THE LIFE OF THE EARTH.

Otago Witness, Issue 1156, 24 January 1874, Page 21

THE LIFE OF THE EARTH.

The Earth, the orb on ■which we live and move and have our being, sickens at times. Such was the conclusion at which we arrived in our article upon great epidemic Plagues. Good reader ! does the phrase startle you ? In ordinary talk, we often speak of the Earth as if it were a living, if not a sentient being. And in early times, men— indeed all the nations of mankind — not only spoke but thought in this way. They even paid ndoration to Earth us the great Mother,— ad the parent of all the life that we see around us, and of man kind too. Some peoples, like the early Athenians, prided themselves on the idea that they were Autochthans- i.e. born of the soil of the country which thej r inhabited. And many of the picturesque myths of ancient Greece were simply poetical forms of the primitive beliefs of mankind (for the most part imported from the older Asiatic world), which attributed the origin of all life, and the grand source of Power affecting life, to Mother Earth, acted upon, or as it were sexually embraced, by the Jovian influence of the Sun. In modern times, at least in the matter-of-fact Western world, Life is held to be restricted (speaking roundly) to creatures or things which possess the power of locomotion, — a power which culminates in Man. and which sinks lower and lower, till the limit of Life (as the word is now used) is reached and disappears in the dubious half-animal half-vege-table formsof existence, like the Sponges. But Life, whether it be sentient or not, cannot be so limited. The stately forests that cover the earth with their pillared canopy of waving foliage ; the green or golden ere ps, that grow and ripen, rejoicing the heart of Man,— is there not Life in them ? The graceful stately Palm, that shoots its tall shaft aloft into the air from the surface of the sandy desert, and whose crown of feathery foliage, heavy with dates, stands silently thrilling in the tropical noon to the blaze of the sunlight, " like a lonely woman " (to use an Eastern metaphor) "nodding drowsily;" the grand solid Oak, which throws out its gnarled limbs all round, presenting an almost spherical mass of boughs and foliiijie to the winds that vainly assail it ; or the Fir of our Scottish mountains, which, rising from the scant soil of the rocks, over which ie spreads widely its shallow hungry roots in search of sustenance, exhibits its tall clean shaft and feathered crown, like a palm tree of the North ; -has not each of them a life of its own, as distinct as any which we find among the races of men and animals ?

Give to the Fir and the Oak, the pillarlike poplar, and the wide-spreading banyantree, exactly the same food and other elements of growth, — let them grow in the same soil, and (if they can) under the same influences of sky and climate ; and each will build up its food, the elements of the soil and air, into a form and fibre quite different from the others. Just as, in the hutnau species, the same food and sustenances of life are converted, in some cases, into fair hair, blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and tall frame; and in other cases into dark hair and eyes, sallow complexion, and short frames ; so is it, in more striking and fur more enduring fashion, in the lower world of trees and plants. In both of these cases — indeed in all such cases whereof the name is L 'fjion — the phenomenon is in its character identical. Each kind of creature or organism has a life-power of its own, which, while appropriating the same surrounding matter as its pabulum or food, transmutes that substance into its own, and builds it up in a form and fashion peculiar to itself. Herein it shows to demonstration not merely a life-power, but a vital power peculiar to itself, the individual action of its own life, — in other words, Life combined with Individuality.

