134 Royal Society : — 



May 16, 1867.— William Bowman, Esq., V.P., in the Chair. 



"Further Observations on the Structure and Affinities of Eozoon 

 Canadense" (In a Letter to the President.) By William B. 

 Carpenter, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. 



University of London, May 9th, 18G7. 



When, on the 14th of December 1864-, I addressed you on 

 the subject of the remarkable discovery which had been recently 

 made in Canada, and submitted by Sir William Logan to myself 

 for verification, of a fossil belonging to the Foraminiferal type, 

 occurring in large masses in the Serpentine-limestones inter- 

 calated among Gneissic and other rocks in the Lower Laurentian 

 formation, and therefore long anterior in Geological time to the 

 earliest traces of life previously observed, no doubts had been 

 expressed as to the organic nature of this body, which had 

 received the designation Eozoon Canadense. 



The announcement was soon afterwards made, that the Serpen- 

 tine Marble of Connemara, employed as an ornamental marble 

 by builders under the name of " Irish Green," presented struc- 

 tural characters sufficiently allied to those of tlie Laurentian 

 Serpentines of Canada to justify its being referred to the same 

 origin. An examination of numerous decalcified specimens of this 

 rock led me to the conclusion that, although the evidences of its 

 organic origin were by no means such as to justify, or even to 

 suggest, such a doctrine, if the structure of the Canadian Eozoon 

 had not been previously elucidated, yet the very exact corre- 

 spondence in size and mode of aggregation between the Serjien- 

 tine-grauules of the Connemara Marble and those of the ' acervu- 

 line ' portion of the Canadian was sufficient to justify in behalf of 

 the one the claim which had been freely conceded in regard to the 

 other. 



In the following summer, however, it was announced in the 

 *E.eader' (June 10, 1865) by Professors King and liowney of 

 Queen's College, Gahvay, that having applied themselves to the 

 study of the Serpentine-Marble of Connemara with a full belief 

 in its organic origin, they had been gradually led to the convic- 

 tion that its structure was the result of chemical and physical 

 agencies alone, and that the same explanation was applicable to 

 the supposed Eozoon Canadense of the Latu-entian Serpentines. 

 This view was afterwards fully set forth in a Paper " On the so- 

 called Eozoonal Eock," read at the Geological Society on the 

 10th of January 18G6, and published (with additions) in the 

 Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for August 1866. The 

 following is their own Summary of their conclusions (p. 21.5) : — 

 " It has been seen (1) that the ' chamber-casts ' or granules of 

 serpentine are more or less simulated by chondrodite, coccolite, 

 pargasite, &c., also by the botryoidal configurations common in 

 Permian Magnesian Limestone ; (2) that the ' intermediate ske- 

 leton ' is closely represented, both in chemical composition and 

 other conditions, by the matrix of the above and other minerals ; 



