A MAY OF LIFE. 67 



the mineral, performing a sort of commissary function in 

 behalf of the animal. The animal — even the carnivorous 

 animal — implies the vegetable — requires the vegetable 

 All things considered, we are led to believe that plant life 

 had a history upon our earth a full epoch before the exist- 

 ence of the lowest animals. There must have been a real 

 Azoic Age. This deductive conclusion receives some sup- 

 port from inductive data. Petroleum, when existing in a 

 state of wide or general distribution through a formation, 

 is found to be traceable to vegetable organisms, generally 

 marine plants, that have been reduced to a pulp and min- 

 gled with argillaceous mud before deposition. Petroleum 

 is thus found in every formation, from the very latest down 

 to the primeval gneiss. The actual presence of petroleum 

 in gneissic strata affords a material prop to the doctrine 

 of prsezoic vegetation — a doctrine of no inconsiderable im- 

 portance in establishing the harmony of the Mosaic and 

 geologic records. 



But a few months since geologists were equally ignorant 

 of the existence of vegetable and animal remains through 

 the entire series ofLaurentian and Huronian strata, unless, 

 perchance, the so-called "Cambrian" rocks of the Old World 

 be of the same age as the Huronian — a conclusion which 

 the eminent geologist, Dr. Bigsby, disinclines to accept. 

 Geologists, it is true, drew the same inferences as now 

 from the same data in reference to the existence of vege- 

 tal organization ; but no actual or recognizable remains 

 had been found, nor have they to this day. Greatly to 

 the astonishment of the whole geological world, however, 

 the abundant remains of animals have been discovered in 

 strata which long antedate the most ancient in which a 

 vegetable form has been descried. It was not by any 

 means a rich fauna, but a single species, which populated 

 the sea even in the Laurentian period. The faint tracery 



