Conquest of the Dry Land.
5. The terrestrial haunt has been invaded age after age by contingents from the sea or from the freshwaters. We must recognise the worm invasion, which led eventually to the making of the fertile soil, the invasion due to air-breathing Arthropods, which led eventually to the important linkage between flowers and their insect visitors, and the invasion due to air-breathing Amphibians, which led eventually to the higher terrestrial animals and to the development of intelligence and family affection. Besides these three great invasions, there were minor ones such as that leading to land-snails, for there has been a widespread and persistent tendency among aquatic animals to try to possess the dry land.
Getting on to dry land had a manifold significance.
It implied getting into a medium with a much larger supply of oxygen than there is dissolved in the water. But the oxygen of the air is more difficult to capture, especially when the skin becomes hard or well protected, as it is almost bound to become in animals living on dry ground. Thus this leads to the development of internal surfaces, such as those of lungs, where the oxygen taken into the body may be absorbed by the blood. In most animals the blood goes to the surface of oxygen-capture; but in insects and their relatives there is a different idea--of taking the air to the blood or in greater part to the area of oxygen-combustion, the living tissues. A system of branching air-tubes takes air into every hole and corner of the insect"s body, and this thorough aeration is doubtless in part the secret of the insect"s intense activity. The blood never becomes impure.
The conquest of the dry land also implied a predominance of that kind of locomotion which may be compared to punting, when the body is pushed along by pressing a lever against a hard substratum. And it also followed that with few exceptions the body of the terrestrial animal tended to be compact, readily lifted off the ground by the limbs or adjusted in some other way so that there may not be too large a surface trailing on the ground. An animal like a jellyfish, easily supported in the water, would be impossible on land. Such apparent exceptions as earthworms, centipedes, and snakes are not difficult to explain, for the earthworm is a burrower which eats its way through the soil, the centipede"s long body is supported by numerous hard legs, and the snake pushes itself along by means of the large ventral scales to which the lower ends of very numerous ribs are attached.
Methods of Mastering the Difficulties of Terrestrial Life.
A great restriction attendant on the invasion of the dry land is that locomotion becomes limited to one plane, namely, the surface of the earth. This is in great contrast to what is true in the water, where the animal can move up or down, to right or to left, at any angle and in three dimensions. It surely follows from this that the movements of land animals must be rapid and precise, unless, indeed, safety is secured in some other way. Hence it is easy to understand why most land animals have very finely developed striped muscles, and why a beetle running on the ground has far more numerous muscles than a lobster swimming in the sea.
Land animals were also handicapped by the risks of drought and of frost, but these were met by defences of the most diverse description, from the hairs of woolly caterpillars to the fur of mammals, from the carapace of tortoises to the armour of armadillos. In other cases, it is hardly necessary to say, the difficulties may be met in other ways, as frogs meet the winter by falling into a lethargic state in some secluded retreat.
Another consequence of getting on to dry land is that the eggs or young can no longer be set free anyhow, as is possible when the animal is surrounded by water, which is in itself more or less of a cradle. If the eggs were laid or the young liberated on dry ground, the chances are many that they would be dried up or devoured. So there are numerous ways in which land animals secure the safety of their young, e.g. by burying them in the ground, or by hiding them in nests, or by carrying them about for a prolonged period either before or after birth. This may mean great safety for the young, this may make it possible to have only a small family, and this may tend to the evolution of parental care and the kindly emotions. Thus it may be understood that from the conquest of the land many far-reaching consequences have followed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: Rischgitz.
PROFESSOR THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY (1825-95).
One of the most distinguished of zoologists, with unsurpa.s.sed gifts as a teacher and expositor. He did great service in gaining a place for science in ordinary education and in popular estimation. No one championed Evolutionism with more courage and skill.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: BARON CUVIER, 1769-1832.
