124 THE DAWN OF LIFE. . 'J 



the animal, in which, not only the chambers and connecting 

 canals, but the minute tubuli and pores are represented by 

 solid mineral silicates. It was shown that this process must 

 have taken place immediately after the death of the animal, 

 and must have depended on the deposition of these silicates 

 from the waters of the ocean. 



" The train of investigation thus opened up, has been pursued 

 by Dr. Giimbel, Director of the Geological Survey of Ba- 

 varia, who, in a recent remarkable memoir presented to the 

 Eoyal Society of that country, has detailed his results. 



" Having first detected a fossil identical with the Canadian 

 Eozoon (together with several other curious microscopic 

 organic forms not yet observed in Canada), replaced by ser- 

 pentine in a crystalline limestone from the primitive group of 

 Bavaria, which he identified with the Laurentian system of 

 this country, he next discovered a related organism, to which 

 he has given the name of Eozoon Bavaricum. This occurs in a 

 crystalline limestone belonging to a series of rocks more 

 recent than the Laurentian, but older than the Primordial 

 zone of the Lower Silurian, and designated by him the 

 Hercynian clay slate series, which he conceives may repre- 

 sent the Cambrian system of Great Britain, and perhaps cor- 

 respond to the Huronian series of Canada and the United 

 States. The cast of the soft parts of this new fossil is, accord- 

 ing to Giimbel, in part of serpentine, and in part of horn- 

 blende. 



" His attention was next directed to the green hornblende 

 (pargasite) which occurs in the crystalline limestone of Pargas 

 in Finland, and remains when the carbonate of lime is dissolved 

 as a coherent mass closely resembling that left by the irregu- 

 lar and acervuline forms of Eozoon. The calcite walls also 

 sometimes show casts of tubuli. ... A white mineral, 

 probably scapolite was found to constitute some tubercles 

 associated with the pargasite, and the two mineral species 

 were in some cases united in the same rounded grain. 



" Similar observations were made by him upon specimens of 

 coccolite or green pyroxene, occurring in rounded and wrinkled 

 grains in a Laurentian limestone from New York. These, 



