Another subject which merits attention here is the evidence which mere markings or other indications may sometimes give as to the existence of unknown creatures, and thus may be as important to us as the footprints of Friday to Robinson Crusoe. As I have been taking Canadian examples, I may borrow one here from Mr. Matthew, of St. John, New Brunswick.
He remarks in one of his papers the manner in which the Trilobites of the early Cambrian are protected with defensive spines, and asks against what enemies they were intended to guard. That there were enemies is further proved by the occurrence of Coprolites or masses of excrement, oval or cylindrical in form, and containing fragments of shells of Trilobites, of Pteropods (Hyolithes) and of Lingula. There must therefore have been marine animals of considerable size, which preyed on Trilobites. Dr. Hunt and myself have recorded similar facts from the Upper Cambrian and Cambro-Silurian of the Province of Quebec. No remains, however, are known of animals which could have produced such coprolites, except, indeed, some of the larger worms of the period, and they seem scarcely large enough. In these circumstances Mr. Matthew falls back on certain curious marks or scratches with which large surfaces of these old rocks are covered, and which he names Ctenichnites or "Comb tracks." These markings seem to indicate the rapid motion of some animal touching the bottom with fins or other organs; and as we know no fishes in these old rocks, the question recurs, What could it have been? From the form and character of the markings Mr. Matthew infers (1) That these animals lived in "schools," or were social in their habits; (2) That they had a rapid, direct, darting motion; (3) That they had three or four (at least) flexible arms; (4) That these arms were furnished with hooks or spines; (5) That the creatures swam with an easy motion, so that sometimes the arms of one side touched the bottom, sometimes those of the other. These indications point to animals allied to the modern squids or cuttle-fishes, and as these animals may have had no hard parts capable of preservation, except their horny beaks, nothing might remain to indicate their presence except these marks on the bottom. Mr. Matthew therefore conjectures that there may have been large cuttle-fishes in the Cambrian. Since, however, these are animals of very high rank in their class, and are not certainly known to us till a very much later period, their occurrence in these old rocks would be a very remarkable and unexpected fact.
A discovery made by Walcott in the Western States since Mr. Matthew's paper was written, throws fresh light on the question. Remains of fishes have been found by the former in the Cambro Silurian rocks nearly as far back as Mr. Matthew's comb-tracks. Besides this, Pander in Russia has found in these old rocks curious teeth, which he refers conjecturally to fishes (Conodonts). Why may there not have been in the Cambrian large fishes having, like the modern sharks, cartilage or gristle instead of bone—perhaps destitute of scales, and with small teeth which have not yet been detected. The fin rays of such fishes may have left the comb tracks, and in support of this I may say that there are in the Lower Carboniferous of Horton Bluff, in Nova Scotia, very similar tracks in beds holding many remains of fishes. Whichever view we adopt we see good evidence that there were in the early Cambrian animals of higher grade than we have yet dreamt of. Observe, however, that if we could complete the record in this point it would only give us higher forms of life at an earlier time, and so push farther back their possible development from lower forms. I fear, indeed, that I can hold out little hopes to the evolutionists that a more complete geological record would help them in any way. It would possibly only render their position more difficult.
But the saddest of all the possible defects of the geological record is that it may want the beginning, and be like the Bible of some of the German historical critics, from which they eliminate as mythical everything before the time of the later Hebrew kings. Our attention is forcibly called to this by the condition of the fauna of the earliest Cambrian rocks. The discoveries in these in Wales, in Norway, and in America show us that the seas of this early period swarmed with animals representing all the great types of invertebrate marine life. We have here highly organized Crustaceans, Worms, Mollusks and other creatures which show us that in that early age all these distinct forms of life were as well separated from each other as in later times, that eyes of different types, jointed limbs with nerves and muscles, and a vast variety of anatomical contrivances were as highly developed as at any subsequent time.[20] To a Darwinian evolutionist this means nothing less than that these creatures must have existed through countless ages of development from their imagined simple ancestral form or forms how long it is impossible to guess, since, unless change was more speedy in the infancy of the earth, the term of ages required must have far exceeded that from the Cambrian to the Modern. Yet, to represent all this we have absolutely nothing except Eozoon in its solitary grandeur, and a few other forms, possibly of Protozoa and worms. An imaginary phylogeny of animal life from Monads to Trilobites would be something as long as the whole geological history. Yet it would be almost wholly imaginary, for the record of the rocks tells little or nothing. In face of such an imperfection as this, geologists should surely be humble, and make confession of ignorance to any extent that may be desired. Yet we may at least, with all humility and self-abasement, ask our critics how they know that this great blank really exists, and whether it may not be possible that the swarming life of the early Cambrian may, after all, have appeared suddenly on the stage in some way as yet unknown to us and to them.
[20] Walcott and Matthew record more than 160 species of 67 genera, including Sponges, Zoophytes, Echinoderms, Brachiopods, Bivalve and Univalve shellfishes, Trilobites and other Crustaceans from the Lower Cambrian of the United States of America and Canada alone; and these are but a portion of the inhabitants of the early Cambrian seas. There is a rich Scandinavian fauna of the same early date, and in England and Wales, Sailer, Hicks and Lapworth have described many fossils of the basal Cambrian. From year to year, also, discoveries of fossil remains are being made, both in America and Europe, in beds of older date than those previously known to be fossiliferous. At present, however, these remains are still few and imperfectly known, and it is not in all cases certain whether the beds in which they occur are pre-Cambrian or belong to the lowest members of that great system. It is unfortunate that so many of the strata between the Laurentian and the Cambrian seem to be of a character little likely to contain fossils; being littoral deposits produced in times of much physical disturbance. Yet there must have been contemporaneous beds of a different character, which may yet be discovered.
References:—"Fossil Sponges from the Quebec Group of Little Metis, Lower St. Lawrence": Transactions Royal Society of Canada, 1890. "Rèsumè of the Carboniferous Land Shells of North America": American Journal of Science, 1880. "Burrows and Tracks of Invertebrate Animals": Journal Geological Society of London, 1890. "Notes on the Pleistocene of Canada": Canadian Naturalist, 1876. "Air-breathers of the Coal Period ": Ibid., 1863.