lO THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



quired to deposit such masses of strata. Unfortunately, by 

 far the largest portion of the primordial group of strata is 

 in the metamoi-phic state (which we shall directly explain), 

 and consequently the petrifactions contained in them — the 

 most ancient and most important of all — have, to a great 

 extent, been destroyed and become unrecognizable. Only in 

 one portion of the Cambrian and Silurian strata have petri- 

 factions been preserved in a recognizable condition and in 

 large quantities. The most ancient of all distinctly pre- 

 served petrifactions has been found in the lowest Lauren- 

 tian strata (in the Ottawa formation), which I shall after- 

 wards have to speak of as the "Canadian Life's-dawn" 

 (Eozoon canadense). 



Although only by far the smaller portion of the primor- 

 dial or archilithic petrifactions are preserved to us in a 

 recognizable condition, still they possess the value of inestim- 

 able documents of the most ancient and obscure times of the 

 organic history of the earth. What seems to be shown by 

 them, in the first place, is that during the whole of this im- 

 mense period there existed only inhabitants of the waters. 

 As yet, at any rate, among all archilithic petrifactions, not 

 a single one has been found which can with certainty be 

 regarded as an organism which has lived on land. All the 

 vegetable remains we possess of the primordial period 

 belong to the lowest of all groups of plants, to the class of 

 Tangles or Algte, living in water. In the warm primaeval 

 sea, these constituted the forests of the primordial period, 

 of the richness of which in forms and density we may form 

 an approximate idea from their present descendants, the 

 tangle forests of the Atlantic Sargasso sea. The colossal 

 tangle forests of the archilithic period supplied the place of 



