Read Ebook: The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal Vol. XLIX April-October 1850 by Various Jameson Robert Editor

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An occasional log drifts to their shores; and at some of the more isolated atolls, where the natives are ignorant of any land but the spot they inhabit; they are deemed direct gifts from a propitiated deity. These drift-logs were noticed by Kotzebue, at the Marshall Islands, and he remarked also that they often brought stones in their roots. Similar facts were observed by us at the Tarawan group, and also at Enderby's Island, and elsewhere.

The stones at the Tarawan Islands, as far as we could learn, are generally basaltic, and they are highly valued for whetstones, pestles, and hatchets. The logs are claimed by the chiefs for canoes. Some of the logs on Enderby's Island were forty feet long, and four in diameter.

Fragments of pumice and resin are transported by the waves to the Tarawan Islands. We were informed that the pumice was gathered from the shores by the women, and pounded up to fertilize the soil of their taro patches; and it is so common, that one woman will pick up a peck in a day. Pumice was also met with at Fakaafo. Volcanic ashes are sometimes distributed over these islands, through the atmosphere; and in this manner the soil of the Tonga Islands is improved, and in some places it has received a reddish colour.

The officers of the "Vincennes" observed several large masses of compact and cellular basalt on Rose Island, a few degrees east of Samoa: they lie two hundred yards inside of the line of breakers. The island is uninhabited, and the origin of the stories is doubtful; they may have been brought there by roots of trees, or perhaps by some canoe.

The language of the natives indicates their poverty, as well as the limited productions and unvarying features of the land. All words, like those for mountain, hill, river, and many of the implements of their ancestors, as well as the trees and other vegetation of the land from which they are derived, are lost to them; and as words are but signs for ideas, they have fallen off in general intelligence. It would be an interesting inquiry for the philosopher, to what extent a race of men, placed in such circumstances, are capable of mental improvement. Perhaps the query might be best answered by another: How many of the various arts of civilized life could exist in a land where shells are the only cutting instruments? The plants, in all but twenty-nine in number,--but a single mineral,--quadrupeds, none, with the exception of foreign mice,--fresh water barely enough for household purposes,--no streams, nor mountains, nor hills! How much of the poetry or literature of Europe would be intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded only to the limits of a coral island,--who had never conceived of a surface of land above half a mile in breadth, of a slope higher than a beach, of a change of seasons beyond a variation in the prevalence of rains? What elevation in morals should be expected upon a contracted islet, so readily overpeopled that threatened starvation drives to infanticide, and tends to cultivate the extremest selfishness? Assuredly, there is not a more unfavourable spot for moral or intellectual development in the wide world than the Coral Island, with all its beauty of grove and lake.

These islands are exposed to earthquakes and storms, like the continents, and occasionally a devastating wave sweeps across the land. During the heavier gales the natives sometimes secure their houses by tying them to the cocoa-nut trees, or to a stake planted for the purpose. A height of ten or twelve feet, the elevation of their land, is easily overtopped by the more violent seas; and great damage is sometimes experienced. The still more extensive earthquake waves, such as those which have swept up the coast of Spain, Peru, and the Sandwich Islands, would produce a complete deluge over these islands.--

Footnote 31: Read to the Geological Society of France, at their meeting on the 16th of April 1849.

Footnote 32: Spettatore del Vesuvio et Bulletino del Vesuvio. Napoli, 1832.

Footnote 33: Sopra la produzione delle fiamme nei vulcani, e sopra le consequenze che se ne possono tirare. Atti del Congresso di Lucca, 1845.

Footnote 34: Memoires de la Soci?t? Geologique de France, t. i., 2me serie.

With a mind at once philosophical and cultivated, he was able to generalise and describe, to unite erudition with good taste, and to treat questions of deepest science with that grace and picturesqueness of style, which renders them popular without detracting from their accuracy. His love for geology amounted to enthusiasm; he was therefore so zealous in propagating his views, that certain jealous minds could not pardon him, and led him to atone for his fault, by a voluntary exile. The apostle of the science, he likewise was its martyr; thus nothing was wanting to his fame. It is the privilege of men of genius to be persecuted. Obliged to yield to the storm, Pilla left Naples, but by his writings he belonged to Italy at large; and the unanimous acclamation which greeted him in the chair formerly occupied by Galileo, conferred on him by the liberality of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, formed at once his triumph and revenge.

