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.