The pre-Cambrian rocks show no evidence of any forces then at work upon the earth except the forces which are at work upon it now. The most ancient sediments known are so like the sediments now being laid that we may infer that they were formed under conditions essentially similar to those of the present time. There is no proof that the sands of the pre-Cambrian sandstones were swept by any more powerful waves and currents than are offshore sands to-day, or that the muds of the pre-Cambrian shales settled to the sea floor in less quiet water than such muds settle in at present. The pre-Cambrian lands were, no doubt, worn by wind and weather, beaten by rain, and furrowed by streams as now, and, as now, they fronted the ocean with beaches on which waves dashed and along which tidal currents ran. Perhaps the chief difference between the pre-Cambrian and the present was the absence of life upon the land. So far as we have any knowledge, no forests covered the mountain sides, no verdure carpeted the plains, and no animals lived on the ground or in the air. It is permitted to think of the most ancient lands as deserts of barren rock and rock waste swept by rains and trenched by powerful streams. We may therefore suppose that the processes of their destruction went on more rapidly than at present. CHAPTER XVI THE CAMBRIAN =The Paleozoic era.= The second volume of the geological record, called the Paleozoic (Greek, _palaios_, ancient; _zoe_, life), has come down to us far less mutilated and defaced than has the first volume, which contains the traces of the most ancient life of the globe. Fossils are far more abundant in the Paleozoic than in the earlier strata, while the sediments in which they were entombed have suffered far less from metamorphism and other causes, and have been less widely buried from view, than the strata of the pre-Cambrian groups. By means of their fossils we can correlate the formations of widely separated regions from the beginning of the Paleozoic on, and can therefore trace some outline of the history of the continents. Paleozoic time, although shorter than the pre-Cambrian as measured by the thickness of the strata, must still be reckoned in millions of years. During this vast reach of time the changes in organisms were very great. It is according to the successive stages in the advance of life that the Paleozoic formations are arranged in five systems,--the _Cambrian_, the _Ordovician_, the _Silurian_, the _Devonian_, and the _Carboniferous_. On the same basis the first three systems are grouped together as the older Paleozoic, because they alike are characterized by the dominance of the invertebrates; while the last two systems are united in the later Paleozoic, and are characterized, the one by the dominance of fishes, and the other by the appearance of amphibians and reptiles.