104 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



an invariable order of succession among fossil types, and its 

 sequel, the intrinsic time-value of index fossils. The question, 

 in other words, is whether or not a reliable time-scale can 

 be based on the facts of fossiliferous stratification as they are 

 observed to exist in the concrete. Price's answer is negative, 

 and he formulates several empirical laws to express the con- 

 crete facts, on which he bases his contention. The laws and 

 facts to which he appeals may be summarized as follows: 



1. The concrete facts of geology do not warrant our singling 

 out any fossiliferous deposit as unquestionably the oldest, and 

 hence we have no reliable starting-point for our time-scale, 

 because: 



(a) We may lay it down as an empirical law that ''any 

 kind of fossiliferous rock (even the 'youngest'), that is, strata 

 belonging to any of the systems or other subdivisions, may 

 rest directly upon the Archaean or primitive crystalline rocks, 

 wit'^out any other so-called 'younger' strata intervening; also 

 these rocks, Permian, Cretaceous, Tertiary, or whatever thus 

 reposing directly on the Archaean may be themselves crystal- 

 line or wholly metamorphic in texture. And this applies not 

 alone to small points of contact, but to large areas." 



(h) Conversely: any kind of fossiliferous strata (even the 

 "oldest") may not only constitute the surface rocks over wide 

 areas,^ but may consist of loose, unconsolidated materials, 

 thus in both position and texture resembling the "late" Ter- 

 tiaries or the Pleistocene — "In some regions, notably in the 

 Baltic province and in parts of the United States," says John 

 Allen Howe, alluding to the Cambrian rocks around the Baltic 



* "It is a common occurrence," says Charles Schuchert, ''on the Cana- 

 dian Shield to find the Archseozoic formations overlain by the most 

 recent Pleistocene glacial deposits, and even these may be absent. It 

 appears as if in such places no rocks had been deposited, either by 

 the sea or by the forces of the land, since Archseozoic time, and yet 

 geologists know that the shield has been variously covered by sheets of 

 sediments formed at sundry times in the Proterozoic, Palaeozoic, and, to 

 a more limited extent, in the Mesozoic." C'Text-book of Geology," 

 ed. of 1920, II, p. 569.) It may be remarked that, when geologists 

 "know" such things, they know them in spite of the facts! 



