i 



64 



RELICS OF PRIMEVAL LIFE 







are represented by very many peculiar specific and 

 generic forms. Some of the earliest types, like 

 Obolus and Lin^ula, persist very long, and the latter 

 has continued without change from the Early Cam- 

 brian to the Modern period. 



The great group of the Sea-stars and Sea-urchins 

 appears only in a few of its lower forms, and seems 

 to be the only class represented by embryonic types. 

 The coral animals are absent, so far as known. 

 The Jelly-fishes and their allies cannot be preserved 

 as fossils, but some peculiar markings, at one time 

 regarded as plants, are now supposed to be trails 

 made by the tentacles of creatures of this kind 

 moving over muddy bottoms. A few spicules in- 

 dicate Sponges, and the ubiquitous groups of the 

 marine Protozoa, the Foraminifera and the Radio- 

 launus, are represented by shells scarcely distinguish- 

 able from those of modern species. The great and 

 peculiar forms represented at this early time by 

 Cryptozoon and its allies seem long ago to have 

 perished, and we shall have to return to them in a 

 later stage of our inquiry. 



To sum up the little that we know of this 

 earliest Palaeozoic life : — It was perfect of its kind, 

 equally pregnant with evidences of design, and of 



