FOSSILS IN THE " AZOIC " ROCKS. 



347 



there was any universal synchronous catastrophe or cataclysm such 

 as to depopulate the entire world. 



From some cause, at present unknown, and perhaps even unguessed, 

 it was not an actively vital period ; in fact, it fell below what may 

 be called the normal degree of organic productiveness. Compared 

 with those above and those below, its strata are poor in fossils in 

 proportion to their thickness, and the genera are similarly sterile in 

 species. 



Possibly the climate was somewhat warmer than now, though the 

 evidence of this is very treacherous. Exogenous trees existed then, 

 and by their rings of woody matter, implying activity and stimulus, 

 and the separability of those rings, indicating rest and the suspension 

 of the force which causes growth, suggest the idea of changes of 

 temperature characterized by periodicity — in fine, a change of sea- 

 sons ; the earth travelling round the sun under the influence of his 

 attraction, and having then as well as now her axis inclined to the 

 plane of her orbit.* 



The beautiful patterns of the coral genera, Heliolites, Acervularia, 

 Smithia, Spongophylktm, and others ; and the exquisite forms of the 

 Grmoidea, are so many revelations of the existence of beauty in those 

 early pre-humcm times. So far as man is concerned — 



" Full many a flower is bom to blush unseen, 

 And waste its sweetness on the desert air."f 



And then, too, animals were furnished with weapons and other 

 means of defence, implying the co -existence of organs of offence. 

 Violence, Fear, Terror, and Pain occupied the earth ; the threads of 

 Death were from the first inwoven in the web of Life, and the com- 

 mission "to kill and eat" is as old as the organic creation. 



FOSSILS IN THE "AZOIC" ROCKS. 



Sir, — I hasten to communicate a new and most interesting fact 

 regarding the oldest rocks ; and I do so for the sake of securing the 

 credit of its discovery to the excellent Keeper of the paleontological 

 collection of the Royal Bohemian Museum, Prague — Dr. Antonio 

 Fritsch, who well known on the continent as an authority on birds, 

 is also an ardent paleontologist. Three summers back, he 

 went over with me the old Silurian ground of Shropshire and the 

 Malverns, and he convinced me that he knew his own rich district well, 

 by the frequent comparisons he made between the different parts of 



* Dr. Dawson, Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., vol. xv., p. 485. 

 t Testimony of the Rocks, p. 241, &c. 



