrals, and temples erected to the "living God," embracing the finest and most majestic architecture of the world, would have to succumb to the iconoclastic zeal of these materialistic reformers. The ten categories of Aristotle would disappear in the one category of Haeckel, or possibly the two categories of Bastian--Matter and Motion! Philologically speaking, we should all be at sea, drifting, like a set of deaf-mutes, on a wide and inaudible ocean--all inarticulate, tongue-tied, voiceless--with only the screeching of the sea-mew, or some other sepulchral bird of the night, to greet us as in wide-mouthed derision of our speechlessness and folly.

But let us see how the incontestible facts of nature, and the truths of science, fit into the three simple Hebrew words referring to "germs," or the germinal principle of life, instead of the natural "seeds" of plants or trees. We have given what we claim to be the true rendering of these words. To show how perfectly they harmonize with all the phenomenal manifestations of life in nature, we hurriedly pass to our third chapter.

Alternations of Forest Growths.

No fact has more profoundly puzzled the vegetable physiologist than the alternations of forest growths which are everywhere occurring without the apparent interposition of natural seeds, and which have been considered as wholly inexplicable except as one unsatisfactory theory after another has been suggested to account for the wide dissemination and distribution of their seeds. We have had any number of these theories, more or less ingeniously constructed, but it is safe to say that none of them satisfactorily accounts for more than a very limited number of the phenomena presented. It is only within a comparatively recent period that these alternations of timber growth have attracted the attention of scientific men; consequently little more than crude suggestions and ill-digested facts are at the command of the general reader and writer. And yet the facts themselves, such as they are, would fill a dozen volumes of the size of Dr. Hough's recent "Report upon American Forestry." We can only give a few of the more important facts we have gathered, and many of these are so deficient in necessary detail that their value is greatly lessened for scientific uses. This is especially true of nearly all those noticed and collated by Dr. Hough, in his report to the United States Commissioner of Agriculture, made in 1877, in which the alternations in question are referred to at length, but no new suggestions presented, nor any very important new facts given.

If our construction of the Bible genesis be the correct one, it will, we think, be unhesitatingly admitted that all the facts collected and collated by Dr. Hough, together with others more carefully noticed by our ablest writers on vegetable physiology, not only harmonize with this ancient Hebrew text, but so completely fit into it, both in its implications and explications, that adverse criticism will be awed into silence rather than provoked into any new controversy on the subject. This remarkable genesis declares that the germs of all living things are in themselves upon the earth--"upon the face of all the earth." It is true that this declaration, as contained in the 11th verse of the first chapter of Genesis, is textually limited to the vegetation of the earth; but the further emphatic statement that "the animating principle of life" is in the earth, coupled with the more substantive fact that God commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every living creature, with the single exception of man, conclusively extends the language of the 11th verse to whatever vegetable and animal life the earth was specifically directed to "bring forth." It is our purpose to consider, in this connection, not only the various facts noticed and theories suggested by our ablest writers and thinkers on the subject of seed-distribution, but to ascertain, as far as possible, to what extent their several facts and theories harmonize with natural phenomena, and at the same time determine what disposition should be made of them in the light of this new genesis, herein for the first time disclosed.

But the idea that nature has any cunning devices by which she may hide seeds away where they will remain "almost imperishable" for ages, is not entirely new with Professor Marsh, nor is it any suggestion that would be protected by copyright. In finding the winds, birds, quadrupeds, and other assumed agencies of distribution improbable, he seeks, with Dr. Dwight, for "the seeds of an ancient vegetation," and, finding none by actual observation, concludes that nature has some occult, and thoroughly surreptitious, method of hiding them away, even in soils below the last glacial drift, where no microscope can possibly reach them. As the accounts of seeds taken from the mummy-cases of Egypt may answer the purposes of those seeking to palm off some new cereal as a nine-days wonder on the ignorant, so these speculations about the indestructibility of seeds, when hidden away by nature, may answer a like purpose in imposing upon the over-credulous; but they will hardly be accepted by the intelligent, much less the scientific, in the light of all the facts herein given. The simple truth is that all seeds are speedily perishable by out-door exposure. We hardly know a single seed that will survive beyond the second year when subjected to such exposure. If they do not germinate the first year, their vitality is utterly gone the second year, as hopelessly so as if they had been cast into the fire and consumed to ashes.

