4S0 C. Sohuohert — Pre-Cambrian Nomenclature. 



posed for the rocks of pre-Cambrian time. It appears that 

 Professor Phillips was the first to use a term for all pre-Cam- 

 hrian rocks in his Manual of Geology (London 1832), group- 

 ing them under Ilypozoic. The writer does not have access to 

 this book, but in the second edition of it, published in 1855, on 

 page 655 the term is defined as follows : " Ilypozoic. A term 

 proposed .... for the lowest primary strata, such as gneiss, 

 mica, schist, etc., found below all those which contain organic 

 remains," i. e., below the Cambrian and Silurian. The word 

 is taken from the Greek words for below and life. In this 

 book Phillips further says it equals Murchison's term Azoic. 

 The latter, however, dates from 1845* and therefore should not 

 dispossess Ilypozoic ; it is defined as follows : "To the crystal- 

 line masses [of Norway and Sweden] which preceded that 

 palaeozoic succession to which our researches were mostly 

 directed, we apply the term 'Azoic,' not meaning thereby dog- 

 matically to affirm, that nothing organic could have been in 

 existence during those earliest deposits of sedimentary matter, 

 but simply as expressing the fact, that in as far as human 

 researches have reached, no vestiges of living things have been 

 found in them. . . . Professor Phillips has applied the word 

 Hypozoic to the same rocks which we term Azoic.'' 



" One of the Scandinavian features which first strikes the 

 ordinary observer with surprise, is the enormous amount of 

 crystalline rock that occupies the surface of the country. In 

 the term Azoic rocks, we include all the crystalline masses 

 belonging to the ancient group of gneiss, together with ancient 

 granitic and phitonic rocks by which they have been invaded." 



The older term Hypozoic was not widely used and finally 

 was altogether displaced by Azoic. The first geologists to use 

 this term in America, and for all pre-Cambrian rocks, were 

 Foster and Whitney, f Sir William Dawson used it also for 

 all the pre-Cambrian rocks, the "oldest metamorphic rocks of 

 Canada," in the first edition of his Acadian Geology ;X in the 

 second edition of this book we read :§ The rocks below the 

 Paleozoic ''until lately, were regarded as azoic, or destitute of 

 remains of life ; but the discovery of Eozoon canadense [this 

 is certainly not a protozoan as held by Dawson, but appears to 

 be an algal calcareous secretion] now entitles them to the name 

 Eozoic [= dawn life], or those that indicate the morning of 

 that great creative day in which the lower forms of animal 

 life were introduced upon our planet." Dana also used Azoic 

 in the first edition of his Manual^ as follows : " The Azoic 



* E. I. Murchison, Geology of Russia in Europe, 10*. 



f Foster and Whitney, Geology of the Lake Superior Land District, Pt. II, 

 Washington, 1851, 3 and Chapter II. 

 X Acadian Geology, Edinburgh, 1855, 22 and Chapter 15. 

 §1868, 658. 

 I Manual of Geology, 1863, 134. 



