We have already considered the claims which Eozoon and its contemporaries may urge to recognition, as beginnings of life; but when we ascend from the Laurentian beds, we find ourselves in a barren series of conglomerates, sandstones, and other rocks, indicating shore rather than sea conditions, and remarkably destitute of indications of life. These are the Huronian beds, and possibly other series associated with them. They have afforded spicules of sponges, casts of burrows of worms, obscure forms, which may represent crustaceans or mollusks, markings of unknown origin, and some laminated forms which may perhaps represent remains of Eozoon, though their structures are imperfectly preserved. These are sufficient to show that marine life continued in some forms, and to encourage the hope that a rich pre-Cambrian fauna may yet be discovered. But let us leave for the present the somewhat isolated case of Eozoon, and the few scattered forms of the Huronian, and go on farther to the early Cambrian fauna. This is graphically presented to us in the sections in South Wales, as described by Hicks. Here we find a nucleus of ancient rocks, supposed to be Laurentian, though in mineral character more nearly akin to the Huronian, but which have hitherto afforded no trace of fossils. Resting unconformably on these is a series of slates and sandstones, regarded as Lower Cambrian, the Caerfai group of Hicks, and which are the earliest holding organic remains. The lowest bed which contains indications of life is a red shale near the base of the series, which holds a few organic remains. The species are a _Lingulella_, worm burrows and a Trilobite.[70] Supposing these to be all, it is remarkable that we have no Protozoa or Corals or Echinoderms, and that the types of Brachiopods and Crustaceans are of comparatively modern affinities. Passing upward through 1,000 feet of barren sandstone and shale, we reach a zone in which many Trilobites of at least five genera are found, along with Pteropods, Brachiopods and Sponges. Thus it is that life comes in at the base of the Cambrian in Wales, and it may be regarded as a fair specimen of the facts as they appear in the earlier fossiliferous beds succeeding the Laurentian. Taking the first of these groups of fossils, we may recognise in the worms representatives of those that still haunt our shores, in the Trilobite a Crustacean or Arachnoid of no mean grade. The _Lingulellæ_, whether we regard them as molluscoids, or, with Professor Morse, as singularly specialized worms, represent a peculiar and distinct type, handed down, through all the vicissitudes of the geological ages, to the present day. Had the Primordial life begun with species altogether inscrutable and unexampled in succeeding ages, this would no doubt have been mysterious; but next to this is the mystery of the oldest forms of life being also among the newest. One great fact shines here with the clearness of noon-day. Whatever