But there is a large class of vegetable phenomena which wholly excludes the idea of this wonderful vitality of seeds. It is well known that soil brought up from deep wells and other excavations, often produces plants entirely unlike the prevailing local flora. This soil has been brought up, in many instances, from beneath the last glacial drift, where it must have remained for not less than a quarter of a million years at the lowest calculation, and may have remained for millions of years, if not longer; and yet the same singular phenomenon is presented. Exposed to the sun's rays, and the fructifying influences of showers and dews, the soil burgeons forth into an independent flora, and such as are nowhere to be found in the surrounding locality. The writer, in digging a well in Waukesha, Wis.,--a place now famous for the curative properties of its waters--in 1847, struck soil at a depth of about thirty-five feet--that which was evidently ante-glacial. The place is some twenty miles back from Milwaukee, and the whole section, far into the interior of the state from Lake Michigan, is one of drift, covering the primeval soil at various depths, from a few feet up to a hundred or more; and the imbedded soil must have remained in its place for untold ages. And yet, it was no sooner brought to the surface than it produced several small plants that were wholly unlike the prevailing local flora; although, unfortunately, they did not sufficiently mature to enable us to determine their genera and species. Considerable portions of this soil were dried and subjected by us, and the late Dr. John A. Savage, then president of Carroll College, to microscopic examination, but without discovering the slightest trace of any seed, or anything resembling seed, in the several portions carefully examined. The soil, however, contained, in its imbedded place, several large Norway spruce logs, in a more or less perfect state of preservation. But there were no cones, nor chits to cones, to be found in it, although the most rigid examination was made at the time to discover them. That the seeds of these delicate little plants should have survived the wreck of this ancient Norwegian forest, or the drift from one, and burst forth into newness of life after hundreds of thousands, not to say millions of years, is decidedly too large a draft upon our credulity to be honored "without sight." But we will return to the alternations of forest growths.

It is within a comparatively recent period that extensive areas of hemlock, in Greene and Ulster Counties, N.Y., were cut off to supply the neighboring tanneries with bark. These clearings were no sooner made than oak, chestnut, birch, and other trees of deciduous foliage, sprang up and entirely usurped the place of the hemlock; for the reason, no doubt, that the soil had become chemically unbalanced for the growth of the latter, while its condition was entirely favorable for the development of the "germs" of the former. These changes in timber growths have been widely noticed in all parts of this country, as well as in Europe, but the universal supposition has been that they came from the natural seeds of their respective localities, those either scattered by the winds, or borne thither by the birds, by quadrupeds, or by some other natural agency. No one has suggested the theory of "primordial germs" or "vital units," or come any nearer to it than Dr. Dwight did in suggesting "the seeds of an ancient vegetation." The great truth of the Bible genesis has been wholly overlooked by reason of a faulty translation in the first instance, as taken from the Masoretic renderings of the sixth century, and implicitly followed since.

In 1845, a violent tornado swept a wide strip of forest in Northern New York, from the more thickly settled portions of Jefferson County to Lake Champlain. The timber that succumbed to the force of the tornado, and growing at various points along its track, was mainly beech, maple, birch, ash, hemlock, spruce, etc.; but it was rarely replaced, at any point, by the same timber, in the growths that almost immediately followed. The trees that are now growing along the track of the tornado are principally poplar, cherry, birch, and a little beech and ironwood: no ash, maple, spruce, or hemlock, except here and there, at considerable intervals, a tree or two which may have been replaced by natural seed. The important fact noticeable, in this connection, is that the aggressive timber--that replacing the old--entirely usurped the place of the evergreen growths, supplanting them with those that were wholly deciduous. Besides, it does not appear that the poplar, the cherry, and the ironwood, which were altogether aggressive, previously grew near enough to the track of the tornado to have possibly supplied the seed necessary for their appearance and growth.

