Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/683

STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY] other acids, which, together with decaying organic matter taken up by passing moisture, become potent in effecting the chemical decomposition of rocks and in promoting the disintegration of soils. (3) By inserting their roots or branches between joints of rock, which are thereby loosened, so that large slices may be eventually wedged off. (4) By attracting rain, as thick woods, forests and peat-mosses do, and thus accelerating the general waste of a country by running water. (5) By promoting the decay of diseased and dead plants and animals, as when fungi overspread a damp rotting tree or the carcase of a dead animal.

That plants also exert a conservative influence on the surface of the land is shown in various ways. (1) The formation of a stratum of turf protects the soil and rocks underneath from being rapidly disintegrated and washed away by atmospheric action. (2) Many plants, even without forming a layer of turf, serve by their roots or branches to protect the loose sand or soil on which they grow from being removed by wind. The common sand-carex and other arenaceous plants bind the loose sand-dunes of our coasts, and give them a permanence, which would at once be destroyed were the sand laid bare again to storms. The growth of shrubs and brushwood along the course of a stream not only keeps the alluvial banks from being so easily undermined and removed as would otherwise be the case, but serves to arrest the sediment in floods, filtering the water and thereby adding to the height of the flood plain. (3) Some marine plants, like the calcareous nullipores, afford protection to shore rocks by covering them with a hard incrustation. The tangles and smaller Fuci which grow abundantly on the littoral zone break the force of the waves or diminish the effects of ground swell. (4) Forests and brushwood protect the soil, especially on slopes, from being washed away by rain or ploughed up by avalanches.

Plants contribute by the aggregation of their remains to the formation of stratified deposits. Some marine algae which secrete carbonate of lime not only encrust rocks but give rise to sheets of submarine limestone. An analogous part is played in fresh-water lakes by various lime-secreting plants, such as Chara. Long-continued growth of vegetation has, in some regions, produced thick accumulations of a dark loam, as in the black cotton soil (regur) of India, and the black earth (tchernozom) of Russia. Peat-mosses are formed in temperate and arctic climates by the growth of marsh-loving plants, sometimes to a thickness of 40 or 50 ft. In tropical regions the mangrove swamps on low moist shores form a dense jungle, sometimes 20 m. broad, which protects these shores from the sea until, by the arrest of sediment and the constant contribution of decayed vegetation, the spongy ground is at last turned into firm soil. Some plants (diatoms) can abstract silica and build it into their framework, so that their remains form a siliceous deposit or ooze which covers spaces of the deep sea-floor estimated at more than ten millions of square miles in extent.

(b) Animals.—These exert a destructive influence in the following ways: (1) By seriously affecting the composition and arrangement of the vegetable soil. Worms bring up the lower portions of the soil to the surface, and while thus promoting its fertility increase its liability to be washed away by rain. Burrowing animals, by throwing up the soil and subsoil, expose these to be dried and blown away by the wind. At the same time their subterranean passages serve to drain off the superficial water and to injure the stability of the surface of the ground above them. In Britain the mole and rabbit are familiar examples. (2) By interfering with or even diverting the flow of streams. Thus beaver-dams check the current of water-courses, intercept floating materials, and sometimes turn streams into new channels. The embankments of the Mississippi are sometimes weakened to such an extent by the burrowings of the cray-fish as to give way and allow the river to inundate the surrounding country. Similar results have happened in Europe from subterranean operations of rats. (3) Some mollusca bore into stone or wood and by the number of contiguous perforations greatly weaken the material. (4) Many animals exercise a ruinously destructive influence upon vegetation. Of the numerous plagues of this kind the locust, phylloxera and Colorado beetle may be cited.

The most important geological function performed by animals is the formation of new deposits out of their remains. It is chiefly by the lower grades of the animal kingdom that this work is accomplished, especially by molluscs, corals and foraminifera. Shell-banks are formed abundantly in such comparatively shallow and enclosed basins as that of the North Sea, and on a much more extensive scale on the floor of the West Indian seas. By the coral polyps thick masses of limestones have been built up in the warmer seas of the globe (see ). The floor of the Atlantic and other oceans is covered with a fine calcareous ooze derived mainly from the remains of foraminifera, while in other regions the bottom shows a siliceous ooze formed almost entirely of radiolaria. Vertebrate animals give rise to phosphatic deposits formed sometimes of their excrement, as in guano and coprolites, sometimes of an accumulation of their bones.

