20 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [March 



parts of the modern ocean. Another is the possible occurrence of 

 other forms of animal life than Eozoon and Annelids, which I 

 have stated in my paper of 1864, after extensive microscopic study 

 of the Laurentian limestones, to be indicated by the occurrence of 

 calcareous fragments, differing in structure from Eozoon, but at 

 present of unknown nature. Another is the effort to bridge over, 

 by further discoveries similar to that of the Eozoon havaricum of 

 Giimbel, the gap now existing between the life of the Lower- 

 Laurentian and that of the Primordial Silurian or Cambrian 

 period. It is scarcely too much to say that these inquires open 

 up a new world of thought and investigation, and hold out the 

 hope of bringing us into the presence of the actual origin of 

 organic life on our planet, though this may perhaps be found to 

 have been Prelaurentian. I would here take the opportunity of 

 stating that, in proposing the name Eozoon for the first fossil of 

 the Laurentian, and in suggesting for the period the name 

 "Eozoic," I have by no means desired to exclude the possibility 

 of forms of life which may have been precurs^ors of what is now to 

 us the dawn of organic existence. Should remains of still older 

 organisms be found in those rocks now known to us only by 

 pebbles in the Laurentian, these names will at least serve to mark 

 an important stage in geological investigation. 



NOTE ON THE GENUS EOPHYTON. 



Until within a few years, the oldest known land plants were a 

 few Lycopodiaceans, forms from the upper part of the Upper 

 Silurian. Recently Barrande and Geinitz have announced land 

 plants probably Lycopodiaceans from olden Silurian beds. Still 

 more lately Torell has described, from Cambrian or Primordial 

 rocks in Sweden, a plant, or supposed plant, which he has named 

 Eophyton Linnmanum. The drawings and descriptions, however, 

 render it very doubtful whether this is not merely a cast of 

 scratches or workings of unknown origin, similar to those which 

 are very abundant on Carboniferous and Silurian rocks in Eastern 

 America, and which have often been described as fucoids. Mr. 

 Hicks has, however, recently described in the Geol. Magazine, 

 Dec, 1869, a fossil from the Lower Arenig rocks of Wales. 

 This plant is a striated stem, showing a very coarse tubular 

 tissue, comparable with that of Nematoezla or Prototoxites of the 