1 And what are we to say of Flowers — those 1 lovely existences which blossom in a thousand 1 shapes and hues, making heautif ul the face of 1 Earth ; and then, after a brief heydey, shedding their glowing leaves, and falling down and disappearing the ground from which they sprung ? As we look at them in the early morning, awaking as from sleep and unfolding their blossoms, — as we see them radiant in full beauty at noonday, beneath the golden stimulanee of the sunlight, — or drooping again, with heavy head and closing eyes, at eventide, — do they not show to us how keenly their little life thrills and changes with the grander life which surrounds them ? Can we look at a Rose, blooming in its full mor.iing beauty, brightly and tenderly as if it yearned for our admiration, yel be insensi . ble to a passing sadness, a natural melancholy when at evening we see the Flower's bright blossoms loosening from their stem and strewing the ground, the black earth which like death will soon swallow them up. The Hindoos— in early times especially, and to a large extent even now — with that tender mysticism which belongs to their race, that fine sympathy with Nature, with all surrounding existence — look with a plaintive tenderness upon plants and flowers as possessing a life akin in essence with their own, — holding that the same Divine Soul breathes throughout the entire Universe, as the source of all Existence, and that plants and animals and men are but varying forms of the manifested life of the Supreme. And even in our own country, in hard matter-of-fact England, there are men — I am one of them — who can hardly be brought to pluck o flower from its stem, feeling as if they were doing it harm, robbing it of that sweet enjoyment of life to which every creature has a just claim. And who shall say that this feeling is wrong, however much he may (naturally) disregard the claims of inferior Life when opposed to his own ? Look, for instance, at that so-called mystery the Sensitive Plant, which visibly thjillp, &nd, mpves, and. shudders, and, esjiftndff

again, at and after the slightest contact with that other life contained in the human finger. Yet the ground, the soil, the hungry black earth, which thus swallows up all life and its gay blossomings, of itself begets and produces the whole world of vegetable existence, ever covering itself with a mantle of beauty. Leave the cultured precincts of the garden and orchard, the farm, and the plantations where the skill of man is at work, — pass away into the so-called waste places, and behold how richly untended Nature does her work. Stand on one of our wide upland moors, or in a solitary glen among th^. hills, far removed from the cultivating hand of man, and see how Earth crowns herself with beauty — with wild flowers and richly coloured mosses, and the purpje bloom of the heather, interspersed with the'lovely green of the ferns. See how the Alder and the graceful Birch-tree, with its silvery stem— the Lady of the woods — spring up beside the rocky streamlets in the hollows, casting fluttering shadows on the clear pools where the fishes play, yet where seldom a human eye comes to behold the loveliness of the scene,— the lavish prodigality with which Nature spontaneously adorns herself, and with which she adorned herself just the same countless ajons before Man appeared upon the scene. Nature, enduring for ever, year after year exhibits the same loveliness ; while we, proud mortals, pass away ! Even the lone deserts of Cobi and the Sahara produce their arid thorny shrubs, — life-power struggling into existence under the moss adverse circumstances ; so that ere long even those stony beds of ancient seas will cover themselves with fertile soil and be mantled with vegetable life. Even the Rocks, the deadest form of Matter, have a sort of life of their own. Theirs, indeed, is a slow growth, extending over ajons of time, and only perceptible to man in its results. It is in the oldest rocks that the mystery of inorganic life is most visible. The sandstone, and all the sedimentary rocks more or less, are still in embryo : they have not yet attained to Crystallisation, the highest form of rock-structure, the floweiing of inorganic matter. Yet where igneous rocks uprise through the sedimentary strata, we see how the latter tend to assimilate, in imperfect crystallisation, obeying the contagious force. And what are the veins of metals but portions of rock sublimated in course of ages by the warm electric currents, the nerve-force of Matter? And thegemsand sparry crystals— the Flowers of the rocks— what are they but still finer sublimations, or forms of growth ? Among the large flinty gravel often used to macadamise our suburban streets, you will find dozens of round smooth stones, which, on being broken, show an outer vein of pebble environing the common stone within, Had the gravel been allowed to remain where it was (in situ), this growth, this transmutation of flint into pebble, would have gone on until the whole stone was pebble, like what we find in the rocky beds of Scottish rivers. Growth even here !— in " dead " rock. Now, nil these multitudinous forms of Life nnto t merely in the animal world (endowed with the power of locomotion), but in the trees of the wood, the crops of the farm, the flowers of the garden and moorland, andevm in the seemingly inert rocks— what are they but separate and widely-diversed manifestations of the still grander, infinitely grander, life of the Earth itself -of our Orb, from which they spring ? And if so, how grand aud vastly beautiful must be the Life of the ; Earth, of which these are but the scatter d rays, the many diverse minor manifestations ? \ Man, by his natural instinct, by the influ* ■ ence of his organisation, gaimes everything \ by his human standard. He denies _ the 1 faculty of life to all organisms which differ : widely from his own— to all organisms in i which Life is embodied in a widely different shape, or manifests itself in widely different : modes, from his. And as he thinks thus of ', the inferior organisms which surround him : on earth's surface, so also does he think of > the Ear Mi itself and all the Orbs of the Universe, the grandest visible forms of the i Creator's work. A poet of our own country, by an inspiration un borrowed from Science, : has spoken of the starry worlds in a very different fashion, as grand and sentient i Existences — 1 For ever sinking as they shine, '■ " The hand that made us is Divine." i

