Ellsworth Huntington - "The Red Man's Continent, A Chronicle of Aboriginal America"

Irving Bacheller - "The Master of Silence"

Elinor Glyn - "His Hour"

John Lothrop Motley - "The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1567"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Elements of Geology

W >> William Harmon Norton >> The Elements of Geology




The first three systems were named from the fact that their strata
are well displayed in Wales. The Cambrian carries the Roman name
of Wales, and the Ordovician and Silurian the names of tribes of
ancient Britons which inhabited the same country. The Devonian is
named from the English county Devon, where its rocks were early
studied. The Carboniferous was so called from the large amount of
coal which it was found to contain in Great Britain and
continental Europe.

THE CAMBRIAN

DISTRIBUTION OF STRATA. The Cambrian rocks outcrop in narrow belts
about the pre-Cambrian areas of eastern Canada and the Lake
Superior region, the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains. Strips
of Cambrian formations occupy troughs in the pre-Cambrian rocks of
New England and the maritime provinces of Canada; a long belt
borders on the west the crystalline rocks of the Blue Ridge; and
on the opposite side of the continent the Cambrian reappears in
the mountains of the Great Basin and the Canadian Rockies. In the
Mississippi valley it is exposed in small districts where uplift
has permitted the stripping off of younger rocks. Although the
areas of outcrop are small, we may infer that Cambrian rocks were
widely deposited over the continent of North America.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. The Cambrian system of North America comprises
three distinct series, the LOWER CAMBRIAN, the MIDDLE CAMBRIAN,
and the UPPER CAMBRIAN, each of which is characterized by its own
peculiar fauna. In sketching the outlines of the continent as it
was at the beginning of the Paleozoic, it must be remembered that
wherever the Lower Cambrian formations now are found was certainly
then sea bottom, and wherever the Lower Cambrian are wanting, and
the next formations rest directly on pre-Cambrian rocks, was
probably then land.

EARLY CAMBRIAN GEOGRAPHY. In this way we know that at the opening
of the Cambrian two long, narrow mediterranean seas stretched from
north to south across the continent. The eastern sea extended from
the Gulf of St. Lawrence down the Champlain-Hudson valley and
thence along the western base of the Blue Ridge south at least to
Alabama. The western sea stretched from the Canadian Rockies over
the Great Basin and at least as far south as the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado in Arizona.

Between these mediterraneans lay a great central land which
included the pre-Cambrian U-shaped area of the Laurentian
peneplain, and probably extended southward to the latitude of New
Orleans. To the east lay a land which we may designate as
APPALACHIA, whose western shore line was drawn along the site of
the present Blue Ridge, but whose other limits are quite unknown.
The land of Appalachia must have been large, for it furnished a
great amount of waste during the entire Paleozoic era, and its
eastern coast may possibly have lain even beyond the edge of the
present continental shelf. On the western side of the continent a
narrow land occupied the site of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Thus, even at the beginning of the Paleozoic, the continental
plateau of North America had already been left by crustal
movements in relief above the abysses of the great oceans on
either side. The mediterraneans which lay upon it were shallow, as
their sediments prove. They were EPICONTINENTAL SEAS; that is,
they rested UPON (Greek, EPI) the submerged portion of the
continental plateau. We have no proof that the deep ocean ever
occupied any part of where North America now is.

The Middle and Upper Cambrian strata are found together with the
Lower Cambrian over the area of both the eastern and the western
mediterraneans, so that here the sea continued during the entire
period. The sediments throughout are those of shoal water. Coarse
cross-bedded sandstones record the action of strong shifting
currents which spread coarse waste near shore and winnowed it of
finer stuff. Frequent ripple marks on the bedding planes of the
strata prove that the loose sands of the sea floor were near
enough to the surface to be agitated by waves and tidal currents.
Sun cracks show that often the outgoing tide exposed large muddy
flats to the drying action of the sun. The fossils, also, of the
strata are of kinds related to those which now live in shallow
waters near the shore.

The sediments which gathered in the mediterranean seas were very
thick, reaching in places the enormous depth of ten thousand feet.
Hence the bottoms of these seas were sinking troughs, ever filling
with waste from the adjacent land as fast as they subsided.

