VI 



THE HISTORY OF A DISCOVERY 



AT^HEN Mr. Logan, afterwards Sir William 

 ^ Logan, entered on the Geological Survey 

 of Canada, in 1840, he found that vast and little- 

 explored regions in the northern part of that country 

 were occupied with gneissic rocks, similar to the 

 oldest gneisses of Scotland and Scandinavia, and 

 to which the name Azoic had been given by 

 Murchison, as rocks destitute of fossils, while they 

 had been the " fundamental granite " or ur-gneiss 

 of most European geologists. They were unques- 

 tionably below and more ancient than the oldest 

 fossiliferous Cambrian rocks both in Europe and 

 North America, and geologists had for the most 

 part contented themselves with regarding them as 

 primitive rocks, destitute of any geological interest, 

 much as some United States geologists of the 

 present day call them the " Archaean complex," 

 a name which the late Prof Dana has well cha- 

 racterized as a " term of despair." 



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