The fact was specially noticeable at the time, and has been widely communicated since, that the white oak timber cut off at Valley Forge for fuel and other army purposes in the American camp, in the winter of 1777-78, was succeeded by black oak, hickory, chestnut, etc.--the white oak entirely disappearing, although by far the most favorably situated for propagation by seed. But the alternations of forest growths had attracted too little attention at that time to render the meagre facts given of any special value to scientific men. If the usurping timber had grown in the immediate neighborhood , it might have come from natural seeds, and not from primordial germs under "favoring conditions."

In the Ohio Agricultural Report of 1872, an account is given of a storm-track, in that state, which swept for a considerable distance, and was violent enough to bear down all the timber before it. It is stated that the path of this tornado "had grown up with black-walnut, another and different growth from that prostrated by the force of the storm." In this instance, there were no neighboring trees, except perhaps at distant intervals, from which the nuts of the black-walnut could have been derived, unless they had been promiscuously strewn by the tornado along its entire track. But it is, unfortunately, not stated that the tornado occurred at that opportune season of the year when the nuts were properly matured for planting.

Dr. Franklin B. Hough, in his recent "Report upon American Forestry," to which we have already referred, says: "It is not unusual to observe in the swamps of the northern states, an alternation of growth taking place without human agency. Extensive tracts of tamarack may be seen in northern Wisconsin that are dying out, and being succeeded by the balsam fir , which may be probably caused by the partial drainage of the swamps, from the decay or removal of a fallen tree that had obstructed the outlet." The writer of this work resided for a period of ten years or more in Wisconsin, and during that time traversed extensive portions of its territory, both before and after it became a state. As early as 1844, the extensive tamarack swamps of that region were manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutritious elements in the soil, and the balsam fir rapidly taking its place, especially where the accumulations of soil, resulting from decayed vegetation, were favorable for its appearance. The drainage of the swamps had not been thought of at that time, nor had the swamps themselves been disposed of, to any considerable extent, by the federal government. They were subsequently granted to the state for educational purposes, and afterwards purchased up in the interest of speculative parties.

But the decay of the tamarack had really commenced long before population found its way, in any considerable numbers, into that section of the country; and the balsam fir had begun its usurpation, in many of the swamps, long prior to the advent there of the white man. Neither artificial drainage, nor accidental drainage, had anything to do with the appearance of the balsam fir, or the disappearance of the tamarack. The latter was manifestly dying out for the want of the proper nutriment, and the former coming in for the reason that the soil was chemically balanced for the development of its "primordial germs"--those everywhere implanted in the earth, to await the necessary conditions for their development and growth. The natural seeds of this balsam fir were not present in either the first, second, or third tamarack swamp in which this alternation of growth originally took place. The change commenced as soon as conditions favored, and not before. It is safe to say that, in none of these tamarack swamps, was there a single balsam fir cone, or a single chit to a cone, nor had there probably been for thousands of years, before the time when the first balsam fir made its appearance in that section. They came, as all primordial forests come, from germs, not from the seeds of trees. Universally, the germ precedes the tree, as the tree precedes the seed, in all vegetal growths, from the lowest cryptogam to the lordliest conifer of the Pacific slope. Otherwise, we should be logically driven back to an act of "specific creation," which the materialist stoutly rejects, and the Bible genesis nowhere affirms.

Mr. George B. Emerson, in his valuable work on the "Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts," suggests as a cause for the dying out of old forests, "the exhaustion of the nutritious elements of the soil required for their vigorous and successful growth." But he is evidently at fault in his speculations as to the alternations of forest growths. The Cretan labyrinth that everywhere confronts him is the "seed-theory," which is so inextricable to him that he constantly stumbles, as one scientifically blind, yet eager to lead the blind. All the phenomenal facts with which he deals admirably fit into the Bible genesis, but he fails to see it because the sublime truth lies locked up in an unmeaning translation. He is indefatigable, however, in his hunt after seeds where there are no seeds, and in his jumps at conclusions where there are manifestly no data to justify them.

