272 
modified, it may be, to suit the particular habits of the 
creature. And thus the whole animal kingdom admits of 
an easy and intelligent classification, which even the youthful 
student of zoology can understand. Surely such a faith as this is 
more intelligent and reasonable than that of the transmutation 
of one species into another by evolution and natural selec- 
tion, which must of necessity be blind and unreasoning. 
There is another point of very great importance in this 
controversy. It is this. Evolution by natural selection is 
not borne out by the testimony of geology, or, in other words, 
by what the rocks declare as to the succession of life on the 
earth. 
We are told by the advanced evolutionist that the changes 
produced by evolution cannot be tested by the history of 
animal life in historic times ; but if we wish to get any 
evidence of the truth of the doctrine we must seek it in the 
treasure-house of geology. Agreed. Let us, therefore, ques- 
tion the rocks, and mark well their answers. In the oldest 
rocks, at the very bottom of the Laurentian series in Canada, 
there has been found what is considered to be the most 
ancient of all fossils. It has been called by Professor Dawson 
the Eozoon, or dawn of life.^”^ The Eozoon is supposed to 
be the fossil form of a protozoan — a species of foraminifera, 
which, instead of existing as minute microscopic creatures 
as we find their representatives to-day, were gigantic aggre- 
gations of protoplasm, which combined to secrete vast reefs 
of calcareous shells. Thus much for the first evidence of 
animal life — a Protozoon. 
The Laurentian rocks reveal no further indications of 
animal life ; not one trace of the evolution of an eozoon 
into any other form. And what is true in the case of the 
Laurentian series is true also in that next above, viz., the 
Huronian. 
Let us now take another step upwards and question the 
Cambrian system. Among these rocks, at Bray Head, near 
Dublin, some remarkable fossils have been found, to which 
the name of Oldhamia has been given. What is the position 
of these creatures in the scale of nature ? It is now generally 
admitted that the Oldhamia rank with the Corallines of the 
present day. The second fossil is doubtless the remains of 
a more highly- organized animal than the eozoon, and so far 
seems to favour the hypothesis of evolution. 
Let us, however, take another step upwards. Ascending 
higher in the Cambrian series we find the third oldest fossil. 
And what is it ? Hot a protozoon, not an hydrozoon, not an 