One of the founders of modern Comparative Anatomy. A man of gigantic intellect, who came to Paris as a youth from the provinces, and became the director of the higher education of France and a peer of the Empire. He was opposed to Evolutionist ideas, but he had anatomical genius.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ILl.u.s.tRATION SHOWING VARIOUS METHODS OF FLYING AND SWOOPING.
Gull, with a feather-wing, a true flier. Fox-bat, with a skin-wing, a true flier. Flying Squirrel, with a parachute of skin, able to swoop from tree to tree, but not to fly. Flying Fish, with pectoral fins used as volplanes in a great leap due to the tail. To some extent able to sail in albatros fashion.]
Finally, it is worth dwelling on the risks of terrestrial life, because they enable us better to understand why so many land animals have become burrowers and others climbers of trees, why some have returned to the water and others have taken to the air. It may be asked, perhaps, why the land should have been colonised at all when the risks and difficulties are so great. The answer must be that necessity and curiosity are the mother and father of invention. Animals left the water because the pools dried up, or because they were overcrowded, or because of inveterate enemies, but also because of that curiosity and spirit of adventure which, from first to last, has been one of the spurs of progress.
Conquering the Air.
6. The last great haunt of life is the air, a mastery of which must be placed to the credit of insects, Pterodactyls, birds, and bats. These have been the successes, but it should be noted that there have been many brilliant failures, which have not attained to much more than parachuting. These include the Flying Fishes, which take leaps from the water and are carried for many yards and to considerable heights, holding their enlarged pectoral fins taut or with little more than a slight fluttering. There is a so-called Flying Frog (Rhacophorus) that skims from branch to branch, and the much more effective Flying Dragon (Draco volans) of the Far East, which has been mentioned already. Among mammals there are Flying Phalangers, Flying Lemurs, and more besides, all attaining to great skill as parachutists, and ill.u.s.trating the endeavour to master the air which man has realised in a way of his own.
The power of flight brings obvious advantages. A bird feeding on the ground is able to evade the stalking carnivore by suddenly rising into the air; food and water can be followed rapidly and to great distances; the eggs or the young can be placed in safe situations; and birds in their migrations have made a brilliant conquest both of time and s.p.a.ce. Many of them know no winter in their year, and the migratory flight of the Pacific Golden Plover from Hawaii to Alaska and back again does not stand alone.
THE PROCESSION OF LIFE THROUGH THE AGES.
-- 1.
The Rock Record.
How do we know when the various cla.s.ses of animals and plants were established on the earth? How do we know the order of their appearance and the succession of their advances? The answer is: by reading the Rock Record. In the course of time the crust of the earth has been elevated into continents and depressed into ocean-troughs, and the surface of the land has been buckled up into mountain ranges and folded in gentler hills and valleys. The high places of the land have been weathered by air and water in many forms, and the results of the weathering have been borne away by rivers and seas, to be laid down again elsewhere as deposits which eventually formed sandstones, mudstones, and similar sedimentary rocks. Much of the material of the original crust has thus been broken down and worked up again many times over, and if the total thickness of the sedimentary rocks is added up it amounts, according to some geologists, to a total of 67 miles. In most cases, however, only a small part of this thickness is to be seen in one place, for the deposits were usually formed in limited areas at any one time.
The Use of Fossils.
When the sediments were acc.u.mulating age after age, it naturally came about that remains of the plants and animals living at the time were buried, and these formed the fossils by the aid of which it is possible to read the story of the past. By careful piecing together of evidence the geologist is able to determine the order in which the different sedimentary rocks were laid down, and thus to say, for instance, that the Devonian period was the time of the origin of Amphibians. In other cases the geologist utilises the fossils in his attempt to work out the order of the strata when these have been much disarranged. For the simpler fossil forms of any type must be older than those that are more complex. There is no vicious circle here, for the general succession of strata is clear, and it is quite certain that there were fishes before there were amphibians, and amphibians before there were reptiles, and reptiles before there were birds and mammals. In certain cases, e.g. of fossil horses and elephants, the actual historical succession has been clearly worked out.
