The base of the cliffs consists entirely11 of a very soft and plastic blue lias mud. This mud contains large numbers of fossils, chiefly chambered shells, but mixed with not a few relics12 of the great swimming and flying lizards13 that swarmed14 among the shallow flats or low islands of the lias sea. When the blue mud was slowly accumulating in the hollows of the ancient bottom, these huge saurians formed practically the highest race of animals then existing upon earth. There were, it is true, a few prim15?val kangaroo-mice and wombats16 among the rank brushwood of the mainland; and there may even have been a species or two of reptilian17 birds, with murderous-looking teeth and long lizard-like tails—descendants of those problematical creatures which printed their footmarks on the American trias, and ancestors of the later toothed bird whose tail-feathers have been naturally lithographed for us on the Solenhofen slate18. But in spite of such rare precursors19 of higher modern types, the saurian was in fact the real lord of earth in the lias ocean.
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran,
And he felt himself in his pride to be nature's crowning race.
We have adopted an easy and slovenly20 way of dividing all rocks into primary, secondary, and tertiary, which veils from us the real chronological21 relations of evolving life in the different periods. The lias is ranked by geologists among the earliest secondary formations: but if we were to distribute all the sedimentary rocks into ten great epochs, each representing about equal duration in time, the lias would really fall in the tenth and latest of all. So very misleading to the ordinary mind is our accepted geological nomenclature. Nay23, even commonplace geologists themselves often overlook the real implications of many facts and figures which they have learned to quote glibly24 enough in a certain off-hand way. Let me just briefly25 reconstruct the chief features of this scarcely recognised world's chronology as I sit on this piece of fallen chalk at the foot of the mouldering26 cliff, where the stream from the meadow above brought down the newest landslip during the hard frosts of last December. First of all, there is the vast lapse27 of time represented by the Laurentian rocks of Canada. These Laurentian rocks, the oldest in the world, are at least 30,000 feet in thickness, and it must be allowed that it takes a reasonable number of years to accumulate such a mass of solid limestone28 or clay as that at the bottom of even the widest prim?val ocean. In these rocks there are no fossils, except a single very doubtful member of the very lowest animal type. But there are indirect traces of life in the shape of limestone probably derived29 from shells, and of black lead probably derived from plants. All these early deposits have been terribly twisted and contorted by subsequent convulsions of the earth, and most of them have been melted down by volcanic30 action; so that we can tell very little about their original state. Thus the history of life opens for us, like most other histories, with a period of uncertainty31: its origin is lost in the distant vistas32 of time. Still, we know that there was such an early period; and from the thickness of the rocks which represent it we may conjecture33 that it spread over three out of the ten great ?ons into which I have roughly divided geological time. Next comes the period known as the Cambrian, and to it we may similarly assign about two and a half ?ons on like grounds. The Cambrian epoch22 begins with a fair sprinkling of the lower animals and plants, presumably developed during the preceding age; but it shows no remains34 of fish or any other vertebrates. To the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous periods we may roughly allow an ?on and a fraction each: while to the whole group of secondary and tertiary strata35, comprising almost all the best-known English formations—red marl, lias, oolite, greensand, chalk, eocene, miocene, pliocene, and drift—we can only give a single ?on to be divided between them. Such facts will sufficiently36 suggest how comparatively modern are all these rocks when viewed by the light of an absolute chronology. Now, the first fishes do not occur till the Silurian—that is to say, in or about the seventh ?on after the beginning of geological time. The first mammals are found in the trias, at the beginning of the tenth ?on. And the first known bird only makes its appearance in the oolite, about half-way through that latest period. This will show that there was plenty of time for their development in the earlier ages. True, we must reckon the interval37 between ourselves and the date of this blue mud at many millions of years; but then we must reckon the interval between the lias and the earliest Cambrian strata at some six times as much, and between the lias and the lowest Laurentian beds at nearly ten times as much. Just the same sort of lessening38 perspective exists in geology as in ordinary history. Most people look upon the age before the Norman Conquest as a mere39 brief episode of the English annals; yet six whole centuries elapsed between the landing of the real or mythical40 Hengst at Ebbsfleet and the landing of William the Conqueror41 at Hastings; while under eight centuries elapsed between the time of William the Conqueror and the accession of Queen Victoria. But, just as most English histories give far more space to the three centuries since Elizabeth than to the eleven centuries which preceded them, so most books on geology give far more space to the single ?on (embracing the secondary and tertiary periods) which comes nearest our own time, than to the nine ?ons which spread from the Laurentian to the Carboniferous epoch. In the earliest period, records either geological or historical are wholly wanting; in the later periods they become both more numerous and more varied42 in proportion as they approach nearer and nearer to our own time.