LATE CAMBRIAN GEOGRAPHY. The formations of the Middle and Upper
Cambrian are found resting unconformably on the pre-Cambrian rocks
from New York westward into Minnesota and at various points in the
interior, as in Missouri and in Texas. Hence after earlier
Cambrian time the central land subsided, with much the same effect
as if the Mississippi valley were now to lower gradually, and the
Gulf of Mexico to spread northward until it entered Lake Superior.
The Cambrian seas transgressed the central land and strewed far
and wide behind their advancing beaches the sediments of the later
Cambrian upon an eroded surface of pre-Cambrian rocks.

The succession of the Cambrian formations in North America records
many minor oscillations and varying conditions of physical
geography; yet on the whole it tells of widening seas and lowering
lands. Basal conglomerates and coarse sandstones which must have
been laid near shore are succeeded by shaly sandstones, sandy
shales, and shales. Toward the top of the series heavy beds of
limestone, extending from the Blue Ridge to Missouri, speak of
clear water, and either of more distant shores or of neighboring
lands which were worn or sunk so low that for the most part their
waste was carried to the sea in solution.

In brief, the Cambrian was a period of submergence. It began with
the larger part of North America emerged as great land masses. It
closed with most of the interior of the continental plateau
covered with a shallow sea.

THE LIFE OF THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD

It is now for the first time that we find preserved in the
offshore deposits of the Cambrian seas enough remains of animal
life to be properly called a fauna. Doubtless these remains are
only the most fragmentary representation of the life of the time,
for the Cambrian rocks are very old and have been widely
metamorphosed. Yet the five hundred and more species already
discovered embrace all the leading types of invertebrate life, and
are so varied that we must believe that their lines of descent
stretch far back into the pre-Cambrian past.

PLANTS. No remains of plants have been found in Cambrian strata,
except some doubtful markings, as of seaweed.

SPONGES. The sponges, the lowest of the multicellular animals,
were represented by several orders. Their fossils are recognized
by the siliceous spicules, which, as in modern sponges, either
were scattered through a mass of horny fibers or were connected in
a flinty framework.

COELENTERATES. This subkingdom includes two classes of interest to
the geologist,--the HYDROZOA, such as the fresh-water hydra and
the jellyfish, and the CORALS. Both classes existed in the
Cambrian.

The Hydrozoa were represented not only by jellyfish but also by
the GRAPTOLITE, which takes its name from a fancied resemblance of
some of its forms to a quill pen. It was a composite animal with a
horny framework, the individuals of the colony living in cells
strung on one or both sides along a hollow stem, and communicating
by means of a common flesh in this central tube. Some graptolites
were straight, and some curved or spiral; some were single
stemmed, and others consisted of several radial stems united.
Graptolites occur but rarely in the Upper Cambrian. In the
Ordovician and Silurian they are very plentiful, and at the close
of the Silurian they pass out of existence, never to return.

CORALS are very rarely found in the Cambrian, and the description
of their primitive types is postponed to later chapters treating
of periods when they became more numerous.

ECHINODERMS. This subkingdom comprises at present such familiar
forms as the crinoid, the starfish, and the sea urchin. The
structure of echinoderms is radiate. Their integument is hardened
with plates or particles of carbonate of lime.

Of the free echinoderms, such as the starfish and the sea urchin,
the former has been found in the Cambrian rocks of Europe, but
neither have so far been discovered in the strata of this period
in North America. The stemmed and lower division of the
echinoderms was represented by a primitive type, the CYSTOID, so
called from its saclike form, A small globular or ovate "calyx" of
calcareous plates, with an aperture at the top for the mouth,
inclosed the body of the animal, and was attached to the sea
bottom by a short flexible stalk consisting of disks of carbonate
of lime held together by a central ligament.

ARTHOPODS. These segmented animals with "jointed feet," as their
name suggests, may be divided in a general way into water
breathers and air breathers. The first-named and lower division
comprises the class of the CRUSTACEA,--arthropods protected by a
hard exterior skeleton, or "crust,"--of which crabs, crayfish, and
lobsters are familiar examples. The higher division, that of the
air breathers, includes the following classes: spiders, scorpions,
centipedes, and insects.