If the successive strata contained good samples of all the plants and animals living at the time when the beds were formed, then it would be easy to read the record of the rocks, but many animals were too soft to become satisfactory fossils, many were eaten or dissolved away, many were destroyed by heat and pressure, so that the rock record is like a library very much damaged by fire and looting and decay.
-- 2.
The Geological Time-table.
The long history of the earth and its inhabitants is conveniently divided into eras. Thus, just as we speak of the ancient, medi-val, and modern history of mankind, so we may speak of Pal-ozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras in the history of the earth as a whole.
Geologists cannot tell us except in an approximate way how long the process of evolution has taken. One of the methods is to estimate how long has been required for the acc.u.mulation of the salts of the sea, for all these have been dissolved out of the rocks since rain began to fall on the earth. Dividing the total amount of saline matter by what is contributed every year in modern times, we get about a hundred million years as the age of the sea. But as the present rate of salt-acc.u.mulation is probably much greater than it was during many of the geological periods, the prodigious age just mentioned is in all likelihood far below the mark. Another method is to calculate how long it would take to form the sedimentary rocks, like sandstones and mudstones, which have a total thickness of over fifty miles, though the local thickness is rarely over a mile. As most of the materials have come from the weathering of the earth"s crust, and as the annual amount of weathering now going on can be estimated, the time required for the formation of the sedimentary rocks of the world can be approximately calculated. There are some other ways of trying to tell the earth"s age and the length of the successive periods, but no certainty has been reached.
The eras marked on the table (page 92) as before the Cambriancorrespond to about thirty-two miles of thickness of strata; and all the subsequent eras with fossil-bearing rocks to a thickness of about twenty-one miles--in itself an astounding fact. Perhaps thirty million years must be allotted to the Pre-Cambrian eras, eighteen to the Pal-ozoic, nine to the Mesozoic, three to the Cenozoic, making a grand total of sixty millions.
The Establishment of Invertebrate Stocks.
It is an astounding fact that at least half of geological time (the Arch-ozoic and Proterozoic eras) pa.s.sed before there were living creatures with parts sufficiently hard to form fossils. In the latter part of the Proterozoic era there are traces of one-celled marine animals (Radiolarians) with sh.e.l.ls of flint, and of worms that wallowed in the primal mud. It is plain that as regards the most primitive creatures the rock record tells us little.
[Ill.u.s.tration: From Knipe"s "Nebula to Man."
ANIMALS OF THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD e.g. Sponges, Jellyfish, Starfish, Sea-lilies, Water-fleas, and Trilobites]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: J. J. Ward, F.E.S.
A TRILOBITE.
Trilobites were ancient seash.o.r.e animals, abundant from the Upper Cambrian to the Carboniferous eras. They have no direct descendants to-day. They were jointed-footed animals, allied to Crustaceans and perhaps also to King-crabs. They were able to roll themselves up in their ring-armour.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: British Museum (Natural History).
THE GAMBIAN MUD-FISH, PROTOPTERUS.
It can breathe oxygen dissolved in water by its gills; it can also breathe dry air by means of its swim-bladder, which has become a lung. It is a double-breather, showing evolution in process. For seven months of the year, the dry season, it can remain inert in the mud, getting air through an open pipe to the surface. When water fills the pools it can use its gills again. Mud-nests or mud encas.e.m.e.nts with the lung-fish inside have often been brought to Britain and the fish when liberated were quite lively.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARCHaeOPTERYX.
(After William Leche of Stockholm.).
A good restoration of the oldest known bird, Arch-opteryx (Jura.s.sic Era). It was about the size of a crow; it had teeth on both jaws; it had claws on the thumb and two fingers; and it had a long lizard-like tail. But it had feathers, proving itself a true bird.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: WING OF A BIRD, SHOWING THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE FEATHERS.
