54 EOZOON CANADENSE. PART in. 



from the temperate zones in both, hemispheres, and from 

 shallow as well as deep-sea beds. They have also reviewed 

 the fossil Foraminifera in their manifold aspects as 

 presented by the ancient geological fannas throughout 

 the whole series from the Tertiary down to the Carbonifer- 

 ous strata inclusive ; and have come to the astonishing 

 / conclusion that scarcely any of the species of the Fora- 

 ^ I minifera met with in the secondary rocks have become 

 j extinct. All that they had seen have their counterparts 

 in the recent Mediterranean deposits. Throughout 

 that long series of geological epochs even to the present 

 day, the Foraminifera show no tendency to rise to a 

 higher type ; but variety of form in the same species 

 prevailed then as it does now. 



/ Subsequently to this investigation, a gigantic Orbi- 



tulite twelve inches in diameter, and the third of an 



> , inch thick, has been found in the Silurian strata in 



( Canada. The largest recent species Dr. Carpenter had 



seen was about the size and thickness of a shilling. 



The lowest stratum of the Cambrian formations has 

 been regarded as the most ancient of the Palaeozoic 

 rocks ; now, however, strata of crystallized limestone 

 near the base of the Laurentian system, which is 50,000 

 feet thick in Canada, are discovered by Sir W. E. Logan 

 to have been the work of the Eozoon Canadense, a 

 gigantic Foraminifer, at a period so inconceivably 

 remote that it may be regarded as the first appearance 

 of animal life upon the earth. In a paper published by 

 Dr. Carpenter, in May 1865, he expressed his opinion 

 that the Eozoon would be found in the older rocks of 

 central Europe ; and in the December following he 

 received specimens from the fundamental quartz rocks 

 of Germany, in which he found undoubted traces of the 

 Eozoon. Here the superincumbent strata are 90,000 

 feet thick ; the transcendent antiquity of the Eozoon is 

 therefore beyond all estimation. 



