Devonian and Silurian formations, we must remember, on the one hand,
that even a cartilaginous or ganoid fish belongs to the highest
sub-kingdom of the animal series; and, on the other hand, that such
animals are thus proved to have abounded in the very lowest strata where
there is good evidence of there having been any forms of life at all.
Lastly, the fact that Marsupials occur in the Trias, coupled with the
fact that the still existing Monotremata are what may be termed animated
fossils, referring us by their lowly type of organization to some period
enormously more remote,--these facts render it practically certain that
some members of this very highest class of the highest sub-kingdom must
have existed far back in the Primaries.

These things, I say, I should not have expected to find, and I think all
other evolutionists ought to be prepared to make the same
acknowledgment. But as these things have been found, the only possible
way of accounting for them on evolutionary principles is by supposing
that the geological record is even more imperfect than we needed to
suppose in order to meet the previous objections. I cannot see, however,
why evolutionists should be afraid to make this acknowledgment. For I do
not know any reason which would lead us to suppose that there is any
common measure between the distances marked on our tables of geological
formations, and the times which those distances severally represent. Let
the reader turn to the table on page 163, and then let him say why the
30,000 feet of so-called Azoic rocks may not represent a greater
duration of time than does the thickness of all the Primary rocks above
them put together. For my own part I believe that this is probably the
case, looking to the enormous ages during which these very early
formations must have been exposed to destructive agencies of all kinds,
now at one time and now at another, in different parts of the world.
And, of course, we are without any means of surmising what ranges of
time are represented by the so-called Primeval rocks, for the simple
reason that they are non-sedimentary, and non-sedimentary rocks cannot
be expected to contain fossils.

But, it will be answered, the 30,000 feet of Azoic rocks, lying above
the Primeval, _are_ sedimentary to some extent: they are not all
completely metamorphic: yet they are all destitute of fossils. This is
the fourth and last difficulty which has to be met, and it can only be
met by the c