134: Royal Society :— 
May 16, 1867.—William Bowman, Esq., V.P., im the Chair. 
‘** Further Observations on the Structure and Affinities of Hozoon 
Canadense.” (In a Letter to the President.) By Witi1am B. 
CaRrPENTER, M.D., F.R.S., F.L.S., F.G.S. 
University of London, May 9th, 1867. 
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- 
ealated 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 Hozoon 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 the 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 Serpen- — 
tine-granules 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 
‘Reader’ (June 10, 1865) by Professors King and Rowney of 
Queen’s College, Galway, 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 Hozoon Canadense of the Laurentian Serpentines. 
This view was afterwards fully set forth in a Paper “ On the so- 
called Eozoonal Rock,’’ read at the Geological Society on the 
10th of January 1866, 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. 215) :— 
“Tt has been seen (1) that the ‘chamber-casts’ or granules of 
serpentine are more or less simulated by chondrodite, coccolite, 
ads &¢., also by the botryoidal configurations common in 
ermian 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 ; 