(c) Man.—No survey of the geological workings of plant and animal life upon the surface of the globe can be complete which does not take account of the influence of man—an influence of enormous and increasing consequence in physical geography, for man has introduced, as it were, an element of antagonism to nature. His interference shows itself in his relations to climate, where he has affected the meteorological conditions of different countries: (1) By removing forests, and laying bare to the sun and winds areas which were previously kept cool and damp under trees, or which, lying on the lee side, were protected from tempests. It is supposed that the wholesale destruction of the woodlands formerly existing in countries bordering the Mediterranean has been in part the cause of the present desiccation of these districts. (2) By drainage, whereby the discharged rainfall is rapidly removed, and the evaporation is lessened, with a consequent diminution of rainfall and some increase in the general temperature of a country. (3) By the other processes of agriculture, such as the transformation of moor and bog into cultivated land, and the clothing of bare hillsides with green crops or plantations of coniferous and hardwood trees.

Still more obvious are the results of human interference with the flow of water: (1) By increasing or diminishing the rainfall man directly affects the volume of rivers. (2) By his drainage operations he makes the rain to run off more rapidly than before, and thereby increases the magnitude of floods and of the destruction caused by them. (3) By wells, bores, mines, or other subterranean works he interferes with the underground waters, and consequently with the discharge of springs. (4) By embanking rivers he confines them to narrow channels, sometimes increasing their scour, and enabling them to carry their sediment further seaward, sometimes causing them to deposit it over the plains and raise their level. (5) By his engineering operations for water-supply he abstracts water from its natural basins and depletes the streams.

In many ways man alters the aspect of a country: (1) By changing forest into bare mountain, or clothing bare mountains with forest. (2) By promoting the growth or causing the removal of peat-mosses. (3) By heedlessly uncovering sand-dunes, and thereby setting in motion a process of destruction which may convert hundreds of acres of fertile land into waste sand, or by prudently planting the dunes with sand-loving vegetation and thus arresting their landward progress. (4) By so guiding the course of rivers as to make them aid him in reclaiming waste land, and bringing it under cultivation. (5) By piers and bulwarks, whereby the ravages of the sea are stayed, or by the thoughtless removal from the beach of stones which the waves had themselves thrown up, and which would have served for a time to protect the land. (6) By forming new deposits either designedly or incidentally. The roads, bridges, canals, railways, tunnels, villages and towns with which man has covered the surface of the land will in many cases form a permanent record of his presence. Under his hand the whole surface of civilized countries is very slowly covered with a stratum, either formed wholly by him or due in great measure to his operations and containing many relics of his presence. The soil of ancient towns has been increased to a depth of many feet by their successive destructions and renovations.

Perhaps the most subtle of human influences are to be seen in the distribution of plant and animal life upon the globe. Some of man’s doings in this domain are indeed plain enough, such as the extirpation of wild animals, the diminution or destruction of some forms of vegetation, the introduction of plants and animals useful to himself, and especially the enormous predominance given by him to the cereals and to the spread of sheep and cattle. But no such extensive disturbance of the normal conditions of the distribution of life can take place without carrying with it many secondary effects, and setting in motion a wide cycle of change and of reaction in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. For example, the incessant warfare waged by man against birds and beasts of prey in districts given up to the chase leads sometimes to unforeseen results. The weak game is allowed to live, which would otherwise be killed off and give more room for the healthy remainder. Other animals which feed perhaps on the same materials as the game are by the same cause permitted to live unchecked, and thereby to act as a further hindrance to the spread of the protected species. But the indirect results of man’s interference with the régime of plants and animals still require much prolonged observation.

From a study of the nature and composition of minerals and rocks, and an investigation of the different agencies by which they are formed and modified, the geologist proceeds to inquire how these materials have been put together so as to build up the visible part of the earth’s crust. He soon ascertains that they have not been thrown together wholly at random, but that they show a recognizable order of arrangement. Some of them, especially those of most recent growth, remain in their original condition and position, but, in proportion to their antiquity, they generally present increasing alteration, until it may no longer be possible to tell what was their pristine state. As by far the largest accessible portion of the terrestrial crust consists of stratified rocks, and as these furnish clear evidence of most of the modifications to which they have been subjected in the long course of geological history, it is convenient to take them into