PREFACE

WHAT may be called the first edition of the present work was printed in the summer of 1906 under the title of "Illogical Geology." It was only a pamphlet, and was intended only as a sort of trial edition, being circulated privately by the author for examination and criticism, some five hundred copies being distributed gratuitously among the geologists and other scientists of this country and England. A large number of replies were received. The president of one of our greatest universities, who is rightly considered the leading authority in one department of zoology, wrote the author some six letters in defense of the popular theories; but he presented nothing in the way of argument that had not been considered in "Illogical Geology," and closed the subject by saying that he did not see "anything very amazing" in my Five Facts. But the replies from other illustrious scholars of international reputation have encouraged the author to believe that these Facts, as well as the whole general argument, absolutely demand a reconstruction of geological theory; and under this belief this preliminary outline has been revised and extended into the present volume, the changes warranting also a change of title.

No one was more painfully conscious of the crudeness and imperfections of the first edition than was the author. But it served its purpose in shaping up the subject; and the criticisms of many friends have been helpful in showing how it ought to be improved. However, the corrections and enlargements here presented have come chiefly from important discoveries that have since been made.

Perhaps of first importance among the latter should be mentioned the great increase in our knowledge of the so-called faulted area in Montana and Alberta, where several thousand square miles of Cambrian or Pre-Cambrian rocks occur, often apparently conformably, on the Cretaceous (see frontispiece). Bailey Willis and others had

already studied the southern portion of this area in Montana, though their work was unknown to the author; but it is only quite recently that the mountains of all this vast area have been studied together, with the result that similar conditions are now known to prevail over a district some 350 miles long from north to south, and about twenty or twenty-five miles from east to west. These things, with other discoveries elsewhere, have made it necessary to rewrite completely chapter 5; while a number of photographs have been added to help make the subject clearer. It now looks as if this very striking example of Palæozoic rocks quite obviously deposited in a natural way on top of Cretaceous over an immense extent of country, may do more than the hundreds of quite similar examples elsewhere have hitherto been able to accomplish in compelling a complete reform in geological theory.

Another important event since issuing "Illogical Geology" has been the publication of the English translation of the great work of Eduard Suess, "The Face of the Earth," with which the author had been acquainted previously only in an indirect way. For those who are familiar with this masterly work, it will be unnecessary to call attention to the many ways in which it confirms the positions taken in the first edition of the present work regarding (1) the radical differences between the ancient strata and the deposits now forming in our modern oceans, (2) the absolute fixedness of our present continents since the beginning of scientific observation, and hence (3) the hopelessness of trying longer to explain these ancient deposits on the basis of uniformity. Indeed, this work of Eduard Suess, who is perhaps the greatest of living geologists, may well be called the epitaph of the doctrine of uniformitarianism.

Professor Suess alludes to "the remarkable fact that it has been found possible to employ the same terminology to distinguish the sedimentary formations in all parts of the world." (Vol. 2, p. 540.) He reverts to this problem again and again, as if troubled by this modern form of the onion-coat theory; and finally, in putting it in the form of a question, which he considers one of the greatest prob

lems of geology, as to how one of these formations "recurs in parts of the earth so widely removed from one another, always attended by such characteristic features, and how it comes that even the more minute "stratigraphical subdivisions extend over the whole globe" (Vol. 1, p. 8), he says that "if we could assemble in one brilliant tribunal the most famous masters of our science, and could lay this question of the student before them, I doubt whether the reply would be unanimous, I do not even know whether it would be definite."

And he closes by acknowledging that if the student were to seek an answer to this great problem in "The Face of the Earth, " "he would not find in it an answer to his question." (Vol. 1, p. 15.)

But how easily this "remarkable fact" is explained when we once realize that the geological series of life has no time value whatever, but simply represents an old-time taxonomic series! That its terminology has proved to be universally applicable is the most natural thing in the world; while the fact that certain formations comprising the lower types of life are to be found all over the world is also just what we should expect from the almost universal extension of similar forms of life to-day.

A great deal has been written of late regarding the antiquity of Man in Europe, the more interesting part of it dealing with the large number of drawings that have been found on the walls of caves in numerous places in Southern Europe. But the author has not felt like materially revising his argument on this point in order to embody these more recent discoveries, for his confidence in the real antiquity of most if not all of them has grown steadily less with the passing years, and like the artificial distinctions made in glacial geology, the following up of the results of such subjective methods becomes a weariness of the flesh. When every layer in a sand-bank calls for a new age, and every peculiarity on a skull or a femur demands a new Latin name to characterize the particular species of the genus Homo represented, it would seem as if pseudo-scientific speculation could not well go much further; but until something more substantial is accomplished in the

way of discovering human remains, it has seemed best to leave the argument as first written. Some day we may discover something regarding the men of that ancient world that will make it worth while to rewrite this part also.

The first chapter has been wholly rewritten, in order to make the rather intricate matter of the a priori argument clearer to the general reader. The part of the Appendix dealing with the subject of Creation has also been rewritten and strengthened, as what was said on this point in the first edition was entirely too timid and weak in the light of the logic of the preceding argument; for if the scientific induction from Parts One and Two be sound, a literal Creation, such as Christianity teaches, is the only possible conclusion of a rational mind.

With the firm conviction that the night of cosmological speculation has nearly passed, and that the day of true inductive geology is about to dawn, this little work is sent forth with the request that its readers will view charitably the mistakes and shortcomings that can scarcely be avoided in a pioneer work like this, which attempts to reconstruct so comprehensive and so highly developed a science as geology.

Loma Linda, California, January, 1913.

THE AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTION

DURING the last quarter of a century or so, all the physical and biological sciences have experienced a most astonishing development. In most of them the rapidly accumulating discoveries have necessitated a readjustment or even the complete abandonment of long-cherished theories to make room for these troops of newly discovered facts. For as one of our leading physicists has remarked, "Directly a fact refuses to be pigeonholed, and will not be explained on theoretical grounds, the theory must go, or it must be revised to admit the new fact. (Sir William Crookes, "Living Age," Vol. 238, p. 318.) In other words, facts must always have the right of way over theory. And in any healthy science, the fundamental theories are always kept well adjusted to all the new discoveries; for whenever this is not done, a science soon gets in a comatose condition. But why is it that for nearly a century geology alone has never revised its fundamental theories? Is it a remarkable instance of perfection from the beginning, or is it a case of arrested development?

Geology is often spoken of as one of the youngest of the sciences. This is a mistake; for as Zittel has shown, some of the most fundamental theories of the science were well formulated long before the most essential facts in the related sciences were known. Thus the theories of the igneous origin of the crystalline rocks "had been laid without the assistance of chemistry," and before anything was known of the microscopic structure of these rocks. ("History of Geology and Palæontology," pp. 327, 341.) And in the same way the whole series of fossil plants and animals had been blocked off and even the details pretty well fixed previous to 1820, or before anything of importance was known of any class of living animals save Mammals. (Id., pp. 128-137.) But is it not incredible that this science, the one above all others dependent upon the