172 



THE DAWN OF LIFE. 



brilliant discoveries of Sedgwick, Murcliison, Barrande, 

 and a liost of otliers, have peopled these once barren 

 regions ; and they now stretch before our wondering 

 gaze in the long vistas of early Palgeozoic life. So 

 we now look out from the Cambrian shore upon the 

 vast ocean of the Huronian and Laurentian, all to us 

 yet tenantlesSj except for the few organisms, which, like 

 stray shells cast upon the beach, or a far-off land dimly 

 seen in the distance, incite to further researches, and 

 to the exploration of the unknown treasures that 

 still lie undiscovered. It would be a suitable culmina- 

 tion of the geological work of the last half- century, and 

 one within reach at least of our immediate successors, 

 to fill up this great blank, and to trace back the Pri- 

 mordial life to the stage of Eozoon, and perhaps even 

 beyond this, to predecessors which may have existed at 

 the beginning of the Lower Laurentian, when the 

 earliest sediments of that great formation were laid 

 down. Vast unexplored areas of Laurentian and Hu- 

 ronian rocks exist in the Old World and the New. The 

 most ample facilities for microscopic examination of 

 rocks may now be obtained ; and I could wish that one 

 result of the publication of these pages may be to 

 direct the attention of some of the younger and more 

 active geologists to these fields of investigation. It is 

 to be observed also that such regions are among the 

 richest in useful minerals, and there is no reason why 

 search for these fossils should not be connected with 

 other and more practically useful researches. On this 

 subject it will not be out of place to quote the remarks 



