TO THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
quired to deposit such masses of strata. Unfortunately, by 
far the largest portion of the primordial group of strata is 
in the metamorphic state (which we shall directly explain), 
and consequently the petrifactions contained in them—the 
most ancient and most important of all—have, to a great 
extent, been destroyed and become unrecognizable. Only in 
one portion of the Cambrian and Silurian strata have petri- 
factions been preserved in a recognizable condition and in 
large quantities. The most ancient of all distinctly pre- 
served petrifactions has been found in the lowest Lauren- 
tian strata (in the Ottawa formation), which I shall after- 
wards have to speak of as the “Canadian Life’s-dawn” 
(Eozoon canadense). 
Although only by far the smaller portion of the primor- 
dial or archilithic petrifactions are preserved to us in a 
recognizable condition, still they possess the value of inestim- 
able documents of the most ancient and obscure times of the 
organic history of the earth. What seems to be shown by 
them, in the first place, is that during the whole of this im- 
mense period there existed only inhabitants of the waters. 
As yet, at any rate, among all archilithic petrifactions, not 
a single one has been found which can with certainty be 
regarded as an organism which has lived on land. All the 
vegetable remains we possess of the primordial period 
belong to the lowest of all groups of plants, to the class of 
Tangles or Algz, living in water. In the warm primeval 
sea, these constituted the forests of the primordial period, 
of the richness of which in forms and density we may form 
an approximate idea from their present descendants, the 
tangle forests of the Atlantic Sargasso sea. The colossal 
tangle forests of the archilithic period supplied the place of 
