ONWARD THROUGH THE AGES. 127 



to stay his hand. But man was not yet. Ichthyic life 

 seems to have dawned upon our earth in remarkable pro- 

 fuseness. The bones, and plates, and jaws, and teeth of 

 fishes large and small have been cleft from the Corniferous 

 limestone in Canada, Michigan, and Ohio. Our first au- 

 thentic information of these earliest vertebrates came from 

 Dr. J. S. Newberry — equally distinguished in the service of 

 science and his country — and who has very recently worked 

 up a wonderful collection of Devonian fishes, created main- 

 ly by the intelligent industry of a German Methodist min- 

 ister, Rev. Herman Herzer, while discharging the duties of 

 his ministry at Delaware, Ohio. These ancient fishes were 

 only the av ant-couriers of the shoals of sharks, and stur- 

 geons, and garpikes which made a Golgotha of the Old Red 

 Sandstone. 



The closing convulsions of this epoch upheaved still 

 higher the growing continent, and depopulated the coral 

 cities of the sea that had just been astir with being. A 

 pause, and another epoch — the Hamilton epoch — followed, 

 a period characterized by its abundance of argillaceous 

 sediments, and by two masses of black bituminous shale — 

 the c Marcellus" at the bottom, and the "Genesee" at the 

 uop, with the more calcareous strata between. The ab- 

 sence of the " Marcellus" at the West has dropped the lime- 

 stones of this group upon the top of the Corniferous lime- 

 stone, and formed the appearance of but a single mass. 

 This is cleanly seen in the extensive quarries upon the isl- 

 ands in the western part of Lake Erie. Indeed, the absence 

 of the " Oriskany" at the West has brought the calcareous 

 portions of four groups of rocks into immediate juxtaposi- 

 tion. These are the Niagara, the Salina, the Corniferous, 

 and the Hamilton. Before these groups were correctly dis- 

 criminated, the entire mass was known in the West as the 

 "Cliff Limestone." No epoch of the world's history ever 



