FEB i: 1896 



I. 



THE PALAEOZOIC FORMATION. 



W. F. COOI'ER. 



No subject open to our investigation is more interesting or eco- 

 nomical than that department of inorganic geology embraced under 

 its stratigraphical relations. The conditions attending the origin and 

 deposition of the earth's crust are at the basis of our existence in a 

 certain sense ; that is leaving out the ethical element which it is hoped 

 one may consider as the pre-existing state necessary for such physical 

 operations as should best fit man for his abode throughout his entire 

 cycle of life. 



Whatever may be the relations sustained by our planet with the 

 rest of the solar system, through the so-called nebular hypothesis; it 

 is suggestive to follow out the comparisons of W. Prmz published in the 

 Annuaire dc /' Obscrvatoire Royal de Briixdles for 1891, in which the 

 great continental torsions of the western coasts of America, Europe 

 and Africa, western Siberia through the corresponding coast line of 

 Australia, together with a fourth supposed by him to be indicated by 

 the great chain of islands to which the Marshall group belongs; has 

 been thought to be analagous with similar oblique lines observed on 

 Mars, and less distinctly on Venus and Jupiter. 



The similarities afforded by each of the three great continental 

 systems is suggestive as bearing upon the similar primary condition 

 attending their origin and fundamental development. We have coun- 

 terparts in the respective irregular triangular outlines of North Amer- 

 ica, Europe, and Asia, in connection with the formation of South 

 America, Africa, and Australia, all with a more or less triangular de- 

 velopment, and with the apex of the triangle pointing southward. 

 Similarly as the outlines become less triangular and larger from west 

 to east, we have regularly separating bodies of water also increasing 

 in size, and represented by the Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, and 

 the Indian Ocean. The existence of greater depths in the western 

 Atlantic and Pacific, in connection with corresponding altitudes on 

 both of their immediate shoie lines, may indicate a great law of strati, 

 graphic equivalence or ecpiilibrium, through which as we already 



