PKE-HISTORIC TIMES. 59 



that the period of growth and upheaval could not have been less 

 than 5,400,000 years. This may seem incredibly long to our 

 short-sighted vision, but time is the earth's attribute ; she does 

 things leisurely. To us she renews her charming drapery of 

 foliage and flowers, year after year, while during the long 

 lapse of ages she reconstitutes seas and continents, building 

 up here and depressing there, changing everywhere and every- 

 where in motion, since motion itself is the first condition of 

 vitality. 



It may give some plausibility to this theory to consider that 

 the waters, as well as the land of that warm, semi-tropical 

 climate are, even to this day, incredibly full of animal life. 

 In the upper waters of the St. John's, where the destroying 

 hand of civilization has left less of its blight than is percep- 

 tible further north, the sluggish streams are literally swarm- 

 ing with fishes, and with an infinite variety of animal life ; 

 and we know that even so late as the time of the advent of 

 white men on this continent, such was the condition of the 

 waters even in much higher latitudes ; while it is clear, from 

 the numerous fossil-bones and teeth found among the phosphate 

 deposits and elsewhere, that a vast number of species of ter- 

 restrial monsters, long since extinct, — like the mammoth, the 

 mastodon, the rhinoceros, the dinotherium, the haclrosaurus, 

 and other gigantic saurians and their associates, — roamed the 

 southern forests and filled the lagoons, and it is by no means 

 inconceivable that they should have congregated in a reo-ion 

 so abounding in vegetable life, and have left their remains in 

 such a burial-place. 



But there is another theory that seems to explain the facts 

 more rationally, and to rest on more conclusive evidence. I 

 do not know that I shall be able to make it clear without the 

 aid of diagrams. I have not been able to discover the appear- 

 ance of cellular structure in these specimens of phosphate 

 rocks, and recently I requested Prof. Charles A. Goessmann 

 to examine them with the higher powers of his excellent 

 microscope with special reference to this point, and he reports 

 that the structure is clearly granular, and that he can discover 

 no evidence of bone-cells, nor any similarity to bony struct- 

 ure. That would seem to be pretty conclusive evidence 

 against the theory which I have already attempted to explain. 