Footnote 35: Trattato mineralogico delle Roccie, Napoli.

Footnote 36: Introduzione allo studio della geologia, Napoli.

Footnote 37: Osservazioni Geologiche che si possono fare lungo la strada da Napoli a Vienna.

During the years of his professorship at Pisa, Pilla published, in succession, a comparative Essay on the formations which compose the soil of Italy; a Collection of the Mineral riches of Tuscany; two Memoirs on the Etrurian Formation; History of an Earthquake felt in Tuscany, in 1846; many notices respecting the Calcare-rosso, and on the temperature observed in the wells of Monte-Massi; lastly, the first volume of his Treatise on Geology. The entire work would have formed four octavo volumes. The materials were prepared, but death left the work incomplete. As these various writings are in the hands of all geologists, we give no analysis of them; which indeed would only be a faint reflection from the pictures present to your memory. I may merely say, that the elevated considerations of the general physics of the globe to which he has risen in appreciating and investigating the causes of earthquakes, the comprehensive and methodical plan on which he has projected this geological treatise, by affording us a proof of the fertility and maturity of his mind, shew us, at the same time, the importance of the part reserved for a philosopher, whom death has removed from the present scene before he had reached his thirty-sixth year.

Footnote 38: Saggio comparative dei terreni che compongono il suolo de l'Italia, Pisa.

Footnote 39: Breve cenno sopra la richezza mineralogica della Toscano, Pisa.

Footnote 40: Sulla vera posizione del terreno di macigno in Italia, Pisa; and Memoires de la Soci?t? geologique de France, 2me serie, t. ii.

Footnote 41: Storia del tremuoto che ha devastuto i paesi della costa Toscana, il di 14 Agosto 1846, Pisa.

Footnote 42: Miscellanee di fisica e di Storia naturale di Pisa, anno 1, Nos. 7 and 8.

Footnote 43: Trattato di geologia, t. i., Pisa, 1847.

The war of independence raged at the time when Pilla was about to visit the north of Europe, in order to complete his studies in practical geology, by comparing the different formations. Every generous heart in Italy beat high at the report of the insurrection of Milan; and the Universities of Pisa and Sienna, by demanding arms and first flying to the scene of danger, shewed that hearts, proved in the fire of science, are prepared for great things. Pilla marched at the head of his pupils, and led them in the path of glory, as he had done in that of philosophy. The love of country and thirst for independence, by subjugating his heart, had stifled the calculation of reason under the impulse and delirium of enthusiasm. He had foreseen the issue of the struggle; for he said to me some days before setting out for the plains of Lombardy, "the hour of our fall has struck. Italy loses by fourteen ages of servitude the splendour of her early days. They are leading us to slaughter; but we must teach our children how to die, in order that they may know how they may one day become free."

The University legion formed a small corps which was placed on the right wing of the Piedmontese army, and occupied the positions of Curtatone and Montanara. The principal effort of the Austrian army was directed against these lines, in the affair of the 29th May 1848. Attacked by 13,000 imperial troops, the Tuscans resisted courageously, and did not fall back till they had left 250 of their men on the field of battle. Their heroic resistance paved the way for the success of Goito. Pilla was found among the dead.

"We perceive that there are great specific differences between the plants of these localities, and that hitherto no species common to them has been found. Must we ascribe these differences to the influence of the great diversity of geographical position, or is there, besides, a difference in the period of their origin among these formations? The only character which tends to bring these two latter Floras near each other, is the relation which both of them bear to the coal-formations, of which they seem to be a kind of extract, reminding us more especially of the most recent beds.