The longest feathers or primaries (PR) are borne by the two fingers (2 and 3), and their palm-bones (CMC); the second longest or secondaries are borne by the ulna bone (U) of the fore-arm; there is a separate tuft (AS) on the thumb (TH).]
The rarity of direct traces of life in the oldest rocks is partly due to the fact that the primitive animals would be of delicate build, but it must also be remembered that the ancient rocks have been profoundly and repeatedly changed by pressure and heat, so that the traces which did exist would be very liable to obliteration. And if it be asked what right we have to suppose the presence of living creatures in the absence or extreme rarity of fossils, we must point to great acc.u.mulations of limestone which indicate the existence of calcareous alg-, and to deposits of iron which probably indicate the activity of iron-forming Bacteria. Ancient beds of graphite similarly suggest that green plants flourished in these ancient days.
-- 3.
The Era of Ancient Life (Pal-ozoic).
The Cambrian period was the time of the establishment of the chief stocks of backboneless animals such as sponges, jellyfishes, worms, sea-cuc.u.mbers, lamp-sh.e.l.ls, trilobites, crustaceans, and molluscs. There is something very eloquent in the broad fact that the peopling of the seas had definitely begun some thirty million years ago, for Professor H. F. Osborn points out that in the Cambrian period there was already a colonisation of the sh.o.r.e of the sea, the open sea, and the deep waters.
The Ordovician period was marked by abundant representation of the once very successful cla.s.s of Trilobites--jointed-footed, antenna-bearing, segmented marine animals, with numerous appendages and a covering of chitin. They died away entirely with the end of the Pal-ozoic era. Also very notable was the abundance of predatory cuttlefishes, the bullies of the ancient seas. But it was in this period that the first backboned animals made their appearance--an epoch-making step in evolution. In other words, true fishes were evolved--destined in the course of ages to replace the cuttlefishes (which are mere molluscs) in dominating the seas.
____ RECENT TIMES Human civilisation.
{PLEISTOCENE OR GLACIAL TIME Last great Ice Age. CENOZOIC ERA {MIOCENE AND PLIOCENE TIMES Emergence of Man. {EOCENE AND OLIGOCENE TIMES Rise of higher mammals. _____________________________________________________________________ {CRETACEOUS PERIOD Rise of primitive mammals, { flowering plants, { and higher insects. MESOZOIC ERA {JURa.s.sIC PERIOD Rise of birds and flying { reptiles. {TRIa.s.sIC PERIOD Rise of dinosaur reptiles. _____________________________________________________________________ {PERMIAN PERIOD Rise of reptiles. {CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD Rise of insects. {DEVONIAN PERIOD First amphibians. PALaeOZOIC ERA {SILURIAN PERIOD Land animals began. {ORDOVICIAN PERIOD First fishes. {CAMBRIAN PERIOD Peopling of the sea. _____________________________________________________________________ PROTEROZOIC AGES Many of the Backboneless stocks began. ARCHaeOZOIC AGES Living creatures began to be upon the earth.
{Making of continents and ocean-basins. {Beginnings of atmosphere and hydrosphere. FORMATIVE TIMES {Cooling of the earth. {Establishment of the solar system. _____________________________________________________________________ In the Silurian period in which the peopling of the seas went on apace, there was the first known attempt at colonising the dry land. For in Silurian rocks there are fossil scorpions, and that implies ability to breathe dry air--by means of internal surfaces, in this case known as lungbooks. It was also towards the end of the Silurian, when a period of great aridity set in, that fishes appeared related to our mud-fishes or double-breathers (Dipnoi), which have lungs as well as gills. This, again, meant utilising dry air, just as the present-day mud-fishes do when the water disappears from the pools in hot weather. The lung-fishes or mud-fishes of to-day are but three in number, one in Queensland, one in South America, and one in Africa, but they are extremely interesting "living fossils," binding the cla.s.s of fishes to that of amphibians. It is highly probable that the first invasion of the dry land should be put to the credit of some adventurous worms, but the second great invasion was certainly due to air-breathing Arthropods, like the pioneer scorpion we mentioned.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION OF THE SUCCESSIVE STRATA OF THE EARTH"S CRUST, WITH SUGGESTIONS OF CHARACTERISTIC FOSSILS E.g. Fish and Trilobite in the Devonian (red), a large Amphibian in the Carboniferous (blue), Reptiles in Permian (light red), the first Mammal in the Tria.s.sic (blue), the first Bird in the Jura.s.sic (yellow), Giant Reptiles in the Cretaceous (white), then follow the Tertiary strata with progressive mammals, and Quaternary at the top with man and mammoth.]