THE TRILOBITE. The aquatic arthropods, the Crustacea, culminated
before the air breathers; and while none of the latter are found
in the Cambrian, the former were the dominant life of the time in
numbers, in size, and in the variety of their forms. The leading
crustacean type is the TRILOBITE, which takes its name from the
three lobes into which its shell is divided longitudinally. There
are also three cross divisions,--the head shield, the tail shield,
and between the two the thorax, consisting of a number of distinct
and unconsolidated segments. The head shield carries a pair of
large, crescentic, compound eyes, like those of the insect. The
eye varies greatly in the number of its lenses, ranging from
fourteen in some species to fifteen thousand in others. Figure
268, C, is a restoration of the trilobite, and shows the
appendages, which are found preserved only in the rarest cases.

During the long ages of the Cambrian the trilobite varied greatly.
Again and again new species and genera appeared, while the older
types became extinct. For this reason and because of their
abundance, trilobites are used in the classification of the
Cambrian system. The Lower Cambrian is characterized by the
presence of a trilobitic fauna in which the genus Olenellus is
predominant. This, the OLENELLUS ZONE, is one of the most
important platforms in the entire geological series; for, the
world over, it marks the beginning of Paleozoic time, while all
underlying strata are classified as pre-Cambrian. The Middle
Cambrian is marked by the genus Paradoxides, and the Upper
Cambrian by the genus Olenus. Some of the Cambrian trilobites were
giants, measuring as much as two feet long, while others were the
smallest of their kind, a fraction of an inch in length.

Another type of crustacean which lived in the Cambrian and whose
order is still living is illustrated in Figure 269.

WORMS. Trails and burrows of worms have been left on the sea
beaches and mud flats of all geological times from the Algonkian
to the present.

BRACHIOPODS. These soft-bodied animals, with bivalve shells and
two interior armlike processes which served for breathing,
appeared in the Algonkian, and had now become very abundant. The
two valves of the brachiopod shell are unequal in size, and in
each valve a line drawn from the beak to the base divides the
valve into two equal parts. It may thus be told from the pelecypod
mollusk, such as the clam, whose two valves are not far from equal
in size, each being divided into unequal parts by a line dropped
from the beak.

Brachiopods include two orders. In the most primitive order--that
of the INARTICULATE brachiopods--the two valves are held together
only by muscles of the animal, and the shell is horny or is
composed of phosphate of lime. The DISCINA, which began in the
Algonkian, is of this type, as is also the LINGULELLA of the
Cambrian. Both of these genera have lived on during the millions
of years of geological time since their introduction, handing down
from generation to generation with hardly any change to their
descendants now living off our shores the characters impressed
upon them at the beginning.

The more highly organized ARTICULATE brachiopods have valves of
carbonate of lime more securely joined by a hinge with teeth and
sockets (Fig. 270). In the Cambrian the inarticulates predominate,
though the articulates grow common toward the end of the period.

MOLLUSKS. The three chief classes of mollusks--the PELECYPODS
(represented by the oyster and clam of to-day), the GASTROPODS
(represented now by snails, conches, and periwinkles), and the
CEPHALOPODS (such as the nautilus, cuttlefish, and squids)--were
all represented in the Cambrian, although very sparingly.

Pteropods, a suborder of the gastropods, appeared in this age.
Their papery shells of carbonate of lime are found in great
numbers from this time on.

Cephalopods, the most highly organized of the mollusks, started
into existence, so far as the record shows, toward, the end of the
Cambrian, with the long extinct ORTHOCERAS (STRAIGHTHORN) and the
allied genera of its family. The Orthoceras had a long, straight,
and tapering shell, divided by cross partitions into chambers. The
animal lived in the "body chamber" at the larger end, and walled
off the other chambers from it in succession during the growth of
the shell. A central tube, the SIPHUNCLE, passed through from the
body chamber to the closed tip of the cone.

The seashells, both brachiopods and mollusks, are in some respects
the most important to the geologist of all fossils. They have been
so numerous, so widely distributed, and so well preserved because
of their durable shells and their station in growing sediments,
that better than any other group of organisms they can be used to
correlate the strata of different regions and to mark by their
slow changes the advance of geological time.

CLIMATE. The life of Cambrian times in different countries
contains no suggestion of any marked climatic zones, and as in
later periods a warm climate probably reached to the polar
regions.





CHAPTER XVII

THE ORDOVICIAN AND SILURIAN
[Footnote: Often known as the Lower Silurian.]

THE ORDOVICIAN


In North America the Ordovician rocks lie conformably on the
Cambrian. The two periods, therefore, were not parted by any
deformation, either of mountain making or of continental uplift.
The general submergence which marked the Cambrian continued into
the succeeding period with little interruption.

