On Ammcan Geological History. 407 



the same basis, and essentially within the same limits. It is true 

 that but little of it was above the sea, but equally true that little 

 of it was at great depths in the ocean. 



3. Again, in the remains of life which appear in the earliest 

 layers of this primal rock, three of the four great branches of the 

 Animal Kingdom are represented, — Mollusks, Trilobites among 

 Articulates, and Corals and Crinoids among Radiates, — a sufficient 

 representation of life for a title-page. The New York beds of this 

 rock had afforded only a few mollusks ; but the investigations of 

 Owen and others have added the remaining tribes ; and this diver- 

 sity of forms is confirmed by Barrande in his Bohemian researches.* 



Among the genera, while the most of them were ancient forms 

 that afterwards became extinct, and through succeeding ages thou- 

 sands of other genera appeared and disappeared ; the very earliest 

 and most universal was one that now exists, — the genus Lingula^ 

 — thus connecting the extremes of time, and declaring most im- 

 pressively the unity of creation. Mr. T. S. Hunt, of the Canada 

 Geological Survey, recently discovered that the ancient shell had 

 the anomalous chemical constitution of bones, being mainly phos- 



* The Lingula prima and L. antiqua are the Mollusks referred to as oc- 

 curring in the 'New York beds. The discoveries by Owen, in the vicinity of 

 'the Falls of the St. Croix, Minnesota, and on the Mississippi, were published 

 by him in his Report on a Geological Reconnaissance of the Chippewa Land 

 District of Wisconsin and the Northern part of Iowa, AVashington (Senate 

 Document), 1848, p. 14, and subsequently in his quarto Report on "Wiscon- 

 sin, (fee, of 1852. The fossils he mentions in the latter work are species of 

 Lingula, Oholus, Orbicula, Or this, several forms of Crinoids, and large Tri- 

 lobites referred mostly to the new genus Dikelocephalus. The species as 

 named are, Lingula antiqua, L. prima, L. pinnaformis Owen, L. ampla Owen, 

 Oholus Apollinis (I) , Orbicula prima 0., Dikelocephalus Minnesotensis O., 

 D. Miniscaencis 0., D. (?) lowensis O., D. granulosus 0., D. Pepinensis 0., 

 Lunchaccphahis Chippexoaensis 0., Crepicephalus (?) Wisconsensis 0., C. 

 Miniscaensis 0. 



Prof. "VV. B. Rogers in the last number of this Journal (p. 296), announced 

 the discovery of the Trilobite Paradoxides Harlani of Green (P. spinosus of 

 Barrande) in slates ten miles south of Boston, Mass., a species found by 

 Barrande in his protozoic or earliest fossiliferous rock of Bohemia, — thus 

 adding a new species to the American protozoic Fauna, and the largest jet 

 discovered, the length of some of the specimens exceeding a foot. Prof. E. 

 Emmon? announces also (Meeting of Amer. Assoc, in August last, at Alba- 

 ny) the discovery of a large Cyathophylloid coral in the lowest fossiliferous 

 rocks of A'orth Carolina. The exact age of the rock however is yet uncer- 

 tain. — See a notice beyond in this number. 



