Appendix to Chapter V. 433 
coupled with the fact that the still existing Monotremata 
are what may be termed animated fossils, referring us by their 
lowly type of organization to some period enormously more 
remote,—these facts render it practically certain that some 
members of this very highest class of the highest sub-kingdom 
must have existed far back in the Primaries. 
These things, I say, I should not have expected to find, 
and I think all other evolutionists ought to be prepared to 
make the same acknowledgment, But as these things have 
been found, the only possible way of accounting for them on 
evolutionary principles is by supposing that the geological 
record is even more imperfect than we needed to suppose in 
order to meet the previous objections. I cannot see, however, 
why evolutionists should be afraid to make this acknowledg- 
ment. For I do not know any reason which would lead us to 
suppose that there is any common measure between the 
distances marked on our tables of geological formations, and 
the times which those distances severally represent. Let the 
reader turn to the table on page 163, and then let him say 
why the 30,000 feet of so-called Azoic rocks may not represent 
a greater duration of time than does the thickness of all the 
Primary rocks above them put together. For my own part I 
believe that this is probably the case, looking to the enormous 
ages during which these very early formations must have been 
exposed to destructive agencies of all kinds, now at one time 
and now at another, in different parts of the world. And, 
of course, we are without any means of surmising what 
ranges of time are represented by the so-called Primeval 
rocks, for the simple reason that they are non-sedimentary, 
and non-sedimentary rocks cannot be expected to contain 
fossils. 
But, it will be answered, the 30,000 feet of Azoic rocks, 
lying above the Primeval, are sedimentary to some extent: 
they are not all completely metamorphic: yet they are 
all destitute of fossils. This is the fourth and last difficulty 
* Ff 