In the book of Job, the pride of man is humbled by bringing him face to face with the mighty orbs which surround him— with the ever-moving starry tenants of the sky, circling in their vast and orderly courses, yet visible to him only as moving specks of liglit : "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion ? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season ? or canst tliou guide A returns with his sons ?" And the royal Psalmist of Israel, who had often in his youth watched ■with reverent wonder the bright courses of the atarry worlds, as he tended his father's flocks by night beneath the clear Syrian sky, gives a striking expression to his sense of the littleness of man compared with those grander works of the Almighty Creator :— "When I consider the heavens, the work of Ihy fingers, the Moon and the Stars, which Thou hast ordained : what is man, that Thou art mindful of /tint?" * Yet, in modern European thought at least, all those grand Orbs are. but dead imsentient matter; and the highest form of Life is Man, an ephemeron of our little planet tan it really be imagined that the perfection of organic life is confined to a creature with two arms and two legs— a perpendicular oblong six feet by two — who cannot evn move save in a state of unstable equilibrum ? A sphere, how ever magnificent in its proportions and condition— although in the grandest degree locomotive in space, and ceaselessly changing, top, in sympathy with the motions »ad jnfltt-

ences of the surronnding world of sister orbs —is held to be but dead matter. Yet.^ in truth, even in the narrow domain of physical and chemical science open to human inspection and study, it is not found and acknowledged that the Sphere is the most stable of all forms of agglomeration, and that all molecular matter seems to strive after sphericity, as the most perfect and enduring form — a goal, however, which it is overshootiug or falling short of, and hence is condemned to ceaseless and ephemeral changes ?

A sphere — like Earth and all the cosmical bodies, the tenants of the Universe, the grander forms of Creation — is really, even in the imperfect light of human science, the most fitting form for large aud enduring oxistencies. We think that Earth and all the starry orbs have no claim to the faculty of life, because they are not subject to those critical vicissitudes, variations of movement and condition, such as we naturally associate with life. This is because we cannot rid ouri selves of the ideas born of our own brief mortal life, whose duration counts hardly even as a moment in the lifetime of the Worlds. It is as if the tiny-winged insects which in summer hours hover in mazy dance over the surface of our rivers and. lakes, and which run through all the stages of their ephemeral existence in a day — born in the morning, enjoying themselves in the noonday sunshine, perpetuating their kind, and then sinking into death— were to form a similar opinion in regard to ourselves — denying to Man the possession of life because between morn and eve they can note no great changes in him such as happen to themselves. The greatest duration that can be ascribed to the Historical period of our race is but a day in the life of our planet ; and in that long time — long at least to vs — we certainly can note no changes in Earth at all corresponding to the birth and death and fitful career of shortlived SI an.

