640 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1904. 



sonal and often not particularly creditable to those most interested. 

 Thus Carpenter accused Rowney of never having seen any transparent 

 sections of Eozoon thin enough to give a good view of its tubuliferous 

 layer until he himself had shown it to him; and, further than that, that 

 he had no practical knowledge of the structure of nummuline shells at 

 best. His paper in reply to the statements of Rowney concluded with 

 the remark that he had recently had his attention called to an occur- 

 rence of Eozoon, which was preserved simply in carbonate of lime 

 without any serpentine or other foreign mineral, and showing the 

 canal system ver} 7 perfectly. This he felt was a conclusive answer to 

 King and Rowney's objection No. 3, to the effect that the canal system 

 of Eozoon was no other than crystallization of metaxite, an allomor- 

 phic variety of serpentine. 



In this same year Ferdinand von Hochstetter found in the crystal- 

 line Azoic limestone of Krumman, Bavaria, structures which, when 

 examined by Carpenter, were pronounced by him to be unmistakably 

 those of Eozoon. 



The forms thus far found were limited to the Laurentian rocks, and 

 were regarded by both Logan and Dawson as important " horizon 

 markers, 11 i. e., as affording presumptive evidence in favor of the Lau- 

 rentian age of all rocks in which they might occur. The announce- 

 ment by C. W. Gi'imbel of finding Eozoonal structures in the Hercynian 

 gneisses of Bavaria, regarded by him as of Huronian or Cambrian age, 

 was, therefore, both disconcerting and encouraging to the Eozoonists. 

 Gi'imbel himself adopted enthusiastically the conclusions of Carpenter 

 and Dawson as to the organic nature of the forms. " This discovery," 

 he wrote, "at once overturns the notions hitherto commonly enter- 

 tained with regard to the origin of the stratified primary limestones. 

 In this discovery we hail with joy the dawn of a new epoch." 



In 1867 Sir William Logan again brought the matter to the atten- 

 tion of the Geological Society of London, submitting a specimen of 

 Eozoon obtained in the township of Tudor, Hastings County, Canada, 

 in which the serpentine minerals were quite lacking, it being, in fact, 

 the specimen above referred to by Carpenter. This was examined 

 and described by Dawson, who thought to be able to detect all the 

 essential characteristics of the true Eozoon. In presenting his descrip- 

 tion of this new find, Dawson took occasion once more to challenge the 

 work of Messrs. King and Rowney, and accused them of making the 

 fundamental error of defective observation in failure to distinguish 

 between organic and crystalline forms, an accusation which he sub- 

 stantiated (?) by a long argument not necessary to reproduce here. 



From this time on, literature on both sides of the Atlantic contains 

 many references and matter more or less relevant to the discussion. 

 By many of the best informed the organic nature of the fossil was con- 

 sidered to be an open question, and but few American geologists, so 

 far as I am aware, ever openly advocated it. 



