HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSSIP. 



83 



rampart of the doctrine of Special Creation and 

 external interference with the uniformity of nature. 



The assistance geology could render in the quest 

 was but trivial, as the palreontological record — 

 imperfect at the best — after affording a constantly 

 lowering grade of organization with the increasing 

 age of the deposits examined, snapped at the base of 

 the Cambrian system, leaving as the oldest known 

 fossils, those so comparatively complex as brachiopods 

 and crustaceans. Below lay huge masses of meta- 

 morphosed and igneous rocks, some five or six miles 

 in thickness, and in these apparently the story of the 

 dawn of life on the planet had been obliterated 

 beyond hope of recovery. But scientists do not 

 readily despair, and as by more diligent hammering, 

 the list of fossiliferous schistose and metamorphic 

 rocks in other parts of the globe gradually increased, 

 American geologists plucked up courage and ex- 

 pressed the confident hope that some traces of life 

 might be exhumed. Hence it was that the announce- 

 ment of the discovery of a fossil ip the Lower 

 Laurentian rocks of Canada, vouched for by such 

 menl as Carpenter, Logan, Dawson, and Hunt, 

 roused no ordinary excitement in the geological 

 world, and was received as an earnest of much still to 

 be unearthed ; and when it was further stated that 

 it ^was a foraminifer, it agreed so perfectly with 

 current theories as to what the oldest fossil ought to 

 have been, that it is little wonder that geologists 

 accepted it with practical unanimity. 



It was in 1864 that Professor Dawson made the 

 momentous announcement, that he had discovered 

 strong arguments for the organic origin of a remark- 

 able Lower Laurentian rock, composed of irregular 

 layers of serpentine and calcite, which had long 

 before attracted attention as affording the first 

 specimen of a new mineral named " loganite," and 

 which Logan had then suggested might have had an 

 organic origin. These suggestions were repeatedly 

 renewed, and in 1S63 a specimen was actually figured 

 in one of the Reports of the Canadian Geological 

 Survey as probably a Laurentian fossil ; about the 

 same time another band of the structure was 

 discovered at Grenville, and of this Dawson had a 

 series of slides prepared for the microscope, in order 

 to settle a point at issue between himself and Sterry 

 Hunt ; on examining them he found, to his intense 

 delight, what he regarded as conclusive evidence of 

 the organic nature of the rock in the so-called 

 "proper wall." He forwarded specimens to Dr. 

 Carpenter, who, in one of calcite and serpentine, 

 discovered a system of canals not present in those of 

 dolomite and loganite which Dawson had examined. 

 This was considered to be absolutely conclusive of 

 their foraminiferal nature, and in 1865 a joint paper 

 by Sir Wm. Logan, Professor Dawson, and Doctors 

 Carpenter and Sterry Hunt appeared in the Journal 

 of the Geological Society, in which the microscopic 

 structure, stratigraphical relations and zoological 



affinities of the supposed fossil were described. 

 These views were not long allowed to pass un- 

 challenged, for they were opposed by Mr. W. H. 

 Bailey, the well-known palaeontologist, in the Geo- 

 logical Magazine, and Professor Harkness at the 

 Birmingham Meeting of the British Association. In 

 the same year Professors King and Rowney, who have 

 been the most persistent opponents of the theory, 

 began in a letter to, the " Reader " their long uphill 

 fight against it, and which they continued next year 

 by a Memoir in the "Journal of the Geological 

 Society." Meanwhile, the announcement had stimu- 

 lated the energies of geologists in other fields where 

 Pre-cambrian rocks are exposed, and soon a goodly- 

 list of other localities of Eozoon was known ; Gumbel 

 obtained it in Bavaria, at Steinhag, near Obernzell, 

 and near Passau on the Danube, and in higher beds 

 a species which he named Eozoon £avarku??i. M. 

 Favre found it in a serpentine limestone in the Alps ; 

 Hochstetter and Fritsch, in Bohemia, Pusyrewski in 

 Finland, and Sandford from the Lower Silurian rocks 

 of Connemara, a;discovery which was " verified," to 

 use the term applied to the process, by Professor 

 Rupert Jones. Supported by this additional informa- 

 tion, and reinforced by men such as Lyell, Murchison, 

 Gumbel — in fact by all the leading geologists of the 

 day — Eozoonists carried all before them, and, though 

 with several honourable exceptions, answered their 

 few opponents in the dogmatic hi-cockalorum style of 

 men absolutely certain of their own correctness. " I 

 should now no more think," wrote Carpenter, in his 

 so-called " Final Note on°Eozoon," " of attempting to 

 convert the Galway infallibles (i.e. King and Rowney) 

 than of trying to convert the Pope." * Similarly, 

 when, in 1 87 1, Mr. Mellard Reade ventured to obtrude 

 his objections before the public, and to point out 

 that the various replies were mere reiterations of the 

 statements in dispute, he was firmly told by the same 

 authoritv to "shut up," L and readers of "Nature " were 

 invited not so much to weigh the respective argu- 

 ments, as to choose between the combatants, whether 

 they would follow Dr. Carpenter or Mr. Reade. Dr. 

 Carpenter closed the controversy by remarking,! 

 " since I do not feel called upon to expend valuable 

 time in giving to Mr. T. Mellard Reade the 

 instruction he requires to qualify him for discussing 

 this question, I now leave him to the enjoyment oi 

 his own opinion, whenever he shall have shown by 

 work of his own, his competence to criticise the 

 observations of others." He however kindly promised 

 to do so. 



Since that date " the sceptical tendency of our 

 age," as Dawson in his " Dawn of Life " mournfully 

 calls it, has been veering farther and farther from this 

 belief, and after death had removed one of its most 

 zealous supporters, in the peison of Sir Charles Lyell, 



' Annals Mag. Nat. Hist.," ser. 4, vol. xiv. p. 371. 

 f " Nature," vol. iii. p. 386. 



