390 Professors King and Rowney on 



LVI. — Remarks on the Subject of " Eozoon." 

 By Prof. King, D.Sc, and Prof. Rowney, D.Pli. 



We have no intention of entering on the discussion opened up 

 by Mr. Carter, F.R.S. &c., in his letter to one of us, and the 

 reply to it by Dr. Carpenter, that have lately appeared in the 

 'Annals;' feeling satisfied that the constructors of the so-called 

 Eozoon canadense have quite sufficient to attend to in answer- 

 ing the evidences and arguments already brought forward in 

 the papers we have published against its presumed organic 

 origin. Hitherto, and we regret to say it advisedly, no proper 

 attempt has been made to do so. 



In our early investigations, and after having fully satisfied 

 ourselves that the various eozoonal structures could not be the 

 remains of an organism, we felt it to be our duty to make an 

 attempt at explaining their mineral origin. They looked 

 much like dendromorphs and acicular crystallizations ; but we 

 soon found that they were not productions of these kinds, nor 

 concretions, nor infiltrations : instead of being incremental, 

 they were obviously decremental. Consisting for the most 

 part of serpentine (an amorphous hydro-silicate of magnesia), 

 this mineral was seen to be affected by an irregular septarian 

 and a subparallel divisional structure, accompanied by some 

 remarkable changes, one fibrous (known to mineralogists as 

 chrysotile) , another arborescent (? metaxite), and another floc- 

 culent — all usually of a white colour. Very frequently calcite 

 prevails in the divisional interspaces in association with the 

 latter allomorphs. In such cases the serpentine is broken up 

 into irregularly lobulated or segmented grains, lumps, and 

 plates, separated by the calcific interspaces ; in which are im- 

 bedded examples of the three allomorphs : the chrysotile is 

 generally an integral portion of the grains and plates of serpen- 

 tine, forming patches of asbestiform coating. The plates of 

 serpentine and their calcitic interspaces occasionally give rise to 

 remarkable interlaminations, while the grains (usually at- 

 tached to one another, but occasionally isolated) occur irregu- 

 larly scattered amongst the calcite. Not unfrequently the 

 serpentine assumes the condition of chrysotile ivithout any cal- 

 cite being present. A close investigation enabled us to see not 

 only the serpentine passing insensibly into compact or true 

 chrysotile and flocculite (as, for the sake of brevity, it may be 

 called), but that the one often became separately acicular, 

 and the other changing from rudely shaped masses into simple 

 and complex arborescences (like those in metaxite), simu- 

 lating, in the most remarkable manner, sponge-structures and 

 dendritic crystallizations. The evidences were so clear and 



