54 The American Geologist. January, 1892 
not indeed without fossils but in which fossils were exceedingly 
scarce. 
Now, however, the immense Cambrian system has been erected 
in this chaotic region with its three divisions, each holding a 
characteristic fauna, and geologists are venturing on yet farther 
conquests in the same direction. The vast Pre-Cambrian masses 
intervening between the Cambrian and the true Archzean are be- 
coming more and more a field for careful investigation, and slowly 
we are finding traces of forms of lowly life that inhabited the an- 
cient seas wherein those rocks were formed. 
Behind these zons of Pre-Cambrian time lie the Archzean ages, 
and even these are not too old to yield traces of life. For thirty 
years has the spectral Hozoon canadense stood before the world as 
u paleontologic problem; on one hand stoutly defended by its 
foster father, Sir William Dawson, and a few faithful friends, and 
on the other attacked by almost all other students of the Foramini- 
fera. In the report of Dr. Frazer to the International Congress 
in 1888, as given in this magazine for September of that year, 
are the opinions of fourteen geologists, of whom only three, Daw- 
son, Hunt and Walcott, pronounced in its favor. 
It is scarcely possible to doubt that not a few of these were in- 
fluenced against Kozoon by its loneliness. Standing solitary as 
the single relic of the life of the dim and distant Archeean, it was 
surrounded with a haze that no geological telescope could entirely 
pierce. For this reason it was exposed, and naturally so, to sus- 
picion that would not have been felt had other organisms of 
similar date been known or even suspected. 
From this point of view some of the recent work of Canadian 
geologists is of very great interest. In his address as president 
of the Natural History Society, of New Brunswick, Mr. G. F., 
Matthew has reported some remarkable discoveries among the 
Archean rocks of Canada, After noticing several connected 
matters, Mr. Matthew says: 
“It is with pleasure that I am able to call your attention to the 
existence, in your neighborhood, of remains of organic forms of 
an antiquity far antedating the Cambrian age, 
“As we have at St. John a definite base to the Cambrian sys- 
tem, and since these basal rocks carry the very oldest Cambrian 
fauna known, we are sure of the greater antiquity of the organic 
forms to which IT refer. 
‘ 
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