136 Royal Society :— 
In the first place, the Serpentine-Marble of Connemara, on 
which their investigations had been chiefly conducted, is admitted 
by every one who has examined it to have undergone a considera- 
ble amount of metamorphic change. To myself, as well as to 
Professors King and Rowney, the evidence which it presents of 
the operation of chemical and physical agencies is most obvious 
and conclusive; whilst the evidence of its organic origin rests 
entirely on its partial analogy to the eozoonal rock of Canada. 
Hence an entire surrender might be made of the organic hypothesis | 
as regards the Connemara marble, without in the least degree 
invalidating the claim of the eozoonal rock of Canada to an or- 
ganie origin. But, on the other hand, if the latter claim can be 
sustained, it may be fairly extended to the “ Irish Green,” should 
the evidence of similarity be found sufficient to justify such an 
extension, since it must be admitted by every petrologist that no 
amount of purely mineral arrangement in a metamorphic rock 
ean disprove its claim to organic origin, if that claim ean be 
shown to be justified by distinct traces, in other parts of the same 
formation, of organisms adequate to its production. The Carboni- 
ferous Limestone, various members of the Oolitic and Cretaceous 
formations, and the Hippurite and Nummulitic Limestones, all 
exhibit in parts an entire absence of organic structure, which is 
yet so distinct elsewhere as to justify the generalization that their 
materials have been originally separated from the ocean-waters by 
animal agency. And it is well known to those who have studied 
the changes which recent Coral-formations have undergone when 
upraised above the sea-level, that a complete conversion of a mass 
of Coral into a suberystalline Limestone not distinguishable 
from ordinary Carboniferous Limestone, may take place under 
circumstances in no way extraordinary. 
It is, therefore, upon the character of the Serpentine-Limestone 
of Canada, not upon the nature of the Connemara Marble, that 
the question of organic origin entirely turns; and, as I have else- 
where shown in detail*, the hypothesis of Professors King and 
Rowney altogether fails to account for the combination of pheno- 
mena which the former presents, whilst the accordance of that 
combination with the idea of its Organic origin (a very moderate 
allowance being made for the effects of metamorphie change) is 
such as to establish the same kind of probability in its favour as 
that which we derive in the case of the Human origin of the “ flint 
implements ”’ from the cumulative evidence of their succession of 
fractured surfaces, or in the case of the chemical composition of 
the sun from the precise correspondence between certain dark 
lines in the solar spectrum and groups of bright lines produced in 
a dark spectrum by the combustion of certain known metals. 
I may stop to point out, however, that Professors King and 
Rowney do not attempt to offer any feasible explanation of the 
fundamental fact of the regular alternation of lamelle of Calca- 
* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, August, 1866. 
: 
