United States or Malaysia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The presence of phosphatic nodules and bituminous matter in some of the lowest azoic rocks, probably indicates the former existence of life at these periods. But the difficulty of understanding the absence of vast piles of fossiliferous strata, which on my theory no doubt were somewhere accumulated before the Silurian epoch, is very great.
The obelisks are all formed of granite, the foundation-stone of the globe, belonging to the oldest azoic formation, which laid down the first basis for the appearing of life.
We may infer, then, that the strata deposited next after the almost "azoic" strata, would contain the remains of invertebrata, allied to those found near the shores of Australia and South America.
Assuming that they did exist, the task of accounting for the mode of occurrence of our auriferous quartz lodes is comparatively simple. Chloride of gold is at present day contained in sea water and in some mineral waters, and would have been likely to be more abundant during the Azoic and early Paleozoic period.
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."
First, we have the Azoic period, devoid of life, as its name signifies, namely, the earliest stratified deposits upon the heated film forming the first solid surface of the earth, in which no trace of living thing has ever been found.
There was a brotherhood between man and not only the zoöphyte, but still further down, even with the ultimate cell in which organisation can first be traced, only faintly distinguishable from the azoic rock on which it hangs.
I have spoken of the first of these periods, the Azoic, as having been absolutely devoid of life, and I believe this statement to be strictly true; but I ought to add that there is a difference of opinion among geologists upon this point, many believing that the first surface of our globe may have been inhabited by living beings, but that all traces of their existence have been obliterated by the eruptions of melted materials, which not only altered the character of those earliest stratified rocks, but destroyed all the organic remains contained in them.
The "Glengariff grits," and other accompanying strata there described as 13,500 feet thick, contain no signs of contemporaneous life. Yet Sir R. Murchison refers them to the Devonian period a period which had a large and varied marine Fauna. How then, from the absence of fossils in the Longmynd beds and their equivalents, can we conclude that the Earth was "azoic" when they were formed?
The total absence of any trace of fossils has inclined many geologists to attribute the origin of the most ancient strata to an azoic period, or one antecedent to the existence of organic beings.
Word Of The Day