The Devonian period, including that of the Old Red Sandstone, was one of the most significant periods in the earth"s history. For it was the time of the establishment of flowering plants upon the earth and of terrestrial backboned animals. One would like to have been the discoverer of the Devonian foot-print of Thinopus, the first known Amphibian foot-print--an eloquent vestige of the third great invasion of the dry land. It was probably from a stock of Devonian lung-fishes that the first Amphibians sprang, but it was not till the next period that they came to their own. While they were still feeling their way, there was a remarkable exuberance of shark-like and heavily armoured fishes in the Devonian seas.
EVOLUTION OF LAND ANIMALS.
-- 1.
Giant Amphibians and Coal-measures.
The Carboniferous period was marked by a mild moist climate and a luxuriant vegetation in the swampy low grounds. It was a much less strenuous time than the Devonian period; it was like a very long summer. There were no trees of the type we see now, but there were forests of club-mosses and horsetails which grew to a gigantic size compared with their pigmy representatives of to-day. In these forests the jointed-footed invaders of the dry land ran riot in the form of centipedes, spiders, scorpions, and insects, and on these the primeval Amphibians fed. The appearance of insects made possible a new linkage of far-reaching importance, namely, the cross-fertilisation of flowering plants by their insect visitors, and from this time onwards it may be said that flowers and their visitors have evolved hand in hand. Cross-fertilisation is much surer by insects than by the wind, and cross-fertilisation is more advantageous than self-fertilisation because it promotes both fertility and plasticity. It was probably in this period that coloured flowers--attractive to insect-visitors--began to justify themselves as beauty became useful, and began to relieve the monotonous green of the horsetail and club-moss forests, which covered great tracts of the earth for millions of years. In the Carboniferous forests there were also land-snails, representing one of the minor invasions of the dry land, tending on the whole to check vegetation. They, too, were probably preyed upon by the Amphibians, some of which attained a large size. Each age has had its giants, and those of the Carboniferous were Amphibians called Labyrinthodonts, some of which were almost as big as donkeys. It need hardly be said that it was in this period that most of the Coal-measures were laid down by the immense acc.u.mulation of the spores and debris of the club-moss forests. Ages afterwards, it was given to man to tap this great source of energy--traceable back to the sunshine of millions of years ago. Even then it was true that no plant or animal lives or dies to itself!
The Acquisitions of Amphibians..
