184 THE DAWN OF LIFE. 



as organic^ and to wliose ability and honesty of 

 purpose I willingly bear testimony _, will find them- 

 selves enabled to acknowledge at least the reasonable 

 probability of that interpretation of these remarkable 

 forms and structures. 



NOTES TO CHAPTER YII. 



A. Objections of Profs. King and Rottney. 



Trans. Royal Irish Academy, July, 1869.* 



The following summary, given by these authors, may be 

 taken as including the substance of their objections to the 

 animal nature of Eozoon. I shall give them in their words 

 and follow them with short answers to each. 



" 1st. The serpentine in ophitic rocks has been shown to 

 present appearances which can only be explained on the view 

 that it undergoes structural and chemical changes, causing it 

 to pass into variously subdivided states, and etching out the 

 resulting portions into a variety of forms — grains and plates, 

 with lobulated or segmented surfaces — fibres and aciculi — 

 simple and branching configurations. Crystals of malacolite, 

 often associated with the serpentine, manifest some of these 

 changes in a remarkable degree. 



" 2nd. The ' intermediate skeleton ' of Eozoon (which we 

 hold to be the calcareous matrix of the above lobulated 

 grains, etc.) is completely paralleled in various crystalline 

 rocks — notably marble containing grains of coccolite (Aker 

 and Tyree), pargasite (Finland), chondrodite (Xew Jersey, etc.)- 



" 3rd. The ' chamber casts ' in the acervuline variety of 

 Eozoon are more or less paralleled by the grains of the 

 mineral silicates in the pre-cited marbles. 



* Eeprinted in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, May, 

 187i. 



