OUR SLATE FOSSILIFEROUS. 
43 
Notwithstanding the irreconcileableness of the fact 
to preconceived views, and the hesitation and 
chagrin with which many men receive it, our slate 
formation is fossiliferous, and even abundantly so 
in some places. Without doubt, a vast quantity of 
our slate—the loose and highly separable material 
of a large number of our hills, is devoid of fossils, 
but, in a deal also, of the same kind of rock where 
it would not be expected to exist, fossils are spar¬ 
ingly distributed. In nearly all the quarries of roofing 
slate they are readily distinguishable, and in the 
greywacke slate of the coast, a variety of interesting 
specimens attract notice. It may be argued, that 
there is evidence of a gradual increase of organic life, 
of gradual passage from the period when the earth 
was devoid of living beings, to that time when they 
were tolerably numerous, as exhibited in the forma¬ 
tion of our limestone. This gradual kind of change 
is allowed to be a maxim in our science ; but, what¬ 
ever partial symptoms of this rule are to be detected 
or fancied in the present case, I am clearly of opinion, 
that the decided connexions of the whole body of 
our fossiliferous rocks, will far outweigh any con¬ 
siderations gatherered from the remains themselves 
calculated to engender a persuasion that intervals 
occurred between their depositions. Whether the 
arrangement which is perceptible, occurred through 
mere accident,, or by some law of nature during the 
process of the nearly simultaneous deposit of these 
rocks, must for the present be matter of speculation. 
If we were to calculate the probable amount of 
those relics which are with difficulty recognised, or 
of those appearances probably referrible to former 
beings, it is possible that it would surpass the 
quantity of other remains in this rock. These obscure 
indications of animal (and vegetable ?) life, are 
seemingly the remains of soft gelatinous bodies, 
such as are the Actinia of the present day, and 