"With regard to the plants of the bituminous slates of the Mansfeld district, they are so few in number, and appear to have been deposited in conditions so different, that we can with difficulty compare them with the two other Floras. Yet the species of Sphenopteris are extremely like each other in the three formations, and an exact comparison would perhaps establish the identity of many of them. The Pecopteris crenulata of Ilmenau, is only perhaps an imperfect state of the Pecopteris abbreviata of Lod?ve; lastly, the Callipteris of the Permian formation of Lod?ve have a very close connection between themselves and the Callipteris of the coal-formation.

"We may add, with regard to the bituminous slates of Thuringia, that many of these fossils appear to be marine plants, whose numbers would become much more considerable if we did not suppress all the imperfect impressions which have been described as such, and which are nothing more than fragments of ferns or altered coniferae.

"This reign of the Gymnospermous dicotyledons is divided into two periods; the first, in which the Coniferae predominate, and in which the Cycadeae scarcely appear; the second, in which this family becomes predominating in the number of species, in frequency and variety of generic forms. The latter may be divided into many epochs, each presenting peculiar characters.

"This consideration appears to me to separate completely, in a botanical point of view, the period of the variegated sandstone from that of the Keuper, although both are placed by geologists in the trias-formation. For the Cycadeae become very abundant in the Keuper, are perfectly characterised, and often analogous to those of the Jurassic period; while the Coniferae of the variegated sandstone are, on the contrary, wanting in this formation.

"Yet these common characters, which indicate a great analogy between the Floras of each of these epochs of formation, do not prevent each of them having characters of its own, and often an assemblage of species, almost all peculiar to each particular epoch. We ought, therefore, to distinguish here those various subdivisions, the number of which will perhaps be afterwards multiplied, when we become better acquainted with the vegetables of each of the stages of the Jurassic formations.

"This list is chiefly founded on the fossils, so varied in character, collected on the coasts of Yorkshire, near Whitby and Scarborough, in beds which are referred to different parts of the inferior oolite, and particularly to the great oolite. It likewise contains a small number of species found in the slaty limestone of Stonesfield, near Oxford, depending on these same beds.

"In Germany, it is more especially in the slaty limestone of Solenhofen, near Aichstaedt, that these fossils have been observed, and particularly those of the family of Algae. M. Gaeppert likewise notices many Cycadeae in the Jurassic formation of Ludwigsdorf, near Kreuzburg, in Silesia.

"But these localities, so diverse, are referrible to very different stages of the Oolithic series, and perhaps will constitute, when they are better known, and more fully explored, distinct epochs.

"We can therefore distinguish two great periods in the reign of the Angiosperms:

"We are acquainted with fossil vegetables of the Cretaceous period:--

"But in other places, and in beds belonging to epochs certainly different, this period has presented only marine vegetables; such more especially are those fucoidal sandstones or macigno, characterised by Chondrites targionii, aequalis, intricatus, &c., now designated by the name of fucoidal sandstone or flysch--the geological epoch of which has long been doubtful, but which observers seem to agree in considering as a distinct formation, superior to the chalk, and inferior to the most ancient beds of the Tertiary formations.

"These fucoidal sandstones form a very distinct epoch, which hitherto appears to be characterised only by marine vegetables, and what, at least in a botanical point of view, would form the line of demarcation between the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations; for it is remarkable that the fuci found there in such great numbers have little connection with those of the Chalk, properly so called, and none whatever with those of the most ancient beds of the Tertiary formations, such as those of Monte-Bolca.

"From the study and comparison of these fossils, derived from such various sources, we may divide the Cretaceous period into three epochs, of which the middle one is the true Cretaceous epoch. The others, characterised almost exclusively by marine vegetables, are somewhat doubtful with regard to their true geological position; the one, more ancient than the Chalk, contains only the subcretaceous lignites of the neighbourhood of La Rochelle, and the Department of Dordogne; the other, superior to the Chalk, corresponds to the Sandstone with fucoides."

"This small Flora is almost entirely founded on fossil plants, collected among the marine lignites of the Isle of Aix, near La Rochelle, long since described by M. Fleureau de Bellevue.

"Does this fossil Flora correspond to a formation almost entirely marine, but cotemporary with the Wealdean epoch? New investigations can alone determine this, but we may suppose an analogy between the Brachyphyllum of the epochs."

