16 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1904 
ash on the summit of Snowdon. Even ashes erupted on 
the land may preserve organisms. But though no evidence 
of life has yet been detected in the Uriconian, this barren- 
ness may be due rather to the perishability of the 
inhabitants of those ancient seas than to their scarcity. 
This subject was discussed in a paper which I read to the 
Club in 1899, and I must not now reopen it. I will con- 
tent myself with pointing out that, in Precambrian times, 
it is unlikely that any conspicuous terrestrial forms of life 
had been evolved, so that the Uriconian landscape would 
have presented a weird spectacle to a visitor from another 
planet. No grass, or herb, or tree was in the ground, and 
there was no voice of living animal to mingle with the 
explosive thunders of the volcano, the pattering of the 
falling ashes, and the murmur of the changeless sea break- 
ing upon the rocky and barren shore. 