As Amphibians had their Golden Age in the Carboniferous period we may fitly use this opportunity of indicating the advances in evolution which the emergence of Amphibians implied. (1) In the first place the pa.s.sage from water to dry land was the beginning of a higher and more promiseful life, taxed no doubt by increased difficulties. The natural question rises why animals should have migrated from water to dry land at all when great difficulties were involved in the transition. The answers must be: (a) that local drying up of water-basins or elevations of the land surface often made the old haunts untenable; (b) that there may have been great congestion and compet.i.tion in the old quarters; and (c) that there has been an undeniable endeavour after well-being throughout the history of animal life. In the same way with mankind, migrations were prompted by the setting in of prolonged drought, by over-population, and by the spirit of adventure. (2) In Amphibians for the first time the non-digitate paired fins of fishes were replaced by limbs with fingers and toes. This implied an advantageous power of grasping, of holding firm, of putting food into the mouth, of feeling things in three dimensions. (3) We cannot be positive in regard to the soft parts of the ancient Amphibians known only as fossils, but if they were in a general way like the frogs and toads, newts and salamanders of the present day, we may say that they made among other acquisitions the following: true ventral lungs, a three-chambered heart, a movable tongue, a drum to the ear, and lids to the eyes. It is very interesting to find that though the tongue of the tadpole has some muscle-fibres in it, they are not strong enough to effect movement, recalling the tongue of fishes, which has not any muscles at all. Gradually, as the tadpole becomes a frog, the muscle-fibres grow in strength, and make it possible for the full-grown creature to shoot out its tongue upon insects. This is probably a recapitulation of what was accomplished in the course of millennia in the history of the Amphibian race. (4) Another acquisition made by Amphibians was a voice, due, as in ourselves, to the rapid pa.s.sage of air over taut membranes (vocal cords) stretched in the larynx. It is an interesting fact that for millions of years there was upon the earth no sound of life at all, only the noise of wind and wave, thunder and avalanche. Apart from the instrumental music of some insects, perhaps beginning in the Carboniferous, the first vital sounds were due to Amphibians, and theirs certainly was the first voice--surely one of the great steps in organic evolution.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: British Museum (Natural History).
FOSSIL OF A PTERODACTYL OR EXTINCT FLYING DRAGON.
The wing is made of a web of skin extended on the enormously elongated outermost finger. The long tail served for balancing and steering. The Pterodactyls varied from the size of sparrows to a wing-span of fifteen feet--the largest flying creatures.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: From Knipe"s "Nebula to Man."
PARIASAURUS: AN EXTINCT VEGETARIAN TRIa.s.sIC REPTILE.
Total length about 9 feet. (Remains found in Cape Colony, South Africa.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: From Knipe"s "Nebula to Man."
TRICERATOPS: A HUGE EXTINCT REPTILE.
(From remains found in Cretaceous strata of Wyoming, U.S.A.).
This Dinosaur, about the size of a large rhinoceros, had a huge three-horned skull with a remarkable bony collar over the neck. But, as in many other cases, its brain was so small that it could have pa.s.sed down the spinal ca.n.a.l in which the spinal cord lies. Perhaps this partly accounts for the extinction of giant reptiles.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: "Daily Mail."
THE DUCKMOLE OR DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS OF AUSTRALIA.
The Duckmole or Duck-billed Platypus of Australia is a survivor of the most primitive mammals. It harks back to reptiles, e.g. in being an egg-layer, in having comparatively large eggs, and in being imperfectly warm-blooded. It swims well and feeds on small water-animals. It can also burrow.]
Evolution of the Voice.
The first use of the voice was probably that indicated by our frogs and toads--it serves as a s.e.x-call. That is the meaning of the trumpeting with which frogs herald the spring, and it is often only in the males that the voice is well developed. But if we look forward, past Amphibians altogether, we find the voice becoming a maternal call helping to secure the safety of the young--a use very obvious when young birds squat motionless at the sound of the parent"s danger-note. Later on, probably, the voice became an infantile call, as when the unhatched crocodile pipes from within the deeply buried egg, signalling to the mother that it is time to be unearthed. Higher still the voice expresses emotion, as in the song of birds, often outside the limits of the breeding time. Later still, particular sounds become words, signifying particular things or feelings, such as "food," "danger," "home," "anger," and "joy." Finally words become a medium of social intercourse and as symbols help to make it possible for man to reason.
-- 2.
The Early Reptiles.