SUBDIVISIONS AND DISTRIBUTION OF STRATA. The Ordovician series, as
they have been made out in New York, are given for reference in
the following table, with the rocks of which they are chiefly
composed:

5 Hudson . . . . . . . . shales
4 Utica . . . . . . . . shales
3 Trenton . . . . . . . limestones
2 Chazy . . . . . . . . limestones
1 Calciferous . . . . . sandy limestones

These marine formations of the Ordovician outcrop about the
Cambrian and pre-Cambrian areas, and, as borings show, extend far
and wide over the interior of the continent beneath more recent
strata. The Ordovician sea stretched from Appalachia across the
Mississippi valley. It seems to have extended to California,
although broken probably by several mountainous islands in the
west.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. The physical history of the period is recorded
in the succession of its formations. The sandstones of the Upper
Cambrian, as we have learned, tell of a transgressing sea which
gradually came to occupy the Mississippi valley and the interior
of North America. The limestones of the early and middle
Ordovician show that now the shore had become remote and the lands
had become more low. The waters now had cleared. Colonies of
brachiopods and other lime-secreting animals occupied the sea
bottom, and their debris mantled it with sheets of limy ooze. The
sandy limestones of the Calciferous record the transition stage
from the Cambrian when some sand was still brought in from shore.
The highly fossiliferous limestones of the Trenton tell of clear
water and abundant life. We need not regard this epicontinental
sea as deep. No abysmal deposits have been found, and the
limestones of the period are those which would be laid in clear,
warm water of moderate depth like that of modern coral seas.

The shales of the Utica and Hudson show that the waters of the sea
now became clouded with mud washed in from land. Either the land
was gradually uplifted, or perhaps there had arrived one of those
periodic crises which, as we may imagine, have taken place
whenever the crust of the shrinking earth has slowly given way
over its great depressions, and the ocean has withdrawn its waters
into deepening abysses. The land was thus left relatively higher
and bordered with new coastal plains. The epicontinental sea was
shoaled and narrowed, and muds were washed in from the adjacent
lands.

THE TACONIC DEFORMATION. The Ordovician was closed by a
deformation whose extent and severity are not yet known. From the
St. Lawrence River to New York Bay, along the northwestern and
western border of New England, lies a belt of Cambrian-Ordovician
rocks more than a mile in total thickness, which accumulated
during the long ages of those periods in a gradually subsiding
trough between the Adirondacks and a pre-Cambrian range lying west
of the Connecticut River. But since their deposition these ancient
sediments have been crumpled and crushed, broken with great
faults, and extensively metamorphosed. The limestones have
recrystallized into marbles, among them the famous marbles of
Vermont; the Cambrian sandstones have become quartzites, and the
Hudson shale has been changed to a schist exposed on Manhattan
Island and northward.

In part these changes occurred at the close of the Ordovician, for
in several places beds of Silurian age rest unconformably on the
upturned Ordovician strata; but recent investigations have made it
probable that the crustal movements recurred at later times, and
it was perhaps in the Devonian and at the close of the
Carboniferous that the greater part of the deformation and
metamorphism was accomplished. As a result of these movements,--
perhaps several times repeated,--a great mountain range was
upridged, which has been long since leveled by erosion, but whose
roots are now visible in the Taconic Mountains of western New
England.

THE CINCINNATI ANTICLINE. Over an oval area in Ohio, Indiana, and
Kentucky, whose longer axis extends from north to south through
Cincinnati, the Ordovician strata rise in a very low, broad swell,
called the Cincinnati anticline. The Silurian and Devonian strata
thin out as they approach this area and seem never to have
deposited upon it. We may regard it, therefore, as an island
upwarped from the sea at the close of the Ordovician or shortly
after.

PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS. These valuable illuminants and fuels
are considered here because, although they are found in traces in
older strata, it is in the Ordovician that they occur for the
first time in large quantities. They range throughout later
formations down to the most recent.

The oil horizons of California and Texas are Tertiary; those of
Colorado, Cretaceous; those of West Virginia, Carboniferous; those
of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Canada, Devonian; and the large
field of Ohio and Indiana belongs to the Ordovician and higher
systems.

