Eureka daily sentinel. [volume] (Eureka, Nev.) 1871-1887, 1877-03-13
The Geological Record.
EUREKA, New, March 10, 1S7

A~bA.IhA, New, NudICH ~, lO|I.
EDITOR SENTINEL: The crest of our
planet may be compared to a great
compost in chemical fermentation,
subjected to the ~excitements of heat
and light; to the varied actions and
reactions Of the elements; to the Gen.
tral force Of weight, and to the motions
which cause weight. Il is only in this
sense that we can correctly examine
the singular results. This fermenta-
ton or incessant composition or de.
composition has operated on all the
parts or surfaces which in countless
revolutions have been exposed to
the solar action. We find the prim-
alive earth only when We de-
scend below the conglomerate of what
has been surface at the mean depth of
one or tsp miles. Fossil remains of
organized beings are subjects of geolo-
gy, but t3a anne processes which have
fossilized thAm have also $50 to speak,
fossilized earthS themselves, conse
quently few subjects are in their prim-
tive state, but in intimately mingled
states. The fossil remains Of all times
tell US almost as much of the physical
condition of our globe, at different
epochs, as they do of its mineral and
vegetable population.
The crest of our globe is a great
cemetery where the rocks are tomb
stones on which the buried dead have
written their own epitaphs. They
tell US not only who they were and
when and where they lived, but much
also Of the circumstances under which
they lived. Rocks of igneous origin
are known by their CRYSTALS TO belong
to this or that period OF the earth's his
tory, and rocks of aqueous origin are
known by their fossils to belong to the
Silurian or Devonian or carboniferous
deposits. The Azoic period, devoid of
life, las its name signifies) om first;
next the Silurian. when the
crust of the earth had thickened
and cooled sufficiently to render
the existence of animals and plants
upon it possible.
A belt of argillaceous shale, contain
ing Silurian fossils, extends along the
flank or foothills of Prospect Mount
ain, close by and running parallel to
the great ore channel from the Rich
mond on the northwest to the Ham
burg on the southeast; and, 10y the tes-
tinony of thousands of trilobiGes, so
named from their peculiar structure of
three-lobed divisions, representatives
of the ancient primary deposits and
vestiges OF creation, we have the first
old Silurian beach on which any life
stirred.
When Robinson Crusoe first caught
sight of the footprint on the sand, he
saw in it more than tho mere footprint,
for it spoke to him of the presence
of man on his desert island. At the
foothills of Prospect Mountain, by the
Hamburg mine, We there walk on
the old geological shore, and the foot
prints we find there tell us, too, more
than we actually see in them. To look
on the first land that was ever lifted
above the waste of waters, to follow
the shore where the earliest animals
and plants were formed, to hold in
ones hand a bit of stone from an old
seabeach, hardened into rock thou.
sands of centuries ago, and studded
with the beings that once crept upon
its surface, or were stranded there by
some receding wave, is even of deeper
interest TO men than the relics of their
own race. The eye OF the trilobite
tells Us that the sun shone on the old
Silurisn beach at the base G. Prospect
Mountain, where he lived, and when
so complicate an organ as the eye of a
trilobite was made to receive the light,
there must certainly have been light
10 enter it, JOHN NJ. FOLEY.