304 ALG.E 



the trails of aquatic animals, or even ripple-marks. Carruthers is disposed 

 to regard the structure which he has called Nematophycus, from the 

 Lower Erian or Upper Silurian beds of Canada, as the earliest algoid 

 remains or impressions which have come down to us. The true nature 

 of the tracings in the still earlier Laurentian rocks known as Eozoon 

 canadense is still a subject of controversy with palaeontologists and 

 petrologists. 



Coming down to more recent periods, the organisms described as 

 Chondrites and Confervites, found in the Cretaceous beds, were possibly 

 algce allied to the Confervacese, and are thought by some to have had 

 a large effect in the precipitation of chalk from sea water, from the great 

 quantity of carbonic acid which they removed. From nodules in the 

 Pleistocene of Canada, Dawson obtains remains which he places under 

 genera allied to Ulva or Fucus, and possibly also to Laminaria. Various 

 other remains, sometimes of gigantic size, found in strata extending 

 over a very wide geological range, are referred by Saporta and others to 

 alg^ allied to the Laminariacese and Fucaceae ; but the evidence is 

 generally too imperfect to justify a settled conclusion on the subject. 



Of the calcareous remains of algae w^hich have come down to us, the 

 most remarkable are those described by Munier-Chalmas, including 

 more than fifty genera, which he refers to the Siphonocladaceae, mostly 

 found in the Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary strata. The 

 calcareous skeleton contains hollow chambers and canals w^here the rays 

 and the organs of reproduction were seated in life, rendering them very 

 Hable to be mistaken for the remains of Foraminifera, under which 

 class of animals many of them have been placed by palaeontologists. 

 Amonsf these is the G;enus Ovulites from the Eocene. 



Literature. 



Balfour — Introduction to Pal^eontological Botany, 1S72. 



Carruthers - (Nematophycus) Monthly Microscopical Journal, 1872, p. 208. 



Munier-Chalmas — Comptes Rendus, 1S77, p. 814; Bull. Soc. Geol. France, 1881, 



p. 661. 

 Saporta — Les organismes problematiques des anciennes mers, 1884. 

 Reinsch — Micro-paleeophytologia, 1884. 

 Nathorst — Nouvelles observations sur des traces d'animaux et autres phenomenes 



d'origine purement mecanique decrits comme Algues fossiles, 1886. 

 Delgado— Etudes sur les Bilobites, 1886, 1888. 

 Dawson — Geological History of Plants, 1888. 

 (See also under Fossil Vascular Cr}'ptogams. ) 