But if, by the royp.l gift of high intellect, we disabuse ourselves of the prejudices, the common modes of thought natural to a being so shortlived as Man, and view the career of Earth even as it is imperfectly visible to us, in the enduring records or tablets which she preserves, what a spectacle of mighty vicissitudes, catastrophes, and triumphant developments of Life and aspect is presented to our gaze ! The greatness of any Existence is roughly indicated by its power of endurance, by the length of iis life ; and the magnitude of the changes and exploits which belong to any order of life may in like manner be gauged by its brevity or longevity: the longer its career, the larger may be expected to be the vicissitudes it undergoes and the developments to which it attains. And how grand the changes in the past condition of our planet ! Even within Historic times, how mighty have been the forces at work, directly visible to us, in earthquakes, volcanic action, and terrible and widespread telluric epidemics, sweeping away at times one-half of the human population of the globe, besides countless herds and shoals of the lower animals. But if we look beyond Historic times, and in supplement to human records, read the enduring tablets (of Geology) where Earth has written her own history, how incomparably vaster still are the phenomena presented to us. In those Earth -records, what do we see ? Sea turned into land — and land into sea. Land uprising from the depth of the ocean, — becoming crowned with vege tation and animal existence — then sinking again beneath the waters, with all their wealth of animal and vegetable existence swept for hundreds of miles around by the ■wild currents of ocean and deposited at the bottom of the seas, where they grow into, or become imbedded in solid rock— like the coalbeds which are the spoils of land vegetation swept away into the seas, or the shells and bones of animals found imbedded in the solid strata. The whole surface of our planet has thus changed from land to water, and from water to land, — in some cases, by successive upheaval and submergence. Hardly less remarkable are the changes of climate over earth's surface. Countries once glowing with tropical he;it and vegetation have gradually changed into arctic regions, of perpetual frost and ice ; and again have emerged into a warmer atmosphere. Continents and islands have risen and sunk— have basked in the sunshine, or shivered in the cold. Over all its surface — its region of life — earth has experienced changes of condition of surpassing magnitude. Great mountain chains, belting the world, like the Himalayas and Ancles, have suddenly been upheaved, rising several miles into the air : while corresponding depressions have occurred, forming the basin of great lakes or seas. Inland seas, by upheaval, have emptied themselves in deluges across the land into the all-girdling ocean ; or suas have bocome confluent by the rupture of their walls of partition, — ns the Mediterranean and Atlantic by the disrupture of the Pillars of Hercules, and the Euxine and Ainin by the rupture of the rocks of the Bosphorous. Changes of this magnitude, marking the career of earth, are so immeasurably greater than any belonging to man's career, that the whole human race might toil together without being able to accomplish them. It would be a mad effort like that of vainly ambitious man 5000 years ago on the Plain of Shinar, when he aspired to build a tower which should reach unto heaven, — up to the starry world of whose vast distance he was so little cognisant, and which instead of an ocean of starry depths out stretching into the unfathomable void, seemed to him buc as a single plain of star-gemmed azure above him, in which, could he reach it, he might wander even aa ou the surface of earth, enjoying existence in a higher and sunnier world,—reaching perchance the Home of the Gods themselves, and tasting their supernal joys. Besides these vast successive changes in the dead aspect af earth, change even mpre gtrilv

ing have occurred in our planet's Life-power,

as manifested in the development of successive

forms of vegetable and animal existence upon its surface. Earth, in truth has changed in all its conditions and features, — the only resemblance to its primal self being that it is

still a sphere circling through the ether-deep of space.

Of the genesis of Eartli even geology can tell us nothing. Whether our Planet was thrown off as a molten mass from the central orb of our system, the sun ; or whether it was formed by condensation out of a belt of the tenuous cosmical matter ; the ether which pervades the universe, — building itself up by the agglomeration of atoms into inorganic forms which at length became capable of generating what we call life, and slowly covering its surface with animated existences, we cannot tell. But though we cannot see the Birth of Earth, at least in geology we can see the infancy of our planet ; we can behold it at a time when its vital power, or cosmical force (which is inherent in all matter), was sufficient only for the production of inorganic forms — like water and the rocks. No soil then, with its power of begetting vegetable life, — still less of producing creatures endowed Avith the power of locomotion, which too rashly we regard as an indispensable attribute of life and sensibility.

Two forces or conditions must have cooperated in this development of our planet — raising it from what may be called a dead orb into endless manifestations of life. One of these was the solidifying process, and molecular agglomeration — whether our planet was condensed from the ether, or thrown of in a cooling mass from the Sun ; the other, and still and ever operating influence, was the inter-action of cosmical force, between the newborn planet and the other and vaster orbs in surrounding space.