"We ought, moreover, to notice at least from ten to twelve species of dicotyledonous leaves, indeterminate, and often imperfect, figured by Geinitz, Reuss, Corda, and Goeppert, or existing in collections.

"This Flora, which contains from sixty to seventy species, is, as we perceive, remarkable in this respect, that the Angiospermous dicotyledons nearly equal the Gymnospermous dicotyledons, and in the existence of a pretty considerable number of well characterised Cycadeae, which cease to appear at the Eocene epoch of the Tertiary formations.

"I have not hitherto found land plants mingled with these marine species. I do not believe that fossil woods have been met with.

The Flora of the fucoidean sandstone is constituted by twelve species of Algae

"What is remarkable in this series of species is, that they have nothing in common, either with the Algae of the Subcretaceous epoch, or with those of the Eocene epoch, and particularly of Monte-Bolca, with which this Flora should be almost cotemporary, according to many geologists. The identity of these species of Algae is likewise remarkable in all the localities, however distant from each other--localities so numerous, in regard to the greater number of these species, that I have been unable to enumerate them.

"The Chondrites targionii, or perhaps a distinct species, but very nearly related, is the only one presented in another formation, in the greensand and gault of the Isle of Wight, in England, according to M. Fitton; and in this same formation, in the department of the Oise, according to M. Graves.

"Notwithstanding this assemblage of characters common to the whole Tertiary period, there are evidently notable differences in the generic and specific forms, and in the predominance of certain families at different epochs of this long period; but here we often experience serious difficulties in establishing a uniformity as to time among the numerous local formations which constitute the different Tertiary formations. In assigning the different localities where fossil vegetables have been observed to the principal divisions of the Tertiary series, I have not followed exactly the bases admitted by M. Unger in his Synopsis; I have approached nearer to the distribution adopted by M. Raulin, in his Memoir on the Transformations of the Flora of Central Europe during the Tertiary period , which refers many of the formations, classified by M. Unger in the Miocene division, to the Pliocene, or most recent epoch. Yet, according to the advice of M. Elie de Beaumont, I have not placed all the Lignite formations of Germany in the Pliocene division, as M. Raulin has done, nor all of them in the Miocene division, like M. Unger; but, conformably to the old opinion of my father, I have left the Lignites from the shores of the Baltic, which include amber, in the inferior division of the old basins of Paris, London, and Brussels, considering them cotemporary with the Soisson Lignites. Those of the banks of the Rhine, of Wetteravia and Westphalia, are arranged in the Miocene division; those of Styria, and part of Bohemia, on the contrary, are placed among the recent or Pliocene formations.

"This distribution agrees pretty generally with the nature of the vegetables contained in them. One important point only leaves me in doubt: this relates to the Lignites of the environs of Frankfort or Wetteravia, the plants of which are pretty generally analogous to those of OEningen or Partschlug in Styria; although their geological position seems to call upon us to refer them to a more ancient formation.

"It is probable that a more complete knowledge of these diverse deposits would lead to a division into distinct epochs more numerous; but I think that, in the meantime, the division into three principal epochs, which I shall designate, with the majority of geologists, by the names Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, is sufficient for a comparison of the successive changes of the vegetable kingdom. I shall point out for each of them the localities which I think should be comprehended under these different designations.

"With regard to the general characters which result from the comparative examinations of these Floras, we find that the number of species, in the great divisions, are thus distributed in these three Floras:--

"It may only be remarked that, in the first column, or Eocene formation, the fossil fruits of the Isle of Sheppey--a part only of which have been described by M. Bowerbank--have a great influence on the numbers of the different divisions of Phanerogams, and that this locality appears altogether exceptional, and is, perhaps, an example of the effect of currents conveying exotic fruits from remote climates, and accumulating them on a point of the shores of Europe.

"In this point of view, the enumeration of the plants of this first epoch is in no way comparable to that of the other epochs, where I have refrained even from introducing the small number of fossil plants from the Tertiary formations of the equatorial regions that are known, in order to confine myself to a comparison of the Tertiary Floras of Europe.

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