Abstract
I.
THE records of geological history, like those of the human race, become more fragmentary and illegible, the farther back we trace them into the past. While the younger rocks of the earth's crust have been made to yield a more or less connected story of geographical and biological evolution, the oldest rocks have till comparatively lately been neglected, or have been tacitly left to mere speculation and conjecture. Only within the last few years have these ancient formations been seriously and sedulously attacked by scientific methods of inquiry. Though the progress of investigation has necessarily been slow, a steady advance in knowledge can be chronicled. There is a curious fascination in this department of geology. These venerable rocks reveal to us the oldest known part of the outer shell of our planet. The palimpsest of the earth's surface has been written over again and again during the long ages of geological history; but down among these bottom-rocks we reach the earliest recognizable inscriptions, and come as near towards the beginning of things as geological evidence by itself is ever likely to lead us. These records carry us back to a time anterior to that of the oldest fossiliferous formations, possibly to an epoch that preceded the appearance of vegetable or animal life on the globe. They reveal to us the very foundations of the earth's crust, on which all other known rocks rest, and out of the waste of which the greater part of these rocks has been formed.
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References
It would be obviously out of place to include here references to the voluminous literature of the subject. A condensed summary will be found in the Report by the officers of the Geological Survey, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xliv., 1888.
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Recent Researches into the Origin and Age of the Highlands of Scotland and the West of Ireland.1. Nature 40, 299–302 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/040299d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/040299d0