Our vegetable physiologists, Mr. Emerson among the number, are simply unfortunate in their use of terms--those expressing even the commonest operations of nature. In their genesis of plants and trees they need to adhere a little more closely to the genesis of induction, and use language in harmony with the phenomenal facts and characteristics which they are called upon to explain. But Mr. Emerson was not alone at fault in this almost universal slip of the scientific pen. He quotes from a letter of Mr. P. Sanderson, of East Whately, Mass., in which the writer says: "There is an instance on my farm of spruce and hackmatack being succeeded by a spontaneous growth of maple wood;" and he adds that "instances are also mentioned by him of beech and maple succeeding oaks; oaks following pines, and the reverse; hemlock succeeded by white birch in cold places, and by hard maple in warm ones; beech succeeded by maple, elm, etc; and, in fact, the occurrence was so common that surprise was expressed at the asking of the question."

These several alternations in timber growths, effectually vouched for by Mr. Emerson, occurring "spontaneously" as stated, can hardly be accounted for on any other theory than the presence of "germs" and "favoring conditions," such as we have named in connection with the Bible genesis. They might possibly be explained on the theory of "scattered seeds," if the several growths had made their appearance gradually, and not "spontaneously," as stated. The misfortune with Mr. Emerson, as well as with his several "reliable correspondents," was, that his facts are too meagrely imparted, in the necessary details, to draw any satisfactory conclusions from them--such as the nearness or distance of surrounding trees of the same species, and the possible chances of their seeds taking lodgment in the soil from which they grew. But, fortunately, there are facts, and those abundantly substantiated, which entirely negative the presence of seeds in the soils where these "spontaneous growths" are said to have appeared. In some instances, they cover large tracts of land, at distances of thirty, forty, fifty, and even hundreds of miles, from any native forest from which seed could have been derived.

While Dr. Dwight emphatically rejects the "transportation theory," he imagined he had solved the difficulty in his suggestion "that the cultivation of the land had brought up the seeds of a former forest, within the limits of vegetation, and given them an opportunity to vegetate." But the utter absurdity of this theory may be demonstrated by any one inside of two years, by placing hickory nuts, in different soils, at a depth to which an ordinary plough-point would reach in cultivation; and then, at the end of the second year, examining those that did not germinate the first year. The commonest observer of a hickory forest knows that if the fallen nuts do not germinate the first year, their vitality is utterly and hopelessly gone. It makes no difference whether you leave the nuts on the ground where they fall, or place them one inch or twenty inches beneath the soil, the result will be the same. At the end of two years, you can pulverize them between thumb and finger almost as easily as so much dried loam. The idea of deriving a new forest from such nuts, is hardly less absurd than that of emptying the Egyptian catacombs of their old mummy-cases, in the expectation of seeing a race of Theban kings stalking the earth as before the foundations of either Carthage or Rome were laid.

As early as 1807, Judge Peters, of Philadelphia, became satisfied that all that elevated region around the head waters of the Delaware, Alleghany, and Genesee Rivers, then covered with heavy growths of hemlock, or with forests of beech and sugar-maple, was originally an oak forest, probably covering most of that entire region. And Mr. John Adlum, of Havre de Grace, Md., who originally surveyed the lands south of the great bend of the Susquehanna, between that river and the Delaware, conceived the same idea as early as 1788. The section surveyed by him was chiefly covered with beech and sugar-maple; in fact, it was in what was called, at the time, "the beech and sugar-maple country." He drew his inferences from the fact that he found, here and there, at irregular intervals, red and white oaks growing to an enormous size, none being less than sixteen feet, and many measuring twenty-two feet or more, in circumference five feet above the ground. He says that "the hemlock in this region seems to have succeeded the oak, while the beech and maple no doubt succeeded the hemlock." This last inference would seem to have been made from the fact that clumps of large hemlock trees were, at that time, still growing at intervals among the larger deciduous trees.

Here are some of his more important statements:--

"At Clarksville, Ga., oak and hickory lands, when cleared, invariably grew up with pine. This is true of that region of country generally."

"In Bristol County, Mass., in some cases, after pines have been cut off, oak, maple, and birch have sprung up abundantly."

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