The shore-bottoms round the primitive
continent are raised above the water, their rocks crumpling like
plates of lead under the overpowering pressure. The sea retires
with its inhabitants, mingling their various provinces,
transforming their settled homes. A larger continent spans the
northern ocean of the earth.
In the shore-waters of this early continent are myriads of living
things, representing all the great families of the animal world
below the level of the fish and the insect. The mud and sand in
which their frames are entombed, as they die, will one day be the
"Cambrian" rocks of the geologist, and reveal to him their forms
and suggest their habits. No great volcanic age will reduce them
to streaks of shapeless carbon. The earth now buries its dead,
and from their petrified remains we conjure up a picture of the
swarming life of the Cambrian ocean.
A strange, sluggish population burrows in the mud, crawls over
the sand, adheres to the rocks, and swims among the thickets of
sea-weed. The strangest and most formidable, though still too
puny a thing to survive in a more strenuous age, is the familiar
Trilobite of the geological museum; a flattish animal with broad,
round head, like a shovel, its back covered with a three-lobed
shell, and a number of fine legs or swimmers below.
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