To sum up the little that we know of this earliest Palæozoic life:--It was perfect of its kind, equally pregnant with evidences of design, and of the nicest and most delicate contrivance as the animal life of any later time, and it presupposed vegetable life and multitudes of minute organic beings altogether unknown to us to nourish the creatures we do know. As an example of this, a little Brachiopod or sponge nourished by the currents produced by its cilia, or a Jelly-fish gathering food by its thread-like tentacles, or a Globigerina selecting its nourishment by its delicate gelatinous pseudopods, required an ocean swarming with minute forms of life, which probably can never be known to us, but every one of which must have been an inscrutable miracle of organization and vital function. Lastly, with reference to our present subject, the Etcheminian fossils carry life backward one whole great period earlier than the Lower Cambrian, and appear to indicate that we are approaching a beginning of living things in the Palæozoic world. Much no doubt remains to be discovered, but it would seem that any future discoveries must fail to negative this conclusion. The Huronian. In whatever way the rocks immediately below the Cambrian may be classified, it is certain that the next system in descending order is that to which Logan long ago gave the name Huronian, from its development on Lake Huron[12]--a name to which it is still entitled, though there may, perhaps, be some grounds for dividing it into an upper and lower member.[13] To this sub-division, however, we need not for the present give any special attention. In the typical area of Lake Huron the Huronian consists of quartzites, which are merely hardened sandstones, of slates which are muddy or volcanic-ash beds, of conglomerates or pebble-rocks, and of coarse earthy limestone. With these rocks are deposits of igneous material which represent contemporary volcanic eruptions. In other districts, as in New Brunswick, Newfoundland, etc., the beds have been considerably altered, and are locally more mixed with igneous products. The physical picture presented to us by the Huronian is that of a shore deposit, formed under circumstances in which beds of pebbles and sand were intermixed with the products of neighbouring volcanoes. [Footnote 12: Dr. G. M. Dawson, F.R.S., the present Director of the Geological Survey of Canada, whose judgment in this matter should be of the highest value, holds that the original simple arrangement of Logan still holds, notwithstanding the multitude of new names proposed by the Western Geologists of the United States.] [Footnote 13: Van Hise, "Pre-Cambrian Rocks of North America." _Comptes Rendus_, 5th Session International Geol. Congress 1891, p. 134. Also "Report U.S. Geol. Survey, 1895."] [Illustration: Fig. 15.--_Annelid Burrows, Hastings Series, Madoc._