f life
all around the globe in the earliest age. But it is now known that the
so-called "oldest" fossiliferous rocks occur only in detached patches
over the globe, while other or "younger" kinds are just as likely to be
found on the Primitive or next to the Archaean. Not only may any kind of
fossiliferous rocks occur next to the Archaean, but even the "youngest"
may be so metamorphosed and crystalline as to resemble exactly in this
respect the so-called "oldest" rocks. On the other hand some of the very
"oldest" rocks may, like the Cambrian strata around the Baltic and in
some parts of the United States, consist of "muds scarcely indurated and
sands still incoherent."[40]

[Footnote 40: J.A. Howe; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. II, p. 86.
Cambridge Edition.]

All this means that many facts regarding the _position_ of the strata as
well as regarding their _consolidation_ contradict the theory of
successive ages.

2. Many of the rivers of the world completely ignore the alleged varying
ages of the rocks in the different parts of their course, and treat them
all as if of the same age or as if they began sawing at them all at the
same time. This is true of the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Danube in
Europe, the Sutlej of India, and the upper part of the Colorado in
America, not to mention others. The old strand lines around all the
continents act in the very same way, ignoring the varying ages of the
rocks they happen to meet; as is also true of nearly all the great
faults or fissures which are of more than local extent. The ore veins of
the various minerals are about as likely to be found in Tertiary or
Mesozoic as in the Palaeozoic. A very similar lesson is to be learned
from the fossils found lying exposed on the deep ocean bottom; for they
are about as likely to be Palaeozoic or Mesozoic as Tertiary.

From these facts we conclude that practically all the great natural
chronometers of the earth seem to treat the fossiliferous rocks as if
they are _all of about the same age_, completely disregarding the
distinctions in age founded on the fossils.

3. According to the present chronological arrangement of the rocks, very
many genera, often whole tribes of animals, are found as fossils only in
the oldest rocks, and _have skipped all the others_, though found in
comparative abundance in our modern world. Very many others have skipped
from the Mesozoic down, while still others skip large _parts_ of the
series of successive a