

not cvon studied the principal collections on which other natur- 

 alists ecjually competent have based their conclusions, they incur 

 a responsibility much more grave than if they were merely the 

 conductors of a popular scientific journal, open to cursory dis- 

 cussions of controverted points. They cannot rel'evc themselves 

 from tills responsibility till they shall liavc publislud a really ex- 

 haustive description of Kozoon by some one of the original workers 

 on the subject. This is the more necessary, since if hJtK.(H)>i is 

 really a fossil, its discovery is one ot' the most important in 

 modern palwontoldgy, and since its claims cannot be .settled 

 except by the most fnll itivestigation and illustration. 



The second {)aper referred to abov(! contains little that is new, 

 being a re-h;ibilitation of that hypothfsis of " Methylosls," or 

 chemic il transmutation, which the authors have already fully 

 explained in the Transactions of the Irish Academy and else- 

 where. Its bearing on Eozoon is simply this: — that if any one 

 ac()uainted with geological and chemical possibilities can be in- 

 duced to believe that the L:iurentian limestones of Canada are 

 '' Methyjosed products,'' which originally • existed as gneisses, 

 hornblende schists, and other mineralised silacid meiamorphics," 

 he may be induced also to believe that h'o-.'nm is a product of 

 nirrely mineral metamorphism. 



When we consider that these great limestones hav<' been so 

 fully traced and mapped by Sir William Logan and his succes- 

 sors on the Geological Survey ; that some of them are several 

 hundreds of feet in thickness and traceable for great distances, 

 that they are quite conformable with tli'' containing beds, and 

 themselves exhibit alternating layers of limostoiu' and d lomite, 

 with layers (tharacterized by the presence of graphite, serpentine, 

 and other minerals, and subordinate thin bands of gneiss and 

 pyroxene rock, the idea that they can be products of a sort of 

 pseudomorphism of gneisses and similar rocks, becomes stupend- 

 ously absurd, and can only be accounted foi' by want of acquaint- 

 ance with the facts on the part of the authors. 



To explain tlu^ structures of hJnzoon. however, even this is not 

 altogether sufficient, but we must su[)pose a peculiar and complex 

 arrangianent of laminae, canals, and microscopic tubuli or fibres 

 simulating them, to be produced in some parts of llie limestones 

 and not in others; ajid this by the agency of several different 

 kinds of minerals. 



In other words we have to suppose a conversioti on a irigantic 



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