PROCEEDINGS FOR 189(; LXXXV 



And here we come upon one of the protracteil battles I have referred 

 to. It has been waged with varying succass by biological and chemical 

 forces, singly or combined, but seems still undecided. 



On the I7th January, 1871, Professor (now Sir Frederick) McCo}'- 

 wrote me as follows respecting it : "I have never been satisfied of the 

 organic nature of eozoon, and if I had seen the specimens for the first 

 time I should have looked on them as imitation growths of the mineral 

 developed by metamorphic action in the mass." 



The late Mr. Billings did not believe in it, though, so far as I am 

 aware, he never publicly expressed his opinion. There is little doubt that 

 the consensus of opinion at the present day is against it as being a form 

 of life.^ The view I take of it, however, is wholly independent of either 

 biological, mineralogical or chemical considerations. And, apart from 

 these, I have no hesitation in recording my belief, whether right or 

 wrong, that neither the theoretical Archaean ocean nor the theoretical 

 sediments therein had any demonstrable or probable existence during the 

 early evolution and refrigeration of the lithosphère, when this creature 

 is supposed to have existed. I fail to understand why geologists have 

 persistently, from the earliest times, mixed and intermingled the opera- 

 tions of those early Archsean days with those of the obviously — as I 

 have endeavoured to show — non-existent hydi'osphere ; or why the 

 rocks of the original lithosphère should be es.sentially different from 

 what they became after the evolution of its two important partners, 

 the atmosphere and the hydrosphere. The materials were certainly all 

 there from the beginning, and that the product should be something dif- 

 ferent from anything now known to us in the solid crust seems unreason- 

 able. The whole scheme is doubtless based on theoretical orthodoxy ; 

 and much plausible and able advocacy has supported it. It is, I consider, 

 inconsistent, contradictory and retrogressive. In the interests of truth 

 and of facts, unmistakably exhibited in the Archaean lithosphère itself, it 

 should be abandoned ; together with the pernicious theorj' which has 

 arisen largely from the mistaken notion that stratification or parallel 

 structure and fragmentation could only be produced, and were in them- 

 selves proofs of aqueous abrasion and sedimentation. It is as objection- 

 able as is that other latterl}^ much used fallacy of so-called '• basal con- 

 glomerates " as being evidence of breaks and unconformity, instead of, 

 as such beds much more often are, as being the result of mere local 

 change in the conditions of deposition. It also ignores or overlooks the 

 possibility of both being largel}' due to subaërial deposition of ejected 

 igneous matter on to the first formed solid crust, and the subsequent 

 action on this matter of dynamic forces, including crystallization. These 

 are quite competent to produce one and all of the phenomena observed 

 in the Archaean rocks. 



1 " Am. Geologist," vol. II., 1888, pp. 175. 



