133 Fossils of the Niagara and Clinton Groups, 



but vice, iudicates an unsound mind, a defective judgement, an ignorance of 

 the relations which men have to each other, and to their Creator, an undue 

 self-estimation and a contempt of the rights of other men. He who measures 

 the orbit of a comet has not, therefore, higher faculties than he who examines 

 the cytoblast of a fungus ; and there is far more to be seen by us in a beetle 

 than in a plane1>— upon that granite mountain opposite, at the distance of 

 nine or ten miles, than in the sun and the moon and the stars." * 



In Geology some of the principal truths that break upon the mind from 

 actual examination of the various formations of rock are, the amazing anti- 

 quity of the earth, the enonnous revolutions that have taken place on its 

 surface, the number and vastuess of the convulsions to which it has been 

 subjected, the strange forms of the races of animals by which it was inhabited 

 during the many long and dark ages that rolled away previous to the creation 

 of man, and most important of all the perception of the great fact that 

 throughout all the prodigious^changes and disturbances, all has been conti- 

 nually under the government and direction of some unseen power which is 

 the same now as it was in the first ages. The operations of to-day may be 

 traced back and connected link by link with those the most ancient, and 

 thus it can be shewn that they constitute the work of but one mind ; that 

 amid all physical and vital subversions, there has been no change of rulers 

 in nature. The creations and destructions of myriaels of races of animated 

 beings are events that have followed each other in a regular unbroken pro- 

 cession under the marshalling and direction of the same will. The same 

 procession is still moving grandly onward, but how much of it there is still 

 to go by science cannot tell. "We can by simply going out into the fields 

 and collectmg and comparing specimens, ascertain the forms of those that 

 have passed, but what these may be like which are yet to come is a problem 

 reserved for the future. 



The fossils intombed in the rocks of Canada, are the remains of the 

 creatui'es that appeared in the commencement of the procession of life. — 

 They may be called the old advance-guard. It is long since they passed, 

 perished, and were buried. They are all of extinct species, most of them of 

 extinct genera, while a very large proportion are even of orders that have 

 now no representatives on earth. Those described in the following article 

 are more or less abundant in those oceanic deposits of West-ern Canada, 

 known as the Clinton and Niagara Groups, and although most of them are 

 small in size, yet each forms a portion of the history of the world, and cannot 

 be too carefully studied. They shew that when the great beds of rock were 

 formed, over which the Niagara now rolls its waters, this country was beneath 

 a vast sea, and that the life of that sea was totally different from that of the 

 present oceans. If the mind can receive any benefit from musing over tlie 

 history of fallen nations, surely something in the way of intellectual improve- 

 ment must accrue from the study of the much mighier truths of the extermi- 

 nation of worlds of animated beings. 



* Extract from the Nataral History of Dee Side & Braemar ; bj the Ule 

 Wm. MacGilliyray, M.D, 