Petroleum and natural gas, wherever found, have probably
originated from the decay of organic matter when buried in
sedimentary deposits, just as at present in swampy places the
hydrogen and carbon of decaying vegetation combine to form marsh
gas. The light and heat of these hydrocarbons we may think of,
therefore, as a gift to the civilized life of our race from the
humble organisms, both animal and vegetable, of the remote past,
whose remains were entombed in the sediments of the Ordovician and
later geological ages.

Petroleum is very widely disseminated throughout the stratified
rocks. Certain limestones are visibly greasy with it, and others
give off its characteristic fetid odor when struck with a hammer.
Many shales are bituminous, and some are so highly charged that
small flakes may be lighted like tapers, and several gallons of
oil to the ton may be obtained by distillation.

But oil and gas are found in paying quantities only when certain
conditions meet:

1. A SOURCE below, usually a bituminous shale, from whose organic
matter they have been derived by slow change.

2. A RESERVOIR above, in which they have gathered. This is either
a porous sandstone or a porous or creviced limestone.

3. Oil and gas are lighter than water, and are usually under
pressure owing to artesian water. Hence, in order to hold them
from escaping to the surface, the reservoir must have the shape of
an ANTICLINE, DOME, or LENS.

4. It must also have an IMPERVIOUS COVER, usually a shale. In
these reservoirs gas is under a pressure which is often enormous,
reaching in extreme cases as high as a thousand five hundred
pounds to the square inch. When tapped it rushes out with a
deafening roar, sometimes flinging the heavy drill high in air. In
accounting for this pressure we must remember that the gas has
been compressed within the pores of the reservoir rock by artesian
water, and in some cases also by its own expansive force. It is
not uncommon for artesian water to rise in wells after the
exhaustion of gas and oil.

LIFE OF THE ORDOVICIAN

During the ages of the Ordovician, life made great advances. Types
already present branched widely into new genera and species, and
new and higher types appeared.

Sponges continued from the Cambrian. Graptolites now reached their
climax.

STROMATOPORA--colonies of minute hydrozoans allied to corals--grew
in places on the sea floor, secreting stony masses composed of
thin, close, concentric layers, connected by vertical rods. The
Stromatopora are among the chief limestone builders of the
Silurian and Devonian periods.

CORALS developed along several distinct lines, like modern corals
they secreted a calcareous framework, in whose outer portions the
polyps lived. In the Ordovician, corals were represented chiefly
by the family of the CHOETETES, all species of which are long
since extinct. The description of other types of corals will be
given under the Silurian, where they first became abundant.

ECHINODERMS. The cystoid reaches its climax, but there appear now
two higher types of echinoderms,--the crinoid and the starfish.
The CRINOID, named from its resemblance to the lily, is like the
cystoid in many respects, but has a longer stem and supports a
crown of plumose arms. Stirring the water with these arms, it
creates currents by which particles of food are wafted to its
mouth. Crinoids are rare at the present time, but they grew in the
greatest profusion in the warm Ordovician seas and for long ages
thereafter. In many places the sea floor was beautiful with these
graceful, flowerlike forms, as with fields of long-stemmed lilies.
Of the higher, free-moving classes of the echinoderms, starfish
are more numerous than in the Cambrian, and sea urchins make their
appearance in rare archaic forms.

CRUSTACEANS. Trilobites now reach their greatest development and
more than eleven hundred species have been described from the
rocks of this period. It is interesting to note that in many
species the segments of the thorax have now come to be so shaped
that they move freely on one another. Unlike their Cambrian
ancestors, many of the Ordovician trilobites could roll themselves
into balls at the approach of danger. It is in this attitude,
taken at the approach of death, that trilobites are often found in
the Ordovician and later rocks. The gigantic crustaceans called
the EURYPTERIDS were also present in this period.

The arthropods had now seized upon the land. Centipedes and
insects of a low type, the earliest known land animals, have been
discovered in strata of this system.

BRYOZOANS. No fossils are more common in the limestones of the
time than the small branching stems and lacelike mats of the
bryozoans,--the skeletons of colonies of a minute animal allied in
structure to the brachiopod.

BRACHIOPODS. These multiplied greatly, and in places their shells
formed thick beds of coquina. They still greatly surpassed the
mollusks in numbers.

CEPHALOPODS. Among the mollusks we must note the evolution of the
cephalopods. The primitive straight Orthoceras has now become
abundant. But in addition to this ancestral type there appears a
succession of forms more and more curved and closely coiled, as
illustrated in Figure 285. The nautilus, which began its course in
this period, crawls on the bottom of our present seas.