... impossible to avoid associating such a formation with the fine, smooth, homogeneous clays and schists, poor in fossils, but showing worm- tubes and tracks, and bunches of doubtful branching things, such as Oldhamia, silicious sponges, and thin-shelled peculiar shrimps. Such formations, more or less metamorphosed, are very familiar, especially to the student of palaeozoic geology, and they often attain a vast thickness. One is inclined, from the great resemblance between ... — Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley