142 Annual Retrospect. [Jan., 
The means of communicating between the guard and the passen- 
gers in railway trains has received much attention during the year, 
but with very slight advantage. On the South-Western Railway 
an experiment has been fairly tried, with, we believe, evident ad- 
vantage to all concerned. But railway boards are evidently pos- 
sessed with the genius of procrastination, and are ever postponing 
the consideration of improvements, until they are forced upon them 
by the uncontrollable impetuosity of a public outery, excited by some 
frightful accident or other. 
To return to the natural sciences, Geology has something to 
report. It has proved the existence of life in the world during 
geological ages which have been considered, as it regards organiza- 
tion, a blank, and to which the term of azote (void of life) has been 
given. Long previous to the origin of the Silurian and Cambrian 
strata, which were regarded as the oldest sedimentary formations, 
vast masses of rock had been accumulating in the ancient seas. 
These have been detected by Sir William Logan in the Laurentian 
chain of Canada, and by Sir Roderick Murchison in the ancient rocks 
of the north of Scotland, to which the name of Fundamental Gneiss 
was given. The Laurentian rocks of Canada contain a zoophyte, 
the Hozoon Canadense, which is certainly the most ancient organi- 
zation known to exist. The discovery of this Foraminifer in the 
lowest known deposit confirms the doctrine that the lowest animals 
alone occur in the earliest zone of life, and that this beginning was 
followed through long periods by creations of higher and higher 
animals successively. ‘T’he evidence is before us, that through the 
prolonged periods comprehended within the Lower Silurian epoch, 
no vertebrate animal has been discovered. Fishes begin to appear 
in the Upper Silurian zone, and they have been continued to the 
present day. New forms of vertebrate animals have succeeded each 
other as we ascend in the scale, until in the overlying Secondary 
and Tertiary formations, higher and higher grades of animals appear, 
the relics of man or his works having been discovered in the youngest 
of the Tertiary deposits. 
The geologist and the archzologist have here points of contact. 
The discovery of the rude works of early races of men in drift de- 
posits and in limestone caves, associated with the remains of animals 
which no longer exist, unmistakably shows the age of man far 
