er organisms in earlier strata, has resulted not from the absence
of such traces, but from incomplete examination. At p. 460 of his
_Manual of Elementary Geology_, Sir Charles Lyell gives a list in
illustration of this. It appears that in 1709, fishes were not known
lower than the Permian system. In 1793 they were found in the subjacent
Carboniferous system; in 1828 in the Devonian; in 1840 in the Upper
Silurian. Of reptiles, we read that in 1710 the lowest known were in the
Permian; in 1844 they were detected in the Carboniferous; and in 1852 in
the Upper Devonian. While of the Mammalia the list shows that in 1798
none had been discovered below the Middle Eocene: but that in 1818 they
were discovered in the Lower Oolite; and in 1847 in the Upper Trias.

The fact is, however, that both parties set out with an inadmissible
postulate. Of the Uniformitarians, not only such writers as Hugh Miller,
but also such as Sir Charles Lyell,[27] reason as though we had found
the earliest, or something like the earliest, strata. Their antagonists,
whether defenders of the Development Hypothesis or simply
Progressionists, almost uniformly do the like. Sir R. Murchison, who is
a Progressionist, calls the lowest fossiliferous strata, "Protozoic."
Prof. Ansted uses the same term. Whether avowedly or not, all the
disputants stand on this assumption as their common ground.

Yet is this assumption indefensible, as some who make it very well know.
Facts may be cited against it which show that it is a more than
questionable one--that it is a highly improbable one; while the evidence
assigned in its favour will not bear criticism.

Because in Bohemia, Great Britain, and portions of North America, the
lowest unmetamorphosed strata yet discovered, contain but slight traces
of life, Sir R. Murchison conceives that they were formed while yet few,
if any, plants or animals had been created; and, therefore, classes them
as "Azoic." His own pages, however, show the illegitimacy of the
conclusion that there existed at that period no considerable amount of
life. Such traces of life as have been found in the Longmynd rocks, for
many years considered unfossiliferous, have been found in some of the
lowest beds; and the twenty thousand feet of superposed beds, still
yield no organic remains. If now these superposed strata throughout a
depth of four miles, are without fossils, though the strata over which
they lie prove that life had commenced; what become