Island Life; Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras. Alfred Russel Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ soil or débris on mountain sides and summits, offering stations on which foreign plants can temporarily establish themselves.

      Antiquity of Plants as affecting their Distribution.—We have already referred to the importance of great antiquity in enabling us to account for the wide dispersal of some genera and species of insects and land-shells, and recent discoveries in fossil botany show that this cause has also had great influence in the case of plants. Rich floras have been discovered in the Miocene, the Eocene, and the Upper Cretaceous formations, and these consist almost wholly of living genera, and many of them of species very closely allied to existing forms. We have therefore every reason to believe that a large number of our plant-species have survived great geological, geographical, and climatal changes; and this fact, combined with the varied and wonderful powers of dispersal many of them possess, renders it far less difficult to understand the examples of wide distribution of the genera and species of plants than in the case of similar instances among animals. This subject will be further alluded to when discussing the origin of the New Zealand flora, in Chapter XXII.

CHAPTER VI

       Table of Contents

      GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL CHANGES: THE PERMANENCE OF CONTINENTS

      Changes of Land, and Sea, their Nature and Extent—Shore-deposits and Stratified Rocks—The Movements of Continents—Supposed Oceanic Formations; the Origin of Chalk—Fresh-water and Shore-deposits as proving the Permanence of Continents—Oceanic Islands as indications of the Permanence of Continents and Oceans—General Stability of Continents with constant Change of Form—Effect of Continental Changes on the Distribution of Animals—Changed Distribution proved by the Extinct Animals of Different Epochs—Summary of Evidence for the general Permanence of Continents and Oceans.

      The changes of land and sea which have occurred in particular cases will be described when we discuss the origin and relations of the faunas of the different classes of islands. We have here only to consider the general character and extent of such changes, and to correct some erroneous ideas which are prevalent on the subject.

      Changes of Land and Sea, their Nature and Extent.—It is a very common belief that geological evidence proves a complete change of land and sea to have taken place over and over again. Every foot of dry land has undoubtedly, at one time or other, formed part of a sea-bottom, and we can hardly exclude the surfaces occupied by volcanic and fresh-water deposits, since, in many cases, if not in all, these rest upon a substratum of marine formations. At first sight, therefore, it seems a necessary inference that when the present continents were under water there must have been other continents situated where we now find the oceans, from which the sediments came to form the various deposits we now see. This view was held by so acute and learned a geologist as Sir Charles Lyell, who says:—"Continents, therefore, although permanent for whole geological epochs, shift their positions entirely in the course of ages."^[16] Mr. T. Mellard Reade, late President of the Geological Society of Liverpool, so recently as 1878, says:—"While believing that the ocean-depths are of enormous age, it is impossible to resist other evidences that they have once been land. The very continuity of animal and vegetable life on the globe points to it. The molluscous fauna of the eastern coast of North America is very similar to that of Europe, and this could not have happened without littoral continuity, yet there are depths of 1,500 fathoms between these continents."^[17] It is certainly strange that a geologist should not remember the recent and long-continued warm climates of the Arctic regions, and see that a connection of Northern Europe by Iceland with Greenland and Labrador over a sea far less than a thousand fathoms deep would furnish the "littoral continuity" required. Again, in the same pamphlet Mr. Reade says:—"It can be mathematically demonstrated that the whole, or nearly the whole, of the sea-bottom has been at one time or other dry land. If it were not so, and the oscillations, of the level of the land with respect to the sea were confined within limits near the present continents, the results would have been a gradual diminution instead of development of the calcareous rocks. To state the case in common language, the calcareous portion of the rocks would have been washed out during the mutations, the destruction and redeposit of the continental rocks, and eventually deposited in the depths of the immutable sea far from land. Immense beds of limestone would now exist at the bottom of the ocean, while the land would be composed of sandstones and argillaceous shales. The evidence of chemistry thus confirms the inductions drawn from the distribution of animal life upon the globe."

      

      So far from this being a "mathematical demonstration," it appears to me to be a complete misinterpretation of the facts. Animals did not create the lime which they secrete from the sea-water, and therefore we have every reason to believe that the inorganic sources which originally supplied it still keep up that supply, though perhaps in diminished quantity. Again, the great lime-secreters—corals—work in water of moderate depth, that is, near land, while there is no proof whatever that there is any considerable accumulation of limestone at the bottom of the deep ocean. On the contrary, the fact ascertained by the Challenger, that beyond a certain depth the "calcareous" ooze ceases, and is replaced by red and grey clays, although the calcareous organisms still abound in the surface waters of the ocean, shows that the lime is dissolved again by the excess of carbonic acid usually found at great depths, and its accumulation thus prevented. As to the increase of limestones in recent as compared with older formations, it may be readily explained by two considerations: in the first place, the growth and development of the land in longer and more complex shore lines and the increase of sedimentary over volcanic formations may have offered more stations favourable to the growth of coral; while the solubility of limestone in rain-water renders the destruction of such rocks more rapid than that of sandstones and shales, and would thus, by supplying more calcareous matter in solution for secretion by limestone-forming organisms, lead to their comparative abundance in later as compared with earlier formations.

      However weak we may consider the above-quoted arguments against the permanence of oceans, the fact that these arguments are so confidently and authoritatively put forward, renders it advisable to show how many and what weighty considerations can be adduced to justify the opposite belief, which is now rapidly gaining ground among students of earth-history.

      Shore Deposits and Stratified Rocks.—If we go round the shores of any of our continents we shall almost always find a considerable belt of shallow water, meaning thereby water from 100 to 150 fathoms deep. The distance from the coast line at which such depths are reached is seldom less than twenty miles, and is very frequently more than a hundred, while in some cases such shallow seas extend several hundred miles from existing continents. The great depth of a thousand fathoms is often reached at thirty miles from shore, but more frequently at about sixty or a hundred miles. Round the entire African coast for example, this depth is reached at distances varying from forty to a hundred and fifty miles (except in the Red Sea and the Straits of Mozambique), the average being about eighty miles.

      Now the numerous specimens of sea-bottoms collected during the voyage of the Challenger show that true shore-deposits—that is, materials denuded from the land and carried down as sediment by rivers—are almost always confined within a distance of 50 or 100 miles of the coast, the finest mud only being sometimes carried 150 or rarely 200 miles. As the sediment varies in coarseness and density it is evident that it will sink to the bottom at unequal distances, the bulk of it sinking comparatively near shore, while only the very finest and almost impalpable mud will be carried out to the furthest limits. Beyond these limits the only deposits (with few exceptions) are organic, consisting of the shells of minute calcareous or siliceous organisms with some decomposed pumice and volcanic dust which floats out to mid-ocean. It follows, therefore, that by far the larger part of all stratified deposits, especially those which consist of sand or pebbles or any visible fragments of rock, must have been formed within 50 or 100 miles of then existing continents, or if at a greater distance, in shallow inland seas receiving СКАЧАТЬ