Appendix to Chapter V. 433 



coupled with the fact that the still existing Monotremata 

 are what may be termed animated fossils, referring us by their 

 lowly type of organization to some period enormously more 

 remote, these facts render it practically certain that some 

 members of this very highest class of the highest sub-kingdom 

 must have existed far back in the Primaries. 



These things, I say, I should not have expected to find, 

 and I think all other evolutionists ought to be prepared to 

 make the same acknowledgment. But as these things have 

 been found, the only possible way of accounting for them on 

 evolutionary principles is by supposing that the geological 

 record is even more imperfect than we needed to suppose in 

 order to meet the previous objections. I cannot see, however, 

 why evolutionists should be afraid to make this acknowledg- 

 ment. For I do not know any reason which would lead us to 

 suppose that there is any common measure between the 

 distances marked on our tables of geological formations, and 

 the times which those distances severally represent. Let the 

 reader turn to the table on page 163, and then let him say 

 why the 30,000 feet of so-called Azoic rocks may not represent 

 a greater duration of time than does the thickness of all the 

 Primary rocks above them put together. For my own part I 

 believe that this is probably the case, looking to the enormous 

 ages during which these very early formations must have been 

 exposed to destructive agencies of all kinds, now at one time 

 and now at another, in different parts of the world. And, 

 of course, we are without any means of surmising what 

 ranges of time are represented by the so-called Primeval 

 rocks, for the simple reason that they are non-sedimentary, 

 and non-sedimentary rocks cannot be expected to contain 

 fossils. 



But, it will be answered, the 30,000 feet of Azoic rocks, 

 lying above the Primeval, are sedimentary to some extent : 

 they are not all completely metamorphic : yet they are 

 all destitute of fossils. This is the fourth and last difficulty 



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