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 un^essed, 
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, Spongophyllum, and others ; and the exquisite forms of the 
Crinoidea, are so many revelations of the existence of beauty in those 
GdjAj jpre-human times. So far as man is concerned — 
" Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."t 
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 kno^vn on the continent as an authority on birds, 
is also an ardent paleontologist. Three summers back, he 
went over with me the old Sijurian 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 oif 
* Dr. Dawson, Quart. Jour. Geol, Soc, vol. xv,, p. 485. 
f Testimony of the Rocks, p. 241, &c. 
