16 THE LESSON OF EVOLUTION 



fessor Eupert Jones. However, Mr. H. J. Carter 

 and Professor Mobius never allowed that Eozoon was 

 organic ; and Professor Zittel, although at first 

 favouring the view that it was a Foraminifer, after- 

 wards changed his opinion. Other specimens from 

 Bavaria, Bohemia, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Brazil, 

 which at first were supposed to be Eozoon, are now 

 acknowledged to be inorganic ; and somewhat similar 

 structures have been found in a calcareous veinstone 

 in eastern Massachusetts and in an altered limestone 

 from Vesuvius. 



It is, however, chiefly the position in which 

 Eozoon is found which makes it impossible to believe 

 that it is of organic origin. Professor Bonney has 

 pointed out that the original Eozoon occurs on the 

 periphery of blocks of a variety of pyroxene called 

 Malacolite, surrounded by crystalline limestone, and 

 that it is formed by grains of this Malacolite, 

 generally altered into serpentine, scattered through 

 the limestone. 5 On the organic hypothesis these 

 blocks of pyroxene were the rocks in the ocean on 

 which Eozoon grew ; but evidently this cannot be 

 the case, for the blocks are segregation masses, and 

 were, no doubt, formed at the same time as the 

 grains of serpentine which are supposed to infiltrate 

 the organism. 



Also, the supposed canals are sometimes filled with 

 dolomite, a mineral which is usually altered calcite, 

 and is rarely deposited in cavities of unaltered calcite. 



The great thickness and extent of the limestones 

 with which Eozoon is associated forbid the idea that 



^Geological Magazine, 1895, p. 292. 



