PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 341 
have, I think, been received with an undue amount of suspicion ; 
and I shall illustrate and, I hope, enliven them with one or two 
speculations of my own, which I trust you will receive kindly. 
To proceed now to my theme. 
Paleeontologists began with the younger fossils, and worked 
downwards. From the time of Cuvier and Brongniart in France, 
and William Smith in England, the paleontology of the Cainozoie, 
Mesozoic, and newer Palwozoic rocks made rapid progress ; and in 
1833 Murchison and Sedgwick commenced to unravel the older 
Palzeozoic of Wales. The fossils were described by our esteemed 
friend, Sir Frederick McCoy, and others. in Britain, in Europe, 
and in North America, until a fairly rich fauna was known down 
to the base of the Cambrian. Here fossils suddenly stopped, but 
so rich in species was the Cambrian fauna that it was predicted 
that, sooner or later, fossils would be found in pre-Cambrian 
rocks ;;and this prediction—which was based on the theory of 
organic evolution—has been veritied within the last few years. 
The first attempt at verification ended in disappointment. In 
1865 Sir W. Logan and Sir J. W. Dawson announced that a 
gigantic foraminifer, which they called Eozoén, had been discovered 
a few years previously in the Laurentian rocks of Canada ; but 
the announcement, at first received with favour, has, as I shall 
presently explain, fallen into discredit. Other discoveries, how- 
ever, have proved more satisfactory. So far back as 1864 Mr. 
Billings found fossils in Newfoundland, which both he and Sir 
W. Logan thought at the time to be Cambrian, but which have 
since (in 1888) been shown to be pre-Cambrian. In 1883, and 
again in 1890, Professor Walcott announced the discovery of 
undoubted organic remains in the pre-Cambrian of Arizona, In 
1889 Dr. G. F. Mathew read a paper to the Royal Society of 
Canada on some lower Cambrian fossils from New Brunswick, 
which are now, like those from Newfoundland, considered to be 
pre-Cambrian. Also, in 1892, Dr. C. Barrois discovered radio- 
larians and sponge-spicules in the pre-Cambrian rocks of Brittany, 
descriptions of which were published in 1895 by Dr. Cayeux. 
Here, at last, we seem to have reached a paleontological base ; 
for although radiolarians and sponges are not the lowest of animals, 
they are the lowest which contain any hard parts capable of being 
preserved, and are, therefore, the lowest in organisation of any 
animals we can hope to find fossil. Their position too, as I shall 
point out directly, is, probably, in the oldest system of rocks in 
which we can ever hope to recognise fossils ; and they are, no 
doubt, as old or older than any other known organisms. Conse- 
quently, the paleontological sounding-line appears to have touched 
the bottom. <A glance at what we know, or what we may legiti- 
mately surmise, about the early history of the earth will help to 
give us clearer notions on this dictum of a paleontological base. 
