The Sun.
London, England, 1864-09-15 00:00:00

but this argument seems to me fallacious. Middendorf, in
1843, after digging through some thickness of frozen soil in
Siberia, came down upon an icy mass, in which the carcase
of a mammoth was imbedded, so perfect that, among other
parts, the pupil of its eye was taken out, and is now pre-
served in the Museum of Moscow. No one will deny that
this elephant had lain for several thousand years in its icy
envelope; and if it had been left undisturbed, and the cold
had gone on increasing, for myriads of centuries, we might
reasonably expect that the frozen flesh might continuo
undecayed until a second. glacial period had passed away.
When speculations on the long series of events which
occurred in the glacial and post-glacial periods are indulged
in, the imagination is apt to take alarm at the immensity
of the time required to interpret the monuments of these
ages, all referable to the era of existing species. In order
to abridge the number of centuries which would otherwise
be indispensable, a disposition is shown by many to
magnify the rato of channel in prehistoric times, by
investing the causes which have modified the animate and
inanimate world with extraordinary and excessive energy.
The living generation, when called upon to make grants
of thousands of centuries in order to explain the events of
what is called the modern period, shrink naturally at first
from making what seems so lavish an expenditure of the
past time, Throughout our early education we have been
accustomed to such strict economy in all that relates to the
chronology of the earth and its inhabitants in remote ages,
so fettered have we been by old traditional beliefs, that even
when our reason is convinced,and we are persuaded that we
ought to make more liberal grants of time to the geologist,
we feel how hard it is. I will now briefly allude in con-
clusion to two points on which a gradual change of opinion
has been taking place among geologists of late years. First,
as to whether there has been a continuous succession of
events in the organic and inorganic worlds, uninterrupted
by violent and general catastrophes ; and secondly, whether
clear evidence can be obtained of a period antecedent to the
creation of organic beings on the earth. ,On the first point,
it is worthy of remark that, although a belief in sudden
and general convulsions has been losing ground, as also the
doctrine of abrupt transitions from one set of species of ani-
mals and plants to another of a very different type, yet the
whole series of the records which have been handed down
to us are now more than ever regarded as fragmentary.
They ought to be looked upon as more perfect, because
numerous gaps have been filled up, and in the formations
newly intercalated in the series we have found many miss-
ing links and various intermediate gradations between the
nearest allied forms previously known in the animal and
vegetable worlds. Yet the whole body of monuments
which we are endeavouring to decipher appears more de-
fective than before. For my own part, I agree with Mr
Darwin in considering them as a mere fraction of those
which have once existed, while no approach to a perfect
series was ever formed originally, it having never been part
of the plan of Nature to leave a complete record of all her
works and operations for the enlightenment of rational
beings who might study them in after ages. In refe-
rence to the other great question, or the earliest date of
vital phenomena on this planet, the late discoveries in
Canada have at last demonstrated that certain theories
founded in Europe on mere negative evidence were altogether
delusive. In the course of a geological survey, carried on
under the able direction of Sir William E. Logan, it has
been shown that northward of the river St. Lawrence there
is a vast series of stratified and crystalline rocks of gneiss,
mica-schist, quartzite, and limestone, about 40,000 feet in
thickness, which have been called Laurentian. They are
more ancient than the oldest fossiliferous strata of Europe,
or those to which the term primordial had been rashly as-
signed. In the first place, the newest part of this great
crystalline series is unconformable to the ancient fossili-
ferous or so-called primordial rocks which overlie it ; so that
it must have undergone disturbing movements before the
latter or primordial sot were formed, Then, again, the older
half of the Laurentian series is unconformable to the newer
portion of the same. It is in this lowest and most ancient
system of crystalline strata that a limestone about a thou-
sand feet thick has been observed, containing organic re-
mains. These fossils have been examined by Dr Dawson
of Montreal, and ho has detected in them, by aid of the mi-
croscope, the distinct structure of a large species of Rhizo-
pod. Fine specimens of this fossil, called Eozoon
Canadenso, have been brought to Bath by Sir William
Logan, to be exhibited to the members of the association.
We have every reason to suppose that the rocks in which
these animal remains are included are of as old a date as
any of the formations named azoic in Europe, if not older;
so that they precede in date rocks once supposed to have
been formed before any organic beings had been created.
Sir Charles Lyell concluded by stating that he would not
venture on " speculations respecting the signs of a begin-
ning' or the prospects of an end' of our terrestrial system
—that wide ocean of scientific conjecture on which so many
theorists, before my time, have suffered shipwreck."