FOSSIL PEDIGREES 105 



Sea and in Wisconsin, "the rocks still retain their original 

 horizontality of deposition, the muds are scarcely indurated, 

 and the sands are incoherent." (Encycl. Brit., vol. V, p. 86.) 



A large number of striking instances are cited by Price to 

 substantiate the foregoing rule and its converse. The impres- 

 sion left is that not only is the starting-point of the time- 

 scale in doubt, but that, if we were to judge the age of the 

 rocks by their physical appearance and position, we could 

 not accept the conventional verdicts of modern geology, 

 which makes fossil evidence prevail over every other consider- 

 ation. 



2. When two contiguous strata are parallel to each other, 

 and there is no indication of disturbance in the lower bed, nor 

 any evidence of erosion along the plane of contact, the two 

 beds are said to exhibit conformity, and this is ordinarily 

 interpreted by geologists as a sign that the upper bed has 

 been laid down in immediate sequence to the lower, and that 

 there has been a substantial continuity of deposition, with 

 no long interval during which the lower bed was exposed 

 as surface to the agents of erosion. When such a conformity 

 exists, as it frequently does, between a "recent" stratum, 

 above, and what is said (according to the testimony of the 

 fossils) to be a very "ancient" stratum, below, and though 

 the two are so alike lithologically as to be mistaken for one 

 and the same formation, nevertheless, such a conformity is 

 termed a "non-evident disconformity," or "deceptive conform- 

 ity," implying that, inasmuch as the "lost interval," repre- 

 senting, perhaps, a lapse of "several million years," is en- 

 tirely unrecorded by any intervening deposition, or any erosion, 

 or any disturbance of the lower bed, we should not have 

 suspected that so great a hiatus had intervened, were it not 

 for the testimony of the fossils. Price cites innumerable ex- 

 amples, and sums them up in the general terms of the fol- 

 lowing empirical law: "Any sort of fossiliferous formation 

 may occur on top of any other 'older' fossiliferous formation, 

 with all the physical evidences of perfect conformity, just 



