324 Miscellaneous. 



published work, entitled ' Illustrations of North- American Ento- 

 mology,' which we have not seen. 



Of course any special criticism of this work is quite out of the 

 question, unless one were prepared to go through nearly the same 

 amount of labour that the author has bestowed upon it. The genera 

 and species are most carefully characterized, tables are freelj^ intro- 

 duced to facilitate their determination, and the whole book bears 

 the impress of most conscientious work. Here and there we seem 

 to see indications of a desire to draw the line of specific distinction 

 too tightly ; but without a knowledge of the sj^ecies it is of course 

 impossible to pronounce a decided opinion upon such matters ; and 

 we can only welcome Dr. Thomas's memoir as a most important 

 contribution to our knowledge of American entomology. It is illus- 

 trated with a nicely executed plate of outline figures, designed to 

 show the general characters of a few of the genera referred to. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Eozoon canadense. By Prof. Max Schultze. 



The discovery of the American geologists Sir William Logan and 

 Prof. Dawson with regard to a peculiar fossil in the primaeval lime- 

 stones of the oldest formation of Canada, which they thought must 

 be referred to the Poraminifera, and named Eozoon canadense, has ob- 

 tained a provisional settlement by the investigations of Dr. W.B. Car- 

 penter, of London, whose extensive works upon the Poraminifera are 

 recognized as occupying the first rank. Carpenter considers there 

 is no doubt that the discoidal masses, about a foot in diameter and 

 several inches thick, composed of alternate layers of greenish sili- 

 cates (serpentine or augite) and carbonate of lime (or magnesia), 

 which, caked together into irregular nests, occur in the Laurentian 

 deposits of Canada hitherto regarded as perfectly azoic, represent 

 the remains of a many-chambered Poraminifer of the habit of the 

 Acervulina), M. Schultze. Like the glauconitic filling of more recent 

 Poraminifera, the serpentinous mass of the Eozoon has penetrated 

 into the interior of the chambers, while the intervening calcareous 

 bands represent the original calcareous walls of the chambers. In 

 these, in well-preserved specimens, there is a complex, ramified 

 canal-system, connected with the original cavities of the chambers, 

 and filled, like these, with a silicate which is insoluble in acids. 

 Carpenter compares them to the canals detected in various fossil 

 and recent Poraminifera, which occur arranged in bundles, as, for 

 example, in Calcarina or Siderolites calcitrapoides from the chalk of 

 Maestricht. 



The statements of the above-mentioned English and American 

 observers have been received with much mistrust, especially in Ger- 

 many. In fact there can be no doubt that much of what has been 

 given out as Eozoon shows no kind of organic structure when ex- 

 amined under suificiently high powers. The author therefore 



