HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



i°5 



morphic agency, the edges of the serpentine grains 

 would be altered to chrysolite, and crystals of 

 pyrosclerite and metaxite would branch through the 

 ■calcite, which might at the same time be partly 

 dolomitised and then a form mineralogically identical 

 with Eozoon would ensue. When moreover we re- 

 flect that though Eozoon is now, or once was, claimed 



Connemara, and the Liassic rocks of Skye, never- 

 theless — widespread though be its distribution alike 

 in time and space — it is always found in the class of 

 altered rocks termed ophites, while in the tens of 

 thousands of feet of sandstones, shales, and lime- 

 stones in which its preservation would be so much 

 more probable, never a trace has been recorded, 



F'o- 54.— System of canals in calcite. A specimen prepared by Dawson and sent to Moebius, who figured it, pi. 30, fig. 20. 



Fig. 56. — Transverse sec- 

 tions of canals. Moe- 

 bius, pi. 30, p. 21. 



Fig. 55. — A club-shaped canal. 

 Moebius, pi. 29, fig. 18. 



by Eozoonists to occur not only in the Laurentian 

 rocks but elsewhere, as in the Upper Cambrians 

 or Quebec Series in Delaware, in the Silurians of 



then becomes apparent the overwhelming improba- 

 bility of the realisation of Dawson's once sanguine 

 hope, "I should not be surprised to hear of a 

 veritable specimen being one day dredged alive in 

 the Atlantic or the Pacific." 



With objections so weighty against its foramini- 

 feral nature, with analogies so close to unquestioned 

 mineral structures, the claim for the organic origin 

 of Eozoon must be — as indeed it has been by most 

 geologists- -abandoned as fallacious. We cannot 

 however drop it without a touch of regret at parting 

 with that which has done such good service in the 

 cause of Evolution. It was discovered at a time 

 when the controversy on the theory was raging its 

 fiercest, when the paloeontological record was con- 

 tinually being quoted as evidence against its truth ; 

 and hence the widely accepted statement, that the 

 oldest known form of life was, in exact accordance 

 with the theory in dispute, the lowest of which 

 relics could have been preserved, did service rhe 

 value of which cannot be lightly estimated. Though 

 to-day "when the hurly-burly 's done, and the battle's 

 fought and won," and the theory stands safe, almost 

 unopposed, Eozoon would yet be a weighty argu- 

 ment in its support. Hence we cannot abandon 

 it, remembering its service in the past and the value 

 it would be in the present, without a pang, but 

 abandoned it must be. Facts are facts, and however 

 convenient or useful Eozoon might be, its claims 



