plants and animals, and in the earliest time of all, which is represented by sediments, quite deprived of such?" These words were written ten years ago, and about the same time were published in America those anticipations of the probability of life in the Laurentian already referred to, and Lyell was protesting against the name Primordial, on the ground that it implied that we had reached the beginning of life, when this was not proved. Yet there were elements of truth in both views. It is true now, as then, that the Primordial seems to be a morning hour of life, having, as we shall see in our next paper, unmistakable signs about it of that approach to the beginning to which Phillips refers. It is also true that it is not so early a morning hour as one who has not risen with the dawn might suppose, since with its apparently small beginnings of life it is almost as far removed from the Eozoon reefs of the early Laurentian on the one hand, as it is from the modern period on the other. The dawn of life seems to have been a very slow and protracted process, and it may have required as long a time between the first appearance of Eozoon and the first of those primordial Trilobites which the next period will introduce to our notice, as between these and the advent of Adam. Perhaps no lesson is more instructive then this as to the length of the working days of the Almighty. Another lesson lies ready for us in these same facts. Theoretically, plants should have preceded animals; and this also is the assertion of the first chapter of Genesis; but the oldest fossil certainly known to us is an animal. What if there were still earlier plants, whose remains are still to be discovered? For my own part, I can see no reason to despair of the discovery of an _Eophytic_ period preceding the Eozoic; perhaps preceding it through ages of duration to us almost immeasurable, though still within the possible time of the existence of the crust of the earth. It is even possible that in a warm and humid condition of the atmosphere, before it had been caused "to rain upon the earth" and when dense "mists ascended from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground,"[E] vegetation may have attained to a profusion and grandeur unequalled in the periods whose flora is known to us. [E] Genesis ii. 5. For a description of this Eophytic period of Genesis, see the Author's "Archaia," pp. 160 _et seq._