THE GEOLOGIST. 
MAY, 1859. 
THE COMMON FOSSILS OF THE BRITISH ROCKS. 
By S. J. Mackie, F.G.S., F.S.A., etc. 
{Continued from imge 160.) 
Chap. 3 (continued). The Remnants of the First Life-World, and the 
Bottom-rocks, 
What then was that old land like % 
First, from the structural and physical characters of the primeval 
rocks we may best gather some knowledge. 
In Europe, however, but few are the recognised remnants of those 
primitive lands ; and those few, bare and bleak, return as yet no 
definite answers to our inquiries. 
In the northern parts of Sweden and Norway are large tracts of 
the oldest gneiss, and in Bohemia M. Barrande has described enormous 
masses of stratified rock, devoid of fossils, and apparently of Cambrian 
age, as forming the natural base of his Silurian basin ; but in that 
region, as also in Scandinavia, the earliest traces of animal life belong 
to the Primordial Zone, or that of our Stiper-stones and Lingula-flags, 
and we have no exact knowledge of the lowermost crystalline masses, 
which are probably gneissic. 
In Central France there is also a large tract of the oldest gneiss, 
covered only by a few patches of lacustrine coal, and which not 
impossibly may never have been submerged, but may remain to this 
VOL. II. r 
