464 Dr. W. B. Carpenter on Eozoon canadense. 



tween the structure of the best-preserved specimens of Eozooiij 

 and that of the Numvwlites whose tubulation I described in 

 1849, and of the CalcarinawhoQQ tubulation and canal-system 

 I described in 1860. And I leave it to the judgment of those 

 who know the differences between Organic sti-ucture and any- 

 conceivable results of Physical or Chemical action, whether the 

 appearances represented in Plate XIX., to the minute accuracy 

 of which representation I pledge myself, are compatible with 

 the doctrine that the Canadian Ophite is nothing more than a 

 product of mineralization. 



That I have not troubled myself to reply to the reiterated 

 arguments in favour of that doctrine, which have been 

 advanced by Professors King and Eowney on the strength of 

 the occurrence of undoubted results of mineralization in the 

 Canadian Ophite, and of still more marked evidences of the 

 same action in other Ophites, has been simply because these 

 arguments appeared to me, as I thought they must also appear 

 to others, entirely destitute of logical force. Every scientific 

 Palasontologist I have ever been acquainted with has taken 

 the best preserved specimens, not the icorst, as the basis of his 

 reconstructions ; and if he should meet with distinct evidence 

 of characteristic organic structure in even a very small frag- 

 ment of a doubtful form, he would consider the organic origin 

 of that form to be thereby substantiated, whatever might be 

 the evidence of purely mineral arrangement which the greater 

 part of his specimen miiy present, — since he would regard 

 that arrangement as a probable result of subsequent minerali- 

 zation, by which the original organic structure has been more 

 or less obscured. If this is 7iot to be our rule of interpretation, 

 a large part of the Palieontological work of our time must be 

 be thrown aside as worthless. If, for example, Professors 

 King and Rowney were to begin their study of NummuUtes 

 by the examination of their most mineralized forms, they 

 would deem themselves justified (according to their canons of 

 interpretation) in denying the existence of the tubulation and 

 canalization which I described (in 1849) in the N. hevigata 

 preserved almost unaltered in the London Clay of Bracklesham 

 Bay. 



My own notions oiEozoic structure have been formed on the 

 examination of the Canadian specimens selected by the ex- 

 perienced discrimination of Sir William Logan, as those in 

 wdiich there was lecist appearance of nletamorphism ; and 

 having found in these what I regarded as unmistakable evi- 

 dence of an organic structure conformable to the Foraminiferal 

 type, I cannot regard it as any disproof of that conformity, 