Geology — the decipherment of the rocky tablets in which eartli has written her own history— reveals to us an epoch when no life of any kind existed on earth's surface, — when the life of our planet was still slumbering, too weak to develop itself in external forms. But from this primal stage of inertness -of an embiyo. itself existing, but manifesting no fractional or separate life, — organic animated forms begin, and steadily increase in numbers and variety, and also rise in quality of organisation until the human period is reached. What is the cause or explanation of this ? i

At first, in its earliest epoch or stage of cosmical existence, our planet was solidifying : it was then a chaos, in which matter was "without form," devoid even of molecular structure — an embryo, wherein life is latent, but which has not risen into definite shapes —an Orb pregnaut with capacities for life, but as yet without the power | of giving to it exterior developments. Both vegetable and animal life first began in the waters. "All life," said the Greek sage, '• is in the waters ". — the most mobile form of terrestrial matter. And doubtless the action of water, of the wide-spreading primordial ocean, by the mutation of the old inert materials into new l".»rms, crumbling the primal rocks into stratified matter of softer structure, gradually, on the upheaval of those strata above the level of the seas, prepared the surface of Earth for the generation and srpport of higher forms of life. But whence came those new forms of existence ? Manifestly from increased life-power in the Eartli itself — the maternal soil being now exposed to the vivifying influence of the solar beams, and becoming pregnant like Danac beneath a golden shower. But may we not also conjecture that this genesis of terrestrial life may have been greatly aided by the stimulating influence of increased cosmical interaction between our orb and the other orbs in space? The. more powerful this interaction (due to the varying position of our planet, or of our Solar system, and increasing as it is more nearly and thickly surrounded by the starry worlds) the greater unquestionably will be the cosmical power and vitality of our planet. And as our Solar system is ever speeding onwards through space, who can tell through what dense strata of stars, or dreary wastes of sky, Earth may have journeyed in her millions of years of everwandering existence? "Man is of yesterday, and knows nothing ;" yet even in this the last two thousand years, our bearings mid the star- filled universe have visibly altered ; how great, then, may have been the change since this world of ours began ? The influence of solidification predominated in the infancy of our planet— the extraterrestrial influence of surrounding orbs predominates now, as it has done doubtless for myriads of years. The matter of our globe remains ever the same ; it was as great before animal or even vegetable life was developed as it is now when the whole face of the Earth is covered with a rich crop of Existence, But, though the amount of matter remains the same, the amount of. " life " by which that matter is animated and shaped has varied immensely, and doubtless will continue to vary.

In one of the previous articles of this now concluded series, we have spoken of Earth's times of sickening — the great plagues which hive half unpeopled the glohe. Many of these have occurred in ,the Historic period, and they .will continue to recur. Man's power of resisting the influence of these telluric sickenings has undoubtedly increased ; and so rapid of late years has been the growth of his powers, controlling or turning to his own use the forces of nature, that possibly in subsequent times he may be able to bid defiance to many of tho deleterious telluric changes which in past times have desolated the inhabited earth. It is on this growth of knowledge, by which man by the royal gift of mind as it were conquers nature, that chiefly depends the future development of the human raw alike in power and in lw,ppitv»n. Never •

theless it must be borne in mind that, simply as a physical existence, man is of aIL other beings the most susceptible to the changes which may overtake our planet. The higher the organisation, the more will it be affected by variations in Earth's lifebegetting and life- sustaining powers. Recent dredgings in the depths of the Atlantic have revealed the continued existence of some of those low-organised creatures which

