112 APPENDIX TO THE TACONIC SYSTEM. 



deposits at the bottoms of seas ; and by this we are informed that the earth had then 

 cooled so much as to condense vapour, and to permit the fixation of iiuids upon the sur- 

 face. Tliis condition, it is evident, was requisite before a single living creature, with 

 organizations designed for the earth, could be sustained ; and it is in this system that we 

 find (lie first beings which had life and vitality, all of which, so far as discoveries have 

 been made, were marine. We do not feel confident that it is in the earliest of these de- 

 posits that we have discovered fossils. Mr. James Hall, however, informs me that he 

 found the Scholithiis, a tulmlar polyparian, in the most easterly mass of the granular quartz. 

 On visiting the place as described to me, I was not successful in my search for this fossil ; 

 but at another locality, I found what appears to be an orthoceratite. The fossils, however, 

 are more abundant in the newer rocks of this system ; and they belong to beings of an 

 extremely delicate construction, as the reader may see by reference to our description in 

 another part of this report. 



