have had, for it is not quite certain that they had any clear thoughts on the matter whatever. They did not really begin at the bottom, but half way up, so to speak, at the Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks, and Sedgwick and Murchison, who undertook to find bottom, got too excited over their Cambro-Silurian controversy to attend to such an insignificant detail as the logical proof that any type of fossils was really older than all others. If they had really stopped to consider that some type of fossil might occur next to the Archaean in Wales, and another type occur thus in Scotland, while still another type altogether might be found in this position in some other locality, and so on over the world, leading us to the very natural conclusion that in the olden times as now there were zoological provinces and districts, the history of science during the nineteenth century might have been very different, and this chapter might never have been written. But this commonplace of modern geology, that any type of fossil whatever, even the very "youngest," may occur next to the Archaean, was not then considered or understood; and when about 1830 it came to be recognized, other things were allowed to obscure its significance, and the habit of arranging the rocks in chronological order according to their fossils was too firmly established to be disturbed by such an idea.

But the Fact Number One, which I have chosen as the subject of this chapter, is the now well established principle that any kind of fossil whatever, even "young" Tertiary rocks, may rest upon the Archaean or Azoic series, or may themselves be almost wholly metamorphosed or crystalline, thus resembling in position and outward appearance the so-called "oldest" rocks.

The first part of this proposition, about any rocks occurring next to the Archaean, is covered by the following quotation from Dana:[15]

"A stratum of one era may rest upon any stratum in the whole of the series below it,—the Coal-measures on either the Archaean, Silurian, or Devonian strata; and the Jurassic, Cretaceous, or Tertiary on any one of the earlier rocks, the intermediate being wanting. The Quaternary in America in some cases rests on Archaean rocks, in others on Silurian or Devonian, in others on Cretaceous or Tertiary."

It would be tedious to multiply testimony on a point so universally understood.

As for the other half of this fact, that even the so-called "youngest" rocks may be metamorphic and crystalline just as well as the "oldest," it also is now a recognized commonplace of science. Dana[16] says that as early as 1833 Lyell taught this as a general truth applicable to "all the formations from the earliest to the latest."

The first reference I can find to any disproof of this old fable of Werner's, that only certain kinds of rock are to be found next to the "Primitive" or Archaean, is in the observations of Studer and Beaumont in the Alps, (1826-28), who found "relatively young" fossils in crystalline schists, which, as Zittel says, "was a very great blow to the geologists who upheld the hypothesis of the Archaean or pre-Cambrian age of all gneisses and schists."

James Geikie, doubtless referring to the same series of rocks, tells us that:—

"In the central Alps of Switzerland, some of the Eocene strata are so highly metamorphosed that they closely resemble some of the most ancient deposits of the globe, consisting, as they do, of crystalline rocks, marble, quartz-rock, mica schist, and gneiss."[17]

Hence we need not be surprised at the following statement of the situation by Zittel.[18]

"The last fifteen years of the nineteenth century witnessed very great advances in our knowledge of rock-deformation and metamorphism. It has been found that there is no geological epoch whose sedimentary deposits have been wholly safeguarded from metamorphic changes, and, as this broad fact has come to be realized, it has proved most unsettling, and has necessitated a revision of the stratigraphy of many districts in the light of new possibilities. The newer researches scarcely recognize any theory; they are directed rather to the empirical method of obtaining all possible information regarding microscopic and field evidences of the passage from metamorphic to igneous rocks, and from metamorphic to sedimentary rocks."

But in addition to what Zittel means by recognizing "no theory" as to the origin of the various sorts of "igneous" rocks, it seems to me that this "broad fact" ought surely to prove "most unsettling," to the traditional theories about certain fossils being intrinsically older than others. With our minds divested of all prejudice, and this "broad" Fact Number One well comprehended, that any kind of fossil whatever may occur next to the Archaean, and the rocky strata containing it may in texture and appearance "closely resemble some of the most ancient deposits on the globe," where on this broad earth shall we look for the place to start our life-succession That is, where can we now go to find those kinds of fossils which we can prove, by independent arguments, to be absolutely older than all others? It may seem very difficult for some of us to discard a theory so long an integral part of all geology; but until it can be proved that this "broad fact" as stated by Zittel and Dana is no fact at all, I see no escape from the acknowledgment that the doctrine of any particular fossils being essentially older than others is a pure invention, with absolutely nothing in nature to support it.

Or, to state the matter in another way, since the life succession theory rests logically and historically on Werner's notion that only certain kinds of rocks (fossils) are to be found at the "bottom" or next to the Archaean, and it is now acknowledged everywhere that any kind of rocks whatever may be thus situated, it is as clear as sunlight that the life succession theory rests logically and historically on a myth, and that there is no way of proving what kind of fossil was buried first.

Of course, the reason the followers of Cuvier and his life succession now find themselves in such a fix as this is because they have not been following true inductive methods. Theirs has been a geology by hypothesis instead of by observed fact. They started out with a pretty scheme ready-made about the origin and formation of the world, perfectly innocent of any evil intent in such a method of procedure, and unconscious of its speculative character; and for nearly a hundred years they have supposed that they were following inductive methods in Geology. But in view of what we have now learned I think we are perfectly justified in adapting and applying to Cuvier and the modern school of geologists what Geikie[19] says about Werner and his school:

"But never in the history of science did a stranger hallucination arise than that of Cuvier and the modern