were among the first living productions of Earth, and which have maintained themselves for millions of years, amid all the changes and convulsions of our globe, while successive races of higher animals have perished. When Earth's life-power diminishes, it is the higher organisms which suffer most. They are the latest productions, the highest forms, of Earth's life-power; and hence they suffer most, ebb away or disappear, when the height or full-tide of life-poAver which produced them undergoes a decline. But, in like manner, if the life-power of our planet increases, the effect will be most apparent in man, as the highest of terrestrial organisms. The human race are as it were the upper zone of telluric life, by the rise or sinking of which every change of Earth's life-power is indexed. Man would be raised to a still higher organisation by any increase of the telluric life-power,— such as would ensue if Earth, in future ages', were more acted upon by the stimulating influences of the surround, ing orbs — as would be the case if our Solar system in its jonrney through the skies were carried into the thick of the Worlds. On the other hand, should, in the cycles of the Worlds, our little planet be borne with our Solar system farther away from the surrounding orbs, away into the waste places of the sky — into those wide starless regions, which are so striking a feature in the heavens of the southern hemisphere— Earth's life-power will diminish : Man himself will sink into a lower type, or wholly die out Earth itself, now so blooming with life ia a myriad forms of organised matter, will lapse into Arctic desolation or the arid barrenness of the Sahara. Perchance becoming a dead world like the moon — that fair wanderer in our skies, which, despite its witching flood of silvery radiance, is an everpresent witness of cosmical desolation.

Such, then, in its wonderful forms and vicissitudes, is the history of Matter— that outer mantle of the Supreme Being — the ever changing robe in which He all-unchanging manifests Himself — the embodied thoughts of the Creator This life-power of matter, what is it but tho breath of the Supreme moving in and animating all His works, Himself the soul of the universe ; Maker and Ruler of the Worlds. Like a garment (from time to time) He casts them, and they pass away — consumed like a scroll. And such, too, the story of our tiny planet world, with all its manifold manifestations of existence. The Matter of Earth remains the same, but passes ceaselessly from one form or condition into others. Man himself, as a terrestrial existence, shares the same fate. Though the soul returns to God who gave it, the dust returns to dust as it was. Man, and the animals, the stately trees of the forest and the grass of the field, " which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven :" what are they all, but shapes whicl perish, relapsing into their primary elements, to be re-cast, reappearing in other forms under the ever-active lifepower of the Earth,— organisms, molecular structures of matter, which at death are resolved into lower forms of existence, or into the primal atoms devoid alike of organism and life. All earthly life in its fractional exterior forms— id est, not of Earth itself, but of the countless shapes of life which, cover its surface — is like to the shapes which ceaselessly appear, vanish, and reappear on the surface of a river — foam bells which alternately rise and sink on the broad bosom of the stream of life— each foam bell different, havins; its moment of existence under diverse conditions, mirroring separate aspects of land and sky. A perpetual harvest of death is accompanied by a careless springtime of new life : All changes : naught is lost. The forms arc ch.uised, And that which has been is not what it was,— Yet that which has becu, is

Our planet, as is known, has solidified since it came into existence ; to some extent, probably it is solidifying now, and may continue to do so. May not the conjecture of science be true, that our Solar system, nay, all the vast and countless orbs of the sky, obey the same law ? Drawing slowly nearer to each other, and hence (according to our theory) rising more and more into higher cosmi al power and life, till all the worlds, the universe, the present fabric of creation, culminates in a crisis, — terminates, like the humble life of a single creature, to be reformed by the creative hand of the Supreme. Between the grandest orb of the sky and the tiniest creature on Earth's surface there ia an identity in the law of being, — to live its day, and be re-formed into new existence. It is truo not only of man, but of the vast orbs around, that "in Him they live and move and have their being." But vastly sublime as is the conception of the Death of the Worlds, it is no more in the sight of the Maker of All, the ever-living One, than the death of feeble man or than the sparrow's fall. WoH on, ye Stuvs ! exult in youthful prime, Murk with bright curves thu printleas steps of

Tim<> ! Near and more near your beaming cars approach, And li'ssciiinsr orbs on lossimini,' orbs encroach. Flowers of the Sky ! yo, too, to fate must yield, Frail as your silken sisters of the field : Star after star from heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems orush ; Headlong, cxt'not, to one dark ocntre full. And Dark, and Night,, and Chaos, mhiglo all : Till o'er tlio wreck, emotying from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts hor oliauiceful form, Mounts from her funeral pyro ou wings of fli^mc, And soars ami sUiuett, another qnd tho eawo.