112 APPENDIX TO THE TACON1C SYSTEM. 



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

 cooled bo much aa to condense vapour, and to permit the fixation of fluids upon the sur- 

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

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

 find the tir-i 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 

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

 found the Scholitftus, a tubular 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 ] 

 Inn at another locality, I found what appears to he an orthoceratite. The fossils, however, 

 arc 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. 



