LXXXIV ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



240 millions of years ; while other aulhoritios state that the lithosphère, 

 to cool from a temperature of 2000° to 400°, might have taken from 

 350 inillions to 1,400 millions of years ; and Professor Perry gives 9,600 

 milHons of years.' 



There could not, it seems to me. be a more convincing proof of our 

 complete ignorance on this question. We may as profitably, or unprofit- 

 ably, theorize on the age of the imiverse as on that of this little spot 

 within it. There is, however, no reason for doubting that the " combine " 

 would have effected but little in the evolutionary work on which it was 

 engaged, but for the energetic, and all important aid of its youngest 

 member. Without it there could have been no life, either animal or 

 vegetable, and there would have been little, if any, material available for 

 further evolution and construction. 



On page 637 of Geike's "Textbook" we read: "Archaean rocks 

 eveiywhere present the same general characters, and the gneiss shades 

 off into a non-foliated rock which occurs with it in alternating bands, 

 but is in structure a true granite. Occasionally bands of the granite 

 wander across the foliation of the gneiss, but they evidently belong to the 

 period and processes of the gneiss formation, and cannot be classed as 

 later intru.>-ive eruptions." 



That the foregoing is an excellent and accurate description of these 

 granitoid Arcluean rocks I can testify from personal examination of them 

 in situ, in Britain, in Australia, in South America, and over very large 

 areas in K^orth America, as also of specimens of them from many other 

 parts of the world. 



Unlike all newer rocks, whether clastic, pyroclastic, igneous or crys- 

 talline, they are absolutely alike, and, further, they are universal in their 

 terrestrial distribution, upwards from the level of th(; ocean to the sum- 

 mits of some at least of the highest mountains, and not unlikely down to 

 the floor of the deepest oceans. 



In the quotations 1 have made above from pages 485 to 937 of 

 Geike's "Text-book," I find the, to me, doubtful and contradictory terms 

 intrusive and erupted, and also the words deposited and ocean. 



Now, in view of the axiom from which we started, viz., an incan- 

 descent, perhaps molten, but cooling lithosphère, these words formulate 

 an impossible theory, viz., the primitive existence of the hydrosphere. 

 It is a theory for which neither nature nor the character and comjiosition 

 of what are everywhere recognized as the oldest i*ocks of the lithosphère, 

 that have never anywhere been penetrated, afford a single particle of evi- 

 dence. Not only are we compelled to theorize an impossible ocean, but 

 we have also theorized animal life to people it. Salamanders are nothing 

 to Eozoon ; that minute pseudo-organism must have lived and died and 

 been entombed amidst the hottest of rocks and waters. 



' " Page 383 " American Geologist," June, 1895. 