In the Permian period reptiles appeared, or perhaps one should say, began to a.s.sert themselves. That is to say, there was an emergence of backboned animals which were free from water and relinquished the method of breathing by gills, which Amphibians retained in their young stages at least. The unhatched or unborn reptile breathes by means of a vascular hood spread underneath the egg-sh.e.l.l and absorbing dry air from without. It is an interesting point that this vascular hood, called the allantois, is represented in the Amphibians by an unimportant bladder growing out from the hind end of the food-ca.n.a.l. A great step in evolution was implied in the origin of this ante-natal hood or foetal membrane and another one--of protective significance--called the amnion, which forms a water-bag over the delicate embryo. The step meant total emanc.i.p.ation from the water and from gill-breathing, and the two foetal membranes, the amnion and the allantois, persist not only in all reptiles but in birds and mammals as well. These higher Vertebrates are therefore called Amniota in contrast to the Lower Vertebrates or Anamnia (the Amphibians, Fishes, and primitive types).
It is a suggestive fact that the embryos of all reptiles, birds, and mammals show gill-clefts--a tell-tale evidence of their distant aquatic ancestry. But these embryonic gill-clefts are not used for respiration and show no trace of gills except in a few embryonic reptiles and birds where their dwindled vestiges have been recently discovered. As to the gill-clefts, they are of no use in higher Vertebrates except that the first becomes the Eustachian tube leading from the ear-pa.s.sage to the back of the mouth. The reason why they persist when only one is of any use, and that in a transformed guise, would be difficult to interpret except in terms of the Evolution theory. They ill.u.s.trate the lingering influence of a long pedigree, the living hand of the past, the tendency that individual development has to recapitulate racial evolution. In a condensed and telescoped manner, of course, for what took the race a million years may be recapitulated by the individual in a week!
In the Permian period the warm moist climate of most of the Carboniferous period was replaced by severe conditions, culminating in an Ice Age which spread from the Southern Hemisphere throughout the world. With this was a.s.sociated a waning of the Carboniferous flora, and the appearance of a new one, consisting of ferns, conifers, ginkgos, and cycads, which persisted until near the end of the Mesozoic era. The Permian Ice Age lasted for millions of years, and was most severe in the Far South. Of course, it was a very different world then, for North Europe was joined to North America, Africa to South America, and Australia to Asia. It was probably during the Permian Ice Age that many of the insects divided their life-history into two main chapters--the feeding, growing, moulting, immature, larval stages, e.g. caterpillars, and the more ascetic, non-growing, non-moulting, winged phase, adapted for reproduction. Between these there intervened the quiescent, well-protected pupa stage or chrysalis, probably adapted to begin with as a means of surviving the severe winter. For it is easier for an animal to survive when the vital processes are more or less in abeyance.
Disappearance of many Ancient Types.
We cannot leave the last period of the Pal-ozoic era and its prolonged ice age without noticing that it meant the entire cessation of a large number of ancient types, especially among plants and backboneless animals, which now disappear for ever. It is necessary to understand that the animals of ancient days stand in three different relations to those of to-day. (a) There are ancient types that have living representatives, sometimes few and sometimes many, sometimes much changed and sometimes but slightly changed. The lamp-sh.e.l.l, Lingulella, of the Cambrian and Ordovician period has a very near relative in the Lingula of to-day. There are a few extremely conservative animals. (b) There are ancient types which have no living representatives, except in the guise of transformed descendants, as the King-crab (Limulus) may be said to be a transformed descendant of the otherwise quite extinct race to which Eurypterids or Sea-scorpions belonged. (c) There are altogether extinct types--lost races--which have left not a wrack behind. For there is not any representation to-day of such races as Graptolites and Trilobites.
Looking backwards over the many millions of years comprised in the Pal-ozoic era, what may we emphasise as the most salient features? There was in the Cambrian the establishment of the chief cla.s.ses of backboneless animals; in the Ordovician the first fishes and perhaps the first terrestrial plants; in the Silurian the emergence of air-breathing Invertebrates and mud-fishes; in the Devonian the appearance of the first Amphibians, from which all higher land animals are descended, and the establishment of a land flora; in the Carboniferous the great Club-moss forests and an exuberance of air-breathing insects and their allies; in the Permian the first reptiles and a new flora.
THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGES.
-- 1.
The Mesozoic Era.
In a broad way the Mesozoic era corresponds with the Golden Age of reptiles, and with the climax of the Conifer and Cycad flora, which was established in the Permian. But among the Conifers and Cycads our modern flowering plants were beginning to show face tentatively, just like birds and mammals among the great reptiles.
In the Tria.s.sic period the exuberance of reptilian life which marked the Permian was continued. Besides Turtles which still persist, there were Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Dinosaurs, and Pterosaurs, none of which lasted beyond the Mesozoic era. Of great importance was the rise of the Dinosaurs in the Tria.s.sic, for it is highly probable that within the limits of this vigorous and plastic stock--some of them bipeds--we must look for the ancestors of both birds and mammals. Both land and water were dominated by reptiles, some of which attained to gigantic size. Had there been any zoologist in those days, he would have been very sagacious indeed if he had suspected that reptiles did not represent the climax of creation.
The Flying Dragons.
The Jura.s.sic period showed a continuance of the reptilian splendour. They radiated in many directions, becoming adapted to many haunts. Thus there were many Fish Lizards paddling in the seas, many types of terrestrial dragons stalking about on land, many swiftly gliding alligator-like forms, and the Flying Dragons which began in the Tria.s.sic attained to remarkable success and variety. Their wing was formed by the extension of a great fold of skin on the enormously elongated outermost finger, and they varied from the size of a sparrow to a spread of over five feet. A soldering of the dorsal vertebr- as in our Flying Birds was an adaptation to striking the air with some force, but as there is not more than a slight keel, if any, on the breast-bone, it is unlikely that they could fly far. For we know from our modern birds that the power of flight may be to some extent gauged from the degree of development of the keel, which is simply a great ridge for the better insertion of the muscles of flight. It is absent, of course, in the Running Birds, like the ostrich, and it has degenerated in an interesting way in the burrowing parrot (Stringops) and a few other birds that have "gone back."
The First Known Bird.
But the Jura.s.sic is particularly memorable because its strata have yielded two fine specimens of the first known bird, Arch-opteryx. These were entombed in the deposits which formed the fine-grained lithographic stones of Bavaria, and practically every bone in the body is preserved except the breast-bone. Even the feathers have left their marks with distinctness. This oldest known bird--too far advanced to be the first bird--was about the size of a crow and was probably of arboreal habits. Of great interest are its reptilian features, so p.r.o.nounced that one cannot evade the evolutionist suggestion. It had teeth in both jaws, which no modern bird has; it had a long lizard-like tail, which no modern bird has; it had claws on three fingers, and a sort of half-made wing. That is to say, it does not show, what all modern birds show, a fusion of half the wrist-bones with the whole of the palm-bones, the well-known carpo-metacarpus bone which forms a basis for the longest pinions. In many reptiles, such as Crocodiles, there are peculiar bones running across the abdomen beneath the skin, the so-called "abdominal ribs," and it seems an eloquent detail to find these represented in Arch-opteryx, the earliest known bird. No modern bird shows any trace of them. [Ill.u.s.tration: SKELETON OF AN EXTINCT FLIGHTLESS TOOTHED BIRD, HESPERORNIS (After Marsh.).
The bird was five or six feet high, something like a swimming ostrich, with a very powerful leg but only a vestige of a wing. There were sharp teeth in a groove. The modern divers come nearest to this ancient type.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: SIX STAGES IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE, SHOWING GRADUAL INCREASE IN SIZE.
(After Lull and Matthew.).
1. Four-toed horse, Eohippus, about one foot high. Lower Eocene, N. America.
2. Another four-toed horse, Orohippus, a little over a foot high. Middle Eocene, N. America.