>1ACKIE — ox THE BOTTOM-ROCKS. 



191 



know, the wide expanse of ocean waters was then untenanted by the 

 scaly tribe. 



And now I would say a few words why it is believed that these are 

 the first traces of organized life upon our planet. 



While in Europe genei-ally the older strata are much broken up and 

 metamorphosed over some large tracts, they are still in others but very 

 little altered fi'om their original condition of sediments ; and certainly 

 not more so than the newer, though still vastly ancient, Silurian fossili- 

 ferous deposits which succeeded them. For a thousand miles around 

 ^S'ew York, such ancient primitive strata stretch in a nearly level and 

 unchanged condition ; and in Russia, vast plains and low hill-regions 

 are similarly unaltered, untH, in their range towards the igneous 

 eruptive masses of the Urals, they l^ecome crystalline and meta- 

 moi'phosed. 



In our own land, the old Cambrian rocks are not more altered in 

 structui-al character than the Silurian beds above them, in which 

 fossils are abundantly found. There is, therefore, no physical obstruc- 

 tion to the presei*vatiou in the fossilized state of the Hving creatures 

 and plants of the primeval lands or seas. 



TTe should bear in mind, however, that of these old rocks we have 

 as yet but scanty knowledge ; that there are abroad, both in Eui'ope 

 and .America, gi'eat masses of unfossiliferous rock underlying the 

 Silurian strata which have never been searched for organic remains ; 

 and that even in our typiical region, the Longmynd, there are Cam- 

 brian strata, both above and below the fossihferous bands, in which as 

 yet nothing has been found, and therefore we may still hope to obtain 

 further and more correct evidence of the fauna and flora of that vastly 

 remote era. 



We have then, in mental vision, looked through the long vista of 

 past ages, to seethe fir^t-bom lands of our mother-earth joyously bask- 

 ing in the smiles of the sun, bathed in the tear-di^jps of the clouds, and 

 scan'ed with the blasts of the waves and the storms. We have looked 

 back, at least, to perceive a world governed by the same natural laws 

 as our own. But how little, after all, do we know of that primitive 

 world ! How hard, through the mists and obscurities of mp-iad ages, 

 to trace out any of its features I As a babe unfolding its eyes to the 