So too, in the days when Mr. Darwin first took away the breath of scientific Europe by his startling theories, it used confidently to be said that geology had shown us no intermediate form between species and species. Even at the time when this assertion was originally made it was quite untenable. All early geological forms, of whatever race, belong to what we foolishly call 'generalised' types: that is to say, they present a mixture of features now found separately in several different animals. In other words, they represent early ancestors of all the modern forms, with peculiarities43 intermediate between those of their more highly differentiated44 descendants; and hence we ought to call them 'unspecialised' rather than 'generalised' types. For example, the earliest ancestral horse is partly a horse and partly a tapir: we may regard him as a tertium quid, a middle term, from which the horse has varied in one direction and the tapir in another, each of them exaggerating certain special peculiarities of the common ancestor and losing others, in accordance with the circumstances in which they have been placed. Science is now perpetually discovering intermediate forms, many of which compose an unbroken series between the unspecialised ancestral type and the familiar modern creatures. Thus, in this very case of the horse, Professor Marsh45 has unearthed46 a long line of fossil animals which lead in direct descent from the extremely unhorse-like eocene type to the developed Arab of our own times. Similarly with birds, Professor Huxley has shown that there is hardly any gap between the very bird-like lizards of the lias and the very lizard-like birds of the oolite. Such links, discovered afresh every day, are perpetual denials to the old parrot-like cry of 'No geological evidence for evolution.'
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1 ridge | |
n.山脊;鼻梁;分水岭 | |
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2 pebbles | |
[复数]鹅卵石; 沙砾; 卵石,小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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3 bluffs | |
恐吓( bluff的名词复数 ); 悬崖; 峭壁 | |
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4 monotonous | |
adj.单调的,一成不变的,使人厌倦的 | |
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5 intensity | |
n.强烈,剧烈;强度;烈度 | |
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6 tinged | |
v.(使)发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7 geologists | |
地质学家,地质学者( geologist的名词复数 ) | |
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8 livelihood | |
n.生计,谋生之道 | |
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9 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
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10 trickle | |
vi.淌,滴,流出,慢慢移动,逐渐消散 | |
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11 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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12 relics | |
[pl.]n.遗物,遗迹,遗产;遗体,尸骸 | |
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13 lizards | |
n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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14 swarmed | |
密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 ); 云集; 成群地移动; 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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15 prim | |
adj.拘泥形式的,一本正经的;n.循规蹈矩,整洁;adv.循规蹈矩地,整洁地 | |
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16 wombats | |
n.袋熊( wombat的名词复数 ) | |
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17 reptilian | |
adj.(像)爬行动物的;(像)爬虫的;卑躬屈节的;卑鄙的n.两栖动物;卑劣的人 | |
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18 slate | |
n.板岩,石板,石片,石板色,候选人名单;adj.暗蓝灰色的,含板岩的;vt.用石板覆盖,痛打,提名,预订 | |
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19 precursors | |
n.先驱( precursor的名词复数 );先行者;先兆;初期形式 | |
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20 slovenly | |
adj.懒散的,不整齐的,邋遢的 | |
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21 chronological | |
adj.按年月顺序排列的,年代学的 | |
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22 epoch | |
n.(新)时代;历元 | |
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23 nay | |
adv.不;n.反对票,投反对票者 | |
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24 glibly | |
adv.流利地,流畅地;满口 | |
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25 briefly | |
adv.简单地,简短地 | |
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26 mouldering | |
v.腐朽( moulder的现在分词 );腐烂,崩塌 | |
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27 lapse | |
n.过失,流逝,失效,抛弃信仰,间隔;vi.堕落,停止,失效,流逝;vt.使失效 | |
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28 limestone | |
n.石灰石 | |
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29 derived | |
vi.起源;由来;衍生;导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 );(从…中)得到获得;源于;(从…中)提取 | |
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30 volcanic | |
adj.火山的;象火山的;由火山引起的 | |
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31 uncertainty | |
n.易变,靠不住,不确知,不确定的事物 | |
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32 vistas | |
长条形景色( vista的名词复数 ); 回顾; 展望; (未来可能发生的)一系列情景 | |
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33 conjecture | |
n./v.推测,猜测 | |
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34 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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35 strata | |
n.地层(复数);社会阶层 | |
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36 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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37 interval | |
n.间隔,间距;幕间休息,中场休息 | |
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38 lessening | |
减轻,减少,变小 | |
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39 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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40 mythical | |
adj.神话的;虚构的;想像的 | |
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41 conqueror | |
n.征服者,胜利者 | |
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42 varied | |
adj.多样的,多变化的 | |
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43 peculiarities | |
n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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44 differentiated | |
区分,区别,辨别( differentiate的过去式和过去分词 ); 区别对待; 表明…间的差别,构成…间差别的特征 | |
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45 marsh | |
n.沼泽,湿地 | |
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46 unearthed | |
出土的(考古) | |
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