546 



THE A20IC SYSTEM AND ITS SUBDIVISIOKS. 



evolutionists who accept the Eozooa in a more diHlcult position than 

 they would occupy if they rejected it altogether. It would be better 

 for them to take the ground occupied by F. Eoemer, and say that '* the 

 strata containing the Primordial Fauna are the oldest fossiliforous rocks, 

 either because the rocks which are still older were originally unsuited 

 to the preservation of traces of life, or had become so in consequence of 

 subsequent, changes, or else because the organisms which preceded the 

 Primordial Fauna were of too perishable a character to be preserved/' 

 At all events, let them recognize, with Koemer, that, so far as our pres- 

 ent knowledge goes, there arc no fossils older than those of the Pri- 

 mordial Fauna. 



Of ail the results of geological and palscontological investigations 



during the past half-century, there is no one so remarkable as the reve- 

 lation of the existence of the so-called Primordial Fauna. It is now 

 clearly established that there was a time when hfe was represented by 

 a few forms, which were essentially the same all over the globe. What 

 has long been known to be true for Europe and America has been 

 recently supplemented, for Asia, by the investigations of Kichthofen m 

 China, where the peculiar primordial fauna seems to be largely devel- 

 oped, bearing, as Professor Dames remarks,* *'an astonishing resem- 

 blance '' to that of North America and Scandinavia. We have, namely, 

 in China, the same intermixture of trilobites, either belonging to the 

 genus Concocephalites, or closely related to it, together with the usual, 

 primordial brachiopods, OrtJiis ^m\ Linrjulella, y^hich everywhere char- 

 acterize the oldest rocks in which any "decipherable traces" of life 

 have been found. And, as if in utter contempt of all theories, we find 

 the trilobites disappearing entirely in early geological times, while the 

 brachiopods remain almost or entirely unchanged up to the present 



epoch. 



We have thus, as we think, clearly established the truth of the state- 

 ment, that the stratified rocks designated as Azoic by Foster and Whitney, 

 and included within the Archioan of Da»a are 



non-fossiliferous. 



so far as present evidence 

 goes— non-iossunerous. A persistent search for nearly half a century, 

 in all parts of the world, for traces of life in infra-Silurian formations 

 has not resulted in success. We consider, therefore, that geologists who 

 prefer the guidance of fact to that of theory, and who respect the law of 

 priority in nomenclature, will contintie the use of the name Azoic for 

 the rocks described under that name by Foster and Whitney. At tlic 

 same time, it is desirable that a more definite understanding should bo 



* China, YoL IV. p. 7. 



