224 RELICS OF PRIMEVAL LIFE 



take advantage of these conditions. Further, it 

 gives a more simple beginning of life than that 

 afforded by the more complex fauna of the Cam- 

 brian age ; and this is more in accordance with 

 what we know of the slow and gradual introduc- 

 tion of new forms of living things during the vast 

 periods of Palaeozoic time. In connection with this, 

 it opens a new and promising field of observation 

 in the older rocks ; and if this should prove fertile, 

 its exploration may afford a vast harvest of new 

 forms to the geologists of the present and coming 

 time. This result will be in entire accordance with 

 what has taken place before in the history of 

 geological discovery. I can myself remember a 

 time when the old and semi-metamorphic sedi- 

 ments constituting the great Cambrian system 

 were massed together in geological classifications 

 as primitive or primary rocks, destitute or nearly 

 destitute of organic remains. The brilliant dis- 

 coveries of Sedgwick, Murchison, Barrande, and 

 a host of others, have peopled these once barren 

 regions ; and they now stretch before our wonder- 

 ing gaze in the long vistas of early Pahtozoic life. 

 So we now look out from the Cambrian shore 

 upon the ocean of the Etcheminian, the Huronian, 



