PREFACE. Vll 



ment. The opinion on the subject, which had been founded on 

 the researches of Blum, Bischof, Rose, and others, was encounter- 

 ing more or less hostility from Scheerer, Naumann, Delesse, and 

 S terry Hunt. The pseudomorphic origin of serpentine, which 

 had been strongly contended for by the first group of scientists, 

 was uncompromisingly opposed by certain of the latter, espe- 

 cially Sterry Hunt, who, with the fact before him that this 

 mineral occurs, forming vast rock-masses, amongst the old strati- 

 fied crystalline deposits (Archaeans) of Canada, unhesitatingly 

 declared it to be neither pseudomorphic, nor metamorphic, 

 but a crystallized precipitate, chemically thrown down by the 

 primaeval ocean. At last "Eozoon Canadense " appeared on the 

 scene. Chiming in to some extent with Sterry Hunt's ' ' novel 

 doctrine," it was at once enthusiastically accepted by the highest 

 authorities in geology as resolving the vexed question attaching 

 to serpentine and some other Archaean problems ; at the same 

 time it was held up before the eyes of a wondering and con- 

 fiding world as the first-born of life on our planet protoplasm 

 in vast flakes invested with a calcareous covering, and rivalling 

 coral reefs in magnitude ! 



It will be our object in the following pages to show that both 

 doctrines are absolutely fallacious. 



