TRILOBITE HUNTING. 199 



transitional age of confusion and catastrophe which 

 closed the Primary epoch and prepared the way for 

 the Secondary. Hence, whenever a specimen of the 

 easily identified trilobite is met with we may at once 

 feel certain that the bed in which it occurs is older 

 than the Permian or the Coal. 



There is perhaps no chapter in the volume of 

 Creation more complete in itself, or less related to 

 other chapters, than this which gives us the history 

 of the trjlobite. Page by page as we turn from one 

 tablet to another of Nature's great Stone-book we 

 see old organisms becoming extinct and new ones 

 gradually taking their place, all witnessing to the 

 continued existence of creative energy. Coming in 

 along with the very oldest of terrestrial creatures for 

 it is not demonstrated that Eozoon of pre-Cambrian 

 times is organic this remarkable animal goes 

 through its cycle of existence, from the eyeless 

 Agnostus on to the huge Paradoxides by a rapidity 

 of development almost startling for both belong to 

 the earlier Cambrian deposits and then on through 

 long centuries of slow variation and deterioration to 

 the comparatively insignificant Carboniferous genera 

 which were unable to hold their own in the fierce 

 struggle for existence with the mighty Vertebrates 

 that were by this time taking possession of both 

 land and sea. Whence they came, from what root- 

 stock they sprouted, and whither they went, into 

 what surviving forms they transmitted their expiring 

 energies, can be conjectured, but not conclusively 

 determined. 



Scientific classification is based on the nature, 



